Blizzard will respond to Bnet 2.0 Issues. - Page 16

BNet 2.0 isn't exactly feature-complete. In fact it's hard to reconcile the resources allegedly devoted to it with the end product: superficially a slick but otherwise workmanlike front-end.

It's tempting to indulge one's inner rage and attribute this kind of thing to incompetence, but that doesn't really add up. I can't imagine taking a tour of Blizzard and, after the amazing art and design and coding departments, being shown the room where they keep a bunch of monitor-licking morons assigned to the core component of the multiplayer experience. That just doesn't sit well with me.

What fits better is to suppose they're doing something difficult, and they're doing it carefully. This is after all supposed to be a platform upon which to knit together all their future titles. That is such a huge undertaking; I mean, I've been writing and designing commercial games for a couple of decades and just the shadow cast by that task is fucking scary. You can't think purely in terms of a feature set to suit SC2; you have to think about what Diablo III players are going to want to do, and WOW players, and remember you're creating a single point of failure for all these massively popular titles.

For me, the best explanation for the current lack of - say - chat channels is not that chat channels are problematic, but that they're trivial. They've been done a thousand times already. You don't set up a beta to test stuff you already know how to do. What needed testing - what could only be tested on a large scale - was the whole practice/placement/matchmaking/ladder system - so that's what they forced all their beta-testers to use.

The same goes for all kinds of features. Custom ladders: clearly they are going to be in there at some point, so groups of friends (guilds) can set up their own private leagues, or TL can set up an invitational pro-league, or whatever. In itself it's an easy feature to implement so the question would seem to be 'why not put it in already?' Ah, but look at the recent BNet 2.0 interface changes. Look at the 'ladder' screen - hey, you can customise the list of ladders displayed there. Isn't that nice? What an elegant way to accommodate custom private ladders in the future, right there in the core interface. I bet you'll be able to drop your Diablo III and WOW PVP ladders right in there, too.

It's so important to keep front-and-centre the fact that a) this is a beta, so what you get given to play with is what most needs testing by a large contingent of beta testers, and b) there is a really, really big picture into which BNet's support of SC2 has to fit. We will get guilds, and with that will come guild chat, guild ladders, guild tournaments with direct invitational support. I fully expect to see support for broadcast of live games, with host-assignable 'caster' status so spectators can listen to their choice of commentary, toggle between their view of the game and the caster's, etc etc. Maybe support for delayed live broadcasts to hamper cheating. I expect to see all these things because I look at what's been achieved in the rest of the product and nothing else makes sense.