Since the anouncement of SC2, Blizzard has told the world they are interested in keping the Brood War lineage alive by making its sequel the competitive RTS of the future. They went so far as to hire staff solely for the purpose of creating an internal e-sports (ahem-ESPORTS) team, which to my knowledge is an industry first.

For the past year the talk has been vague promises about how the new battle.net system will blow all anything we currently have out of the water. With the advent of the beta, we have some concrete info and a taste of what is to come. Right now there are two areas of concern.

Issue 1: No global rankings

Its highly annoying that the best comparison any one player has is merely to the people in his division, and the aggregate number of points awarded or taken by the system is also dependant on the division itself. When broken into groups, the number of "what if" variables is absolutely huge. Sure there are 8 people in the who are 'on top', but how are we to compare anyone in one division to someone in another? Sure, we know some people are ahead of people in their divisions, but what does that tell us? What about people who are in the middle of their leagues? How can we tell how they would do against each other? In a serious competitive setting we absolutely need a way to compare any one player in a direct manner to another - something other than "is top 8 of his league" and "is not top 8 of his league".

Its understandable to not want a gargantuan ladder ranking where people see themselves as ranked #14,678 in their region, but this division grouping doesn't cut it. Starcraft servers of the past have had a system of grade rankings, things like A through D which allows us to compare players of various skill levels quickly, easily, and without debate. A possible compromise would be to keep the division system, but make the points within each more straight forward. As of right now its not even possible to compare points across divisions, as the calculation takes into account relative levels of players within each grouping. Regardless, if SC2 wants to cater to the competitive circuit something of that calibur is a necessity.

Issue 2: No cross-server capabilities

Being able to compete with people around the world without hassle is one reason current BW is great. The recent twitter chat seems to say this is one feature that won't be available at launch. As GARIMTO said regarding the state of PvP, this is one step shy of a disaster. Being able to easily grab a 3v3 or 4v4 game will be an integral part of the game experience, this is one of the reasons the current scene is so tight knit across countries. With the community split between continents, not being able to do this effectively segregates the community.

For tournaments this makes all kinds of competition essentially impossible. For people to play worldwide they would effectively need to own (and have installed) 3 separate copies of the game. Tournaments as of right now are a way to bring people together, TSL had participants from 13 countries fight on a level playing field to decide who is the best outside the Korean scene. It is not only annoying for players who want to know where they stand, but for viewers who want to see their favorite players duke it out mano-a-mano to find out who comes out on top. Satchel Paige never threw a ball to Babe Ruth, and to this day there is endless speculation on who would have won on the baseball diamond. This absolutely needs to be a capability of the game at launch.

SC2 has a chance to fix one of our current problems in the BW community - that the Korean and Chinese scenes are outside the reach of anyone not living in those countries. The system in place right now is a bit of a step backwards, further dividing up communities when it is not needed.

All in all, its too early to truly judge, but the details we have are not promising.