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![[image loading]](http://vgcache.com/datas/images/5095-bnet2_channel_list.jpg)
When a player logs into Battle.net they should be welcomed with a list of channels (instead of the default channel seeding that SC and the old Battle.net used. That remedies the problem of people being spammed by text once they log on, but at the same time allowed players to know of the existence of channels. Channels should be ranked by their popularity, just like the map & custom game page. That would help players find the appropriate channels quicker and result in them meeting new people with the same interests. Furthermore, channels can be favorited so a player can easily return to them in the future. The list of channels can be filtered by "all, recommended, and friends", the friend filter would show any channels that your Real ID friends are in. Subsequently, the channels can be filtered more by their individual categories, such as "all, league, community, clan, support, and other."
I believe this is the best way to implement the channel list because it allows for instant access upon logging in and at the same time it shares the home page with the "news & community" and "broadcasts" boxes. Currently, instead of a list of channels it just shows a player's achievement progress. I think it's safe to say that channels are more important than achievements and will provide more longevity and replayability to the game than achievements.
I'll add a mock-up of an actual channel when I return home later today.
Here's my take on Blizzard's affirmation of no chat channels (at least not planned or coming soon)..
So in pretty much every interview I've heard or read of a Blizzard employee (whether it be Dustin Browder, Greg Canessa, Frank Pearce, and so forth) it has been stressed that Blizzard wants to emphasize on two things with Battle.net 2.0: community and eSports.
Sure SC2 will be a huge hit and will sell tens of millions of copies over the years, but without a community you lose your product's longevity and with that you will lose all hopes of a stable eSports aspect.
Guess what? Blizzard is doing the exact opposite. Actions speak louder than words and based on Blizzard's actions these past few months it seems they've lost sight of their goals. They're losing their die-hard fans they stood by their side through thick and thin since the beginning of the SC universe. I understand that Blizzard wants to control its IP. I understand why they had to cut off ties with KeSPA and proceed with GomTV. I understand why they added Facebook integration. It's no secret that Blizzard is smart and knows what they're doing with WoW, but it seems to me that they've gotten blinded by their cash cow and think that by simply overlapping WoW's gimmicks with SC2 they'll have an equivalent cash cow.
Wrong. SC2 and WoW are completely different games with completely diferent communities with completely different histories (the same goes for D3) and need completely different social features. Blizzard thinks they know what is best for the community and aren't even listening to them (for example, in the latest interview with Frank Pearce, while on the topic of chat channels, he says "Do you really want channels?" as if to say he they know what the players want and they don't want channels). WoW is an MMO where tens of thousands of players are connected to a "game" (a server). SC2 is not.
It's the community that kept their game alive for over 10 years, not their Battle.net service which has remained the same for all of those years. It's the community that brought up from the ground spectacular achievements such as WGT, PGT, and iCCup. It's the community that helped SC remain popular. It's the community that helped SC eSports grow by providing their attention and support. Blizzard, without a community you have nothing. So stop grabbing us by the balls.
Blizzard is basically saying, "Hey, thanks for making our game so popular, thanks for keeping it alive all these 10 years, and thanks for all your money, time, and effort, but.. fuck off and let us do what we want because we know what's best for you." I'm pretty sure any player that has been playing SC for years upon years knows more about the whole "community" experience than an executive at Blizzard that is stepping into SC2 territory after their success in the WoW field.
If it ain't broke, then don't fix it. That's 99% true in this case. Battle.net's chat channels allowed for probably one of the best online experiences I've ever had in any game I've ever touched. The other 1% is the problem of people abusing bots to spam channels and ruin that online experience. I've been playing the game since 1998 like most other players. I can honestly say for a fact that if it wasn't for chat channels I would've stopped playing the game a year or so after I started. It's because of these chat channels that I met and made online friends, that I joined and created clans, that I found clan wars, that I found other players that shared my interests and could chat with while online. I know I'm not alone in thinking that, too.
Channels did not, in any way whatsoever, ruin the online experience. It could've only helped foster growth, exposure, and networking. I don't think anyone has ever said "there's too many people chatting on this game. i don't like it. i quit this game for good." or "whats with all this text on my screen!? what a horrible game. i refuse to play until this is removed." The point is having chat channels, like in the classic Bnet, can't hurt SC2's sales at all. The only thing that can hurt the sales is a bad game itself. And there's no doubting that SC2 is great. So Frank Pearce says, "Do you really want chat rooms?", and I say to him, "Do you really want to piss off your hardcore fans that have stood by your company's side for over a decade?"
Hell, TL had a channel on west (Op TL-West) that was very active before SC2 came along. One could easily find others from the same community and get pick-up games going. There was no need to ALT+TAB, login to TL.net, post in a thread asking if anyone wants to play, and constantly refresh the thread every X minutes to see a response. There was no need to do the same on IRC either.
Now let's compare a new player's experience on both SC and SC2..
Log onto SC on Battle.net and you get placed into a default channel where other players already are. You can meet new people, chat, move to another channel, play games with them, or you can just go straight to the game list and find a game.
Log onto SC2 on Battle.net 2.0 and you start off alone (I'm not going to touch on the Facebook friend finding because not everyone uses Facebook and not everyone's friends play SC2). You have no human interaction until you join a game. You feel disconnected on an online service meant to connect you with other players. You can't meet new people, you can't chat with new people, you can't move to another channel to meet people you've met before, you can't play games back-to-back with the same people you've met. All that is available for you is to join a game and start a conversation with your team/opponent and hopefully befriend them. The problem with that is most of the time all the other players are focused on.. well.. playing the game. So they don't have time to become your friend, they don't have time to see if you're worthy of being added on their friends list, they don't have time to get to know you. You are still alone.
As of this current state of SC2/Bnet2, I log on, play a few games, chat with whoever is on my friends list, then log off during my downtime (and most likely go back on SC/Bnet to chat). Why would Blizzard want its fans to spend less time on their services? Why would Blizzard want its fans to not be more immersed in the online experience? For those few players that don't like the chat channels.. don't join one or leave whatever channel you're currently in. It's not that hard to type "/j channel" - really it isn't. As it stands I spend less time on SC2 than I thought I would, even if it is just the beta. By letter players hangout in chat channels they can idle/AFK, which mainly means when they do come back to their computer SC2 is there awaiting them right at their fingertips. The game is already started, players may be right there in the channel asking for a game, and more games will be played.
Come on, Blizzard. It doesn't take a psychologist with a PhD to realize all of this. Anyone with a high school level education can see that human interaction can only be a good thing. No one likes being alone; hell, it's because people have been left alone that they sometimes go crazy.
There is no community with you.
A community cannot grow and foster without being able to be unique and expressive, but furthermore without being able to control their surroundings. In SC/Bnet you could create custom game names (ie. for clan recruiting) and custom channels to meet your online friends in. Ins SC2/Bnet2 you can't create custom games (but that's a whole 'nother thread/subject that I wont dive further into) and you can't really "meet" your online friends (you're limited to 4 person parties also).
One of the funny things about the lack of chat channels is players won't be as easily exposed to the eSports/professional scene. Most players on SC found out about professional SC in Korea, or sites like TL, through other players in chat channels. They don't Google "StarCraft community" and register on a random site. Blizzard can only hurt themselves (and eSports) by not including chat channels.
I've been running VileGaming.com since 2005. I pay for all the hosting, do all the web development/programming, put out cash prizes for all the leagues out of my pocket, and spend countless hours clacking away on my keyboard at night (and still do all of that as time flies by). Why? Because the sub-community that I was a part of out of the larger SC global community, was behind my back in support of me (and still is to this day). The community, the fastest money map community, needed a stable place for them to play competitively among each other and I was up to the task of enhancing that online experience for them. I thoroughly enjoy that niche community that I was a part of and I wanted to give back to everyone I knew in that community. I can say, from the 5+ years I've been running VG, that without the chat channels on Battle.net the community would not be as strong and competitive as it is today (like I said, we're small, but in a 2 month season we get close to 2,500 players participating and just under 30,000 matches played).
Let's take a look at Blizzard's very own mission statement:
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html
Commit To Quality
“Blizzard polish” doesn’t just refer to our gameplay experiences, but to every aspect of our jobs. We approach each task carefully and seriously. We seek honest feedback and use it to improve the quality of our work. At the end of the day, most players won’t remember whether the game was late -- only whether it was great.
“Blizzard polish” doesn’t just refer to our gameplay experiences, but to every aspect of our jobs. We approach each task carefully and seriously. We seek honest feedback and use it to improve the quality of our work. At the end of the day, most players won’t remember whether the game was late -- only whether it was great.
Battle.net 2.0 is far from "Blizzard" quality.
Every Voice Matters
Great ideas can come from anywhere. Blizzard Entertainment is what it is today because of the voices of our players and of each member of the company. Every employee is encouraged to speak up, listen, be respectful of other opinions, and embrace criticism as just another avenue for great ideas.
Great ideas can come from anywhere. Blizzard Entertainment is what it is today because of the voices of our players and of each member of the company. Every employee is encouraged to speak up, listen, be respectful of other opinions, and embrace criticism as just another avenue for great ideas.
Really? And the tens of thousands of players that want chat channels don't matter?
Think Globally
Everywhere on the planet there are people who play Blizzard Entertainment games. While respecting the cultural diversity that makes people unique, we strive to grow and support our global gaming community. We also seek the most passionate, talented people in the world to enrich our company and help us forge the future vision of Blizzard Entertainment.
Everywhere on the planet there are people who play Blizzard Entertainment games. While respecting the cultural diversity that makes people unique, we strive to grow and support our global gaming community. We also seek the most passionate, talented people in the world to enrich our company and help us forge the future vision of Blizzard Entertainment.
SC2/Bnet2: no cross-realm play and region locking; enough said.
Anyways, I just realized this whole post is pretty disorganized so if you're skipping to the end I just wanted to say that without chat channels you don't have a complete online experience.
And just to help spread this around (this was in the other thread about the interview itself)..
Poll: Do you like the direction BNET 2.0 is taking?
No (10249)
95%
Yes (595)
5%
10844 total votes
Yes (595)
10844 total votes
Your vote: Do you like the direction BNET 2.0 is taking?
Edit: Some great posts from this thread..
On May 29 2010 16:01 ZoW wrote:
Oh the good old days.
Getting internet when it just went public. Connecting through a dial-up 56k modem through AOL. I remember AOL chat rooms were the most awesome things ever. When I first got exposed to SC and battle.net by a friend it was mind-blowing.
"What is all this"
"Battle.net. See all these id's on the right? It's like being in a giant chat room! You can play starcraft with all these people and talk to them about stuff. Ask them if anyone wants to 1v1 or look for a 2v2 partner, and a bunch of other stuff"
"THATS FUCKING AWESOME"
"I know right"
Soon after all my friends were playing SC. We'd meet in our personal channel and we'd talk about random stuff like what we did today, school, movies, etc. The few of us could talk collectively like we were all in sitting next to each other and back in 1999 that was the most fucking awesome thing ever.
Soon after I joined a clan. Joining the clan channel, seeing people from all over, talking about random stuff. Asking if anyone wants to play. Trivia bot when we were bored. I remember nights when we would talk about random stuff for hours, not even playing a game. We just sat in the channel and talked. It was so fun.
Battle.net was revolutionary at the time. It combined a game and chat room together, and was a unique experience back then. I think it still is.
/nostalgia
Oh the good old days.
Getting internet when it just went public. Connecting through a dial-up 56k modem through AOL. I remember AOL chat rooms were the most awesome things ever. When I first got exposed to SC and battle.net by a friend it was mind-blowing.
"What is all this"
"Battle.net. See all these id's on the right? It's like being in a giant chat room! You can play starcraft with all these people and talk to them about stuff. Ask them if anyone wants to 1v1 or look for a 2v2 partner, and a bunch of other stuff"
"THATS FUCKING AWESOME"
"I know right"
Soon after all my friends were playing SC. We'd meet in our personal channel and we'd talk about random stuff like what we did today, school, movies, etc. The few of us could talk collectively like we were all in sitting next to each other and back in 1999 that was the most fucking awesome thing ever.
Soon after I joined a clan. Joining the clan channel, seeing people from all over, talking about random stuff. Asking if anyone wants to play. Trivia bot when we were bored. I remember nights when we would talk about random stuff for hours, not even playing a game. We just sat in the channel and talked. It was so fun.
Battle.net was revolutionary at the time. It combined a game and chat room together, and was a unique experience back then. I think it still is.
/nostalgia
On May 29 2010 16:27 Tsagacity wrote:
100% Agreed with the OP, and I'm glad it's getting said again and again. I doubt I would have played SC:BW online for more than a month if all I had was a ladder and custom game list. The random clans and communities I stumbled upon in private chat channels made the game for me.
Some of those people I randomly met a decade ago have become close friends that I still talk to every day. I hope Blizzard is taking these threads seriously or has some grand scheme hidden away for now, because at the moment I can't help but grind my teeth when I think about their apparent priorities with B.net 2.0
Of the millions of people playing SC2 probably only ~100k are actually going to be a part of the "competitive community." The rest just want a community. The POINT of Battle.net is to provide a streamlined service for helping you find people to play SC2 with. How could chat channels possibly not add to the community?
And I'm really curios how resource-intensive you think it is for them to give the game a basic chat client.
100% Agreed with the OP, and I'm glad it's getting said again and again. I doubt I would have played SC:BW online for more than a month if all I had was a ladder and custom game list. The random clans and communities I stumbled upon in private chat channels made the game for me.
Some of those people I randomly met a decade ago have become close friends that I still talk to every day. I hope Blizzard is taking these threads seriously or has some grand scheme hidden away for now, because at the moment I can't help but grind my teeth when I think about their apparent priorities with B.net 2.0
Of the millions of people playing SC2 probably only ~100k are actually going to be a part of the "competitive community." The rest just want a community. The POINT of Battle.net is to provide a streamlined service for helping you find people to play SC2 with. How could chat channels possibly not add to the community?
And I'm really curios how resource-intensive you think it is for them to give the game a basic chat client.
