Battlenet Features
Other Pages In the Battle.net Section:
Arena Games
- Detailed information on
this new feature, providing player vs player competition and duels.
Guild Halls
- Tons of information on this new Diablo II feature, including: size,
creation, security, cost, interface, item storage, and more.
Player
Ranking and Stats
- All known information about how the
Arena Games will be scored and ranked, and also how your
Player vs. Monster
(PvM) character will have new numbers to crunch.
Player
Diplomacy - "The Party
System". The new diplomacy system being implemented in Diablo
II. It will control and affect every aspect of player interaction in
Quest (Player vs. Monster) type games.
Servers & Shards - All the talk on Shards and Servers.
Contents of This Page:
• Introduction
•
General
Features
• New
Battle.net Look
• Expanding
the Community
• Guild
Halls
• Arena
Games
• Trading
on Battle.net
• Gameplay
Changes
• PvPSwitch/Party
System
• Cheating
•
Types
of Battle.net Characters
• Voice
Communication
• Continued
Support for Current Titles
Battle.Net, Blizzard's free online service, will be a major part of Diablo II. The multiplayer aspect of Diablo II promises to be a huge part of the game with all quests playable online and more "community" support to encourage more interaction and give benefits to being in a guild. There are numerous added features, new security measures being taken, and countless upgrades and ideas under development. These and the age-old issues of cheating, PK'ing, and lag, are all discussed on this page.
Battle.net for Diablo II will be much different than Battle.net for Diablo was. In-channel icons (displayed next to your name) will have much more variety and representative insignia possibly including: custom colours and icons for Guild (Hall) members, different icons for each of the character classes, your character level (Clvl) displayed, long-term stats for your Quest game play, and also a player ranking display of some sort, derived from the world-wide player ranking system in the Arena Games. Crowded icon, eh? How all of this is going to be displayed is not yet known.
In addition to this, there will be expanded account info boxes, where you can double-click on another character's name and see any personal info they've listed. Possible additions to this include a way to see what a character would look like in the a game (so you could show off your new unique shield to others in chat channels), more space to include personal or role-playing info, and also guild affiliation info, as well as listings of Player Vs. Monster (PvM) statistics. There will be extensive stat tracking on Battle.net for Diablo II characters, with such things as monsters killed, bosses killed, quests completed, and much much more stored in your character statistics. It is not yet determined how much of this you will be able to see, or if you'll be able to let others see it on Battle.net.
Other projected or rumoured features include: a friends list (which could include online notification, chat, game security levels), many more options for searching out others or ignoring others, new ways to customise or organise private channels, and numerous other Battle.net chat improvements. On a technical aspect, Blizzard employees are working very hard to improve Battle.net stability and server issues: In addition to the new Diablo II servers, there will likely be new Battle.net chat servers added as well, which should help spread the player load out.
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We of course expected there to be a new look to Battle.net for Diablo II, but had no info about it until very recently. Blizzard North helpfully released a shot of how Battle.net will look for the Diablo II Beta Test, at least. You can see that shot here. Besides all of the cool new features on it, additional info we have about it is that the screen resolution will indeed be 800x600 for Battle.net for Diablo II. It's not just a feature for this new shot while they are working on the look, it will stay that way, regardless of how the graphics of Battle.net change. However, many other features of this shot will change, including the font, the size of the font, the space alloted for viewing text, the buttons, etc. This is very much a working model, beautiful though it is.
Numerous new features for online play of Diablo II are planned, including Guild Halls, Arena Games, a custom trading interface over Battle.net, and many other changes that are detailed elsewhere on this page and in this section. On a technical aspect, Blizzard plans to expand Battle.net by including additional online capabilities and building a global network of Internet Service Providers. A number of new servers in Europe and Asia, as well as additional servers in the US are being set up now, and, of course, the entire technology of Battle.net is much changed for Diablo II, with the client-server model. [Top]
Guild Halls are one of the most prominent features being added to the community feel of Battle.net. Guild (or Clan) Halls are permanent game types that are only accessible to people on the security list for that hall. There are projected to be various tile sets, floor plans and sizes available, and these extremely expensive conveniences will be a must for any self-respecting Diablo II Guild. Guild halls are explained in much greater detail on our Guild Hall Page. [Top]
Arena
Games
Arenas are
a confirmed feature, but much of how they will function is still yet to be
determined. The Diablo II Team is kicking around ideas for various
game types, and debating how the world-wide player ranking system will
function. Much more info about these topics is expected to be
released before the beta test is underway in late August/early
September. Arena Games are covered in much more detail on our Arena Games
Page. [Top]
One of the best improvements to Diablo II is the secure item trading interface. To use it you will merely need another character to trade with, and of course something to trade. Each player can examine the item the other is offering to trade, seeing it in a sort of inventory trading window, and when both are satisfied with the deal, they can click "okay" and make the trade in complete security. The best thing about this is that you can do it from anywhere. You won't even need to both join a game to trade items, you can do it right in the chat channel. Exactly how this will work is not yet known, but there will probably be a "Trade" button that you can click to pop up the standard trading interface. [Top]
Changes to Diablo II are far too numerous to detail them all, but here are some basic changes that will effect online play:
The number of characters allowed in a game has been increased. In early testing, Blizzard had Diablo working with more than four characters at one time. So why was the final only four? Fun factor. The levels in Diablo just were not large enough for eight players to navigate together without it being hopelessly crowded. In Diablo II not only are the levels far larger in size, but there are so many different areas and dungeons in each Act, and four Acts in the game (well, three Acts and the Finale), that eight players could split up into two or three groups and only see each other in town during hours of game play. There will be even more than eight allowed into Arena games, to permit large-scale guild warfare, and the number allowed in a Guild Hall will be at least eight, though this is also still under evaluation. The thought is that larger sizes of Guild Halls (larger in floor space, as well as larger in number of characters allowed to be members) will be available at correspondingly higher prices, though the number of members in a guild is not necessarily equal to the number of people allowed in a Guild Hall at the same time. A guild could have fifty members, but due to technical issues and lag, there might be no more than twelve allowed in the hall at the same time, for example.
Another change they are working on is allowing observers, most likely in Arena games. This is a much-sought feature for Starcraft/Brood War, and though it's not implemented there, it might be in Diablo II. The big issue is how it would effect cheating, since someone could watch you play and relay the info to the person you are fighting. This isn't as big an issue in Diablo II Arena games, which will likely be short and violent (For example, by the time you could check an ICQ from a friend telling you that the Sorceress you were duelling was about to sneak up and shoot a Meteor at you, it would be too late.), as it would be in Starcraft or Brood War games, which are much longer and involve more stealth (map hacks aside), but if someone had two PC's side by side, for example, they could cheat that way. There's also a concern for two people who live in the same area or have two internet connections in the same residence: One would duel as the other observes and tells that person by mouth (or phone) what is happening. One possible solution would be to allow the players who were fighting to keep a friend or enemy list of people who could watch them play, or have it on a per-match basis, where each time you were going to fight you would get requests from people who wanted to watch, and you could allow them to see you or not. Obviously people you suspected of spying for your opponent you would not allow to observe. [Top]
The issue of how player killing and interaction should be regulated on Battle.net has long been debated, but most ideas of a Player Vs. Player (pvp) switch were eliminated with the announcement of the new, party system. The new system isn't just a switch you can turn on and off allowing either a Player Killer (PK) or non-PK game, but an all-encompassing three-layered system. There is a full explanation on our Player Diplomacy page. [Top]
Cheating
Blizzard North is committed to addressing and
eliminating cheating. They are going to great lengths to solve the
problem, and incorporating numerous checks and balances to ensure that any
cheats that do crop up are patchable and not overwhelming. They
haven't revealed too many details yet, mostly to keep any would-be hackers
from getting a head start, but we do know a few things. There is currently
a so called "Tiger Team" at work, expert hackers hired by Blizzard and
armed with the source code, who stay busy trying to break into Diablo II
and the new Battle.net system. And of course when they do find a
security or design flaw, it's eliminated. Blizzard is also going to
include hackers in the beta, and see if there are any successful breaks in
the game security in advance of the final version.
Besides the server security, there will also be in-game anti-cheating methods. Duping has been eliminated by rewriting the buggy code that allowed it to exist in Diablo, and there will be "sanity checks" on Battle.net for the damage dealt by various items. If a character is doing 5000 damage with a dagger, for example, it will not be allowed, and the item would possibly be deleted. We suppose that the sanity checks will be extended to other things, with top levels and damages set on numerous items, spell damage, hit points, etc. [Top]
Types of Battle.net Characters
This is a largely technical issue that is still under discussion by Blizzard and will continue to be tested into the beta. We have only a preliminary idea of how this will work, but here it is laid out:
To help eliminate cheating, Blizzard wants more control over the character files. For security to work, which is the top priority, there will have to be "Closed" or "Battle.net-only" characters. These will be the secured characters that you may only play on Battle.net, and closed characters can only play with other closed characters. (There is talk of allowing them to be exported to play offline, but this would be a one-way transfer only.) Closed chars will be the ones in the player ranking system and Guild Halls on Battle.net. They have the highest level of security.
The other type of characters are called "open characters". These are characters that have been exported from Battle.net, created to play over a modem or a LAN, or just solo play offline. These will be the characters of choice for people with poor internet access, or many people outside of the US, where the internet time is generally too expensive to play only on Battle.net.
Open characters are not nearly as secure as closed characters. Certainly a player could choose not to cheat with their open character, but as there's no way to check that sort of thing, and there will inevitably be some hacks and cheats created for Diablo II, there can't be any mixing between these two character types.
Another type of character still under discussion could be called "Closed, non-B.net". This is an online-only character stored on a server that works like Blizzard's Battle.net, but is not run by Blizzard. There haven't been any names named yet, but we assume that internet gaming services such as Kali and MPlayer will host their own Diablo II servers and store the characters on dedicated servers. Hacking on these servers can be handled the same way it is on B.net, however the vigilance of the security personnel on these non-Blizzard servers is unknown, and will vary. Some servers will probably be patrolled as tightly as Battle.net, while others won't worry so much about characters being hacked. This type of character is still far from finalised though.
There was initially an uproar and some outrage over the B.net-only sort of characters, and it's still not a real popular issue with many people, especially those who have to pay by the minute or hour for their ISP or phone calls. The early explanation for this issue can be seen here, in a quote from an email we received from Max Schaefer back in late 1998:
To answer your question, we have no choice but to have B.net only characters that are not playable on your LAN. The reason is fairly obvious; unless we control the character data on our end, it is hackable. We are doing everything we can to ensure that B.net provides a fair, cheat-free playing environment. Unfortunately, that means B.net-only characters.
Max Schaefer,
VP, BlizzNorth
That was the opinion of Blizzard very early on in the development of this system, and they've likely not changed their minds too much since then. [Top]
Voice
Communication
While the addition of real time voice communication was a
much-anticipated addition to Battle.net and Diablo II Gameplay, and
Blizzard did license Meta Voice (a voice communication technology) to
evaluate, they have decided against using it for Diablo II, due to various
technical issues that ruled it out for Starcraft as well. There are
various 3rd party programs that work now for Diablo and Starcraft that we
assume would work for Diablo II over Battle.net, but this is not
confirmed. Also, Microsoft recently purchased Shadowfactor, makers
of the BattleCom voice communication software, and are planning to
incorporate it into Direct X 8.0, which will be released in 2000, and
Blizzard will more than likely enable this to work over Battle.net with
Diablo II and any other Blizzard Games. [Top]
Continued Support for Current Titles
While there will be plenty of changes on Battle.net for Diablo II, Blizzard will of course not be forgetting about their current titles. Diablo, Starcraft, and Brood War will continue just as they are now, and probably even better, with more Battle.net servers and the server splits and other issues beaten into submission. Also, Warcraft 2 Battle.net Edition will be released this Fall, before Diablo II is out, so there will be new B.net traffic for that. We don't know how the Warcraft 2 BNE Battle.net interface will look, but it is assumed that it will be much like the Starcraft or Brood War interface is now, though with different icons and colours. In regards to their current titles, Battle.net will continue to fully support them before, during, and after Diablo II is released. [Top]
Other Pages In the Battle.net
Section:
Arena Games
- Detailed information on
this new feature, providing player vs player competition and duels.
Guild Halls
- Tons of information on this new Diablo II feature, including: size,
creation, security, cost, interface, item storage, and more.
Player
Ranking and Stats
- All known information about how the
Arena Games will be scored and ranked, and also how your PvM character
will have new numbers to crunch.
Player
Diplomacy - "The Party
System". The new diplomacy system being implemented in Diablo
II. It will control and effect every aspect of player interaction in
Quest (Player vs. Monster) type
games.
