Kotaku 
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Denver, 5:15 AM
Tue Nov 10
57 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/22/09
online all the time FTL
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08/21/09
I can guarantee you that Blizzard will want some commission out of each sale, which is extremely sleazy if that is the case. Nothing like making money from someone else's work, eh?
08/21/09
"This is horrible"?
Seriously?
Blizzard gives great modders a chance to produce great content and get some payment out of it... instead of producing great content and getting absolutely nothing which is what happens in most cases.
This has the potential to be an awesome way for modders to earn a little extra cash for all the work and love they put into the game. And OF COURSE blizzard is going to get part of the money, they are providing the game and the service.
If you have a good counter-argument, please reply.
08/21/09
As someone who's pouring an extreme amount of effort into becoming a game developer, and also someone who spent some serious time on my own original SC maps this sounds really cool.
To have the ability to make a bit of cash off of my creations thrills me, but I only worry about just how big of a chunk blizz is going to be taking out.
Yeah it's their game and their service, but there's not much point to charging money for your map if you don't end up getting much.
I'd rather have people enjoying and getting nothing but that satisfaction than say charging them 2 bucks for it so that I make 9 cents.
08/21/09
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08/21/09
I am very impressed by the amount of features they are adding into the service. Particularly the stuff regarding the modding community. The idea that it might be possible for the best mods for the game to be hosted and downloaded on and from Battle.net itself is great. I say might, because reading through this it doesn't seem to make explicit mention to much more besides maps.
It seems like a great way to foster community growth for their games, which adds greatly to the value of the games on the service, and at the same time combat game piracy.
08/21/09
08/22/09
This is a horrible approach. Removing LAN is petty and pointless. Mandatory Battle.Net is a transparent cashgrab. It will not reduce piracy. This sort of thing never reduces piracy. Spore is a good example of just how massively this behavior FAILS to reduce piracy, ALWAYS.
Starcraft was the last RTS I played for longer than a month. Turns out I STILL play it occasionally, spawning copies onto a couple machines on a LAN. I haven't played on Battle.Net for the better part of a decade, though.
I was excited about this game. I'm sure it will be fun and do very well at retail. But I will probably not buy this one, or at least wait until the crackers and pirates release a fixed EXE that lets me play the game like a customer instead of a presumed criminal.
08/22/09
Ideally I agree, forcing gamers to use the game online instead of making it optional is not ideal for anyone, however I completely see why they want to do it this way, and I am happy that they have made so many features available on Battle.net so that using the game exclusively online, at least for multiplayer, is rewarding and enjoyable due to all the extra features they are adding, allowing ease of modding, and fostering community growth.
I do think that the content and features they are making available online are so substantial that people who pirate the game will be missing a lot of the game.
Realistically, it is not going to be very often that people are going to be playing the game in a location without Internet, so I doubt it will much of an inconvenience to have much of the game require online login to play for anyone besides people who pirate the game. Entirely ideal? No. A game crippling problem however? No.
08/21/09
I give up. The activision merger was bad news for the common man, but good news for a few men's bank accounts. At least somebody is happy. Most likely Bobby "Baggins" Kotick.
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Also if they are making a little bit of money off the mods that they host that is more incentive for them to publicise the mods, which in the end is only good for the consumer.
I guess what I am getting at is that it can't hurt the modding community and in fact it can only help it.
The only problem that I could see arising is the free mods get pushed to the side and aren't given as much attention on Battle.net as the paid mods are. I don't want all the mods that didn't make the Bliz vetting process to just be pushed aside and be difficult or impossible to get to. Given, I have no idea if that will be the case, I can only hope that it will not be.
08/22/09
08/22/09
As long as Bliz has a good vetting process for the paid stuff and doesn't exclude any of the free stuff, I think it will be great.
08/21/09
Also, Blizzard making money from the community seems shady to me. I know the modders are using Blizzard's tech, and getting money too, but it just rubs me the wrong way.
08/21/09
08/21/09
This is definitely not something Blizzard would do. Well, not something the old Blizzard would do.
:(
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08/21/09
A universal messenger built INTO the game, so no matter what game I'm playing or my friends are playing. I can chat with them.
Sure.... this is just limited to Blizzard games, but still, a truly amazing idea and what I've wanted for a long while.
08/21/09
Ever heard of Steam?
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08/21/09
@-MasterDex-:
@TaylorEatWorld:
I was under the impression that Steam sent messages in the same manner as X-box Live and PSN, where as you send a message, wait for them to go to their messages section and read it.
I don't really play online multiplayer games on Steam much so I've never really had to use it. Sorry for my mistake.
08/21/09
* reaches out and touches your forehead*
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08/21/09
"Jashin_Slayer has no friends."
Edit: Woops, meant to drop this under the "Kotaku is full of blithering idiots" post he made.