A View From The Road: An Uphill Battle.net

[John Funk]

Pound for pound, Battle.net is better.

Battle.net's pound buys WoW and Starcraft.

Steam's pound buys over 1,000 games, other games that can be added and all the stuff MSN can do.

And all your steam friends can't used Battle.net 2.0....

I can understand your love for Battle.net, and I'mma gonna let you finish, but Steam has the most games supported in the whole world. And all those friends who might not be playing Battle.net.

Which...

...is my point. Steam has more games (it doesn't help that Bnet is, y'know, a new service launching with a game that isn't *out* yet), but Bnet does it better. The only problem is, it requires more work, which means it probably won't achieve as much market penetration as Steam despite being much more intuitive.

 

[kibayasu]

When you say you have to tab out of a game to check a new Steam window, I assume you mean the Shift-Tab? Otherwise, you're doing it wrong. "Tab out of a game" to me holds a specific meaning.

I'd like to see Steam be more tailorable to specific games, something like the window system Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and the like use. Taking AvP as an example, everything works just fine over Steam. I never have problems inviting people or joining friends' games or anything really. But it always seems like such an awkward combination of two completely different services even if the difference is just in the menus.

 

[Aenir]

Almost paid $300 bucks for a key on ebay I wanted this game sooo bad, but luckily I found a site where they are giving out some free invites. Mine just came in this morning, thought for sure this would just be a scam lol, the survey is pretty annoying too but its w.e. since I got my key now try it out tho!

http://freestarcraft2beta.blogspot.com/

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Also why would you pay 6x the retail price for a BETA? I'm as anxious to get in as everyone but I'm not forking that much over just for a beta.

I've never seen more annoying spam surveys in my life. Not worth the beta key.

 

[Credge]

Battle.net 2.0 is bad. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Integrated is the crappiest thing. Just baaaaad.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

"John Funk actually runs the StarCraft II beta through Steam, just to make his Steam friends jealous."
Well that's just mean.
No doubt that's what I'd do if I get the beta...

 

[Fenixius]

Uhm... aside from looking nice, which Steam will likely do when that new UI comes out of beta, what does BNet2.0 actually -do- which Steam does not? The overlay doesn't look amazing, but it works just fine. It has your friends list. Shows you what they're playing. Has all your chat windows. You can edit Steam-settings ingame. For me, at least, it's quick and responsive.

You said it's worse because it opens new windows to do stuff. I have a few things to say: firstly, Steam UI does that -in game-. You don't need to alt-tab to check your friends list; it's right there on the overlay. You can alt-tab, which is a nice touch for those who like windowed mode, but it's an option. Secondly, I prefer the option to move stuff around in my UI. Close bits I don't need. Bring forward or change the size on ones I do. Static, locked, single-window multi-pane or dropdown lists are pains in the ass. Steam's method is better.

From what I read, all it does which Steam doesn't is look shiny, and let you categorise your friends. ...I don't need either of those, and I'll take heightened functionality over both together anyday.

Oh, and don't get me started on the piece of abyssal crap that is Games For Windows Live. I hate that thing so so so much.

 

[Worgen]

I care not about battle.net altho considering how stupid big the blizz fan base is if they really went into the digi distribution with sc2 it would probably set itself up big as a competitor for steam, glad it doesnt look like they are doing that, blizz/activision is big enough as it is

 

[Fenixius]

If anyone is looking for a beta invite still, try this. Might still work. bit.ly/bWxzYi

That link doesn't look half-dodgy at all :\

 

[Therumancer]

I think a point missed in a lot of these articles is that this idea is hardly new. If you want to get technically Sony had all of it's games linked through chat a long time ago. It was possible to for example send tells and mail back and forth between games like EQ 2 and Star Wars Galaxies if you wanted to. The idea of being able to chat with someone playing Starcraft 2 while playing WoW through Battle.net strikes me as being no big deal overall.

The big thing with the idea of these "social services" is that they strike me as being a pointless gimmick. In general if your playing a game that is worthwhile multiplayer it's either a dedicated MMO and has all of the social tools you need intergrated into it, OR it's a multi-player action game where your either going to be playing regularly with the same group of guys and coordinating via Teamspeak/Ventrilo/whatever, or "pugging" it and thus nobody is going to be listening to anyone else much anyway other than to swear like 12 year olds. Yes, I am jaded and cynical, but this is also accurate.

Steam's success has nothing to do with it's social networking really, but with it's constant barrage of sales and deals. Simply put it succeeded by being cheap and actually delivering on the lower prices promised by digital download, where others were simply talking cr@p.

Oh surely, with popular titles, Battle.net is liable to have a lot of users (Blizzard is a monster) but I don't think it's exactly going to be any kind of genuine social center, at least no more than the games have always been.

I'll also be somewhat honest in saying that right now I think Battle.net and similar things are indications of a cancer that is strangling gaming. That is to say that everyone is so online crazed that every group/company/developer/etc... is creating it's own online service. All in hopes of luring people into their stores to buy games digitally (at full price usually) and tempt them with microtransactions. This ultimatly means that it's rapidly getting to the point where your going to need like 6 differant logins for six differant games in the near future. It also means that the potential you see in something like STEAM or Battle.net will never fully be realized or continue to evolve, at least not for a long time. The Escapist has had other articles talking about this kind of trend in the past.


For the most part all I can say is "meh". Besides, think of it this way. If your taking a night off from a raid with your guild to kick back and play some Star Craft, the last thing you want is a social system that let's them track you. Even if invisible there is always the chance that one group of people might run into the other group of people accidently and cause things to get really awkward.

The point being that a lot of people aren't going to want all their games to be linked for some reasons that I don't think developers are on to. Simple invisibility features are hardly ideal either since there are ways of pinging through that.

 

[KDR_11k]

The clunky overlay isn't just easy to integrate, you can even automatically throw it on top of any game you play, Steam or not.

 

[Tharwen]

Does it have better voice chat than WoW?

It had better... grrr...

 

[karmapolizei]

That's kind of the walled garden flaw - a problem a lot of platforms and applications share: Focusing on a consistent and highly integrated user experience with your product comes with a high adoption threshold for consumers and third parties alike. It can be observed in a lot of places, and it's precisely what drives me away from any browser besides Firefox - it's UI might start looking oldish, some of the competitors have higher perfomance, and pretty much every modern browser including IE 8 looks a fair deal better - but neither of them has Firefox's easy extension API and the crapload of amazing extensions it brings along.

Speaking of which, that's why I like what you describe as Steam's clunkiness. I like that I can tack it on whatever game I want to and works equally well. And here we part ways: I like the way the Steam overlay works, I find it (mostly) unobtrusive, easy to reach (I think it's still a long shot from actual Alt-Tabbing) and have no responsiveness issues at all.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Playing SC2 using steam...now thats just mean! XD Blizzard was pretty clear that they have no intention of ever using their battle.net for anything other than Blizzard products. Saw it in one of those Dev interviews on GT. maybe they change their tune 5 years down the line but by then i really would think it would be a moot point. plus y wouldnt they give the dev kits for the UI to third-parties whom want to release a game on B.net

 

[teh_gunslinger]

While I haven't tried Battlenet yet I'm pretty happy with Steam. It has chat and whatnot so I can talk to my mates even when not playing and if I need to do it ingame I just use the overlay. In a single player game I'm not interested in knowing who's online or not, so it suits me fine that I have to go to the overlay. In multiplayer games I use the ingame chat to talk to my mates if the need should arise or use voice chat.
I like that Steam isn't needlessly pestering me with information by default. But if I want the information it's all just a tab away.

That said, I have no doubt that Actiblizzions new interface is all kinds of slick and useful. I just prefer a choice in the matter.

But in the end both are fine I assume. Though I'll never buy another Actiblizzion game so I will hardly be affected either way.

 

[Byers]

As long as they don't start charging for it, it sounds like a fine service.

 

[EmmerikXXII]

I'd be super happy if they managed to allow third party IM programs to communicate with Battle Net 2.0. I have been dying for one cohesive method of communicating with all my friends on AIM, YM, WLM, Facebook, WoW, etc. I really don't care if it's outside of the game or not (though in-game would be sexy), I just want to be able to implement all the platforms. Due to security and licensing issues, this is probably impossible, but I am still dreaming. Also, I tried Steam and hated it, so no dice there.

 

[zamble]

A View From The Road: An Uphill Battle.net

John Funk actually runs the StarCraft II beta through Steam, just to make his Steam friends jealous

Read Full Article

Now that's mean!!

 

[Kiithid]

Yay a xfire that doesn't looks crappy!

In all seriousness, it's a nice plataform to spread the word of social networking cross games to the first-time-players-blame-wow-for-it, however the apparent lack of support for other games makes it a less usefull xfire... unless it eats less memory, then I would totally dig it.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Hmm...we'll have to see how this pans out. Also, awesome title!