Blizzard Is Getting Rid of the Battle.net Name (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Battle.net name is no more. Today Blizzard announced that it's moving away from using the Battle.net moniker when referring to its online services. "Battle.net technology will continue to serve as the central nervous system for Blizzard games -- nothing is changing in that regard," the company wrote in a forum post. "We'll just be referring to it as Blizzard tech instead." Battle.net originally debuted way back in 1996 alongside the original Diablo, and since then has been used to power iconic games like Starcraft, World of Warcraft, and more recent titles like Hearthstone and Overwatch. According to the company, as online multiplayer has become an expected part of its games -- and as Blizzard expanded to new platforms like Facebook Live -- the name was no longer needed. "When we created Battle.net, the idea of including a tailored online-gaming service together with your game was more of a novel concept, so we put a lot of focus on explaining what the service was and how it worked, including giving it a distinct name," the company explained. "Over time, though, we've seen that there's been occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities under which everything falls -- Blizzard and Battle.net."

Comments

Then, with all due respect

[Anonymous Coward]

Then, uh, what do I call the launcher? Blizzard Tech Interactive Game Launching Utility? That just sucks donkey balls.

Re:Then, with all due respect

[blindseer]

How about Blizzard Inc. Technology Connection Homepage?

Use the acronym for short.

Re:Then, with all due respect

[ElectricPrism]

I for one am proud to be associated with Blizzard and they're VIP B.I.T.C.H.ers club

Re:Then, with all due respect

[blindseer]

Oh, wait! I have another...

Blizzard Online Next Generation.

Whatever, thanks for chat in Starcraft2 at least.

[Anonymous Coward]

With Hearthstone, people can't chat. As long as people can chat, I can wish them blessings and well wishes and encouragement. I know there's more foul mouthers than encouragers, but I like to do my thing. It took them years to get us chat on battle.net for Starcraft2, but hey better late than never.

Re:Whatever, thanks for chat in Starcraft2 at leas

[Anonymous Coward]

Who has time to chat when you're constantly pressing qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq

Re:Whatever, thanks for chat in Starcraft2 at leas

[The-Ixian]

zerg rush kakakakaka

WOW Mythic Dungeons will now be called ...

[Modern]

Greater Rifts. With the new WOW mythic token+, the mythic dungeons are working like Diablo 3's Greater Rifts. Soon somehow all the blizzard titles will be the same game, same name. The name you know...

Update

[snookiex]

Does this mean I will have to download another 10GB patch to play, so they can update a few banners?

Re:Update

[Anonymous Coward]

More than likely. Since I completed D3 and SC2 I uninstalled all Blizzard software a couple of years back. No longer interested in their way of doing business.

Just don't patch it out from older games

[cen1]

I guess this makes sense. Long live PvPGN.

What is this Facebook thing?

[WillAffleckUW]

Is that some new outreach program from the NSA?

Alias for old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they gonna keep the name reserved, and do some kind of alias link so that old games that try to connect to battle.net, will just end up connecting to blizzard-wants-to-change-things.net ?

if, so, sounds great, I'm all for it. if they break my old games, I'll slash the tires of all blizzard employees. Assuming I get motivated

Re:Alias for old games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird. Freelancer fans are still rockin' mods. No need to slash tires.

Well with the Facebook talk...

[Immerial]

wouldn't it be Zuck rush? or maybe Zucker rush? ;)

Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Valve do it? Steam is perfectly comprehensible. Why is Battle.net confusing? Does this mean WOW players are more easily confused?

Re:Steam?

[murdocj]

No. Gamers are gamers. But it's a nice irrelevant try.

Re:Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Valve do it? Steam is perfectly comprehensible. Why is Battle.net confusing? Does this mean WOW players are more easily confused?

What?

Re:Whatever, thanks for chat in Starcraft2 at leas

[Anonymous Coward]

I still say hf in Starcraft, and I still emote hello in hearthstone. But I always squelch in Hearth, and almost always ignore in Starcraft- most opponents will be civil, but I don't need the input of the uncivil ones, so I simply mute'em all.

spoken like a true Blizzard employee

[Anonymous Coward]

may the wheels fall off your car, you had your chance to cooperate with Freecraft, bnetd, and FSGS back when your only products were Starcraft 1 and Diablo 1. all it takes is one clever model developer over Tremulous mod or Bid For Power mod or Urban Terror 2 mod to do in one month what Blizzard took 10 patchful years to remove or instigate.

I remember the first time I used battlenet

[the_Bionic_lemming]

After finishing the single player game, I went to try multi-player in Diablo. I created a new character, launched a game, arrived at the village and was hit by a wall of fire instantly killing the character.

I think that's what clued me in on why MMorgs suck to people like me.

I wouldn't do that -don't want to be anywhere close to people that would.

Re:I remember the first time I used battlenet

[perpenso]

The multiplayer battle.net experience for Diablo was incredible, better than single player, when you somehow knew the other players in the game. Nearly every time real world and online friends met up in the game someone would comment on how this was so much better than playing with randoms.

FWIW WoW did a better job of making play with randoms fun but still with all friends in your group it was an incredible experience.

Which is why guilds are so popular.

Re:I remember the first time I used battlenet

[The_Revelation]

I do remember D1 having one of the most rewarding multiplayer experiences of all of the Diablo games. I think the slower walking helped keep players from moving too far apart too quickly. D1 and D2 were both great fun to play direct, but the feature seemed to have been dropped in favour of just the stupid Battle.net alternative, so I'm afraid I'm really not sad to see that rubbish go. Hopefully this will mark a turning point in Blizzards decision to take games that don't need to be online...offline, and then perhaps Diablo 3 will become a good game for single player and maybe even multiplayer if they would be so good as to re-add direct connects.

Re:I remember the first time I used battlenet

[fedos]

My first experience was similar, only instead of a wall of fire I was met with 5,000 duped shields.

Re:I remember the first time I used battlenet

[Anonymous Coward]

Godly plate of the whale.

Re:I remember the first time I used battlenet

[Rakarra]

Wow multiplayer rewards are great.
However, the Diablo and Diablo 2 multiplayer experiences were SO bad, and so abused, that I stayed away from WoW for some time just because I didn't like the idea of it being a game where you're interacting with other people. Every single public D2 game I was ever in had the exact same thing happen: a boss dies, all the loot drops to the ground, and EVERYONE rush in and clicks as fast as they possibly can to claim every set and unique item themselves, whether they needed it or not. If you need some awesome item that dropped, good luck! No one in the group will let you have it, they're too busy looking up what black market item selling price they can get. Everyone screwed over everyone else, so everyone was comfortable doing so.

Also, pretty quickly every public game would have 3 regular people and 5 item selling/spamming bots, and for Diablo2, that's a problem they never addressed. At least in WoW they worked semi-hard to add ignore tools, spam-reporting tools, made it so level 1 characters can't send whispers or use public channels, and closed down accounts.

But public D2 multiplayer.. ugh. Not a good experience.

Account?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean we get to create new accounts?

I have a paid copy of Star Wars 2, tied to a Battle.NET account, which is tied to an e-mail address at a previous ISP that I don't have access to.

The account is locked. To unlock it, I need to click a link in an e-mail sent to that e-mail address.

To contact support, I need to log in. To log in, I need to unlock my account.

Until this is resolved, I will not buy any Blizzard games. I will only buy on Steam (I did not have any problems with Steam when I lost my e-mail account), or console games without any online part (I don't have any internet access in the living room anyway).

Re:Account?

[fedos]

They're only changing the name. Everything else stays the same. I'd say RTFA, but it's in the fracking summary.

Re:Account?

[Zaowulf]

You have a Star Wars game installed through the Battle.net launcher?

Re:Account?

[Rakarra]

I have a paid copy of Star Wars 2, tied to a Battle.NET account,

Huh? You sure you're not thinking of Steam?

which is tied to an e-mail address at a previous ISP that I don't have access to.

You can change your email address in the battlenet account management page. If you don't remember your password, then you weren't logging into battle.net to play a game in the first place.