Battle.net: New Bnet Integration Shown In StarCraft II UI, World of Warcraft Implications Pondered (Video)

I’ve never been a big fan of RTS games, primarily because I don’t multi-task well and managing all those units and construction and such is usually a bit too much for me. Throw in competitive play and I’m bound to have one sad losing experience after another. I guess that explains why my first foray into Blizzard’s games was with World of Warcraft, and it’s RTS style titles. Regardless, I’m throwing that all to the wind and giving StarCraft II a nice long look when it comes out.

Closed beta recently began for SC2, and a few lucky people have been getting their hands dirty with Blizz’s newest toy. Below we have footage of someone’s time in beta, but it’s not what you think. The video shows less of the game and more of another new feature that Blizzard is rolling out; the new Battle.net. This clips shows how tight the integration is with the new service directly into the game:

That clip got me thinking about implications for World of Warcraft, and even further ahead for their new-yet-unannounced MMO title. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see Blizzard’s new rated battlegrounds in Cataclysm run by just this type of Battle.net integration, and perhaps even arena matchmaking and dungeon/raid grouping. Of course this is speculation on my part, who knows what the real implementation will be like. Blizzard has however hinted at a possible patch before Cataclysm to bring out some Battle.net functionality, so this could be a harbinger of news to World of Warcraft players.  At minimum it leads me to believe that the next batch of Cataclysm news from Blizzard might be spiced with some Battle.net info as well.

~br3ntbr0