Blizzard's Wilson: Some Battle.net features to be 'monetized'

If we don't jump on it now, Blizzard could have the luxury of charging $50 for each StarCraft campaign.

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lol, common sense gets voted down. you guys are killing joystiq. also, jesus.

Because everyone knows Starcraft is a MMO...

devian, Hellgate wasn't a real MMO either. Honestly, the only difference between its multiplayer and Diablo 2's was that there was a shared graphical lobby between levels instead of a text-based chat before joining a game. Well, that and it was one hell of a lot less fun.

"BBL, making out with Blizzard, etc etc".


Honestly, that's about the worst defense ever.

Aren't they working on battle.net 2.0? We still don't know what that will look like, what kind of features it will have, or anything like that. So yeah, for all we know, the "paradigm of the service" WILL change.

Not directing this next bit at you, apples, but honestly it's fascinating how many people are taking this article as "ZOMG THEY GONA MAKE DA GAMEZ HAVE DA MONTHLY FEES 2 PLAY" despite the very specific statement that "...they do recognize that everyone loves having it as a free service, and they don't have a strong desire to make a subscription-based game."

If they went with a microtransaction plan like, say, DLC for Diablo 3, then I think that would be pretty cool. Or say normal and "premium" battle.net accounts where the normal has the same functions as the current battle.net and the premium service adds a bunch of extra bells and whistles. But far too many people take vague statements with little to no information and run with them, screaming doomsday prophecies the whole way.

I think you missed the point of my comment and I can barely respond with all the words you put in my mouth there.

Right now, I can log into battle.net via various games and every ounce of reasonable chat will be drowned out by bots, spammers, and flavor-of-the-week scams/keyloggers.

I can try a matchmaking game, and join up with the hoard of 12 year olds with racial epithets as their user names. I can watch them spout profanity for an entire game with little to no recourse for myself

My point is, if the service wants to hold itself in enough esteem to charge actual money, it radically needs to overhaul the user experience to clamp down on the massive refuse element.

"He went on to say that they do recognize that everyone loves having it as a free service, and that they don't have a strong desire to make a subscription-based game."

I swear, if I see one more comment like this one I'm just going to snap and start spamming that quote in response to every comment from someone that didn't read the freaking article......

Of course I've read the entire article.

How they feel about it won't matter if they do something diffrent... They never had to monetize battle.net, and they don't HAVE to monetize battle.net v2. Charging a monthly fee for a game you also have to buy is ridiculous.

Don't you agree?

I do, but unlike so many people here I'm not starting from the assumption that they will for sure be charging a monthly fee.

There are a lot of ways for them to "monetize" battle.net. Copy/paste below because it's easier than saying the same thing a different way:

If they went with a microtransaction plan like, say, DLC for Diablo 3, then I think that would be pretty cool. Or say normal and "premium" battle.net accounts where the normal has the same functions as the current battle.net and the premium service adds a bunch of extra bells and whistles. But far too many people take vague statements with little to no information and run with them, screaming doomsday prophecies the whole way.

Only so much can be said with such a vague statement from Jay Wilson. Still, there are a lot of good reasons why folks should be upset with this. A few days ago, many of us thought that for $50 we'd get a single player game with full campaigns for all the factions and multiplayer. Instead, here's what we're getting.

The single player game will be divided into three stand alone products. My concerns about cost aside, I think this is a bad way to tell a narrative. Starcraft and Warcraft 3 had great single player narratives because of concise story telling; it had to be, after a few missions you'd be playing a different faction. This current division sounds like we're going to be getting a lot of filler. (Just like WoW).

Blizzard's recent work with WoW has me disgusted with a "monetized" BNet. At best, they'd only offer aesthetic things like "horse armor." At worst, we'd pay;
a monthly fee, or per new map, or for new unit. One strong possibility is that we'd pay for a tournament ladder like WoW Arena. With regard to new features, WoW's voice-chat is awful. The remainder of possible new features can be lumped in with Live Gold: as either something that should have been included already, or has a free (and probably better) alternative. Last in terms of service... I don't expect much from a company that has its paying customers using bit-torrent to deliver patches.

Play Hellgate: London and subscribe.. youll successfully feel like u took money out of ur bank and set it on fire

What the hell is wrong with you people? Forget WoW, forget what it used to be, THEY ARE PROVIDING A SERVICE. Why is it unreasonable to pay for a service they are providing?

And Psychokitten, sorry to break your little fantasy world, but regardless of how much money they make off WoW, they aren't going to make free games. They're a company. They want to make money. You don't like it, don't play their game. Simple as that.