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StarCraft II Beta Gives Clues For Battle.net Revamp
With yesterday's launch of the StarCraft II beta, we're finally getting a good look at what the promised Battle.net relaunch is going to look like – and more importantly, the ways it'll change the way we play StarCraft II online. Even if the much of the interface is disabled at the moment, it's a gold mine of info about what's coming down the pipe.
Authenticators For All?
Blizzard requiring everyone to use an authenticator in the future has been a persistent rumor over the last few months. Given how many times we've had to petition to get our guild bank back after another moron gets hacked, I'm not sure that it would be a bad thing. The authentication interface is built right into the login screen for StarCraft II instead of the slow separate window that you get in World of WarCraft.
Profile Upgrades
Player profiles are so much more than a win-loss record now. You've got a WoW-like achievements pane on one side, which was expected. The center pane lets you scroll through your statistics for every tracked gametype, with subsections for 1v1, 2v2, etc. You can also access your saved replays and player-created content from this page. Here you can also select your portrait. Currently there are a few dozen open to everyone, but Blizzard has previously said that portraits will be unlockable via certain conditions much like titles in WoW. See the match history toward the bottom there? You can click on those to access the game-end screen and get the resource readout and unit kill/death screens that you're used to, and one more awesome thing:
Tracking Build Orders
Who hasn't gotten their behind handed to them on a platter before and wondered, "how the heck did he get three Carriers out that quickly?" The answer (besides you not scouting him enough or harassing him into spending more resources on defense and earlier units) often lies in the build order. On this new tab in the game-end report, you can see who built what and when. Me, I'm still building my Assimilators too early because I'm so used to being strapped for gas. This early mineral deficit puts me at a disadvantage out of the gate, since I have a harder time responding to harassing Zerglings or what have you. The build order report is a fantastic tool for improving your strategy.
Unified Interface Theory
I love that everything about the StarCraft II frontend is built using consistent UI design, and that this single interface is used for single-player, multiplayer, viewing replays, chatting, and checking your ladder standings. It's a small thing, but like the Dude's rug, it really ties the (chat)room together. I shudder to think how many iterations every element went through before settling into its current state.
Jacking In
The most striking feature of this whole frontend doesn't come through in screenshots, though, and it's not the subtle animations on many elements of the interface that make it feel futuristic and awesome. Everything moves and responds so quickly you wouldn't think that you're accessing reams of data off the network. Every interface of this kind that I've used in my years and a gamer, from the Unreal Tournament browser and (sniff, RIP) Ensemble's online service to Steam, has had little (or not-so-little, on occasion) pauses that remind me that I'm on Earth with a finicky Comcast connection between me and my game. On Battle.net in the StarCraft II beta, I might as well be jacked into the Colonial network from the unblemished smoothness of the experience.
As soon as I have interesting things to report on the gameplay front, they'll be on the site. Right now I'm still figuring out what all the new buildings and tweaked units do. One thing I can tell you right off the bat: This is not StarCraft 1.5, as many have snidely insinuated.
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