It's mid 2011. 32 Players remain in the Tamagochi TSL Season 10. They are from 15 different countries, and play across the 3 Bnet 2.0 servers.
Do i tell these players they need to buy 2 more copies of Starcraft 2 in order to play each other (they've now spent 200$ to compete internationally)? Or do i encourage them to break Blizzard's ToS by sharing accounts in order to play? By the second expansion - players would be expected to own 9 games (1 SC, 2 expansions - for all 3 realms).
There is nothing stopping players from doing cross realm play now - this isn't a lag issue. We've had to deal with that for years, and it was solved by the community (chaos launcher) - the same is likely for SC2. Players are competing cross realm right now in beta with few problems.
I believe in my heart of hearts that the people behind these decisions are just ignorant to the needs of esports players and organizers, and that this isn't just a money grab. That being said, I can't believe that the communication divide between Blizzard and it's Starcraft community has grown so wide that these same people aren't aware of the massive hindrance this lack of cross realm support is to the "esports" that they wish to support and grow (this sentence is long - English Major support please).
Cross realm play isn't on your list? Put it on your list.
Listen. To. Your. Community.
[spoiler="Quote From Interview with Frank Pearce"] Quote from the interview
Interviewer: 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.]
Interviewer 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.]
Interviewer: But you're not excluding the possibility – you're just saying there are no current plans for it?
Pearce: 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.
Interviewer: So I can use my same account?
Pearce: No.
Interviewer: So I need to buy two clients, that's what you're saying?
Yes, I definitely agree with this, I really hope blizzard listens, because especially Australians and New Zealanders who got to connect to the USA server, We have quite massive command lag, 1-2 seconds
On May 29 2010 05:39 renchak wrote: Blizzard seems to be all about the money at this point. Even if they dont please the hardcore scene we are just a minority.
Well, the way they have set up sc2, ESPORTS could theoratically make them a lot of money. But if they don't actually want to bother trying, then wtf...
It really makes you wonder what their "esports team" actually does. It is clear they dont tell the development team the needs of the esports community.
this. blizz needs to get their head out of their collective asses and do what the community wants, not what they think they want, like facebook integration.
who knows how awesome bnet might have been if any of them actually played games and were members of the community.
On May 29 2010 05:41 Mastermind wrote: It really makes you wonder what their "esports team" actually does. It is clear they dont tell the development team the needs of the esports community.
They authorize events - they have nothing to do with planning this afaik. That being said i wish an esports team member would Hadduken one of these producers/managers on my behalf.
I'm not so sure lag issues can be just discounted like that. In IdrA's most recent interview, he says anytime he logs onto the US or especially the Euro server, the latency is pretty terrible. I've heard similar concerns from all sorts of players who have multiple accounts (or share them). I think the lag is a real and genuine factor. That said, the fact that we don't even have the option to log onto another realm is extremely irritating. I'm sure there are a lot of backend optimizations that could be put into play to alleviate lag problems and simulate a chaoslauncher experience.
Chat channels is my beef. I wrote this in the other thread, but how are you supposed to coordinate with more than 4 people? Add them all to your friends list and message them individually? Use the broadcast system? Those are both stupid ideas that could easily be sidestepped by adding in basic private channel functionality. There is no excuse for not implementing such a feature.
Allowing cross realm play and thus making it possible for there to be an e-sports scene big enough everywhere in the world, comparable to Korea would be far far more profitable in the long run. Sure you'd get a few serious players buying the game multiple times and that will net you some dollars, but wouldn't you rather have it be something like StarCraft 1? A game played on tv after 12 years after release?
RTS games don't work like MMORPG games, RTS games are all about competition and while WoW can be enjoyed by playing with the same guys all the time embarking on different quests it just does not work like that in SC2.
What would other sports like football be if everyone just played inside their own country and there wouldn't be a way to host international tournaments?
Blizzard: But but but...really? Don't forget that with that more money earned we can put our teams to create more brilliant achievements for you! You know you want them!
Man, they're already making us buy 3 versions of the game. AND they want us to purchase multiple copies of EACH version just so we can play with people in different regions? GO DIAF BLIZZARD
If I could figure out how the fuck to log in to forums.battle.net, I would write out a detailed post breaking down that interview Frank gave and explain why it's necessary, with specific mention of the OP. Tournaments at the moment are such a clusterfuck. Like I said, I would post, but every CD-key I type in to log-in doesn't work; even their forum system is shit, big surprise.
On May 29 2010 05:44 Inori wrote: Signed over 9000 times + Show Spoiler +
I don't believe Blizzard will give a crap about community opinion, because you all (and me as well) will buy the game anyway, even if you complain, so why waste resources? It's all about the money lately..
That is true, but it will make them look really bad when all the competitive players leave bnet2.0 so they can play on a private server.
If you don't want to have all the Ladders mixed between realms that's fine- but to not even have the option to play cross realm is ridiculous.
Blizzards continued stubbornness on topics like LAN, cross realm, chat rooms, clans, and Facebook/Friends list is really disappointing. They are making the game for a whole new imagined community (ie those that never really played BroodWar) because they won't know the difference. They aren't listening to the people who they should be. At some level, I think a lot of people at Blizzard probably know who they should be listening too- but they have bosses who don't feel the same way.
Its just their way to tax players that want this "feature".. Its surely not an oversight cause its actually important software design decision that they discussed and agreed on.. They are prepared to kill Korean leagues so they can have complete control.. What is stopping them from milking money for international play?
On May 29 2010 05:47 Sniggle wrote: They are owned by activision, hard to see any other reason for it than it being about money.
Well yes, that is exactly what it is about. They clearly stated that imo. He says in order to play in multiple regions you have to buy multiple versions of their product. That is clearly a money grab. That cant possibly be anything but a money grab. No other explanation makes any sense.
See I was just having faith in Blizzard for a while, constantly thinking they might do something for us, the whole community ... but this is just absurd.. WHY ARENT THEY LISTING TT
Why would we pay for another copy just to play with our friends? Its like asking people to subscribe to another phone plan just to call people on another network.
I think whole problem lies in whole infrastructure of their battle.net servers (which were segregated from WoW times) and its would simply be too complicated to implement this change even if they changed their minds now. The question is if this idea of segregation was intended for profit, or because of IP rights laws, that are different for different regions.
And honestly, if you're a progamer dedicated to playing starcraft2 competitively for years to come, is 200$ be such a huge price to pay for free battle.net service? WOW is far more expensive luxury and it's not even rewarding.
I think that one reason why they dont do cross realm, is money, ok ye that was an obvious one, but on a more serious note: able to chat with friends in different blizzard games, I recall this is a new feature in battle 2.0 where you could chat with your friend whos playing WoW while you are in SC2. But heck, I would give up any of that stuff if I can actually play on a different region.
And lag issues? If anything that causes your game to lag, its the non P2P server of battle.net 2.0 that SC2 will be using, unlike SC1 which had this feature. Fancy graphics don't translate to more data to be transferred.
We'd need an esports version of the boston tea party to cause a big enough shitstorm. That being said, I'm on board (/signed).
Not having chat channels kinda sucked. Not having LAN was a pretty serious offense (but I understand why they did it). No cross realm play is insane. Blizzard...wake up guys. You. are. better. than. this.
Did Blizzard go down the drain before or after they merged with Activision?
Blizzard is trying too hard to "unify" players through the same interface, but how is that possible when that very interface is what is isolating pockets of competitive players? When designing such an interface, you have to provide as much transparency and open player communication and connectivity as possible. If they really wanted to promote community and Esports, they would have been a bit more careful in making such design decisions. If those are NOT Blizzard's actual intentions for Battle.net 2.0 and are simply their ADVERTISED intentions, we have a problem.
And if this is a latency issue, it's unlikely that Blizzard will be unable to resolve it; Chaos Launcher makes that obvious.
EDIT: /signed. apparently, Blizzard and Activision are both owned by Vivendi, and nothing's changed in practice. Let's hope this is true. EDIT: It's not true.
Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
/Signed With all the technical problems the internet can bring, and the fact that Facebook is repulsive (Facebook?! OH why oh why, how much did they pay you Blizzard?!), they also deny us the opportunity to play other players globally, and to even have rudimentary communication!
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
I cannot agree more with what kennigit is saying here. let's hope blizzard sees this and atleast replies with a legitimate reason (ie. anything but "lag-issues")
On May 29 2010 05:51 Koffiegast wrote: I think that one reason why they dont do cross realm, is money, ok ye that was an obvious one, but on a more serious note: able to chat with friends in different blizzard games, I recall this is a new feature in battle 2.0 where you could chat with your friend whos playing WoW while you are in SC2. But heck, I would give up any of that stuff if I can actually play on a different region.
And lag issues? If anything that causes your game to lag, its the non P2P server of battle.net 2.0 that SC2 will be using, unlike SC1 which had this feature. Fancy graphics don't translate to more data to be transferred.
Yes, I thought it was absurd he blamed it on a 3D engine. it is not like they need to transmit video of the fucking game. They just have to transmit object states, which should be practically the same as sc and wc3. And that brings up another thing, wc3 was a fucking 3D game. WHAT THE FUCK BLIZZARD. Their excuses are just so fucking bad I dont see how anyone with half a brain could believe them.
On May 29 2010 05:36 Kennigit wrote: By the second expansion - players would be expected to own 9 games (1 SC, 2 expansions - for all 3 realms).
I seem to recall some interview, which said that multiplayer play will not be affected by expansions. Sorry, don't have a link to it atm.
EDIT: My bad, it would be quite fucked up indeed, if this is their final decision.
If I buy StarCraft II but don't buy any of the expansion sets, will I still be able to play online? Yes. This will work similarly to Warcraft III and the original StarCraft, which maintained separate online gaming lobbies and ladders for expansion set players and players with the base Warcraft III or StarCraft.
I really enjoyed SC 2, I thought it was a great mix of new features/design and the old design of SC
..However their complete incompentence with B.net 2.0 is just horrible, and their constant excuse of 'We dont have the technology' is either a downright lie, or they are seriously behind the rest of the industry.
Come on Blizzard! We expect better from you guys =(
You should make a news article with a big fat image at the front page making it almost impossible for a blizzard employee to miss it when he visit tl.net
Cross realm should be made possible . Probably some stupid economist hatched this "brilliant" plan to increase sales . Sad part is nobody stoped it, sigh
On May 29 2010 05:36 Kennigit wrote: By the second expansion - players would be expected to own 9 games (1 SC, 2 expansions - for all 3 realms).
I seem to recall some interview, which said that multiplayer play will not be affected by expansions. Sorry, don't have a link to it atm.
Multiplayer play WILL be affected by the expansions. Originally they werent sure when they came out with the "trilogy" idea, but since then they have stated the expansions will be real expansions just like broodwar and the frozen throne.
Signed. These latest moves by blizzard are really frustrating. Just see how this isolation has even changed the gameplay, where each region has developed unique play styles, none of them probably anywhere close to the optimal timings and builds orders.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
TeamLiquid to the rescue. Can any one track down comments made about cross server functionality? If I recall correctly, and my friends have confirmed my thoughts here, Blizzard said that the cross-realm BS was just for the Beta.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
It's pretty sick how TL can make you feel a bit safer even at the worst of times.
Blizzard needs to open up their eyes and realize that they are hindering the development of eSports by not allowing cross-realming. I dearly hope Blizzard realizes this before it's too late
On May 29 2010 05:58 JoxxOr wrote: You should make a news article with a big fat image at the front page making it almost impossible for a blizzard employee to miss it when he visit tl.net
YES! This and the thread with the article need to be front paged, I would suggest even putting them as a news article so everyone who comes to TL sees it right away.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
TeamLiquid to the rescue. Can any one track down comments made about cross server functionality? If I recall correctly, and my friends have confirmed my thoughts here, Blizzard said that the cross-realm BS was just for the Beta.
Really odd that in the rush to force us to connect and socialize- through face book, and friends lists, and personal info, simple things like chat ,clan support and playing with international friends is overlooked.
The chat particularly confuses me, because if bnet2.0 is going to be this cool hangout spot for all gamers.. it makes no sense whatsoever to not have chat. What they say and what they do...
Im hoping it's some technical issue that they are not disclosing due to pride, or security concerns, but otherwise its discouraging how far off the mark they are on these issues.
The limitations of Battle.net 0.5 are atrocious. Also, even if this issue is brought to their attention repeatedly, with sound logic, I fear they will dig out their stock response, and basically just ignore us.
We'll say: "What you're doing makes no sense for these reasons..." They'll say: "Well, what we're doing will make sense because of this absolutely irrelevant, impotent feature."
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
It's pretty sick how TL can make you feel a bit safer even at the worst of times.
Thank you.
Yeah i'm sure the PR/Community team wont be happy with this thread/impending fire storm, but their job is keep a good image for Blizzard at all times. Ours to raise hell over issues like this.
but... We have Facebook Integration!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe how bad Blizzard is butchering this chance. They are about to write a book on how to completely fuck up a game that they have been planning for 10 years.
I don't know but from the looks of it, Blizzard is intentionally pissing off their community. You'd think with the amount of dimwits working on SC2 that at least one of them visits TL. Yet nothing is being done to accommodate any of TL's requests.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
It's pretty sick how TL can make you feel a bit safer even at the worst of times.
Thank you.
Yeah i'm sure the PR/Community team wont be happy with this thread/impending fire storm, but their job is keep a good image for Blizzard at all times. Ours to raise hell over issues like this.
Teamliquid, GosuGamers, SC2GG, and other sites don't always get along clearly. But assuming all the major fansites agree (who wouldn't?), it's encouraging that every one is going to team up try to effectively communicate to Blizzard that what they are doing is unacceptable. It's been unacceptable for a while now, but this is the final straw that has broken the camel's back I feel.
On monday i'm selling my 2000 shares in Activision Blizzard stock... i'm done with SC2 and i'll go back playing BW. Only hope that blizzard won't kill Korean Leagues. They care only about money.
I'm glad to have a known and respected mod creating this thread, otherwise the OP would be flamed.
The thing that infuriates me is that Blizzard claims that they care about the community views and that "every voice counts". It feels...no, it is blatantly apparent that they are just trying to attract the casual gamers, and that they are alienating the communities.
Everybody ready, ShitStorm inc, TL must cause terrible, terrible damage to Blizz.
Right, I am definitely onboard for making our concerns more heard over this and I think that the current complete lack of cross server play is horrible BUT this is IMPORTANT. We must decide what cause we want to fight because when it comes to cross-server play there is essentially two different issues and it is very important that if we are going to nag to blizzard about this that we pick the one of them that we actually have a chance of getting.
We CAN'T convince Blizzard to open the clients up for cross server play. If you are going to trust in anything you read this week then let it be this, Blizzard will NOT change this. They will never ever tear up their entire server structure and allow players on the EU client to get matched against players on the US client. If we make this our cause then we're just wasting our breath.
What we CAN possibly get through with though is to demand that if you buy the game in one region, then you can use that key to create a battle net account in all regions without buying a new game. This is not as smooth and not as good as just being able to play cross realm from within one client but this we actually have a theoretical chance of getting.
So I am definitely signing, if it is the latter we are asking for.
Definitely agree with this!! We need cross server support, ICCUP does it with no lag no problem on the old 11 year old bnet servers and has found a work around with a dedicated team and persistence. It's ridiculous that you don't have this and are giving less informed gamers the excuse of "lag". You have everything you need, most everyone has high speed internet, you spent over a year on just bnet 2.0 and we are NOT impressed
On May 29 2010 06:06 alkampfer wrote: On monday i'm selling my 2000 shares in Activision Blizzard stock... i'm done with SC2 and i'll go back playing BW. Only hope that blizzard won't kill Korean Leagues. They care only about money.
ATVI - Shares 1.24B.
Money making and personal opinions shouldn't mix. If anything this will probably boost stocks till the throttling of competition make SC2 unable to last.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
Starcraft scene ASSEMBLE!
Originally I was very encouraged by the fact that Blizzard was listening to the community and interms of the game itself it seems they have done a great job on that front, but when it comes to the functionality of tournaments and such it just seems like they are taking their own line. I still believe theyll do the right thing tho
There's was a petition to put LAN that had 100k signatures, they are too stubborn too listen to us when they have their mind set on something.
They are trying to make SC2 like WoW, regions, divisions, and almost everything theyv done was wow inspired. Let's hope the do the right thing and listen to us !!
On May 29 2010 06:06 alkampfer wrote: On monday i'm selling my 2000 shares in Activision Blizzard stock... i'm done with SC2 and i'll go back playing BW. Only hope that blizzard won't kill Korean Leagues. They care only about money.
ATVI - Shares 1.24B.
Money making and personal opinions shouldn't mix. If anything this will probably boost stocks till the throttling of competition make SC2 unable to last.
I don't have any power to make them hear my voice, in this world of corporations , my only power is to sell their shares and by the way i'll do it no matter what. Even if i'll lose money i don't care.
I'm done with blizzard, they became too blatant and arrogant after Activision merger.
Unfortunately i'm not a big investor like warren buffet... but if i had 1 million shares i bet mr. pearce will change opinion really fast... 2000 shares are a piece of shit for him he probably has 50/60 millions in assets.
If someone knows a big investor in Activision Blizzard tell him to phone call mr. pearce... he will answer.
I heard you want to have Intercontinental Tournaments, but Do you really want them? If the Community really wants them, we just will do nothing about it.
at least put on a free-to-switch-for-every-nations-version international server as a place for tournaments and stuff (propably without laddering if you mind). So EVENTS are possible.
I'm fine with having, you know, low latency play on europe server, but I dont agree with dont having some way to get in touch with people all around the world...
Sorry for getting a bit loud on that but THATS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS THAT MADE MADE Starcraft so fascinating to me, the huge world-wide community.
Seriously...Blizzard listen.
EDIT:
P.S. Just do remind you, Blizzard, we aren't KESPA
/signed. Looking forward to the private servers. Makes me not worry so much.
Blizz shows that they are just as ignorant about the sc2 competitive community's needs as they were about the bw competitive community. The good old official ladder and antihack of b.net...
Seems like the community will have to take matters in their own hands (again) and provide what we need for ourselves (again).
Were all those contracts with companies such as facebook worth it? Even when in the end you lose tons of players and no credibility for being a eSport game due to the lack of lan/chatroom/cross-region play?
signed at everything.
Also, some people compare this to WoW. Well let me tell you one thing, in WoW you still had the option to chat in /1 to /5, /raid /anygroup /guild /say, whereas SC2 with battle.net 2.0 as it is now has only /party and /whisper.
On May 29 2010 06:20 Koffiegast wrote: Also, some people compare this to WoW. Well let me tell you one thing, in WoW you still had the option to chat in /1 to /5, /raid /anygroup /guild /say, whereas SC2 with battle.net 2.0 as it is now has only /party and /whisper.
Indeed. Even WoW has chat rooms OMG! But who even really wants them right?
First they said no LAN and i thought, OK. That seems fair. I'll buy two games to play it at home with my wife through the internet even if im in the same LAN.
It bottered me, but I gave in. Made a concession because it was to force 1 game per player. But now, they want to sell one game per realm you wanna play in.
I'm really rethinking the hole "buying the game two freaking times" thought proccess.
I mean. What sense does it make to buy the game if I'm gonna end in private ladders anyway?
Support Blizzard? I don't really feel they are supporting us.
In my country, 50u$d, is worth arround 200$. Nine times that, it equals more than a hole month salary (70% of the population earns less than that).
So yeah, I'm thinking about piracy when dealing with the company that I used to use as an example of how to deal with piracy.
On May 29 2010 05:40 Dragonsven wrote: Do you really want chat rooms?
edit: Also, it will end up being 6 extra games, not 2.
3 servers: Euro, NA and Asia 2 expansions: Euro, NA and Asia 3 clients, 2 expansions each
1 asian, 2 expansions 1 Na, 2 expansions 1 europe, 2 expansions ----------------------------- 9 in total. at around 50 each = 450 if you want to play internationally,
Might go back to Sc:bw.. chat channels: yes LAN: not included but yes
On May 29 2010 05:51 Koffiegast wrote: I think that one reason why they dont do cross realm, is money, ok ye that was an obvious one, but on a more serious note: able to chat with friends in different blizzard games, I recall this is a new feature in battle 2.0 where you could chat with your friend whos playing WoW while you are in SC2. But heck, I would give up any of that stuff if I can actually play on a different region.
This is a very good point, they are planning on networking all their current games through battle.net. Considering WoW is already spilt into regions, this could make multi region connectivity a lot messier.
On May 29 2010 06:27 UntitledQ wrote: signed, just in case the number of posts in this thread helps them think.
Well I dont want to copy your letter, Kennigdit, under my name into a thread and since it's pretty good I'd like you to open a thread including that and hope every eager tl-user will make a flood on the server.
/signed, did someone post this on the "blizzard" forums yet? I think we should all make a thread, everyone on TL makes a copy of this thread, there for 3000 threads on bnet forums of the same thing should open those fucking money grabber's eyes, no?
On May 29 2010 06:31 zerglingsfolife wrote: Blizzard is deleting threads in the official beta feedback forums about BNET 2.0's shortcomings. Are you kidding?
I say keep reposting. Between this, the Amazon 1 star rating, TeamLiquid's efforts to rally the community I think an appropriately sized shit-storm could be made.
- Don't expect me to buy shit for money. I see this as my two options: 1: Play SC2 (a game I don't really like to begin with) and be under total control by Blizzard. 2: Play BW (a game that I'm literally in love with) and enjoy life.¨
Btw, this is another example of corporate interests meeting ESPORTS. I see the corporate interests winning this one.
The arena is packed, millions of viewers all over the world await the games eagerly. Starcraft 2 fulfilled it’s prophecy! It brought all gamers together and now we’re finally here at the finals in Seoul. Conditions are perfect with Artosis, Tasteless, Day[9] and Garimto commentating. You’re at home with all your relatives cheering for your favourite player.
The crowds noise gets louder, Spawncop_referee has created the game (Starcraft Player Association With No interest in Cash but Only Pure gaming), Flash is already in it spamming hotkeys… But something is wrong. Where is Nony? The camera films his booth, Dustin Browder is inside, the mic is turned on.
- Dustin, I can’t join his game since my account is on the U.S server and I can’t play with Those on Asia. - Yeaah. Uhm…
- Well you can borrow my asian account. Here…
A well timed commercial break lasts for 4 hours while Nony reinstalls and updates his starcraft 2 with an asian version, finally it starts... “Terrible.Damage” joins the game, the game can finally begin.
Flash twitches his eye, commences his 16 cc build… He thinks of a Msl final where the booth was too cold, the power went out, somehow misplaces his command center. But then he realises “this isn’t under Kespas rule anymore… We are finally free from slavery and blind capitalism, can play for fun and earn the money we deserve for it”. His booth is warm and the power is secure. He twitches his eye again, repositions his command center and the game continues on.
25 minutes has passed, their armies finally clash in the middle of Blistering Sands. We follow Nony’s Phoenixes as they somehow lift off a 200/200 Terran army, Flash magically manages to land his Command centers on Nonys Interceptors as the whole world holds it’s breath when the fight’s about to end.
But then it happens… An endless lag happens… An endless spam happens…
Thousands of b.net users spam the observer and players, the server starts to lag terribly as the fight is forgotten in a mist of messages and a frozen screen.
And this was only the beginning…
Bip… Bip… Bip… A blue pop up steals the attention. “Server Maintenance! Battle.net 2.0 will go offline in 1 minute.”
Additional patch information: -We are sorry for not adding a lan function without lag and risk off abrupting important games but we are afraid of Chinese private servers, couldn’t think of another way to deal with it.
-We are also sorry for not creating a game without a defenders advantage and explicit ways to micro that differentiates the good from the great.
-We are also sorry for the division system. We know why the functions of Iccup ,that is being able to see how u rank compared to the world and your country, made the experience sweeter. But our priority is the quantity, the new players and for them this is awesome, the league system makes it good enough. Lately we’ve realised that their gaming experience wouldn’t be any worse if a “one division” system was implemented on the higher leagues where 99% of the players would want it but our new player priority clouded our eyes.
While we’re on it we at Blizzard would like to admit something else. We didn’t make Broodwar what it became. You did… We created a bunch of awesome units and abilities with no disturbing attack animations for the sake of cool graphics. We didn’t think about making the game as easy as possible. We just made it pure from scratch, left all kinds of freedom to the player and somehow it ended up balanced, dynamic and with an endless skill ceiling making a 14 year old pro scene possible.
Simply put. We don’t fully understand what gave brood war it’s endless skill ceiling. We don’t know what main functions in the game made it possible, therefore we can’t implement it in a new game.
That’s it. This is what we all must accept. Starcraft 2 didn’t reach perfection but it was good enough for a western pro scene because you made it possible.
Perhaps the sc2pro mod could do something about it... With a TL chat channel as the first thing you see when u log on, maybe even having your b.net account connected with your TL acc. One can always dream...
In peru a social movement was started by local farmers when the police system was corrupt and out of function. The farmers organized "Rondas" where people took rounds doing the safe keeping job that the Police was supposed to do. These organizations grew bigger, followed the peoples will and solved civil suits etc. They even became a voice the state had to respect and the farmers autonomy was increased, their life qualites improved.
Resistance isn't futile. It's our right when there is wrong. We must stand up for our indigenous rights (as Blizzard gamers), resist imperialism.
I believe in Starcraft 2. Not because of Blizzard but because of the people.
On May 29 2010 06:26 gREIFOCs wrote: First they said no LAN and i thought, OK. That seems fair. I'll buy two games to play it at home with my wife through the internet even if im in the same LAN.
It bottered me, but I gave in. Made a concession because it was to force 1 game per player. But now, they want to sell one game per realm you wanna play in.
I'm really rethinking the hole "buying the game two freaking times" thought proccess.
I mean. What sense does it make to buy the game if I'm gonna end in private ladders anyway?
Support Blizzard? I don't really feel they are supporting us.
In my country, 50u$d, is worth arround 200$. Nine times that, it equals more than a hole month salary (70% of the population earns less than that).
So yeah, I'm thinking about piracy when dealing with the company that I used to use as an example of how to deal with piracy.
This sucks.
They came first for the LAN play, and I didn't speak up because I don't play competitively.
Then they came for cross-server support, and I didn't speak up because I only play with friends from home.
Then they came for chat channels and I didn't speak up because I could manage with a Friends List.
THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time I had nowhere left to speak up.
God, so sad with all the recent news. Hopefully this will cause some sort of response or something from Blizzard. I've been a fan of the company for so long, as many on this site, so stuff like this is extra disappointing and makes me feel sick over the decisions that have been made. Hopefully, change will come.
I honestly think this should be stickied to the top of the Starcraft 2 section. To make sure that everyone can see it, Especially any blizzard employees.
That being said, after reading that interview in the other thread I am going to use my same closing sentence.
I am severely disappointed that the great game that is to be Starcraft 2 is packed inside the dirty, used condom that is filled with the ineptitude of your Bnet employees.
Great post Kennigit. Not that it matters to Blizzard but I am already cutting out from Blizzcon this year and seriously comtemplating ever giving them a dime again.
The one good thing is that, they still have time to do a 180 on Bnet and save SC2 for the competitive seen.
This comes as a real shocker to me as I don't have a key and haven't really been up to speed on all things SC2. I always assumed cross-realm play was the norm, not a "supported feature". I don't quite understand why they would ever assume this would be a good change.
It's just ridiculous that they could be making such a huge series of blunders in their competitive scene. Blizzard has always been so excellent at managing their scenes in the past, and now it seems as if they're deliberately trying to break the competitive scene apart.
On May 29 2010 06:45 Piy wrote: It's just ridiculous that they could be making such a huge series of blunders in their competitive scene. Blizzard has always been so excellent at managing their scenes in the past, and now it seems as if they're deliberately trying to break the competitive scene apart.
lololol, you mean KeSPA right? As far as Blizzard managing the Sc2 scene? Im going to start digging a grave now.
From a new players perspective with no real ties to the community, when I log in to battle-net 2.0 it feels like this big empty space. To much like a single player game. No community, maybe 2 on my friends list. And silly achievements.
I feel kinda lonely and sad and usually stop playing after 2-3 games tbh. And it really has nothing to do with the game its pure battle-net.
Same thing happened back in age of empires, when age of mythology came out and suddenly instead of playing on the zone, their was this super high tech, super anti social place, It completely killed the game for me in less then 3 weeks.
I cannot agree more with the OP ! /signed. But I doubt making a shit storm will change something, look at how Blizzard fuck Kespa by signing with GOM TV. Blizzard is not going to bend to a shit storm, how smelly it may be. The point is to make Blizzard realize that the community actually cares a lot about cross realm functionality. In this regard, I think a petition with a shitload of sign will have a better effect.
All of the people I play Blizzard games with either live in the US, Australia, or New Zealand. This is because "American" WoW realms includes US, Australia, and New Zealand. It seems very mismatched to now suddenly say "oh those friends you've made in the five years, those people you're flying 14 hours to visit at blizzcon, some of those friends won't be your friends anymore come SC2 because we'd rather you were friends with some new people from Phillipines, Singapore, and Thailand".
Also, the collector's edition in New Zealand is $200, the normal edition is $139. This is more than PS3 games cost here. And for me, there is no point buying three editions, I'd rather everyone I know bought the American version. But if we're buying in New Zealand, I think there's only the New Zealand version :/
I thought I read somewhere that you could buy only Wings of Liberty and still have full access to everything online forever?
Have they confirmed you will need to buy the new expansions to continue playing online with full features?
I was under the impression that wings was all you needed to play online, and if that's the case it's only 3 games to play across 3 servers.(Which of course, still blows)
Of course, given Blizzards track record, I would be rather surprised if I am actually right/this is indeed the case.
yeah Blizzard really needs to get their act together.
and that "Do people really want chatrooms?" quote in interview is an outrage. lets pray this guy has no idea wtf he's talking about and that the other devs really know whats up and have it on their list
Yeah, this is complete bull. They just bite themselves in the ass if they dont support cross-realm playing, because then there will sooner or later come a hacked bnet which fixes it for us, like the abyss.
idk what blizz is trying to do, they let you join any server with b.net 1: us east, uswest, europe, asia you can do that in b.net 2 but u have to BUY another copy?
anyway D3 is also gonna be using b.net 2.. trading's gonna be really fun without chat channels
this is a fucking stupid. I said to myself in the early days of beta that the only thing that would stop me from buying this game is if there is no x-realming. but I'm not sure if I can keep that promise to myself T_T. But it's still fucking stupid...
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Boo.
That's no problem, just make sure to spread the word.
I was seriosuly kinda shocked about what they said there since the LAN and Gateway thing were around and critizised since day one of beta and it seems like they dont listen at all - blizzard needs a clear feedback on that they are wrong on their choice so go here
Blizzard once again doing a great job making an amazing game keeping their standards.. and then they manage to screw up one of their greatest creations that is battle.net Cross realm support Lan support Custom map support ladder/AMM suppport Stable Functional chat rooms with the basic IRC commands and also the ability to create moderated custom chat rooms for clans Flexible name changing system.
Battle.net 2.0 is a mere shell of its former self. All it did was add facebook stuff and that crappy real ID which is a terrible idea anyway. Who wants to read a bunch of real names if you're trying to find someone? You make an ID for a reason. ID's are cooler anyway. Where's the sense of lore? The map descriptions used to be giving you a history while sneaking in the basics of the map, not some bland description that is better described by using the map preview. All this crap about party and conversation is just a weak version of chatrooms. Invite to a party used to be "join channel XX". Where is the logic? Seriously, what do they think they've improved? Added crappy wow stuff like achievements?
They came first for the LAN play, and I didn't speak up because I don't play competitively.
Then they came for cross-server support, and I didn't speak up because I only play with friends from home.
Then they came for chat channels and I didn't speak up because I could manage with a Friends List.
THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time I had nowhere left to speak up.
I actually signed every petition for LAN play, but still, I found it somehow barely (plus I really like SC). But this, this is just a: "No, we want more money from you.". And I will not be bullied if it doesn't involve a real gun.
I'll just download the game from a torrent, wait two months, and play in a private server, just like I would if i bought the game.
And if that can't be the case, then I'll just move on with my life and do heavy drugs. Maybe that's better than depending on depelopers to get the fun I require.
You are no longer buying SC2, you are buying US SC2, EU SC2, ASIA SC2.
For example, I have better latency on US from my country, but i plan to move to Europe in 1 year (this is actually the case). Do I have to buy SC2 again along with the freaking furniture to play on the ladder that currently works better for me?
You see how strange is for software to be bound to a certain region of the world?
This is not a freaking DVD with extra languages. Its a online interactive plataform. Its beyond that.
Who are they trying to fool with the excuse of "lag issues"? I used to love blizzard, but now I hope the game gets cracked so it can be pirated and used with LAN and custom ladder services. Seriously how hard is it to make Bnet as good as they made it for WC3 8 YEARS ago?
signed. a sad day. I cant believe blizzard are such ignorant about this. This has been a big problem in WoW aswell. Cant believe they havent learnt from their mistakes!
On May 29 2010 06:45 Piy wrote: It's just ridiculous that they could be making such a huge series of blunders in their competitive scene. Blizzard has always been so excellent at managing their scenes in the past, and now it seems as if they're deliberately trying to break the competitive scene apart.
lololol, you mean KeSPA right? As far as Blizzard managing the Sc2 scene? Im going to start digging a grave now.
From the beginning of all their previous games blizzard took a pretty significant role organising tournaments. They continued long term balance problems and issues raised by the community,
Now they're just hacking away without stopping to appreciate the problems they're causing.
When they first said that SC2 won't be supporting LAN, I belived Blizzard would invent some kind of system that would compensate for that. When we finally got beta and found that Bnet 2.0 was pretty underwhelming, I trusted Blizzard would update Bnet in time to make it really good!
There is no kind of LAN latency. The only thing that has been added to Bnet so far is Facebook integration. And to top it all off - now they won't merge the servers or allow us to play cross realm without paying for an additional game!
The thing that pisses me off the most is that pepole CAN play crossrealm without any major lag with the help of Battleping. So it's been proven that crossrealm play without huge lag issues is possible! It's not like Blizzard lacks the knowledge to make this work, so the only reason they wouldn't add it must be money -.-'.
I used to love Blizzard alot! However, due to alot of the recent actions taken by blizz, mainly regarding Bnet 2.0, I can't help but to feel that they are taking a huge dump on the community >.<
Is this the Activision part of ActivisionBlizzard shining through?
Cross-realm play is required for the growth of esports, which will directly benefit Blizzard. SC2 can become huge international if Blizzard stops these terrible bnet2.0 policies. I really thought they would figure out what the community needed by now, but it seems we all need to make our voices heard for them to listen.
signed, I'm eventually going to want to check out the fabled asian servers. I'm not paying $60 (and likely more with expansions) to play a game I already own. I'm all for legally purchasing a game to contribute back to the developers, but them extorting money to implement technology they developed last game is low.
Dear TLers, Maybe blizzard don't read TL so why don't you all reply to my post on their actual forum to voice your opinions. I want to see at least 1,000 replies by tonight -_- http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25170776991
On May 29 2010 07:25 Chaotic_flare wrote: Dear TLers, Maybe blizzard don't read TL so why don't you all reply to my post on their actual forum to voice your opinions. I want to see at least 1,000 replies by tonight -_- http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25170776991
Am I on the Battle.net forums, or why is there huge /signed spam?
This is clearly the highest priority issue for a few reasons. First, players need to know on release day whether they have cross-server play. Otherwise top players would buy extra copies (would probably suit Blizzard more than fine.) Second, it's the only one of the major bnet2 issues for which there is no (free) workaround. It will still be possible to pause and countdown replays, it will be possible to have a chat between people on the internet, playing from LANs works as long as you have an internet connection. For playing with someone from another continent, there's absolutely no other choice than to have accounts on the same server.
On May 29 2010 06:06 alkampfer wrote: On monday i'm selling my 2000 shares in Activision Blizzard stock... i'm done with SC2 and i'll go back playing BW. Only hope that blizzard won't kill Korean Leagues. They care only about money.
If they only care about money, wouldn't it be wiser to keep the stock?
I've known that Blizzard was talented at screwing over their strangely loyal fans seeing as they stick with their games no matter how badly Blizzard ignores them and money grubs. But THIS I honestly did not expect I thought it was well too moronic for Blizzard to not implement this at all. But yet again they managed to surprise me.....
On May 29 2010 07:27 lew wrote: They read teamliquid so why doesn't the teamliquid crew make a big newspost with everything you said included?
Read the first few pages theres a post by Kennigit answering your question.
On May 29 2010 05:36 Kennigit wrote: Dear Blizzard
It's mid 2011. 32 Players remain in the Tamagochi TSL Season 10. They are from 15 different countries, and play across the 3 Bnet 2.0 servers.
Do i tell these players they need to buy 2 more copies of Starcraft 2 in order to play each other (they've now spent 200$ to compete internationally)? Or do i encourage them to break Blizzard's ToS by sharing accounts in order to play? By the second expansion - players would be expected to own 9 games (1 SC, 2 expansions - for all 3 realms).
There is nothing stopping players from doing cross realm play now - this isn't a lag issue. We've had to deal with that for years, and it was solved by the community (chaos launcher) - the same is likely for SC2. Players are competing cross realm right now in beta with few problems.
I believe in my heart of hearts that the people behind these decisions are just ignorant to the needs of esports players and organizers, and that this isn't just a money grab. That being said, I can't believe that the communication divide between Blizzard and it's Starcraft community has grown so wide that these same people aren't aware of the massive hindrance this lack of cross realm support is to the "esports" that they wish to support and grow (this sentence is long - English Major support please).
Cross realm play isn't on your list? Put it on your list.
Listen. To. Your. Community.
Most likely though if you have reached Season 10 of the TSL with Tamagochi sponsoring, you have also had time in the past 10 seasons to realize you might have to host separate TSL for each region. While you say that the future of e-Sports is reliant on the international cross between players you have provided very little evidence of such a case. If anything, the current situation in South Korea has proved that regional play TRUMPS international play. They brought in a few foreigners in the beginning because they could compete, but the regional forces are what made StarCraft what it is in S. Korea today.
While the StarCraft community outside of S. Korea has its longevity to thank for it's interconnectedness over the internet, most BW teams in the past have had their team composition based regional most of the time. However a good example of the cross-pacific interaction between realms is the partnership of that of Testie and Mondragon, but if you look at teams such as Media, ToT, LRM), most have had their players based in a region.
Great players will always have the resources and cash to buy multiply accounts to play internationally. Mediocre players can improve their craft regionally until they start winning regional tournaments themselves. A simple craftcup win IN THE BETA is enough for a second copy of StarCraft 2, there is no doubt more tournaments will come with the release of StarCraft 2.
With Blizzard's support of WoW Arena competitively, I can only imagine what resources they will put behind a game that is actually aimed for competitive play. So yes, playing with my European friends would be nice, but if it is competition I don't see what's stopping the best players in the world from getting together, but if it's just for community sake, what is stopping from players from gathering and chatting on sites like TeamLiquid.net, incgamers, or even GosuGamers.net (;D). So yes, while it would be nice to cross servers here and there, but it goes with what Pierce was saying in the article you quoted when he was talking about the leagues. They don't want players to feel anonymous and inconsequential in a league filled with 800,000 players.
As for chat rooms, I would wonder how hard it is to organize teams and CWs now, maybe we can get some feedback from people who have taken part in the SC2CL matches or even tournament organizers about how hard it has been to contact and organize people without chatrooms. With so many alternatives with IRC and even website forums, why do we need chatrooms as an alternative in communicating with random people?
Blizzard may not be actively screwing people over and they might be trying to prevent people from having a poor experience because they are being destroyed by people who don't speak their language, BUT cross realm play is important.
Solution? No cross-realm stranger matching, just cross-realm games among mutual friends.
Signed, Come on Blizzard you don't have to try and grab every single dollar that's on the table. You have consistently put out amazing products but the selling of in game items in wow, promoting of multiboxing to get more subscriptions and now region locking to gain a few more sales comes across as a bit low rent and tacky.
I'm fully in favor of spending money to support a product you believe in, but asking people to buy multiple copies of the game to play together is a dopey decision.
When I first heard Blizzard's stance on this issue I couldn't believe it. I spend 2 days making forum posts and talking to other players about it and just being generally pissed off that they don't realize how royally this fucks international competition (or maybe they do realize it, they just want the hardcore users to spend 3x as much for a game with worse online features than diablo I).
I'm really glad to see that people with more authority are threatening a shitstorm finally, even though I can't imagine what could be done to get through the thick heads at Blizzard, aside from setting fire to their headquarters.
Bnet "2.0" ... What a sad sad joke... By this point in the beta i was honestly expecting Blizzard to come around and fix things... Seem like they're stubborn and overconfident in their abilities to shape a community.
It's like releasing WoW with only the possibility of whispering.
I really just don't understand how someone can just say that it is ok to leave it this way. What the hell is going on in Blizzard's developer meetings (of which I'm sure there are several each week)? Are they seriously all agreeing that they don't need cross-region play?
It is absolutely mind-boggling that a team of such clearly talented, smart and creative individuals could ever consider this anything less than top-priority right now.
Facebook have managed cross-region interaction. I have friends from all over the world on my Facebook account. Now my Facebook account is integrated with my BNet 2.0 account, but only with friends from my region.
My BNet2.0 account has less useful functionality than my Facebook account.
I really really REALLY hope that they are all just trolling us, but sadly, I think that they are just hoping that we'll get tired of complaining and just accept it.
On May 29 2010 07:39 EmeraldSparks wrote: I actually want to know; I asked it earlier but it got lost:
Could this be solved if all players from all regions simply bought the European client?
that would be hilarious, though it's not going to happen. However if it DID happen then blizzard would be pretty much forced to allow cross server play ^_^. Anyway where's the shitstorm! i can't even smell anything yet.
If Blizzard wants money then they should listen to what TL has to say. If they listen the game will be better and more successful as an E-Sport, and therefore more money. A game for casuals isn't where the long-term money is at.
This is bullshit, someone like Day[9] or Artosis or Tasteless needs to write a letter to blizzard and have it signed by everyone on TeamLiquid and Sc2gg and Blizz forums demanding that cross region play and chat channels be in the game AT LAUNCH
On May 29 2010 07:27 Teddyman wrote: Am I on the Battle.net forums, or why is there huge /signed spam?
This is clearly the highest priority issue for a few reasons. First, players need to know on release day whether they have cross-server play. Otherwise top players would buy extra copies (would probably suit Blizzard more than fine.) Second, it's the only one of the major bnet2 issues for which there is no (free) workaround. It will still be possible to pause and countdown replays, it will be possible to have a chat between people on the internet, playing from LANs works as long as you have an internet connection. For playing with someone from another continent, there's absolutely no other choice than to have accounts on the same server.
On May 29 2010 06:06 alkampfer wrote: On monday i'm selling my 2000 shares in Activision Blizzard stock... i'm done with SC2 and i'll go back playing BW. Only hope that blizzard won't kill Korean Leagues. They care only about money.
If they only care about money, wouldn't it be wiser to keep the stock?
it would be wiser MAYBE, but i am not a wise man. I am an angry fan that is doing what he can. And from what i am seeing they care about THEIR money not Shareholders money actually.
On May 29 2010 05:39 WarChimp wrote: Yes, I definitely agree with this, I really hope blizzard listens, because especially Australians and New Zealanders who got to connect to the USA server, We have quite massive command lag, 1-2 seconds
'Blizzard Entertainment also announced today that both the standard edition and Collector's Edition of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will give players from Australia and New Zealand access to play on servers based in Southeast Asia, alongside gamers from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. This local datacenter will offer players in the region improved latency for a high-quality gameplay and connectivity experience.'
Seriously that interview is mind-boggling... Now "Could this be solved if all players from all regions simply bought the European client?" I'd actually do that.
On May 29 2010 07:43 jtype wrote: I really just don't understand how someone can just say that it is ok to leave it this way. What the hell is going on in Blizzard's developer meetings (of which I'm sure there are several each week)? Are they seriously all agreeing that they don't need cross-region play?
It is absolutely mind-boggling that a team of such clearly talented, smart and creative individuals could ever consider this anything less than top-priority right now.
Facebook have managed cross-region interaction. I have friends from all over the world on my Facebook account. Now my Facebook account is integrated with my BNet 2.0 account, but only with friends from my region.
My BNet2.0 account has less useful functionality than my Facebook account.
I really really REALLY hope that they are all just trolling us, but sadly, I think that they are just hoping that we'll get tired of complaining and just accept it.
Yeah we really need to send them a regular petition signed by everyone. Maybe once a month. It will take several months, but I think that's the sort of action that needs to be taken.
I've seen other developers try these shenanigans and that's pretty much what it took to change their minds.
But... can the TL community actually effect Blizzard's stand on this topic? I hope so... but I think in the end they realize we are going to purchase their product, cross region multiplayer or not.
Oh god I was so pumped up and raged untill I saw that picture...
Thank you.
Well, I also thought that Blizzard was better then this. Maybe I will pay as much for SC2 as for warcraft 2, 3, tft, diablo, diablo 2 + expansion and sc + bw. We will see.
On May 29 2010 07:54 Kruxt wrote: But... can the TL community actually effect Blizzard's stand on this topic? I hope so... but I think in the end they realize we are going to purchase their product, cross region multiplayer or not.
I'm pretty sure that they take notice of what we think. Whether or not they will act upon it is a different story.
They HAVE to realise that this is hurting the very aspect of this game that made it, and it's predecessor, popular in the first place; the competitive aspect.
Anything they do to hinder the progress of the competitive SC2 scene, will hurt them in the long run. I feel like they only really have a tentative hold on the Korean market right now and their dealings with Kespa may or may not have helped, but restrictions like this are only (and it's painfully obvious to anyone with the logical part of their brain still intact) stunting the growth of esports as a worldwide industry.
On May 29 2010 07:43 jtype wrote: I really just don't understand how someone can just say that it is ok to leave it this way. What the hell is going on in Blizzard's developer meetings (of which I'm sure there are several each week)? Are they seriously all agreeing that they don't need cross-region play?
It is absolutely mind-boggling that a team of such clearly talented, smart and creative individuals could ever consider this anything less than top-priority right now.
Facebook have managed cross-region interaction. I have friends from all over the world on my Facebook account. Now my Facebook account is integrated with my BNet 2.0 account, but only with friends from my region.
My BNet2.0 account has less useful functionality than my Facebook account.
I really really REALLY hope that they are all just trolling us, but sadly, I think that they are just hoping that we'll get tired of complaining and just accept it.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
It's pretty sick how TL can make you feel a bit safer even at the worst of times.
Another thing I've not seen discussed is this: They've said that Bnet 2.0 will be cross-game, but WoW has different region locking that SC2 will. Does this mean that when I'm, say, in Diablo, I'll be able to chat to my friend in the US while he's playing wow but not when he's playing sc2?
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
It's pretty sick how TL can make you feel a bit safer even at the worst of times.
actually i dont give a damn about chatchannels because i rarely used them in games i played. but the thing about buying the game several times concernes me.i mean how can you run tournaments where players from all over the world are involved ? -.-
If it comes to the worse case scenario - what are the chances of something similar to Iccup being done for SC2? I'm assuming 0 since even if people do manage to make a seperate server Blizzard will probably be on it straight away shut it down instantly.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
It's pretty sick how TL can make you feel a bit safer even at the worst of times.
On May 29 2010 07:35 Phantom wrote: As for chat rooms, I would wonder how hard it is to organize teams and CWs now, maybe we can get some feedback from people who have taken part in the SC2CL matches or even tournament organizers about how hard it has been to contact and organize people without chatrooms. With so many alternatives with IRC and even website forums, why do we need chatrooms as an alternative in communicating with random people?
It's absolutely terrible. You have to add everyone in the tournament using their email address which in turn gives you their real ID etc. Then you have to relog a few times because the friend list doesn't work and if you typo their email address or something it doesn't tell you that the email address you added doesn't exist. It's horrible. It's unplayable. The only way you can get any tournament going is to have everyone meet up in IRC and then arrange their matches privately by whispering each other their real IDs. In short, they took out chat channels and the result was people went outside bnet2.0 in order to use chat channels.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
It's pretty sick how TL can make you feel a bit safer even at the worst of times.
signed. I'd like to point out that the lack of LAN is a even bigger obstacle for the growth and development of SC2 in Esports. How does Blizzard plan to fix this problem?
Don't read the bnet forums if you have high blood pressure. Seriously it's so enraging. Their arguments boil down to: "Well I don't use any of these features you guys want because I am cool and have a lot of RL friends to play with. Also LAN is so old fashioned lololol. Plus I don't care about competitive gaming."
I wonder what's the real motive behind not having cross realm play. If it is Blizzard's intention to profit from that extra few bucks by forcing people who have to buy multiple copies of the game to do it in the first place, then wouldn't Blizzard just refuse to listen to its community no matter what?
On May 29 2010 05:36 Kennigit wrote: Dear Blizzard Cross realm play isn't on your list? Put it on your list.
Yes please. During the beta I have played a lot on both Europe and US, and I have pretty much the same latency on both regions right now so I can play on both, it's not a limitation in technology or anything because it does work great for a lot of people. I also tried playing on Asia, and there it was pretty much unplayable due to lagg so I didn't play there. See, I made a choice by myself, please let everyone do that at launch.
Another thing that makes you think that this shit is broken, is if I'm going to have accounts in both regions, I actually have to input fake information when creating that new account. How can that be acceptable?
This is most likely only about money though, a lot of people will probably buy a second account in order to have access to both regions, but please, just make two new mounts/pets/whatever and put it in the WoW microtransaction store and that way you can let us choose region without buying 3 copies (9 with expansions) while still not losing money.
If I was a big shot in Blizzard, I'd certainly look at teamliquid and ask the guys here to name 5 people that will represent teamliquid and it's userbase. Then 2-3 Blizzard people would get together with the 5 TL people on a conference call once a week and discuss stuff. Those 5 people would then be the voice of the community. The game would end up being awesome.
/signed They need to keep it sweet and simple. just find and create servers/games,chat rooms,friends list,clan organizing,cross realm play, oh and group replay viewing and should be good.
This whole "let's make bnet 2.0 useless outside our use case" thing seems like short term thinking from Blizzard.
Sure, if they alienate their core fans then it won't cost them too much at first, but in the long term it will definitely have an effect on sales of future games, and on the shelf-life of this game as communities fail to form around it.
I don't understand why they don't allow people to play on other servers, aside from it maybe being a money grab.
If someone plays on a server to which he doesn't have a good connection, it would put LESS stress on the server as far as I understand, because the communication is slower. As long as players understand that their connection will not be as good, they should be able to play on them.
On May 29 2010 08:49 Yukidasu wrote: This whole "let's make bnet 2.0 useless outside our use case" thing seems like short term thinking from Blizzard.
Sure, if they alienate their core fans then it won't cost them too much at first, but in the long term it will definitely have an effect on sales of future games, and on the shelf-life of this game as communities fail to form around it.
I believe that's called Marketing Myopia. See? I learned something in my marketing class after all!
I feel that it is very embarrassing for a company as large and powerful as Blizzard to suffer from this. They are going to kill themselves as a company if they continue down this road.
On May 29 2010 08:47 niteReloaded wrote: If I was a big shot in Blizzard, I'd certainly look at teamliquid and ask the guys here to name 5 people that will represent teamliquid and it's userbase. Then 2-3 Blizzard people would get together with the 5 TL people on a conference call once a week and discuss stuff. Those 5 people would then be the voice of the community. The game would end up being awesome.
this is assuming blizzard even cares about what the hardcore community wants.
/signed I can't really believe Blizzard is being serious with this. Fortunately the Amazon rating isn't up til June 27 (I think), so they definitely have time to respond and do something before some of us start taking desperate measures.
All they really need to to is have a Gateway selector (SC/WC3 style) and have one default choice that clearly says "recommended" (for the tards who can't figure out what their default server should be), and maybe add a warning message for the other server choices that says "omfg if you connect to this server which we do not recommend then you will have lag and the game might just blow up. do you want to continue?"
Problem solved, and now international tournaments can happen easily. Moar esports ensues, moar money for Blizztard ensues. How hard is that to understand?
This move isn't even good for their money in the long run.
They took everything that was good in SC1 and left it out of SC2 (ex: server choice). /signed (where do I sign to cause havoc?... wait that's another site? okay...)
On May 29 2010 08:47 niteReloaded wrote: If I was a big shot in Blizzard, I'd certainly look at teamliquid and ask the guys here to name 5 people that will represent teamliquid and it's userbase. Then 2-3 Blizzard people would get together with the 5 TL people on a conference call once a week and discuss stuff. Those 5 people would then be the voice of the community. The game would end up being awesome.
this is assuming blizzard even cares about what the hardcore community wants.
If they don't then they can at least stop pretending that they do. Because they're not very good at it.
I can't think of any good reason NOT to add cross-realm functionality, other than they're eager to see how many chumps will pay for a copy for each realm. Hopefully not too many...
I think its so weird that on one hand we have this gorgeous game with sharp balance and on the other hand we have this horrible package around it called battle.net 2.0
Can someone please post tl threads such as this on the blizzard forums, so that there is 100% chance that they see it, and so that it is obvious and unavoidable to them?
Decisions like this make me want Blizzard to fail very badly... How can such a big company be so ignorant? This has been asked 100 times, but what happened to blizzard? WoW? Was that enough? The game is awesome. Why is everything around it so dumb?
On May 29 2010 08:47 niteReloaded wrote: If I was a big shot in Blizzard, I'd certainly look at teamliquid and ask the guys here to name 5 people that will represent teamliquid and it's userbase. Then 2-3 Blizzard people would get together with the 5 TL people on a conference call once a week and discuss stuff. Those 5 people would then be the voice of the community. The game would end up being awesome.
this is assuming blizzard even cares about what the hardcore community wants.
Well, they should. Not because they need to be nice, but because they themselves want to make the game as good as possible. The problem is that they aren't even aware of some things that are DUh! to a hardcore (i.e. experienced) player.
TL knows the ins and outs of StarCraft, ESPORTS, you name it... I think Blizzard missed out a lot and could've milked a lot more useful input out of TL.
You can thank Gaming in general for getting so popular/mainstream/accepted that it's caused gaming companies to shift their focus from pleasing the small niche hardcore crowd to the mouth breathing casuals/soccermoms that play the game a couple months tops, because they are now make the majority of the people who buy the games.
With gaming being so mainstream now, the easier they can make the game, the longer the casual plays and is more likely to recommend it and purchase sequels/expansions.
Even Blizzard has became too big for themselves. They always take pride in their successful business model for games, only releasing quality products when they are done instead of reaching deadlines... that is unfortunately not happening with SC2 (even though its been pushed back so many times). I feel like bnet 2.0 needs a major overhaul before release, because frankly I'm sure most of us agree its absolute trash in so many ways. Yes I know its a beta, I've played other beta games as well. Blizzard hasn't been the same since WoW, don't get your hopes up guys.
They are in it for the money 100%. The next gen MMO they are working on is where the money is at, and games like SC2 and Diablo 3 (which has bad direction as well atm, I may add), no matter how successful, do not compare to that monthly payment they get from a game like WoW. Not even close.
Here's the last thing that was said on region locking (this was Sigaty btw):
Q: How far in the 'long term' are those plans which allow for swapping to U.S. servers on an E.U. account - or a global account? A: Jumping to the region you want is definitely in the long term plan for Battle.net, although we do have some concerns about communicating properly to the player what's happening if they choose this because it WILL affect the latency of the game. As far as a date on when, I don't have one yet. There are a number of features that we want to make sure get out their first and jumping to different servers is lower on the priority list at the moment.
There you go. Now, I THINK that that is shit-storm avoided.
To remain coherent with their main goal of Starcraft 2 being eSports centered, they have to implement cross-realm play. For the reasons Kennigit listed, and for the respect of the community, the answers they provided are completely insufficient. Removing offline play while also greatly limiting online play? This is a absurd step back from what we already considered granted and necessary.
If blizzard doesn't want private ladders to spring up for SC2, they should accommodate to their users' wants and make it so that Bnet 2.0 won't lack in anything the community wants so there is no need for private ladders.
I doubt that blizzard cares. that being said, i'm annoyed that I need 3 accounts to do tournies. I wouldn't mind if they had a worldwide option that I could buy for 20-40 dollars more, but buying 9 games to get 3 whole sets? seriously?
just about everything blizzard has done since the beta opened has caused me to lose faith in them but this is probably the worst part of it all. i really dont get how they can talk about promoting esports and turn around and do this.
Their message is clear: "We don't want to put any effort into the new Battle.net at all. You'll have to play on private servers if you want any basic functions."
I'm about that far |---| away from not buying the game I've waited so many years for.
On May 29 2010 10:42 uNiGNoRe wrote: Their message is clear: "We don't want to put any effort into the new Battle.net at all. You'll have to play on private servers if you want any basic functions."
I'm about that far |---| away from not buying the game I've waited so many years for.
It's worse:
"We don't want to put any effort into the new Battle.net and we are going to sue your ass if you mess with our intellectual property by hosting your own server."
The reason why SC survived for so long in the non-korean scene is because of players from all over the world being able to play against each other. Also, the international tournaments are the most popular ones, just like in real sports. Olympics, Fifa World Cup anyone?? How can something that obvious not be apparent? Asking players to spend 3x$60 just so that they can compete on either 3 realms is ridiculous. Even if the sponsors are willing to do that for their clanmates, who is going to do that for the up-and-coming player in the scene? Do they actually know the community and demography they are targeting?
Just let the player pick his region of choice when he logs in. If he lags in the region he selected, obviously that is not Blizzard's fault, but the player's.
The main issue here is that Blizzard could implement these features if they wanted to. You have to think about this with fresh eyes, forget all the prejudice or nostalgia you had for Blizzard, and look at what they're actually doing. They're removing LAN, regions, custom maps, custom games and chat communities.
All of these elements could be implemented with the snap of a finger. It's not because they can't, or avoid it - they WON'T. The question that remains, is why. My money is on the money.
thanks to a friend who linked me to this discussion, cuz I feel pretty strongly about this and I strongly agree with the OP. heres my 2 cents
The thing is, Blizzard is being a hypocrite in this case. They SAY that they want to "connect people with their friends" and this is clearly evident in the Facebook integration, and Real ID friends. However in today's international society, and the explosion of communication technology, the world is linked like never before, and you are going to have a lot of friends in different regions as you.
Latency is definitely not an excuse anymore for this issue. and come on Blizzard... its not 1990, when our network of friends only included people in our town, city, or in very extreme cases, country. - Its 2010, where social networks like Facebook and Twitter connect our everyday lives, and VOIP and IM services like Skype, and MSN allow us to communicate, interact, and make friends across the globe. And your telling me I can't play a game of Starcraft with them once in a while without shelling out another $50.00 (plus each expansion pack thereafter)?
Come on Blizzard stop looking at the world as it was, and look upon the world as it is now.
On May 29 2010 05:42 Salv wrote: Is there a way to communicate this to Blizzard besides just posting?
By causing a shit storm.
jumping on the bandwagon of shit storm.
blizzard really need to change their way of thinking for bnet 2.0 because they're obviously not going in the direction the community wants to, it's the complete opposite.
But yeah I agree with this, there should be a simple way for people around the world to play together. Even WarCraft 2 had direct connect, which technically would work for international players. Or LAN w/Hamachi.
Atleast Blizzard is making it obvious that they're money grabbing cunts now, even the most hardcore blizzard fanboys have to wakeup at this point..
It's 2010 and they're fucking things up which have worked for years, it's extremely hard to understand how a once great company turned to shit.. Oh wait..
Another reason to not buy this game along with the plethora of other reasons.
As much as you nay-sayers say that they dont read these forums, they do in fact read these forums. I think with this much of a storm from this they may realize the pickle they're in.
On May 29 2010 11:25 BDF92 wrote: As much as you nay-sayers say that they dont read these forums, they do in fact read these forums. I think with this much of a storm from this they may realize the pickle they're in.
In the back of their minds they might realize they shouldn't do away with features that they have had since 1998 (chat-rooms, ability to choose the region you want to play in "gateways) - But I doubt they are going to do anything about it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q u o t e:
Chat rooms will not exist during SC2 release, this has been confirmed. Dustin Browder went on to add that the game will likely not receive any "Content Patches"
On May 29 2010 11:25 BDF92 wrote: As much as you nay-sayers say that they dont read these forums, they do in fact read these forums. I think with this much of a storm from this they may realize the pickle they're in.
Well if that is true the obvious answer is for the members who know of them, even happen to talk to them regularly have themselves a few words with them. We shouldn't need to cause a shit storm if there are contacts that can be talked to, to bring the point to blizzard more directly
You know what was so cool about Batte.net? That I could find myself playing against anybody in the world.
If I wanted to have a playdate with people around the world I'd play WoW, except WoW is one of the biggest insults to gaming ever made. Blizzard, for us, SC is about competition, and the thrill of victory. It's not about raiding and chatting with Australians, as pleasant a people as they may be. It's not about letting all my Facebook friends know that I just got Team Terran 5. It's not about sitting alone in my apartment playing with my friends sitting alone in their apartments because we can't play on LAN.
What is the deal anyways? They say the technology isn't there- is that because it was a switch from 2d to 3d graphics, therefore too much info going back and forth?
Blizzard you guys have a LOT of things to fix if you want to make this game an eSport.... Im sure if you read 4 random threads in the SC2 section of this forum, that will account for maybe 90% of the problems.
On May 29 2010 12:19 vietlol wrote: This really sucks for AUS/NZ. Will I be able to activate my key on the US server or should I cancel my preorder and wait to get a US copy?
I was considering the same thing, I might cancel my preorder now and wait and see upon release what I should do.
I forsee 3rd party programs/servers as the only solution. Blizzard doesn't seem to get it. I can play people in South Korea with almost no latency in BW. Why can't I do that over 10 years later?
I've lost a lot of faith in Blizzard the past couple months. I always figured they were simply testing the waters with new ideas and would realize that they were flawed ideas and they'd go with the community. Clearly they're full of shit, or at least the bnet team is.
Blizzard has reached the point where they no longer need successful products to make money. I wish WoW never happened.
There's pretty much no reason to buy the game if you're AU/NZ. Yeah I totally what to be stuck with tens of thousands of people I can't communicate with. IF ONLY THERE WAS A SIMPLE WAY TO CHANGE SERVERS LOL~!~!~!~!~!~!~! Nah, that would be too easy.
The way I see it, Blizzard want to localize 'esports' into regions and then invite the top players from each to Blizzcon (which they will make the biggest SC2 event of each year) thus taking full control of the scene. But yea.. how hard can it be, you don't even need 3 clients its just ONE small file that needs to be replaced depending on what server you wish to connect to, Blizzard could easily implement this into the login screen. Its just money/control.
On May 29 2010 12:25 Floophead_III wrote: I forsee 3rd party programs/servers as the only solution. Blizzard doesn't seem to get it. I can play people in South Korea with almost no latency in BW. Why can't I do that over 10 years later?
I've lost a lot of faith in Blizzard the past couple months. I always figured they were simply testing the waters with new ideas and would realize that they were flawed ideas and they'd go with the community. Clearly they're full of shit, or at least the bnet team is.
Blizzard has reached the point where they no longer need successful products to make money. I wish WoW never happened.
Yeah, pretty much.
Who is SC2 for? It's clearly not for people who actually care about a competitive environment. Some of the features are just so mind-blowingingly stupid, I can hardly believe it. Why can't I chat? Why can't I add friends easily? Why can't I play with people around the world? WHY WHY WHY?! I don't even know the answer. Blizzard is making games for idiots in the hopes of getting huge amounts of money.
I thought Blizzard was like Valve - one of the last gaming companies that actually cared. How wrong I was!
To any AU/NZ players out there; make sure you let all your friends know they won't be on an english speaking server.
Anyone up for spreading the word to try and convince all aussies to buy a USA client, and get communities and sites to only run events via the US server?
On May 29 2010 12:56 deL wrote: Anyone up for spreading the word to try and convince all aussies to buy a USA client, and get communities and sites to only run events via the US server?
cross-realm play and chat channels need to be in the game by RELEASE. If the game does not have those features, DO NOT RELEASE IT UNTIL IT DOES. Also, there needs to be an identifier system so you can add people without email address. (Chat channels would fix this).
On May 29 2010 05:42 Salv wrote: Is there a way to communicate this to Blizzard besides just posting?
By causing a shit storm.
how big of a shitstorm does it have to be to beat out all the profits millions of semi casuals will bring in?
The kind of shitstorm that results in a 1 star amazon rating and articles all over the internet about how SC2 isn't ready for release.
I suggest if you have anyone who writes for a gaming site/blog/whatever tell them about this. You could easily write an interesting article about the decline of gaming being a result of companies selling out, and then compare that statement with blizzard, a company once known for waiting until games were absolutely amazing before releasing them.
It really seems like blizzard is dropping the ball on this one, and the only way they will react is a public shitstorm that overflows the SC community and starts affecting the opinions of people who are not die hard SC fans.
On May 29 2010 13:36 san-tokie wrote: I always thought of Valve and Blizzard as the best developers...
Where did you go so wrong, Blizzard...?
/signed
Yeah I remember there was a poll awhile back about best game developers, and TL tried so hard to win the internet for Blizzard. Man what a waste of time now that I think about it.
On May 29 2010 12:56 deL wrote: Anyone up for spreading the word to try and convince all aussies to buy a USA client, and get communities and sites to only run events via the US server?
On May 29 2010 05:42 Salv wrote: Is there a way to communicate this to Blizzard besides just posting?
By causing a shit storm.
how big of a shitstorm does it have to be to beat out all the profits millions of semi casuals will bring in?
The kind of shitstorm that results in a 1 star amazon rating and articles all over the internet about how SC2 isn't ready for release.
I suggest if you have anyone who writes for a gaming site/blog/whatever tell them about this. You could easily write an interesting article about the decline of gaming being a result of companies selling out, and then compare that statement with blizzard, a company once known for waiting until games were absolutely amazing before releasing them.
It really seems like blizzard is dropping the ball on this one, and the only way they will react is a public shitstorm that overflows the SC community and starts affecting the opinions of people who are not die hard SC fans.
Not really, this "shit storm" your referring to only really happens when a lot of people are involved, I grant you a hard core can have an exaggerated effect but we are notably not talking about say Ubisoft cutting off single player games or even Valve's first release of Steam (not only did it take hours to install of DVD but really got in the way).
We're not even talking about cross-realm here, that's just miss-leading, we're talking about cross-region. The closest equivalent to realms is divisions, now that would be shit storm: can't play with your friends, can't meet new people from your community and join them in again. That would effect the standard and even Blizzards warped 'Wii style' "casual" player.
What we're talking about here are hardcore players and the success of tournaments that they feed into. Arguing its something else I feel just makes your argument too easy to counter because your simply wrong. Even players who complain they won't be able to play Koreans like they did on iCCup seem to be disingenuous, such a random and infrequent occurrence surely won't and can't stop them from buying a game they're obviously invested in, neigh, love.
All I'm saying is please don't forget you* are an minority, the respected people here are part of the worlds best, their needs are obviously different and the mere fact that people want to emulate that doesn't mean Blizz should throw the baby out of the pram, just listen then do what they think is right.
( * I'm here because I respect the skill and time taken by the players, and pop into some single player from time to time)
On May 29 2010 13:36 san-tokie wrote: I always thought of Valve and Blizzard as the best developers...
Where did you go so wrong, Blizzard...?
/signed
Yeah I remember there was a poll awhile back about best game developers, and TL tried so hard to win the internet for Blizzard. Man what a waste of time now that I think about it.
On May 29 2010 12:56 deL wrote: Anyone up for spreading the word to try and convince all aussies to buy a USA client, and get communities and sites to only run events via the US server?
Wow, this is actually a good idea.
No, it's not a good idea but a terrible one, because if some of the Aussies decide that the lag is too much and want to go back to the server they are closest to, they can't. Also that doesn't solve the problem for other international players and for US/Euro players planning on playing in Asian tournaments. The best possible option is still to provide a choice everytime a player logs in.
On May 29 2010 05:42 Salv wrote: Is there a way to communicate this to Blizzard besides just posting?
By causing a shit storm.
how big of a shitstorm does it have to be to beat out all the profits millions of semi casuals will bring in?
The kind of shitstorm that results in a 1 star amazon rating and articles all over the internet about how SC2 isn't ready for release.
I suggest if you have anyone who writes for a gaming site/blog/whatever tell them about this. You could easily write an interesting article about the decline of gaming being a result of companies selling out, and then compare that statement with blizzard, a company once known for waiting until games were absolutely amazing before releasing them.
It really seems like blizzard is dropping the ball on this one, and the only way they will react is a public shitstorm that overflows the SC community and starts affecting the opinions of people who are not die hard SC fans.
Not really, this "shit storm" your referring to only really happens when a lot of people are involved, I grant you a hard core can have an exaggerated effect but we are notably not talking about say Ubisoft cutting off single player games or even Valve's first release of Steam (not only did it take hours to install of DVD but really got in the way).
We're not even talking about cross-realm here, that's just miss-leading, we're talking about cross-region. The closest equivalent to realms is divisions, now that would be shit storm: can't play with your friends, can't meet new people from your community and join them in again. That would effect the standard and even Blizzards warped 'Wii style' "casual" player.
What we're talking about here are hardcore players and the success of tournaments that they feed into. Arguing its something else I feel just makes your argument too easy to counter because your simply wrong. Even players who complain they won't be able to play Koreans like they did on iCCup seem to be disingenuous, such a random and infrequent occurrence surely won't and can't stop them from buying a game they're obviously invested in, neigh, love.
All I'm saying is please don't forget you* are an minority, the respected people here are part of the worlds best, their needs are obviously different and the mere fact that people want to emulate that doesn't mean Blizz should throw the baby out of the pram, just listen then do what they think is right.
( * I'm here because I respect the skill and time taken by the players, and pop into some single player from time to time)
I respectfully disagree. TL is a huge community. If your wondering what kind of pull we have than look no further than the macro mechanics. Weve changed the course of this game (for the better) before and we can do it again.
Poll: Would you give SC2 a one star amazon rating to protest BNET?
Yes (6508)
83%
No (1331)
17%
7839 total votes
Your vote: Would you give SC2 a one star amazon rating to protest BNET?
Keep in mind it doesnt just have to be amazon. We could compile a list of every single major site ranking that allowed users to vote. Metacritic, ign we could hit everything...
They dont have to make the severs connected to make me happy. If they just let us choice are server like they did for BW I be fine with it. There no fucking way I'm paying for 3 copys to play on asia, US, and europe.
ya i dont understand how bnet 2.0 could delay starcraft beta by so long and then come out with NONE of the features that were included in bnet 1.0. the interface reminds me of fucking AOL ffs. why in the hell does it make a shits difference if my opponant is in germany, korea or a block away.
Be Heard Instead of just posting in a forum thread and being washed away, make sure Blizzard knows how you feel. Here are a variety of ways to get in touch and also get the word out. Make sure to be polite and express your thoughts. If this public outcry does not work, a boycott may have to be organized.
Remember the issues: - Chat channels - Cross region play - No LAN, even after Battle.net validation - League system - Clan system - Bnet 2.0 in general
On May 29 2010 12:56 deL wrote: Anyone up for spreading the word to try and convince all aussies to buy a USA client, and get communities and sites to only run events via the US server?
Wow, this is actually a good idea.
No, it's not a good idea but a terrible one, because if some of the Aussies decide that the lag is too much and want to go back to the server they are closest to, they can't. Also that doesn't solve the problem for other international players and for US/Euro players planning on playing in Asian tournaments. The best possible option is still to provide a choice everytime a player logs in.
Of course that is the best option, but that won't happen and this is the best we can hope for, it seems. We've played with people from the USA in every other incarnation of battle.net without issue and I am sure some 3rd-party programs will solve some of the latency issues.
Add to that, we don't get much better ping if at all on Asia as compared to USA...
/signed I am NZ and will be downloading the US version, still doesnt solve problem tho. If it isnt fixed at somr point I doubt I will be buying the expansions. Luckily for blizz at this point not much will stop me from buying the game.
What the hell does blizzard do during the day? The game is pretty much finished, so how the hell do they not have time to link regions and put in clans and have chat? Its not like this game took 5 years to make (oh wait). They have 2 months now before release. Lets hope they get off their asses and actually DO something during that time.
On May 29 2010 14:20 Joey.rumz wrote: There is no way that anyone should have to purchase 3 full games to completely unlock a single piece of software's full potential, whatsoever.
And it feels like Blizzard wants to pigeonhole us into doing just that, which is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I don't think they do. I think when they were in the planning stages of B.net they were like "yeah yeah we'll have everyone on different regional servers with cool profiles and achievements like on WoW :D . And we'll support esports too!"
i guess we're going to have to rely on 3rd party apps, don't know how legal that is, but hey if i bought the game i should be able to play with whoever i want.
On May 29 2010 14:20 Joey.rumz wrote: There is no way that anyone should have to purchase 3 full games to completely unlock a single piece of software's full potential, whatsoever.
And it feels like Blizzard wants to pigeonhole us into doing just that, which is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I don't think they do. I think when they were in the planning stages of B.net they were like "yeah yeah we'll have everyone on different regional servers with cool profiles and achievements like on WoW :D . And we'll support esports too!"
Well than why wouldn't they allow us to make different 'characters' on different 'regions' (servers would be the relevant counterpart to WoW,) on the same cd key.
I don't know Kennigit, I feel like Blizzard was very calculated with their decisions. It wouldn't have been oh-so hard to make a gateway system like they have in the past.
The more I think about it, the more it feels like Battlenet2.0 is the next step towards further segregation, as they feed us bullshit about how bnet2.0 is supposed to bring communities together.
There is a good quote from The Outlaw Josey Wales and it follows:
There's another old saying, Senator: Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.
and the more I read Blizzards pathetic press releases and interviews, the more I start to side with the quote man.
But damn, I hope you're right and they were just considering the novelty of the seperation.. but still.. I can't help but think otherwise.
no cross realm play is the stupidest idea they could have thought of. but hey, the Language barrier (Aus/NZ on south Asia servers) isn't a real issue with Bnet 2.0, if the only way to chat to others other than real ID and Facebook is somewhere like TL.net!
/signed. If Blizz can do it, then do it. No brainer here. I kind of have to agree with others that this is just a steal your money scam. They're taking advantage of loyal fans lame
On May 29 2010 14:22 Kennigit wrote: I don't think they do. I think when they were in the planning stages of B.net they were like "yeah yeah we'll have everyone on different regional servers with cool profiles and achievements like on WoW :D . And we'll support esports too!"
You have a terrible case of denial. There is no way this isn't a money grab on their part. They know people will gobble up whatever they shit out.
On May 29 2010 05:41 Vexx wrote: Judging from the weekly detailed posts here with polls and good discussion, I can't help but feel that Blizzard does not read much TL.
Indeed, there are multiple reasons why the have their own forums, Im not gonna tell u that tho but ill tell u this Team Liquid is not Blizzard, Blizzard is not Team Liquid, for a better chance to be listened go to Blizzard forums and post ur stuff there. In the game there's a News&Community window @ the main screen where u can click and launch the feedback option, this one will open the Feedback - Suggestions/Balance section on Battle.net Forums, that's the right place to post suggestions regarding SC2Beta specifically.
On May 29 2010 05:41 Vexx wrote: Judging from the weekly detailed posts here with polls and good discussion, I can't help but feel that Blizzard does not read much TL.
Indeed, there are multiple reasons why the have their own forums, Im not gonna tell u that tho but ill tell u this Team Liquid is not Blizzard, Blizzard is not Team Liquid, for a better chance to be listened go to Blizzard forums and post ur stuff there. In the game there's a News&Community window @ the main screen where u can click and launch the feedback option, this one will open the Feedback - Suggestions/Balance section on Battle.net Forums, that's the right place to post suggestions regarding SC2Beta specifically.
With every statement from Blizzard these days, I am losing more and more of my respect for them. Is there any option left other than them being either stupid, incompetent, extremely greedy or just ignorant?
On May 29 2010 14:20 Joey.rumz wrote: There is no way that anyone should have to purchase 3 full games to completely unlock a single piece of software's full potential, whatsoever.
And it feels like Blizzard wants to pigeonhole us into doing just that, which is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I don't think they do. I think when they were in the planning stages of B.net they were like "yeah yeah we'll have everyone on different regional servers with cool profiles and achievements like on WoW :D . And we'll support esports too!"
On May 29 2010 05:43 Excalibur_Z wrote: I'm not so sure lag issues can be just discounted like that. In IdrA's most recent interview, he says anytime he logs onto the US or especially the Euro server, the latency is pretty terrible. I've heard similar concerns from all sorts of players who have multiple accounts (or share them). I think the lag is a real and genuine factor. That said, the fact that we don't even have the option to log onto another realm is extremely irritating. I'm sure there are a lot of backend optimizations that could be put into play to alleviate lag problems and simulate a chaoslauncher experience.
Chat channels is my beef. I wrote this in the other thread, but how are you supposed to coordinate with more than 4 people? Add them all to your friends list and message them individually? Use the broadcast system? Those are both stupid ideas that could easily be sidestepped by adding in basic private channel functionality. There is no excuse for not implementing such a feature.
Actually, I believe that the IdrA interview was pre-patch 13... The switch from TCP to UDP made playing from EURO->ASIA a LOT smoother, at least for me.
Tho I hadn't tried in a few patches. Anyway, it's also a question of definitions. Is it 100% without latency (the way europe is for me)? No, no it's not - depending on the hour of the day, it will range between "fine" and "playable", which are very vague definitions that I just made up
Anyway, the major point is - as you said - that it should be our choice.
You can really tell theyve been rushing bnet 2.0. Man so many things arent thought through. Bnet 2 is just full of major fail right now. Here are my suggestions:
Regions: Have a option that enables cross region matchmaking for regular ladder games. For UMS and tourneys I dont see why youll ever want to restrict a player from playing anyone in the world as long as its up to the player to choose the latency.
Chat rooms Obviously they are going to put something in to make bnet feel less lonely, BUT, they should explain what the plans are. Right now theyre just making asses of themselves and pissing off the fans.
UMS maps: Just raise the specs, seriously. Without a happy ums community sc2 will lose so many "casual/non competitive" players. Let the modders and apper do what they want.
Watch replays with friends Just implement it goddamnit.
Every issue at the moment has to do with bnet 2 :/ It makes me sad as Blizzard has made all my favourite games so far. Id hate them to become some arrogant money grubbing corporation. Please Blizz, stay nice and cool.
I put a lot of faith in SC2 and Bnet 2.0. I really can't figure out what the hell happened with good ol' community-appeasing Blizzard. They're acting the same way the developers of MW2 did (in terms of multiplayer). Bnet 2.0 becomes no country for old community (referring to the movie title obviously).
OMG I hope they don't do this.This is mega crazy...I wanna play with my account vs Americans and Asians. Or at least we can make cross realm custom games.
Actually, that rock does have LAN sorta, you can play with it with your friend w/o internet connection.
Ontopic: I really don't see why they can't make the game worldwide without having to buy another client, that's just stupid. I thought the internet was supposed to be for everyone - altogether.
While we're at it, I have no idea how people are supposed to run a tournament or develop any sense of community without chat channels. I guess it has been said once or twice already
The stupid thing that Blizzard doing is that they think this rts community has the same use and same needs like their mmorpg community. That's why they wan't to seperate it to 3 realms and they want to connect all those realms to wow realms so you can chat with your friend playing wow at the same time. All for just having few "cool" feature toi have.
Dear Blizzard, I know you already decided about this long time ago, but just think about it one more time for the sake of your community. You may want people to think you care about your community but if you don't even care the most important need of these people, i don't think you actually care.
It's actually more, not only a player might end up needing to buy 3 accounts (or even 4, if from Russia, AU or South America), but also 3-4 expansions twice over the course of 2 years, which will probably round up to $400 per player on accounts and expansions alone.
Though if you think about it WoW players pay around that much over a 2 year period not including expansions, maybe they assume we're all that stupid? ,==
I think blizz forgot how to do this. Dealing with the wow community must have been traumatizing because they're so damn dumb. This is totally different and cross realm is a completely necessary feature and it's exclusion will badly hinder the competitive environment of the game.
Dudes, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen and how Blizzard is going to fuck everyone over and make tons of cash out of pro gamers. Anyone who's played WoW knows what I'm talking about.
Tournament realm. You pay fucking 15 dollars to get access to a "season" cross realm, and you get to duke it out regionally or against cross realm players, and you qualify through there to BlizzCon where like 8 players get to go, and the rest of the hundreds of thousands who wasted their 15 dollars get jack shit. But hey! at least you got cross realm.
I would not be surprised at all if this turns out to be the case. Blizzard are all about money nowadays, and setting up a cross realm Tournament server once or twice a year would yield lots of free money for almost no work.
I though you needed only to buy 1 game, not all 3. Either way Blizzard just needs more cash, that's all. (Also we're lucky that blizzard won't put a monthly fee for all EU servers. meh)
On May 29 2010 19:06 agarfin wrote: +1 for causing a shit storm. Lets get this started!
Then go to the battle.net forums and go - there are plenty of threads with high view-counters but way too less answers. Even a guy complaining about battlecruisers has more feedback :p
/signed, I don't see the logic behind bizzard's reasoning. Why not just allow cross realm and chat rooms. Isn't stupid that we get less in battle net 2.0?
we should be thankfull to bliz. they protect us from lag! think we could play worldwide and get in lag. this would be terrible. but bliz will sit on top and watch over us, so that we must never worry. We dont have any problems because bliz knows bedder than us what our problems are we dont want contact to each other we just want contact to bliz and we have to much money so bliz will help us!
If Blizzard doesn't start to listen to its community, very few people will be there to play their facebook-integrated achievement-infested lonely experience called Starcraft 2. It certainly won't have a real community, but perhaps they don't care about that either.
The OP's point is crucial if we want to ever see real word competitive starcraft. They just cannot remove chat rooms, cross realm AND LAN. This seems more like Battle.net 0.5 to me... Just like battle.net1 but without the IMPORTANT stuff for eSports
what's the point of a petition?? its just better to go on twitter, facebook, every forum you know and speak up. this will be way more effective than some silly online petition.
SIGNED!!! But I don't really care if Blizzard don't hear us because I will crack the game if I had to buy more than one copy. That's just ridiculous and greedy! I have no words for that in english. That's why I hope the game gets cracked soon enough and there will be a possibility to play outside bnet 2.0 at all. Then Blizzard will finally realize but then it would be too late.
Signed. Also without the LAN support, I can see MSL finals between SC2 Flash and SC2 Jaedong being disturbed by "battletnet is down for maintenance" halfway through the final deciding game...
On May 29 2010 18:59 SolHeiM wrote: Dudes, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen and how Blizzard is going to fuck everyone over and make tons of cash out of pro gamers. Anyone who's played WoW knows what I'm talking about.
Tournament realm. You pay fucking 15 dollars to get access to a "season" cross realm, and you get to duke it out regionally or against cross realm players, and you qualify through there to BlizzCon where like 8 players get to go, and the rest of the hundreds of thousands who wasted their 15 dollars get jack shit. But hey! at least you got cross realm.
I would not be surprised at all if this turns out to be the case. Blizzard are all about money nowadays, and setting up a cross realm Tournament server once or twice a year would yield lots of free money for almost no work.
I actually would not mind this option too much FOR PAID TOURNAMENTS.
Having said that, playing with friends who hav gone to Canada while your in Australia is still extremely problematic.
I'm so worried this is getting less exposure than the chat channels. I can wait for chat channels a little while, this concept makes the SC2 a non starter in my book.
On May 29 2010 23:08 Immersion_ wrote: I'm so worried this is getting less exposure than the chat channels. I can wait for chat channels a little while, this concept makes the SC2 a non starter in my book.
They are all linked together
Chat channels, crossrealm play, lan, real leagues, clans...
Its all a result of Blizzard not listening to the community.
So fucking annoyed by the mess they've created, I would have been ok with it if Blizzard from the outset talked about making SC2 for the casual players first and foremost. Not even talking about e-sport at all, that woulda been more "OK" at this point.
But they've been flirting with us hardcore fans and the e-sport scene ever since SC2 was announced, and we have seen NOTHING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that indicates that they actually give a fuck about the e-sport scene besides some cute statistics in replays.
No cross region play No LAN No chat channels No watching replays together No global or region ladder.
Sigh..
The lag is not the issue Blizzard, EU players can play with low latency on US ever since the lowered latency/UDP changes(which will hopefully be fixed soon) and vice versa. DON'T GIVE US THAT EXCUSE PLEASE.
Just tell us that you don't give a fuck about the longetivity (e-sport aspect) of this game. Please realize then that, while you will sell millions of boxes upon release of each game, the sales of these will drop more so than if the game was actually a viable e-sport and generated interest 7 years from now. Much like Broodwar have done.
Scrolled through FB just to see this. Definitely sad scene for all here on TL and more others who actually see SC and SC2 as an esport and/or more than just a game. + Show Spoiler +
On May 29 2010 23:16 Senx wrote: So fucking annoyed by the mess they've created, I would have been ok with it if Blizzard from the outset talked about making SC2 for the casual players first and foremost. Not even talking about e-sport at all, that woulda been more "OK" at this point.
But they've been flirting with us hardcore fans and the e-sport scene ever since SC2 was announced, and we have seen NOTHING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that indicates that they actually give a fuck about the e-sport scene besides some cute statistics in replays.
No cross region play No LAN No chat channels No watching replays together No global or region ladder.
I just dont understand why the wouldn't be considering this. Both Chat Channels AND cross realm play were available easily in BW. Why take such a key part of the game out in sc2, when everyone is CLEARLY wanting it. I could understand if it was a controversial issue like auto-mine or smartcast, where the community would indeed be torn between keeping it in or leaving it out, but this shit is real. I have seen THOUSANDS of people screaming to let chat channels live, as well as cross realm competition, but I have yet to see the fool to step up and say, "No chat channels please, they are too distracting and I wont get to silver league if im just chatting the whole time." Likewise I have yet to see some one voice an opinion AGAINST cross realm play. So my question is, if the whole fucking community is united in their decision about these two matters, then why the fuck aren't you (BLIZZARD) Doing something about it? Sure you are going to make loads of money off this game, it's a given. But who is going to keep this game going for 10+ years, who's going to make it a classic like BW was? It's not the kids who buy the game to play the campaign, who don't give a shit about the real issues. It will be us, the REAL "sc2 community", that is if you let us have one. The way the creation of this game is playing out now, I believe is a recipe for disaster. The balance of the game itself seems fine, and I don't even care if 1 unit is imbalanced or whatever, that can be fixed fast. But this issue seems to be eating away at like 99% of the community, so please just listen to us and understand where we are coming from.
Even if chat channels aren't wanted by anybody, it wouldn't be hard to make them available, through a pseudo IRC system. It would please many, and I don't see any reason it would hurt..................
Honestly, I don't think this is a money grab. I think the problem is:
1. Blizzard wants all SC2 internet traffic routed through its servers, rather than being peer-to-peer. (correct me if I'm wrong about this, but from the outside it seems to be the case) 2. Cross-realm play is infeasible (too laggy) with this setup. 3. Cross-realm play is a lower priority than routing all traffic through their servers.
In this case, the extra money from people who buy multiple versions of SC2 is just a minor bonus, not a significant motivation.
So not only do we need to convince Blizzard that cross-realm play is important, but also either: (a) laggy cross-realm play is a lot better than no (single-copy) cross-realm play, or (b) cross-realm play is more important than routing all traffic through Bnet.
Personally, I think what we really want is (b). I'm sure routing all traffic through Bnet benefits us in small ways, but being able to play with half our SCBW friends and to have international online competitions are FAR more beneficial.
in a other thread someone had a good idea. If you have to high latency to a other player you dont get him as enemy in ladder. So you can play worldwide and noone can complain over lagger.
btw people we need to share the new with other website
just looked in gosugamer website and they know nothing about what happen , same for many other website.
before give 1 star rating in amazon , better let every fans know what happen . my english realy suck so im not posting there , but i realy hope some people will start doing it .
The funny thing is, how Mike Morhaime said that e-sport is going to be popular not only in Korea, but worldwide, 'meaning' that they would be trying to expand the e-sport scene in West.
Yonhap: What's Blizzard's vision for E-sports? MM: Our understanding of E-sports is as a community project that increases the enjoyment of the game for the players. It's going to be popular not only in Korea, but worldwide.
I just wish they simply got the balls and straight out said "yes, we don't want to allow cross realm play because we want people to buy extra copies of our game" instead of all this pathetic "there's too much lag if you play with people from other continents, so we decided not to even give an option to do it, we know best!" crap..
On May 30 2010 01:40 Bill307 wrote: Honestly, I don't think this is a money grab. I think the problem is:
1. Blizzard wants all SC2 internet traffic routed through its servers, rather than being peer-to-peer. (correct me if I'm wrong about this, but from the outside it seems to be the case) 2. Cross-realm play is infeasible (too laggy) with this setup. 3. Cross-realm play is a lower priority than routing all traffic through their servers.
I am pretty sure that the actual game data is sent peer-to-peer. I didn't confirm that myself but as far as I know even R1CH says so, so I am tempted to believe that. If all the data was sent through their servers, observers should never lag a game (extremely easy to implement), but this is obviously not the case.
I agree with this post. Normally Blizzard is reasonable when fans start to speak out so I can only hope that they listen. I understand they are worried about ping but it should be the players choice imo.
Its pretty sad that they won't even give us the real reason. There is obviously a reason and I'll bet it has something to do with in-game advertising. Wouldn't want a hangul ad wasted on english players!
Anybody else feel dirty after reading that full interview... like they just got shat on? I need to wash.
Sadly, I think SCII is taking the path of MW2. No more listening to the community. Why? Because fuck the community, that's why. First and foremost, they want to maximize profit. They know that even the players suggesting boycott will buy the game, and after months of complaining they'll eventually wear themselves out and become content with what they're given. The 98% of casual gamers will be content from the get-go, regardless.
FUCK that model. GOOD GOD it's despicable. For the first time in ever, I'm considering pirating the game for only single player... and I'll be encouraging a friend to do the same - as I was the only reason he ever considered buying the damn game.
On May 29 2010 05:42 Salv wrote: Is there a way to communicate this to Blizzard besides just posting?
By causing a shit storm.
Unless a huge turnaround happens, i'm done with all things SCII and probably Blizzard. I'm currently a growing fan of KeSPA, OGN, MBC, and all the pro SC teams/players/culture.
Kennigit, Nazgul, Rekrul, others.. please, summon the power that is Team Liquid as a collective entity and break the spell Blizzard is putting on Starcraft's community.
The morons from Blizzard and activision want us to purchase 2 or 3 clients to play cross realm. Are they fucking seroius or just toying with our heads????
Blizzard I will buy the other 2 clients on one condition.................U HAVE TO SHOW ME WHICH FUCKING TREE IN MY BACKYARD IS SUPOOSEDLY GROWING ALL THE THE FUCKING MONEY!!! Hey Blizzard I used to believe that you were the greatest game makers ever now i think.........................................YOU ARE SO FUCKING SOCIALLY RETARDED AND HIGH!!!!!!!!!
Listen to your fans u morons or u wont have any soon enough.
/signed Wholeheartedly agree. I find the situation pretty hysterical. On one hand Blizzard wants esports to expand and for their product to become more popular, but on the other hand they hold the leash which keeps their game from spreading across continents. Truly lol blizzard.
Willing to share my account to top players if they don't provide crossrealm play.
LOL at lag being responsible that's why they don't want crossrealm.. Look, I'm from the Philippines and I don't even lag when I play at the US servers.. sssheeesssshhh
The lag issues etc. is total bs. I play mw2 with american and pinoy friends regularly enough and there really isn't any noticeable lag issues compared to playing with other finnish people. Why exactly there HAS TO be different regions anyway? They could just have koreans, europeans and americans playing on same ladder BUT have the matchmaking favor players around the same region. It really can't be that hard to setup because that is the system mw2 uses now too.
On May 29 2010 05:43 Excalibur_Z wrote: I'm not so sure lag issues can be just discounted like that. In IdrA's most recent interview, he says anytime he logs onto the US or especially the Euro server, the latency is pretty terrible. I've heard similar concerns from all sorts of players who have multiple accounts (or share them). I think the lag is a real and genuine factor.
I must say, I live in South Korea and I play only on the US server ( i like talking to ppl in english ). The latency is better on the Asian server, sure, but I find it perfectly playable; its really not a problem. Although latency on the Euro server is pretty terrible.
Also, to people saying lag is the factor why they don't allow cross realm play: Then why do they allow you to play if you buy 2 accounts hmm ? Buying more games solves the lag eh ?
Fuck buying multiple clients to play with ppl from other parts of the world, thats absolutely ridiculous, i'm sure some kind of hackers will solve this problem
Although, I think, we as a community, need to outgrow the "NERD RAGE AT BLIZZ TIL THEY CHANGE!" habit.
What I mean by that, is that we need to start making a strong, mature message to Blizzard. Regularly. We need to show them that we mean business. And lets face it, what is easier to read, and more likely to be noticed with an open mind: A caps-locked wall of text? Or a well written, precise statement stating what we, as intelligent, passionate gamers really want Blizz to do for their customers?
This is one issue where there can be no compromise. There is either seamless cross-realm support or there isn't. If Blizzard doesn't announce a solution to this glaring problem before release I will cancel my preorder.
People have been waiting years for Starcraft 2. How can Blizzard so easily fuck everything up for a game which so many people have yearned for and supported so long? It's like everyone at Blizzard has suddenly gotten brain damage, because these are simple, important parts of the game that should have been included in Bnet 2.0 from day 1. This shouldn't be an issue, not now not never.
It's utterly astonishing how badly Blizzard can muddle up something so great like Starcraft 2.
I'm sorry for not having read all of the 29 previos pages of posts, but I'll give my 2 cents anyway.
First, to answer your question: You don't encourage or discourage any alternative. All you can do is to make it "convenient" to break the EULA by allowing players to sign up with whichever account they want to. This way, the responsibility of breaking the rules is on the players, not the arrangement. It doesnt sound fair, but if the players are really uptight about the EULA, theyre gonna buy 2 copies anyway.
Second, I actually do believe the fact that theyre not currently planning cross-realm play and chatrooms etc is because of ignorance. Or rather, because they have so many other things to think about at the moment. Anyone who's been working on a big project with a deadline coming up knows that anything that can be postponed often gets way down on the priority list. I'm not making excuses for Blizzard in any way, I'm just stating that I believe this will be fixed later on.
Why don't I believe this is because of greed? -Because I dont really see the benefit of not allowing cross realm play. Sure, you will get a handful of retail sales from the people attending international tournaments, but at what cost? Totally ruining international e-sports, and having a lot of high profile players ragequitting (thus taking many casuals with them). From a strictly buisness perspective, I dont see the benefit.
I have never signed a Thread like this, like "Blizzard, we want X". But this is gonna be soooo essential - it really really feels like "two steps forward, three steps back" I do like some changes, but in overall this is really taking the wrong direction.
I believe in my heart of hearts that the people behind these decisions are just ignorant to the needs of esports players and organizers, and that this isn't just a money grab.
/Signed.
And to add a "Holy Crap", I hadn't thought about the expansions! Do you really think you ALSO have to buy the expansions to play cross-realm? I honestly thought it would be the main client to log in and you'd be done with it.
Main reason is the lag? Let people decide for themselves if they want to play with lag. Just make them log in to the other realm so they know it "could" be laggy.
There's no really no money at all in forcing people to buy multiple clients. The number of people that would be interested in playing on multiple realms because of tournaments is probably less than 1%. They might sell like 50k copies based on people wanting to play on multiple realms. That can't be the reasoning. To me, the fundamental design of bnet 2.0 right now just inhibits it and they'd have to, you know, *do work* to fix it for us 1% and it's not a smart business move.
Though I do feel for Oceania + singapore/phillipines. >_>
From a programming perspective, I don't think it's a huge problem to add things like chat channels or an overall ladder, but cross-realm just isn't going to happen and it's time we accept it.
I play mostly on Asia, and we aren't missing out on much. Most games don't lag. Most players speak English. The overall experience is pretty much identical to US server.
I'm from Singapore, and I've been playing the folks in the US West Server (Warcraft 3) with no problems, sure there might be some delay (latency), but it is definitely bearable and it ain't game breaking.
Just hope that it won't be too late when Cross Realm play becomes available for everyone ...
/signed So you are cutting off the local part of esports by your no-lan-policy and further prohibiting global competition? Does this sound like a way to success? Do you want sc2 to be a game people will be playing and talking about many years after release like sc:bw or wow?
On June 01 2010 15:54 hunter3 wrote: From a programming perspective, I don't think it's a huge problem to add things like chat channels or an overall ladder, but cross-realm just isn't going to happen and it's time we accept it.
I play mostly on Asia, and we aren't missing out on much. Most games don't lag. Most players speak English. The overall experience is pretty much identical to US server.
What? From programming perspective it's not that difficult. There are many options they could do: -You buy EU client and you play ladder only on EU but custom games are allowed everywhere which makes sure you won't make other people lag. -You buy EU client and similar account is made on US/Asia. But they are separate accounts. The only thing they would need to add is a watch to make sure you're playing only on one account which could be either server side or client side watch. The first option I think Blizzard would like more so people wouldn't abuse it as if they had multiple accounts with different stats.
On June 01 2010 16:00 slimshady wrote: /signed I have a feeling that Blizzard will add channels and cross realm support sooner or later. Too many people are complaining about this now.
Too many TL members rather ...95% of their sales will go to people who will be delighted to get achievements instead. I wish we need coherent action to cause that shit storm.
Why don't I believe this is because of greed? -Because I dont really see the benefit of not allowing cross realm play. Sure, you will get a handful of retail sales from the people attending international tournaments, but at what cost? Totally ruining international e-sports, and having a lot of high profile players ragequitting (thus taking many casuals with them). From a strictly buisness perspective, I dont see the benefit.
E: misspelling
I think people give them too much credit. We'll see what happens in the future but for now it looks like they're telling us to f off and I don't see any reason why it should change in the future. It might get worse since more casual gamers whining about void rays, banshees, and spine crawlers will far outnumber the people asking for legitimate changes.
In this day and age where the world is all connected together the fact that in a newly released game there isn't even an option to play against people from another region is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!
I cannot even begin to think what they are doing, it literally makes no sense.
I think they dont want cross server play because of the latency (still allowing it by buying a second account so tournaments can take place, with a barrier so not too many do it), and i think they are right because the gamer from far away forces the player from his own server to have a limited game experience, and there is little he can do about it (in ladder games).
My suggestion is to forbid players form other server to play ladder, that is to say that they can only join costum games or join by friend invite, so the casual gamer is not going to experience lag in the ladder game, and if this doesnt work out you could limit it to just friend invites/games (or integrate a ping/lag/region sign in the game so the host can decide) so big tournaments could still take place without any limitations and casual players won't experience high letancy in their games.
Sadly I think that Blizzard is too big nowadays to care about some hardcore fans and that the only way to make them stop behaving like the dictators they are, would be to absolutely boycott the competitive scene (something they REALLY REALLY want) until the cross realm support and chat channels are in the game. Sadly there are enough selfish people out there who dont give a damn and who would keep tournaments alive. Even if a few thousand well informed people wont buy the game, it simply wont matter if millions of copies of the game are sold to casuals. The real hurt will come in the long run by having too few people interested in competing if the "outside issues" (not being able to communicate with others and having to buy lots of copies to play elsewhere) make organizing anything too much of a hassle. All of their excuses are really bad and show their greed instead ... as the quote from the OP proves.
I like this! It's written properly with explanations and no flaming and anger. That is the way I think such things should be handled. We find a problem and we report and explain why we really need this feature, not threatening with boycott and such moronic stuff.
I am literally, genuinely not purchasing this game due to the cross realm bullshit.
I put up with the LAN thing, it's (somewhat) understandable from a piracy perspective. I put up with the no offline SP thing, same as above. I am enduring the leagues, ladders, user interface and general lacklustre effort to bring the game in to the 21'st centure, I got over that too. I even got over the splitting the game into Terran / Protoss / Zerg thing, I had faith the SP was going to be epic and worth buying 3 games for. I got over Kerrigans voice change, which is flat out _retarded_ considering how good Glennys did the voice in the original. I even EVEN put up with accepting I'll never be great at the MP portion, I'm 32, I work and I am bad at RTS with little time to get better but I still had a good play here and there.
This region thing though, this is the final straw, this is bull.shit, can we swear here? because it's fucked - it's proper, proper fucked - these people are doing this because they are greedy assholes, there's NO OTHER REASON.
How hard is it to allow people to connect to any realm? See this picture -> (stolen from TL) http://imgur.com/bmWRl.jpg
Nope, not buying it, I'll gameshare with a buddy for the single player and that's it - hopefully 3 or 4 of us can split it up to be cheaper on all of us.
On May 29 2010 05:54 Salv wrote: Let us think of a collective way to effectively cause a shit storm. A thread in TL probably isn't going to do any thing unfortunately. All the clowns on forums.battle.net are already saying, "TL guys are so biased, they have no idea what they are saying!" and other ignorant comments like that.
Yeah we are planning a multi site article on it.
When you say multi-site article as in multiple fan sites printing the same scathing article in unison? Almost like some kind of protest or arm band thing?
I'd like to see 3 or 4 or 5 sites literally all print the same scathing article.
Too bad though how they may very well not comply and it all too likely won't hurt them in the least bit
CoD MW2 basically spray farted in the the competitive community's face as in completely abolishing it (no dedicated servers and no mods in (basically BGH with added random unit loss being played 100% of the time with laggy player hosted games)). It still broke some sales records.
Now even given that CoD has mostly gone to console it still doesn't really give one much faith in Activision Blizzard seeing much reason for coming through.
This isnt WoW blizzard, there was no community moving in from another to segment for that game. The Starcraft community is international in every sense, so stop being so ignorant claiming 'lag' and start listening to the people who will be pushing your game beyond your average RTS.
Edit: How about a proper petition link that people have to sign with an email address Kennigt?
I'm 1500% behind anything that moves towards chat channels and cross-region play without wasting time whining about Activision or fire-bombing Blizzard HQ nonsense.
It's going to be a massive change for the BNet2.0 architecture because it's already integrated into WoW as well. But let's hope they can prioritize it far higher than it currently is on their list.
I've played on Europe, US, and Asia, and I've experienced 0 lag issues since UDP was fixed. They have no excuse. Not having chat channels is an inconvenience. Not having cross-realm play or LAN is an absolute deal breaker. I will not purchase the game without these critical features.
On June 01 2010 22:42 HalfAmazing wrote: I've played on Europe, US, and Asia, and I've experienced 0 lag issues since UDP was fixed. They have no excuse. Not having chat channels is an inconvenience. Not having cross-realm play or LAN is an absolute deal breaker. I will not purchase the game without these critical features.
EDIT: but I will pirate the shit out of it.
Yeah but blizzard said you WILL LAGG! I mean dam do they think we are on 56k modems? They haven't even tested if we people do lagg they just have commanded that you will. At least have a test for the crap if there gonna give that excuse.
Since as you say there are little to no problems with lagg from our own experience.
On June 01 2010 22:42 HalfAmazing wrote: I've played on Europe, US, and Asia, and I've experienced 0 lag issues since UDP was fixed. They have no excuse. Not having chat channels is an inconvenience. Not having cross-realm play or LAN is an absolute deal breaker. I will not purchase the game without these critical features.
EDIT: but I will pirate the shit out of it.
Yeah but blizzard said you WILL LAGG! I mean dam do they think we are on 56k modems? They haven't even tested if we people do lagg they just have commanded that you will. At least have a test for the crap if there gonna give that excuse.
Since as you say there are little to no problems with lagg from our own experience.
Relax man. The default implementation of BNet 2.0 architecture that SC2 is built upon doesn't allow people to "cross" realms easily. The way it's built right now their choice was to make everyone play in the same region for matchmaking purposes (greatly increased lag for average user) or to allow no one to cross regions and cut people into distinct regions. There's no gray area.
I know we think that since SC had it, it's easy to implement. But in this case, the way they built BNet makes it a lot harder to do. So when you consider "everyone including non-pros and non-BW players together" or "no one crosses regions and people play in distinct pods" the latency excuse becomes a lot more clear.
But, let our voice be heard: it's important they revisit the BNet architecture and find a way to allow these cross-region matchups. We should understand why they chose to go the way they did, but not allow excuses for why they can't revisit it in the near future.
On June 01 2010 22:42 HalfAmazing wrote: I've played on Europe, US, and Asia, and I've experienced 0 lag issues since UDP was fixed. They have no excuse. Not having chat channels is an inconvenience. Not having cross-realm play or LAN is an absolute deal breaker. I will not purchase the game without these critical features.
EDIT: but I will pirate the shit out of it.
Yeah but blizzard said you WILL LAGG! I mean dam do they think we are on 56k modems? They haven't even tested if we people do lagg they just have commanded that you will. At least have a test for the crap if there gonna give that excuse.
Since as you say there are little to no problems with lagg from our own experience.
Relax man. The default implementation of BNet 2.0 architecture that SC2 is built upon doesn't allow people to "cross" realms easily. The way it's built right now their choice was to make everyone play in the same region for matchmaking purposes (greatly increased lag for average user) or to allow no one to cross regions and cut people into distinct regions. There's no gray area.
I know we think that since SC had it, it's easy to implement. But in this case, the way they built BNet makes it a lot harder to do. So when you consider "everyone including non-pros and non-BW players together" or "no one crosses regions and people play in distinct pods" the latency excuse becomes a lot more clear.
But, let our voice be heard: it's important they revisit the BNet architecture and find a way to allow these cross-region matchups. We should understand why they chose to go the way they did, but not allow excuses for why they can't revisit it in the near future.
This is irrelevant. It's not a lag issue, it's an issue with having to purchase additional clients should you wish to play on a different realm. Realm segretation is acceptable, if we can simply download the required client versions to play on a different realm, without being squeezed for an extra $60. That is just such harsh customer rape, I don't even know how to express it. Maybe the word rape was adequate? I don't think so. It is so ridiculously insulting it makes me want to torch Blizzard's HQ.
On June 01 2010 23:26 HalfAmazing wrote: Realm segretation is acceptable, if we can simply download the required client versions to play on a different realm, without being squeezed for an extra $60. That is just such harsh customer rape, I don't even know how to express it.
Yup. All about money and control.
Blizzard obviously doesn't want ESPORTS. They don't want sports to begin with. You can't charge people that organize soccer tournaments. You can't "update" soccer and ask for $50 extra per player. You can't nickel and dime at every possible corner, leaving little to no independence at all in the hands of players/organizers and expect a sport to get big. "Sports" are a terrible concept from a developer's wallet's perspective. I think at this point and given the design choices that have been plainly explained to us, if you still believe Blizzard gives a ____ about ESPORTS, you're kidding yourself.
I think we can pretty much conclude that BW was an accident, and that ESPORTS will never happen because it doesn't maximize short term profits. Seeing Blizzard who almost made it happen (albeit unintentionally) completely turn its back on it and do its best to KILL IT WITH FIRE, is pretty pathetic.
You'd think designing a video game which is popular enough to be played competitively 11 years later is something to be proud of, but instead they are pissing on it as hard as they can to make room for they new, inferior product (but with updated graphics). I don't really get the people who are still "believing" in Blizzard at this point.
On June 01 2010 23:26 HalfAmazing wrote: Realm segretation is acceptable, if we can simply download the required client versions to play on a different realm, without being squeezed for an extra $60. That is just such harsh customer rape, I don't even know how to express it.
Yup. All about money and control.
Blizzard obviously doesn't want ESPORTS. They don't want sports to begin with. You can't charge people that organize soccer tournaments. You can't "update" soccer and ask for $50 extra per player. You can't nickel and dime at every possible corner, leaving little to no independence at all in the hands of players/organizers and expect a sport to get big. "Sports" are a terrible concept from a developer's wallet's perspective. I think at this point and given the design choices that have been plainly explained to us, if you still believe Blizzard gives a ____ about ESPORTS, you're kidding yourself.
You're just so wrong. It has NOTHING to do about money and trying to make people buy more copies of the game. It's just not like that. There's a reason that people also need to make extra Battle.net accounts for their extra copies of the game: the tech doesn't allow people to have multiple regions attached to the same account. It's not about the client you use to access the game, it's about the account you use to access the client you want to use. They let you download any client you want for free, but you need to have an account flagged for that region. They don't have any tech at this moment to flag accounts for multiple regions. It doesn't work that way. This is the same architecture that WoW runs on. SC2 isn't WoW, but they're now built on the same framework in terms of regions and features of BNet.
Blizzard completely erroneously assumed that like WoW, people wouldn't need to play cross-region outside of some tournament situations if they made BNet full of enough players. They're right for the vast vast vast vast vast majority of players, but of course wrong for near every single high-level player.
This is an example of Blizzard just being a bit blind to the needs of the high-level competitive players as opposed to them making an abusive money grab. Honestly, if people would dial back the zealous, blind rage and just stopped to think about what's going on here, you can see where the lines are drawn. This is not a war. This is not an evil empire trying to fuck a community for more money. It really. honestly. 100%. is. not.
If you're at the point of "torching Blizz HQ" like the poster a couple of people up, then you're just way beyond contributing rationally to this conversation.
"Where did they lose the technology that existed in 1998? And how does me paying for another copy of the game make the technology exist again? I am confused."
But in all seriousness I doubt it's that hard for them to flag accounts on multiple regions, hell they shouldn't even have too and just remove that part of the system check before logging in.
On June 01 2010 23:52 Takkara wrote: This is an example of Blizzard just being a bit blind to the needs of the high-level competitive players as opposed to them making an abusive money grab. Honestly, if people would dial back the zealous, blind rage and just stopped to think about what's going on here, you can see where the lines are drawn. This is not a war. This is not an evil empire trying to fuck a community for more money. It really. honestly. 100%. is. not.
Lol. Yeah they're just stupid and "a bit blind". They just have no clue what is going on. I don't believe they are that idiotic, my friend.
We will see if "it's not a war" when they start rolling out the microtransactions for clans/tournaments/xrealm (oops that last one isn't a microtransaction, it's $60). I'm pretty sure we have it coming. I mean just listen to Frank Pearce once again ffs. The guy is half resigned, half depressed, but he is telling it like it is: you're gonna have to pay up, bitches.
On June 01 2010 23:52 Takkara wrote: Blizzard completely erroneously assumed that like WoW, people wouldn't need to play cross-region outside of some tournament situations
I'm going to quote this because it's too funny. "like WoW"
Yeah, because Blizzard has a long history of not designing RTS games, right? And it makes total sense to look at WoW when you're designing a RTS game. It's not like between SC and SC2 they had War3/TFT, and it's not like War3 had a pretty damn good Bnet with AMM clan support xrealm and omg chatrooms. I mean the level of retardedness you assume from those designers is just amazing.
I'd rather call them money whores, at least I'm not insulting their intelligence.
the Lag-issue is nonsense and an obviously fake reason, for not making the xrealm play available. And someone in here wrote that only the high high high Level players want to compete with gamers from other regions. I strongly disagree. Me and my friends played wc3 for the last 5 years and from time to time we joined the US. or asian server to play against the folk there. Of course we had worse ping than on europe, but we didnt care at all. it was fun to make 3:0 vs. koreans or play funstrats vs. americans :p
chatrooms should not even be discussed - give 'em (back) and thanks!
On June 01 2010 23:55 Nyxs wrote:I doubt it's that hard for them to flag accounts on multiple regions, hell they shouldn't even have too and just remove that part of the system check before logging in.
If it wasn't hard, they'd already have done it. Stop assuming ulterior sinister motives. Sometimes, the simples, most benign explanation is the correct one. It's a company made of real people. Gamers, even. Why is it so hard to believe that if they could make a trivial decision to make the lives of gamers better, they would make it?
It is not a trivial decision or a trivial fix or a trivial action. BNet 2.0 is so different from the BNet of SC that the only thing it shares with it is the name.
Again, I'm 100% in support of this thread. But I'm just hoping, completely naively, that some form of rationality will return to the community lynch mob. Then we can make reasoned, impassioned pleas that are backed by clear logic and that integrates with Blizzard's reality and gives us what we want more easily.
Talking about firing or killing Activision execs or fire-bombing Blizzard is just detracting from our credibility.
On June 02 2010 00:40 Takkara wrote: Talking about firing or killing Activision execs or fire-bombing Blizzard is just detracting from our credibility.
I'd say asking a RTS community if they "really want chatrooms" or stating they have to pay an additional 60$ per region they want to play on outside their own is hurting Blizzard's credibility quite a bit also.
On June 01 2010 23:55 Nyxs wrote:I doubt it's that hard for them to flag accounts on multiple regions, hell they shouldn't even have too and just remove that part of the system check before logging in.
If it wasn't hard, they'd already have done it. Stop assuming ulterior sinister motives. Sometimes, the simples, most benign explanation is the correct one. It's a company made of real people. Gamers, even. Why is it so hard to believe that if they could make a trivial decision to make the lives of gamers better, they would make it?
It is not a trivial decision or a trivial fix or a trivial action. BNet 2.0 is so different from the BNet of SC that the only thing it shares with it is the name.
Again, I'm 100% in support of this thread. But I'm just hoping, completely naively, that some form of rationality will return to the community lynch mob. Then we can make reasoned, impassioned pleas that are backed by clear logic and that integrates with Blizzard's reality and gives us what we want more easily.
Talking about firing or killing Activision execs or fire-bombing Blizzard is just detracting from our credibility.
There is absolutely 0 reason for not allowing Xrealm play besides wanting more money. Just no excuse for it at all. Blizzard is a gigantic company and you don't think that they can allow Xrealm in a game 12 years after a game that they already did it in? No , you are blind if you think that they aren't letting us do that because they can't.
They aren't letting us because they do not want to
I'd rather call them money whores, at least I'm not insulting their intelligence.
When a Blizzard solution to being able to play the game with my friend overseas is "Ummm..... buy the game again?!" I think you have every right to call them money whores and insult their intelligence.
You copied the first sentence, while the rest of the paragraph answers your question for the most part. StarCraft was made in the 28k-56k modem era and because the game is not that demanding, today (many years later) it is possible to play against American and (some) Korean players (still not Chinese for example, because of latency). Even in Warcraft III if you wanted to play against someone from the USA being in Europe it would mean ~250ms and possibly some spikes. In case of players from Asia or Australia for that matter it would be much higher and rarely stable. How many times have you played on the Lordaeron (US) or Kalimdor (Asia) gateway in e.g. WC3 or any newer games than BW for that matter? What was the percentage of players you could play against without lag issues? Would you like to jump from game to game constantly and leave, discouraged by huge latency? Also think about your opponents - wouldn't it affect them as well? I personally just cannot see players not getting frustrated by lags given how many discussions we have had that 125ms in-built latency is way too high. I don't even mention the matchmaking, because it would be unplayable and with proper filters it would match you against European players only anyway.
Please reconsider and don't rage without thinking it over. I am sure it will be possible in the future, but for now “the technology's just not there yet”.
So, if you dont agree, dont answer me, answer him.
i'm playing on US server so can't reply, but wouldn't cross-real custom play whilst leaving ladder play to your respective region solve this issue? it gives players the choice to still play with friends n promotes international tournaments.
You copied the first sentence, while the rest of the paragraph answers your question for the most part. StarCraft was made in the 28k-56k modem era and because the game is not that demanding, today (many years later) it is possible to play against American and (some) Korean players (still not Chinese for example, because of latency). Even in Warcraft III if you wanted to play against someone from the USA being in Europe it would mean ~250ms and possibly some spikes. In case of players from Asia or Australia for that matter it would be much higher and rarely stable. How many times have you played on the Lordaeron (US) or Kalimdor (Asia) gateway in e.g. WC3 or any newer games than BW for that matter? What was the percentage of players you could play against without lag issues? Would you like to jump from game to game constantly and leave, discouraged by huge latency? Also think about your opponents - wouldn't it affect them as well? I personally just cannot see players not getting frustrated by lags given how many discussions we have had that 125ms in-built latency is way too high. I don't even mention the matchmaking, because it would be unplayable and with proper filters it would match you against European players only anyway.
Please reconsider and don't rage without thinking it over. I am sure it will be possible in the future, but for now “the technology's just not there yet”.
So, if you dont agree, dont answer me, answer him.
is that the first blue post regarding the matter? Everyone on EU should quote him and tell him how wrong he is. Maybe he'll respond again.
He's so ignorant. He seems to be talking about a global server, which is not what we're asking for. Not to mention battleping or some equivalents of Chaos Launcher/Hamachi sort of thing could most likely help.
On June 02 2010 06:25 FrozenArbiter wrote: What an excellent picture: + Show Spoiler +
I have to agree that this excellent picture brings the point to it's peak.
And than blizzard makes posts saying (paraphrased)
'Please don't rage, we want to hear what your problems are with the new system in a nice tone/manner!'
Is that a joke? You are removing functionality on a sequel to a game that's over 10 years old and you won't tell us why. (I am still sticking to my guns saying that it will be micro-transactions.) But still, asking for everyone to be just fine with all of these changes without a legitimate reason is just absurd, and to have the balls to say 'please don't be angry in your posts,' just ridiculous.
It is possible to make a point without becoming enraged. I do think that including optional cross-realm play for non-ladder games would be a good compromise however
On June 02 2010 10:10 See.Blue wrote: It is possible to make a point without becoming enraged. I do think that including optional cross-realm play for non-ladder games would be a good compromise however
Here's what I think the issue is for people though:
They've been saying the same point for a long time, and nothing has come of it. Now it looks like saying it nicely will never work, and so they are becoming enraged. If they really listened to people being nice, why didn't they implement any of the feedback in the first place? I'm not so sure that sometimes the squeaky wheel doesn't just get the grease.
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