The Battle.net 2.0 discussion panel is done, with Rob Pardo on the mainstage introducing alot of the features the new platform will have.
Rob Pardo held a discussion panel regarding Battle.net 2.0 and he got booed at on stage when he answered "sorry" to the crowd cheering "beeta!". But he had some interesting announcements to make on the upcoming Battle.net 2.0 which made the audience in a better mood. Later during the discussion panel he showed a picture with the Queen of Blades, and a text saying one more announcement..., which sounds like something huge's coming up, but it was "only" an introduction of the new SC2 Marketplace, which is one of the new features in Battle.net 2.0. Read more about it below the picture.
Mapmakers will get paid
Rob Pardo announced that there will be two kinds of maps available in something called the Starcraft 2 marketplace. The free maps, and the premium maps. This is a function that was added to encourage mapmakers to make more maps with high quality. This way the mapmaker can charge people for downloading their maps, and make money by creating maps for Starcraft 2. Rob Pardo explained how you now can download Tower Defenses on the Playstation Network, even though the Tower Defense has it's origin in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft, where the creators of the maps don't get any credits for it. Now they will. Along with this a lot of other features involving maps and map editing was announced, such as being able to download the map before joining a game, having lists of maps with filters that can be sorted in many ways and some other stuff. A Map Editor panel will be held as well, so more information on that is more suitable when that is done.
Friends online
With the new Battle.net bringing all the games to the same platform, including World of Warcraft, we're now able to chat with each other, independent on which game you or your friend, or who ever you're chatting with, is playing. So this brings new opportunities such as meanwhile waiting for a raid in World of Warcraft, you can join a Tower Defense in Starcraft 2, and still chat with your raid mates in WoW.
The chatroom has also gotten a major makeover. What used to be just a chatroom, with whispers appearing in gray text, is now divided into separate boxes. More like a messenger if you'd like. You can speak with one of your friends in one window, while you have your team in another. This makes it much easier to keep track of all your conversations at once.
Real ID
The Real ID will be your master account to Battle.net 2.0. This is to prevent people to create a bunch of accounts, smurfing and so on, making a new account just to "own noobs". But the greatest thing about adding this feature is that you'll always have the same friends in your friendslist in all of Blizzard's games. Say you start playing Starcraft 2, make a bunch of friends and add them to your friendslist, but then when Diablo 3 is released you want to play an RPG for a while, then you'll still have the same friendslist as in Starcraft 2, and additionally you'll be able to see what games they're currently playing. This is good if one of your friends one day buys Diablo 3 as well, then you'll be able to see that, and you can hook up for some boss-runs or whatever suits you the best.
Additionally your singleplayer campaign will be available on any computer connected to the internet without bringing any save files on a usb-stick or such, as it's all saved on your online account. You'll also be able to read the latest news, download the latest content, and read the battle.net forums on battle.net instead of doing this in a webbrowser. Finally I'd just like to share my dying urge for seeing the screen shown in the picture below on my own monitor someday.
Thanks to RamiZ for sharing this in our forums.
Pictures taken from Blizzconlive.com
Links
blizzconlive.com - BlizzCon
