battlenet posts

So you've bought Starcraft 2 and you've decided to delve into the rather considerable multiplayer component. However, you are getting stomped flat over and over by players that seem to get better units in a quicker time frame than you. Sounds like you need some education on the basics of Starcraft 2. While Starcraft 2 is hardly a casual strategy game, it's basics are easy and simple to learn, and the de-emphasizing of micromanagement of units has made it much more newbie friendly! No more worries of getting steamrolled at 3 minutes into the game.

Blizzard has been running its online multiplayer services for nearly all of their games for free via Battle.net (save of course for the subscription based MMO World of Warcraft). All those Warcraft RTS games along with the Diablo titles and the original Starcraft have had its multiplayer servers running at Blizzard's expense for many years.

However, with two upcoming non-MMO games on the horizon (Starcraft II and Diablo III) there may be some changes coming for Battle.net and it's likely that its many, many customers won't like it. According to our sister site Joystiq (covering a Diablo III gameplay panel at BlizzCon this weekend) the game's producer Jay Wilson was quoted as saying, "We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features. We kind of have to." So what does this mean exactly? Will people have to pay to play Diablo III and Starcraft II online? Will more ads appear on the Battle.net web site? At the moment there's no clear word on the future of the service.