Battle.net has been around for 20 years. It was launched by Blizzard as their online service back in 1996 and hosted games such as Diablo 2, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft. In a recent post on the World of Warcraft website, Blizzard has announced that having a different name for their online service isn’t effective any longer. Here is the post below:
“We’re going to be transitioning away from using the Battle.net name for our gaming service and the functionality connected to it. Battle.net technology will continue to serve as the central nervous system for Blizzard games—nothing is changing in that regard. We’ll just be referring to our various products and services using the Blizzard name instead. You’ve already seen this recently with things like “Blizzard Streaming” and “Blizzard Voice,” and more changes are on the way.
When we created Battle.net, the idea of including a tailored online-gaming service together with your game was more of a novel concept, so we put a lot of focus on explaining what the service was and how it worked, including giving it a distinct name. Over time, though, we’ve seen that there’s been occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities under which everything falls—Blizzard and Battle.net. Given that built-in multiplayer support is a well-understood concept and more of a normal expectation these days, there isn’t as much of a need to maintain a separate identity for what is essentially our networking technology.
We just wanted to make sure everyone was aware as we moved forward with this change over the next several months; we’ll provide any relevant updates as the transition progresses.”
This makes sense to me as it could be confusing for the casual gaming consumer to understand that Blizzard and Battle.net were one in the same.
However, it is a sad day for gamers who grew up playing game on Battle.net, even though the service will still be the same, the name we all grew up with will be changing. I remember countless hours of playing Diablo 2 on Battle.net on my old PC back in the 90s . In college, I played World of Warcraft between classes on a laptop with friends while ordering pizza and planning our raid strategy aloud
Leave us your comments about the change to the Battle.net name below or in the RGM forums.
