Battle.net, Blizzard Social: What’s Next?

by JR Cook - 7 years ago     show comments

Welcome everyone to the Bnet Social: What’s Next Panel.

Andy Simonds comes out and talks about the “whole bucket load of software” that they just recently release. He starts the discussion off by talking about the birth of bnet and how it got its start with Diablo 1 and how it was a great idea if you could play with your friends online. He shows off the very first bnet logo, talks about how they’ve come a long way with blizzard fans playing games all over the world. Shows off “Battle Net Earth” looks very awesome, shows an active heat map of people using bnet. Currently they have over 1000 servers, over 4 data centers, that handle 4.3 PB of data per day that includes over 35 million messages a day.

Moves onto the blizzard launcher application. Mentions it being the central hub for all things blizzard. Talks about the social aspect of the launcher. Says the most common complaint from players is “I would play more, but I don’t have friends to play with.” Notes that fixing this particular complaint is the rally cry for the bnet team. Really ramped up work with the introduction of “Suggested Friends” into the launcher. Worldwide with the Suggested Friends feature, the average user doubled the number of friends.

He shows another list of complaints from users ranging from wanting to set themselves to invisible, to wanting an iOS app or being allowed to gift other players. Andy assures everyone they’ve been listening and they’ve been working on building the capablilites of the launcher.

Introduces Itay Eshet, who is the lead program manager for bnet. Will be presenting some of the new features of the bnet launcher. Talks about wanting to learn more about a player before accepting a friend request, introduces the blizzard profile feature. Which has an “About” feature, shows what games they play. Shows the linking feature, which has twitch, facebook, and youtube link. Shows off the privacy section at the bottom of your personal profile. Now you can also pick your own avatar.

Introduces Mike Yaklin the design lead who will show off more profile things. Wants to help keep friends connected with each other. Debuts Blizzard Groups, which have been out for a few weeks now. Talks about how its similar clans or guilds but they reach across all games. Shows off how to create a group and it does actually seem really simple. Shows you can make a voice channel on top of making it easy to join groups. Not much else left on there.

Brings on Renata Ponte, the program manager with the mobile team and is here to talk about the mobile app for bnet. Beings to talk about the mobile features, shows off the friends list with favorites at the top and what they’re doing. Notes that chat history will now exist so you won’t miss those offline messages and they sync between phone and desktop. Has a quest for everyone that involve the new QR code on the mobile app. Asks everyone to add 3 friends with the QR code. Takes a selfie for the her camera.

Hands it off to Nathan Lyons-Smith, group program manager for the bnet launcher. Talks about the investments they’ve made to help users find new friends and talks about the new gifting experience. Notes they’ve made gifting the experience easier. Shows off how cheap he is by buying a friend 2 OW loot boxes. Really simple, click and gift and click the drop down menu for who it’s going to go to. Explains how easy it is to it now gift anything in the game. Also everyone gets a 3 day stim pack for Heroes via the gift feature which will go out on Monday.

Now passes it back to Andy to close out the panel. Makes a few jokes about getting 2 loot boxes in a make up demo. Covers everything that they went over. Notes one thing they didn’t cover, shows off “Appear Offline” finally. Notes the bnet users have been asking for it for a very long time. Says “Its here, its out” and mentions that an important part is the user getting to choose when they be social and when not to be social. Touches base on more than a few things they added before moving onto the Q&A section.

Time for some Q&A. First Question: Wants to know if you can message someone before accepting a friend request. Answer: Can’t yet, but we’re working on it. Second Question: Gifting, wants to know if we can send mass gifts to several people. Answer: Its definitely in our backlog of ideas to incorporate this. Third Question: For the Avatars, wants to know if someone can use personalized avatars. Answer: Short answer no, use blizzard’s selection. Fourth Question: Want to know if you can customize notification sounds. Answer: They keep talking about it, but no final decision. Fifth Question: Wants to know if avatars will be unlocked through achievements in games. Answer: Cool idea, but no. Sixth Question: Will shout in HOTS be available across the bnet app. Answer: They really like the idea, and its on the list, but they haven’t decided yet.

They’re now covering how to make chat more fun, how to collab with other groups and make sure admins have the proper functions as well how to customize the space and other things. They talk about game integration, no games or time frames available just yet.