Battle.net
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Battle.net is an online gaming service provided by Blizzard Entertainment. It was launched in January of 1997 with the release of Blizzard's action-RPG Diablo. Battle.net was the first online gaming service incoporated directly into the games that make use of it, in contrast to the external interfaces used by the other online services at the time. This feature, along with ease of account creations and the absence of member fees, caused Battle.net to become popular among gamers and became a major selling point for Diablo and subsequent Blizzard games.
Since the successful launch of Battle.net many companies have published online game services mimicking Blizzard's service package and the user interface. However, as of June 2005, none of the other services have rivaled Battle.net's popularity.
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History
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Diablo
When the service initially launched with Diablo, Battle.net offered only a few basic services like chatting and game listings. Players could connect to the service, talk with other gamers and join multiplayer games of Diablo. Besides user account data, no game data was stored on the Battle.net servers. When a player connected to a game, they would be connecting directly to the other players in the game. No data was sent through the Battle.net servers. While this made the service quick and easy to use, it quickly led to rampant cheating since players using cheats could modify their game data locally. However, since there was an option to create private games, many players ended up playing with people who they knew to avoid cheaters.
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StarCraft
With the release of their next game StarCraft in 1998, usage of the Battle.net service increased significantly. With this game, features such as ladder ranking and game filters were added to the service. Battle.net grew even larger after the release of the expansion pack StarCraft: Brood War. Concurrent player counts and games played reached the tens of thousands. This was especially evident in South Korea where StarCraft become a runaway hit and concurrent player counts on Battle.net would often be many times what they were in the United States. StarCraft also brought with it a new copyright protection scheme using CD keys. Under Diablo, Battle.net would allow anyone who had a copy of the game to connect to the service. This allowed people who pirated the game to play on Battle.net. With StarCraft, only those players who had a valid cd key were allowed onto the service. In addition, only one person could be connected to Battle.net using a specific cd key at a time. Every Blizzard game since StarCraft has required a unique, valid cd key to connect to Battle.net.
Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition
The next year, seeing the popularity of StarCraft on Battle.net, Blizzard decided to re-release their previous RTS game Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness packaged with its expansion pack Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal in a version that could be played over Battle.net. This version was titled Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition. Previously, Warcraft II could only be played over the Internet using the IPX network emulator Kali or the now defunct online service Engage. The new version also included support for ladders and a host of other non-Battle.net related features.
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Diablo II
The new millennium brought a new game and a new era for Battle.net. Diablo II was released in 2000 to much fan-fare. The main highlight of Diablo II as it relates to Battle.net was that the game was completely client-server based. The game was no longer simulated on each player's computer, but instead was run on Blizzard's server. This also meant that all of the character data for the game was stored on the Battle.net servers. This effectively put an end to cheating as it had been known during the period of the original Diablo. The game also had an open character feature on Battle.net which stored the player's character on the client. This allowed players to play characters locally or on a LAN, and then use those same characters on Battle.net. However, any open games played on Battle.net were not protected from cheating by other players since they could have modified their characters locally. Diablo II also had a unique feature that would show the players in the Battle.net chatroom as avatars who looked like their characters did in the game. It also used a different Battle.net interface than previous games, where previously there were mainly only color differences. There was also expanded ladder support including a "Hardcore" ladder which listed players whose characters would be removed permanently if they died in-game. Again, with Diablo II usage of Battle.net increased steadily, climbing even higher with the release of the expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction in 2001.
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Warcraft III
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos was released in 2002 and combined with its expansion pack Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne which was released in 2003 are the most recent games Blizzard released which support Battle.net. The release of these two games brought with them a number of new features to the online service. The most significant feature to be added was probably the concept of Anonymous Matchmaking. This feature allowed a user who wanted to play a game to simply press a button and automatically be matched up with one or more other players who were similar in skill (based on ranking) and also wanted to play a game. This allowed for people to get into games quickly and easily. It also reduced win-trading, where two people would purposefully win and lose games to artificially raise their rank on the ladder. The matchmaking concept was also expanded to team games in a feature called "Arranged Teams". In an arranged team game, you could get together with a friend of yours to make a team, which was then anonymously matched up with another team of the same size and rank. Automated tournaments were added in the expansion, where players would compete to be crowned tournament champion in a series of games played throughout the day. In addition to the new game styles, a slew of other features were added including selectable chatroom icons, a friends list, and clan support.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft, Blizzard's MMORPG released in 2004 uses a completely different server and network structure, and thus does not run on the Battle.net online gaming service.
Usage
According to Blizzard's claims, Battle.net is the largest online gaming network in the world. It currently has nearly 12 million active users, who spend more than 2.1 million combined hours online per day. At any one given time, Battle.net averages about 200,000 concurrent users with a peak volume of 400,000 concurrent users. About 50,000 games are being played on typical weekday evenings, more than half of which are StarCraft.
bnetd
A group of gamer/programmers produced a freely available clone of Battle.net called bnetd. Blizzard games normally only work over the Internet with Battle.net, but bnetd allowed gamers to run their own private server.
In February 2002, lawyers retained by Blizzard threatened legal action under provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against the bnetd developers, and the project was officially halted. As this case was one of the first major test cases for the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation became involved, and for a while negotiations were ongoing to resolve the case without a trial. The negotiations failed however, and Blizzard won the case on all counts: the defendants were ruled to have breached both Blizzard's End User License Agreement (EULA) and the Terms of Use of Battle.net. [1] (http://blizzard.com/press/041008.shtml)
Community
A community of developers has arisen around Battle.net. Many unofficial clients are available for Battle.net, and most of the protocol used by Battle.net-enabled games has been reverse-engineered and published (http://bnetdocs.valhallalegends.com) by volunteers.
List of Battle.net Games
- Diablo
- Diablo II
- Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
- Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition
- Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
- Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
- StarCraft
- StarCraft: Brood War
External links
- Battle.net website (http://www.battle.net/)
- Blizzard Entertainment website (http://www.blizzard.com/)Template:Blizzard Entertainment