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On May 31 2010 12:07 XFire wrote:
Honestly, if they're so afraid of piracy, they should require a quick login to authenticate your copy then allow LAN. It would be similar to what they're doing with offline campaign mode.
imo, both the current bnet requirement or bnet auth first then lan method will fail vs piracy.
its very easy to write a program that fakes bnet auth. or provide simulated bnet servers, like what Garena does with SC and WCIII.
ultimately, if they want to fight piracy, they need to learn from EA (yes i can not believe Electronic Arts is doing a better job on this). EA provides incentives for player to connect their games to their official server with things like online only content.
In fact, Diablo II has bnet only items which can not be found in single player. While you CAN use 3rd party program to recreate items with exact properties (in single player only), you will never get the satisfaction of bragging your achievement of defeating those bosses.
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Blizzard: "Urrr, they don't need cross-region play, they'll make neeew friends hurrrrrr"
The sad thing is that's literally their thought process. They're making it "like WoW", a game with an anemic competitive scene. WoW isn't even, at its heart, a competitive game. It's an "everybody wins" type ga-ohshitthat'sWHATBNET2.0ISAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
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On May 31 2010 12:30 dybydx wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 12:07 XFire wrote:
Honestly, if they're so afraid of piracy, they should require a quick login to authenticate your copy then allow LAN. It would be similar to what they're doing with offline campaign mode. imo, both the current bnet requirement or bnet auth first then lan method will fail vs piracy. its very easy to write a program that fakes bnet auth. or provide simulated bnet servers, like what Garena does with SC and WCIII. ultimately, if they want to fight piracy, they need to learn from EA (yes i can not believe Electronic Arts is doing a better job on this). EA provides incentives for player to connect their games to their official server with things like online only content. In fact, Diablo II has bnet only items which can not be found in single player. While you CAN use 3rd party program to recreate items with exact properties (in single player only), you will never get the satisfaction of bragging your achievement of defeating those bosses.
Actually your point is entirely correct. The best way to fight piracy is to make the incentives for online play so strong that people wants to pay for the game. This has been the case for all the blizzard games ive bought and played. Starcraft 1, CD-key for battle.net (back in 98-00). Warcraft III ladder junkie (CD-key + acces to the ladder) and as you mentioned with D2. However the intresting thing is that the current state of battle.net rather enhances the incentives for piracy. Its so because battle.net doesnt offer the most basic features people are screaming after.
If a pirated server pops up configured the same way as ICcup with a "free" client would anyone buy this game? And more important - the players who bought the game, would they play on a ICcup replica or would they prefer battle.net? I think that the vast majority of players would prefer to play SC2 on ICcup rather than battle.net 2.0 as it is now... The bigger the demand, the greater are the incentives. With these high incentives for creating a hacked client with LAN - Chatrooms - Clan support - Cross realm play - i would say its only a matter of time. Blizzard can't win this fight if they stay on the path they have chosen.
Also, one of the greatest incentives for buying a blizzard game has always been the use map settings stuff - but the best (i assume) these will be handled by mini-transactions which actually means that one will be paying for the product over and over again which is such a lack luster. I can't believe Blizzard chose this path for money
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yet another instance of our culture's everybody is a winner attitude creeping into competition and ruining it for everyone.
blizzard keeps trying to cater to casual gamers, and honestly this turns off the hardcore gamers when the casual gamers COULDNT CARE LESS about any of it as they are by definition CASUAL
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Frank Pearce on Blizzard/Activisions stance on DRM:
“The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you’ve got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is,” he added.
“That’s a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it’s really a losing battle for us, because the community is always so much larger, and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it’s because they want to pirate the game or just because it’s a curiosity for them, is much larger than our development teams.
“We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology.
Source:
http://wccftech.com/2010/05/30/blizzard-calls-ubisoft-drm-losing-battle/
YOU CALL NO CHAT CHANNELS, LACK OF CROSS REALM PLAY (without buying multiple copies) AND THE INABILITY TO WATCH REPLAYS WITH FRIENDS "A FULL-FEATURED PLATFORM"???
I mean what the fuck is the development team "focused" on?
Fuck you Bli$$ard!
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On May 31 2010 13:17 Rorschach wrote:Frank Pearce on Blizzard/Activisions stance on DRM: Show nested quote +
“The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you’ve got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is,” he added.
“That’s a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it’s really a losing battle for us, because the community is always so much larger, and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it’s because they want to pirate the game or just because it’s a curiosity for them, is much larger than our development teams.
“We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology.
Source: http://wccftech.com/2010/05/30/blizzard-calls-ubisoft-drm-losing-battle/YOU CALL NO CHAT CHANNELS, LACK OF CROSS REALM PLAY (without buying multiple copies) AND THE INABILITY TO WATCH REPLAYS "A FULL-FEATURED PLATFORM"??? I mean what the fuck is the development team "focused" on? Fuck you Bli$$ard!
Inability to watch replays? What?
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Probably talking about the inability to watch replays online with friends.
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Blizzard runs this bitch and they'll do AS THEY PLEASE with it. I mean how much time are you guys honestly going to spend sitting in the bnet menus? Also LAN is so 1980s. Either buy the game or don't buy it.. but I seriously doubt whining will help.
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On May 31 2010 13:19 Dommk wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 13:17 Rorschach wrote:Frank Pearce on Blizzard/Activisions stance on DRM:
“The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you’ve got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is,” he added.
“That’s a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it’s really a losing battle for us, because the community is always so much larger, and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it’s because they want to pirate the game or just because it’s a curiosity for them, is much larger than our development teams.
“We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology.
Source: http://wccftech.com/2010/05/30/blizzard-calls-ubisoft-drm-losing-battle/YOU CALL NO CHAT CHANNELS, LACK OF CROSS REALM PLAY (without buying multiple copies) AND THE INABILITY TO WATCH REPLAYS "A FULL-FEATURED PLATFORM"??? I mean what the fuck is the development team "focused" on? Fuck you Bli$$ard! Inability to watch replays? What?
online with friends. This is a feature the original starcraft had and many people including myself loved it.
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On May 31 2010 13:21 infestednuke wrote:
Blizzard runs this bitch and they'll do AS THEY PLEASE with it. I mean how much time are you guys honestly going to spend sitting in the bnet menus? Also LAN is so 1980s. Either buy the game or don't buy it.. but I seriously doubt whining will help.
We are not "whining", we are RAGING!
But serious we've been flat out lied to and been side stepped at every turn.
I suppose we should thank good "ol" Frank for just being straight forward with us...
As a loyal Blizz fan I can't help but feel a bit screwed over by all this.
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On May 31 2010 13:21 infestednuke wrote:
Blizzard runs this bitch and they'll do AS THEY PLEASE with it. I mean how much time are you guys honestly going to spend sitting in the bnet menus? Also LAN is so 1980s. Either buy the game or don't buy it.. but I seriously doubt whining will help.
so 1980s? I find having LANs with friend to be very fun and much more social then being trapped in my room alone. Will we be able to have 8 connections from the same house to bnet without lag? I doubt it.
edit: If you had never done a LAN with friends you may not understand how much more fun it is than just talking with people on vent.
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Blizzard is king and we're all the pawns. Personally, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this game no matter what.
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On May 31 2010 13:21 infestednuke wrote:
Blizzard runs this bitch and they'll do AS THEY PLEASE with it. I mean how much time are you guys honestly going to spend sitting in the bnet menus? Also LAN is so 1980s. Either buy the game or don't buy it.. but I seriously doubt whining will help.
Macro
On May 31 2010 13:29 infestednuke wrote:
Blizzard is king and we're all the pawns. Personally, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this game no matter what.
Macro
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On May 31 2010 13:21 infestednuke wrote:
Blizzard runs this bitch and they'll do AS THEY PLEASE with it. I mean how much time are you guys honestly going to spend sitting in the bnet menus? Also LAN is so 1980s. Either buy the game or don't buy it.. but I seriously doubt whining will help.
email is so 1990's. monitors are so 1980's. or in other words, just cuz some blue poster on blizzard forums thinks chat channels are SO 2002 doesn't mean it's cool for you to make similarly idiotic analogies.
whining does help. when you played starcraft 1 back in the day and couldnt figure out how to beat level 3 in the campaign what did you type to build things faster right after you typed "power overwhelming"? operation cwal, duh. And what is operation cwal? I assume I don't need to elaborate more?
and whining does help because it will impact sales. yes, blizzard does "run this bitch". but if the whining, or "shitstorm" as some mod put it earlier, gets huge, then Blizzard will have less than expected sales. which means it impacts their bottom line and will either force them to fire everyone or change the game so more people will buy. which means this "bitch" of theirs isn't completely theirs to "run", right?
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On May 31 2010 13:21 infestednuke wrote:
Also LAN is so 1980s.
Next are you gonna say that internet forums are so 1996?
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Lan is so 1980s? lol.
I bet Blizzard is going to go genius mode and figure out they can charge people $5 a month for chat channels and they'll pay.
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Blizzard makes everyone pay for a copy of Starcraft 2, and you can only have 1 account attached. That stops smurfing and whatnot. That's okay, I'm fine with that. Not only that, but if someone is abusive or is excessively spamming, it is a lot harder to simply make a new account and get away with it as the ability to report a player is there. Whether in-game or by email or whatever. The player only has one account.
Now in reference to chatrooms, Blizzard says their huge issue with chat rooms is the amount of spam and the fact that their matchmaking experience is so awesome, made from the heavens, that we won't NEED to be able to have chatrooms (that's not senseless or cocky at all). Anyway, I have a particular point to make - why is the issue of spamming even valid when considering the "cons" of a chat room feature? The simple fact that all players have ONE account allows any spamming within a chatroom able to be reported by a player and/or noticed and investigated by a mod, whether not a player actually bothers to report someone.
I could give so many more reasons about why their chat room decision is horrid, but I don't think I need to. This is just one point that has been bugging me and I've yet to see it be mentioned by someone.
Okay I lied. I have to give another reason. What stops a simple anti-spamming feature implemented by Blizzard themselves? They spent their time on Facebook integration so I don't see how this wasn't considered. If it was considered, what on earth would be so bad about it? What was wrong with a simple mute feature (They might have this, I don't actually recall if they have it in beta. I don't believe I've communicated to more than 2 people throughout my whole "Community Experience" in beta, so what would I personally need it for in this state of B.Net "2.0")? Or surely something else such as perhaps a system that doesn't allow too many messages being sent at once to reduce spamming (if its bypassed somehow, the person still only has account). That would be a new and innovate feature for Blizzard to put into Battle.net because I'm sure that has never been done before by Blizzard. Oh wait.
tl;dr: Another generic rant at Battle.net 2.0.
EDIT: Spelling etc.
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At this point id rather pay iccup 60$ to properly manage the game than anyone over at blizz. I'm confident that they will get their heads out of their asses before launch tho, unless they want a substantial hit in revenue not only in this game but others as well.
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Hi, new user, sooo... my opinions (been following Starcraft/Starcraft 2 for about a year).
One of the things that people have asked about is if it would be possible to change your name on Battle.net, or reset your stats?
In terms of your profile on Battle.net? Nothing specific planned for launch, but definitely something that if there's a big demand for it, then we can certainly consider it, and we'll see what the community reaction is to the feature set when we launch.
That'll possibly be similar to how World of Warcraft does it, then?
Sure. Maybe. Yeah. Depends.
What does it depend on?
Depends on whether or not it's something the community really wants. [Laughs]
Ok, first... It seems kind of awkward that they are saying "what the community wants" when, as we can see by the poll, overwhelming (Tl.net) support for chat. While this site doesn't represent all of the individuals considering getting Starcraft 2, this community is probably one of the most diehard crux's that probably is getting (sadly) ignored. While, as we can see, we have less than 7000 people voting in this poll (and they mentioned potentially 800,000 users on B-Net 2.0 aka fractions) it seems fooling to think that if 95% of people on one Starcraft fan site want chat channels that overall AT THE LEAST 80% of users would want them... just saying.
I know you've said you have plans for guilds, or clans. Is that something you're planning to release before the first expansion?
Groups and clans is definitely something that we would have a goal of delivering prior to the first expansion. We'll be definitely releasing patches along the way, and so we'll try and get it into one of the patches before Heart of the Swarm comes out.
This concern has already been raised with the whole chatroom problem (as HuskyStarcraft pointed out very distinctly with the video of the kittens + his voice over) that Clans are not going to be able to connect within Battlenet but instead must use a 3rd party chat integration (Skype, Ventrillo, etc.) and that's if you can have everyone in your clan chat together (I doubt there being a problem in 4v4 games, but 8 player training or something of the like I don't know the limitations on such a method), And if speaking is not possible... should players have to Alt+Tab out to get a simple chat outside of game to say "Join this game guys." Yeah... no.
Would those be in the same concept, or possibly using the premium map-making system for people to buy them?
Well, we don't have any plans to launch the marketplace any time soon. Definitely something we want, because we want not only to be able to deliver content that we create to the community, but also if the community is making great content for themselves, have a mechanism by which that can be distributed to the community as well.
So is there going to be a black market of maps being published on torrents and such in order to prevent paying for maps and such, and thus bans resulting? I don't see any way this can go well if they start to charge for maps that need to be downloaded for a game to run, so people just don't pay for them and instead steal them. The only way that might make the great map-makers of our community to receive any cut maybe ads (and I swear that I just said Ads are evil in a poll), where advertising is sold to companies to be posted as a little bar near the game screen (insignificant, and hopefully very download requirement) and thus having a part of the money gained by Blizzard given to the map makers (though for a Teen game, they might be able to make the argument that "our game is for minors, so they cannot receive any proceeds" and pocket it all... maybe I shouldn't post this...
There are many Europeans that have loads of American friends, and have a problem finding matches with Americans. I know you've already promised to bridge this divide...
[Bob Colayco: That's not the case.]
No, it'll be structured very similarly to World of Warcraft, where you've got the European region and players matched against the other players within their region.
[BC: We haven't promised anything like that. That's something we'll look into, but I just wanted to jump in and clarify that.]
But you're not excluding the possibility – you're just saying there are no current plans for it?
There are no current plans for it, and if you're a European player and you've got friends that are in another region that you want to be able to connect with, we definitely want to support that. It might mean that you have to access it through the US client, but those facilities will definitely be available in terms of, if you want the US client, go to the US website, download the US client.
So I can use my same account?
No.
So I need to buy two clients, that's what you're saying?
Yeah.
But I can have two of them in my Battle.net account?
You'd have an EU Battle.net account, and a US Battle.net account.
And that wouldn't be against the Terms of Service or End User License Agreement?
No. I'm pretty sure that's not against the TOS or EULA, but you'd be subject to the terms of the EULA for the region in which you're playing.
This whole bit makes probably many of us fume with rage (-.- < that's me fuming), and despite this probably being the umpteenth time this is being said... it is ridiculous (and a whole host of other words that are similar in the feeling they describe). The original starcraft allowed you to be on multiple servers (with semi-new B-Net accounts, but at least it was totally free) with more latency yes, but you had the choice to accept that risk and go ahead with it. Now, you not only have to accept the risk, but you have slap another $60 for it. While it might seem like a Money Making scheme (and it does have that potential to squeeze some extra dollars), they won't do away with it cause, when a community that is less than 1% of your target audience is complaining, it's easy to ignore.
Another thing I thought you'd promised was chat rooms within Battle.net...
Nope. No plans for specific chat rooms at this time. You'll be able to open up chats direct with your friends, and when we add clans and groups there'll be chats for your clans and groups, but no specific plans for chat rooms right now. Do you really want chat rooms?
Loads of people within the community are wanting Looking For Group chat rooms, and that sort of thing.
Well, if we've done our job right in terms of the matchmaking service, then hopefully they won't feel like they'll need it for that service.
Another thing, again, the most fresh reminder of this was Husky in his video; how are clans going to grow without chat rooms. Said clans have a difficult time connecting with their potential players as is unless they go through Forums or something, thus, when you have said personal chat rooms for clans, who's gonna be in them? The founder and his "totally awesome friends irl ;D." That seems to be it. Now... one other thing that seems to scare me... the best way for a dictatorship to gain power is to restrict information to what you want to get released to not only your people, but to your neighbors (example: Nazi Germany in relation to their own people and Jewish people, and Animal Farm in relation to the humans on the outside). While I'm not trying to say that blizzard is a demon company or anything, if chat rooms don't exist, how does the common, "non-enlightened" gamer who has no clue about the problems that we are posing supposed to learn of them?
Plus, isn't StarCraft 2 the universal language of RTSes? How much English do you need to speak to communicate with your opponent and kick his ass? [Laughs]
I dunno, cuz I'm not the type to smack talk anyways. I do like chatting with people sometimes though... and when your on a Server that you can't understand 80% (off the wall guess) of the other individuals, it might be annoying in a 1v1 and you try to strike of a conversation and all you get are Korean/Chinese symbols in response (I believe China has more English speakers than America though...) (Not ragging on China/Korea, or any other Far Eastern countries at all btw) it can be a bit saddening. What could fix it? Oh, the whole thing about making all servers accessible through one copy....
You're taking Battle.net to a very community-like perspective, and a lot of people have been asking if there's any possibility of having a small client, so you don't have to log into the entire Battle.net?
That'd be really cool, and I think it's definitely something that we will be evaluating. It sounds like an easy task on the surface, but it's not something that's really trivial. We have to figure out if we were going to do something like that, which resources we would use, and if using those resources for a stand-alone client would detract from implementing some of the features that we still want to implement and deliver to the fans in the existing scope.
That would obviously be appreciated by World of Warcraft fans and Diablo fans, as well as StarCraft fans.
Yeah. It'd be really cool. It's something we've definitely talked about and we will be continuing to consider.
Community building without chat. Btw... why would you want to log into a "mini B-Net" when it has no chat... only whispers... hmmmmmmmm...
How involved have you been, in terms of games development?
In terms of...?
The creative process. What would your favourite unit be that's currently in the single-player/multiplayer setup? Do you have one?
No, I don't have a favourite unit in terms of the multiplayer/single-player. I've played through a lot of the campaign. Not necessarily to evaluate the game balance or to look at the units themselves, but to look at the way we're delivering the storytelling experience.
How about a favourite character in the story?
I think the story's really awesome. To pick out a single-character, I dunno... I mean, I think Raynor's got a lot of character development through the story, and we introduce some new characters throughout the story. Tychus is a new character that's really cool. I like to experience it all from the perspective of a fan, and I just think the whole experience overall is really cool.
Is it just me (and I haven't read anywhere near as much as I should before I posted this), but isn't this a perfect chance to use our BS detector to see that, Oh wait, he's bullshitting it. Everyone knows about these characters and such. Obviously, their trying to keep it secret, but whenever somebody says "I like all of it," I immediately think they are either A) a mindless zombie who rates everything 10/10 or B) Don't know what the crap their talking about.
And the whole "Raynor got a whole lot of character development" is such a vague statement... like come on... I don't really think this guy really plays this game, or he's played it to death and still finds it a little amusing, but is about ready to ship it... hopefully it's the latter.
A lot of fans have been asking about a StarCraft expansion unit called the Lurker. It was originally part of StarCraft 2. Are there any plans to bring it back? Why did you cut it?
It's really an issue of making sure that the ideas we have our cool and focused, and there's not enough space to implement every cool unit that we concieve. While you may not see some of the cool units that have been conceived in the multiplayer experience, you'll see a lot of units that are very signature StarCraft units in the single-player campaign. The Goliath is in the single-player campaign, but not multiplayer. The Firebat is in the single-player campaign, but not multiplayer. The Science Vessel. Any of that stuff that we have used and developed along the way that we don't end up incorporating in the multiplayer component, you still might see in the single-player, and then the map editor is really very full-featured and all those units that we've created along the way – even if they're not in multiplayer – are available to the map makers. You might see some really cool multiplayer maps from the community that incorporate those units.
This = he dodged the question/is not willing to discuss why it was dropped. He never discusses it directly, all he says is that they can't have every cool unit that they imagine in the game, and that units that didn't make the cut were probably put into single player. Maybe there is the whole hiding things until it comes out, but seriously, Zergs want to know why or favorite unit that would make any of us (if we were marines) go "HOLY _____ I'M _________ SCREWED." go away. Come on, real answers please, don't be a BP. (Wait... British Petroleum and Blizzard Entertainment BP... BE!!!!!!)
On that note, last year, we saw a lot of publishers put back a lot of their titles because of the recession. How did that, if at all, effect your release dates? Did anything have to be changed internally?
No. Other publishers' schedules and the state of the economy really don't impact our release dates. We feel like if we have a great game, we should get it into the hands of our fans as soon as we realistically can. Our products have such long life cycles that if someone's not thinking about buying our games when we launch, maybe they'll buy them six months from launch, or a year from launch, or two years from launch.
So the recession had no impact on Blizzard's release schedules?
None at all.
Thus WoW saved Starcraft 2?
TOS and EULA, you actually have to opt out to not have your personal details shared with the company and other partners of yours. What was the thought behind this? If you have your names on your Battle.net accounts, you need to email Blizzard to opt out of sharing that information with your partners and third-parties.
That might just be a legal clause that we were required to put in the EULA. I can't tell you for sure without talking to the lawyers, but we're not interested in taking the Battle.net data that we've got and sharing it with anyone. We want to maintain our connections and relationships with our customers ourselves and not give it to anyone else.
Don't be a Facebook or Google... we like our privacy... make it as simple as a check box please...
On a slightly skewed angle, as far as Blizzard's concerned, how important is Asia and the Asian market?
For Blizzard, every market is important, where we're shipping and publishing. All of our fans are important to us worldwide. If you just look at Asia in terms of market share, Asia is huge for us. We have millions of players in China playing World of Warcraft, and we feel like China is still a big, huge growth opportunity in terms of the gaming market. So yeah, definitely really important in terms of we've got millions of fans there and we want to make sure that they're served well, and there's still growth to be seen.
Blizzard is giving Korea a big "F U" cause of the who licensing deal... still hard to discern who is right...
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.
Sorry, being a room with my buds (or across Hamachi or Game Ranger for that matter) able to have fun together without having to say we can't do it because of B-Net being down is stupid. Or, for that matter, it just isn't the same feeling. No matter what you try to do, LAN is what built online gaming (for obvious reasons). Maybe one day online will be better than LAN (because latency is near 0 no matter what and it is a hassle to all go to one location), but technology has (sadly) not gotten that far yet. No matter how much you try to push the curve, it isn't going to work.
And please, don't lie to us about wanting to prove B-Net 2.0 to be superior to LAN. Just say your afraid of pirates and tell the truth. Many of us will respect you more if you stop lying BE.
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Ok, so after my first ever contribution to this community I would like to make a suggestion as to how to make Blizzard reconsider some of these concerns we have.
Essentially, if we don't like something about a game, internet protesting does nothing. Not buying the game does a whole lot more. While I know many people will say they can't believe I would say this and blah blah blah... it is a truth... to not purchase a game makes a company have to respond. They can't just sit idly by twirling (is that the expression?) their thumbs, cause guess what, companies need money to live. Yes, it would be a terrible thing to do this to a traditionally brilliant company that responds to it's players, but it might be the only way to get a serious push for some of the communities concerns. For example, if 35% of the people who pre-ordered the game canceled on worries that it isn't what they had wanted, that would be a huge set back for Blizzard. They would be losing huge amounts of money for concerns that we deem necessary. Again, it might back fire (terribly I might add), but the most effective way to convince a business to change is to hurt their wallets.
And thus, there you go.
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EPT
