"We just want an online destination for our community to be united" and how are they planning to achieve that goal without community chat channels? c'mon..I mean there could be 234234987234 people on b.net and everyone's like right next to each other...only problem is we cannot see them....How are we gonna initiate conversations and unite?
I would like to make a statement from a perspective of a "casual" gamer Blizzard seems so concerned about. I haven't played SC1 or Diablo, I have played WC3 at a friends house, completed the campaign and we had lots of fun nights playing LAN games. I got interested in SC2 just recently, found out about TL.net from HD and Husky, got the beta key here and started playing beta. I was really going to buy this game once it was released, but I no longer do.
As a "casual" player or a complete noobie to competitive RTS I was rather interested at first. The game is really good. I can't say much a bout balance as it's not much of a concern for me as I have just started playing the game. When your APM is 45 balance doesn't matter that much. Overall it's quite interested to play online. However as time went on I started loosing interest. I mean I just come now to play 2-3 games and leave, not because I don't have time, but because it's not that interesting anymore. Why?
1. I feel absolutely alone even though the Bnet shows 12000 players are online atm. I don't have any friends who play SC2, even if I did I would not contact them through facebook. This is just ridiculous feature in my opinion.
2. I have no people to socialise with and play games, because there are no chat rooms.
3. Divisions seem rather nice for a completely new player, but I would like global stats too. Ideally a) division rank b) global bronze/silver/gold/plat/diamond rank c) complete global rank. I am a rather competitve person as I participate in competitive sports and I don't care that I am 15678/16892 atm, but I know that if I win 10 games in a row I'll be 14987/16892, so I have something to work on and feel a sense of achievement.
4. Match making system is rather shit right now. As bronze I don't want to be playing against gold player. What am I going to learn in this match? Also it's not fun to be stomped without a chance at a fair fight.
5. Replay system is shit too. I want to learn from them, but how can I find a replay I played a while ago and compare it to a recent one to see if I improved a bit, when they are named Blistering Sands(23) and so on. Can't even see who I played against or race of my opponent quickly either.
6. NOOOOOOOO LAN!!!! Wtf?? I was going to buy this game so I can introduce it to my frinds so they buy it too and we could happily spend evenings playing on LAN. Have some beers, trash-talk each others skills and generally have a good time. How are we supposed to do this now? Over bnet? No chance of my internet connection being able to keep us all latency free. So if we want no lag we have to be each at his own place. But then 99% of the fun is gone...
7. Even as a "CASUAL" gamer I see no cross continental play as a stupidly bad decision in terms of Esports, even though I did not know such a thing as Esports existed untill about three weeks ago...
8. ACHIEVEMENTS ARE STUPID!!!
9. Such tone of this interview made me convinced not to buy SC2. Maybe once all expansions are released I will buy it to play the campaign, but that's just maybe...
I have one more question. I know you said you're not going to support LAN play with StarCraft, but there has been rumours that there might be some semi-offline mode – log on once to make sure that you have the client, and can connect. Are there any such plans?
The offline mode would be for the single-player component, so if you want to play the campaign offline, if you validate the version on Battle.net and then you play offline for campaign.
If you have a really bad internet connection, but you have a couple of friends there...
"That functionality's not there. Our goal is to make sure that connectivity to the Battle.net servers is such that that's the experience that people want."
....SHIT !!!!!!!! THAT'S NOT WE WANT! you can warn me for this post but do they think that we are stupid?
who wants to play campaign with logging in to b.net?
are you serious? single player is single player! that is why its called SINGLE PLAYER.
After reading Mr. Pearce's comments, I wonder if he has ever even checked the BLIZZARD community forums. I do not wonder if he has bothered looking at any other community site, because it is blatantly obvious that he has not. I am sorely disappointed with Blizzard and with Mr. Pearce's flippant and ignorant comments. Hopefully someone posts the final results of this thread on the Blizzard community forums for starcraft 2, so there is some small chance that someone at Blizzard sees it.
“Depends on whether or not it's something the community really wants. [Laughs]”
Did you have to rub it in to?
I usually have a high level of confidence in blizzard, but it is beginning to wane under these new developments. Hopefully battlenet can be improved upon in its current state, toward the launch of game. Basically the lack of proper social interactions outside of the friends list, makes it so battlenet just feels kind of cold. It’s like being in a constricted place where I can’t really move my arms or legs.
The main thing that bugs me about the interview, is that he seem absolutely oblivious to the complaints, or he’s just plain condescending. I wonder if Activision has anything to do with this? Because I despise Activision.
I still have confidence in Blizzard, but it’s starting to disappear. Very fast.
A Blizzard Battle.net 2.0 meeting looked like this:
- "Okay guys, we gotta work out something to impress the gamers here. Any ideas?" - "Hm, I dunno, let's just do the stuff we had in WC3 already: chat channels, easy way to change between servers etc." - "I'll go out on a limb here... what if we scratched chat channels and access to different servers... and instead... integrate FACEBOOK into battle.net! I mean ask yourselves... do we REALLY want chat channels and a global community??" - "..." - "..." - "...Who the fuck let this guy in. SECURITY!!"
Do we really want chat rooms ? Is that a joke that I didn't get or something ? Cuz it's not really funny. Everyone that I know that talks about sc2 - even people that aren't really interested in starcraft or don't have the beta - say that chat rooms is a must. No exception. Blizzard is intentionally not hearing fans request. I'm seriously disappointed.
I don't want to challenge anyone's opinions here: Maybe they aren't implementing the chat rooms because of the latency problems. I honestly wonder how big their internet pipe is, how many ungodly amount of servers they have for all of their fanchises that they STILL support. Most game companies drop their games after 5-7 years of existence, but Blizzard maintains all of their titles regardless to their age.
Perhaps their cutting corners because they realize that their running out of pipe to shove all this content through?