The new Battle.net started with Blizzard contemplating what's good and bad about the Battle.net present in WarCraft 3 (the last time Battle.net has been upgraded). On the good column, they liked the ease with which you could play with friends, the icon advancement system, great matchmaking, and how surprisingly successful random teams turned out to be.

However, the chat was too disorganised, the multiplayer too disconnected from the single player campaign, the ladder system catered only to the elite (leading to new players getting pwned by veterans), and over time, it was hard finding a game that didn't involve Defense of the Ancients.

This led to a trifecta of core values for the new Battle.net: an always connected experience, a competitive arena for everyone, and to connect the entire Blizzard community.

Always Connected

In order to keep you always connected to the Battle.net community, you'll log in everytime you start StarCraft 2, even if you're going to play the single player campaign only (don't worry if you don't have an internet connection - you'll be able to log in as an offline guest, but you won't be able to earn achievements or improve your rankings without logging on.)

This login system will enable Blizzard to keep your game updated with all the latest patches, as well as always keeping you connected to all your friends, regardless of what Blizzard game they're playing.

When you login, different widgets provide information on different aspects of the game you're playing and the Blizzard community, from news and your friends list, to your stats in StarCraft 2, as well as single player and multiplayer game options.

Much like Xbox Live and PSN, you'll be able to always see your friends list, even if you're in the single player campaign, and be able to chat across games, coordinating a heroic dungeon run with friends that are signed on WoW while playing StarCraft 2.

Each person on Battle.net will also have their own customisable profile page, with privacy controls to let you adjust your information's availability depending on their relation to you (Real ID friend, character friend, etc.), much like Facebook's privacy controls. The profile page also shows gameplay stats, achievements, and rankings.

The new Battle.net system will also incorporate WoW style achievements, but with some improvements. When your friends earn achievements in any Blizzard games, Battle.net will notify you.

Your own achievement progression will earn you custom avatars, as well as decals to use in the new decal system. These decals can be used to customise the actual in game units, giving your own StarCraft forces a personal look based on the achievements you've earned!

Achievements will also be account wide and portable between characters, meaning that if you roll a new character (for example, in WoW) you will not have to re-earn the achievements you've already gotten on your old character.

Another advantage to always having you online is that Blizzard will take advantage of cloud architecture to always keep your save files synced to the cloud, meaning that if you save mid-campaign and sign on at a friend's house, you'll be able to pick up right where you left off without manually transferring any files. It'll all happen automatically in the background.

Competitive Arena for Everyone

Blizzard was extremely unhappy with the ladder system that exists in previous Battle.net games, and wanted a way to let players that weren't professionals still enjoy themselves online competing against others, and to partake of the ranking and ladder systems.

Their solution? A league system that groups you with players of similar skill level to you, and organises ladders and rankings within your skill peers.

Within the first 10 or so games that you play, the system will automatically assign you a league ranking, ranging from Practice League, through Copper, Silver, Gold, etc. and culminating in Professional League.

This means you will always be ranked against 100 players of your skill level within your league, giving everyone a chance to win their division. There will even be end of season tournaments within each league.

Practice League is special in that it comes with special rules to help ease players into the game, including slower game speed, anti-rush maps, and simplified rules.

Blizzard will also be implementing a party system to Battle.net. This means you'll be able to form a group with your friends, allowing you to communicate more easily, and to enter games as a group. You'll even be able to set up games privately as a group, and open them up to the public once it's set up to add extra players to the game (eliminating the need to kick people until your friends are able to join the game you're hosting.)

The interface for joining games is getting a major revamp. All games taking place on a specific map will be consolidated under a single title that you can expand if you wish (reducing the "all I can see is DotA maps" syndrome.)

You'll also be able to filter by map type, game type, and a load of other options, making it much easier to find a game to play that fits your liking.

Blizzard also claims that the new system will reduce cheating and lead to fairer games, since your game key will be attached to your Battle.net account, meaning that if your account is banned, you'll have to buy a whole new copy of the game to make another account and play (making the penalty much higher than the previous Battle.net accounts which were free to make, allowing cheaters to merely make another account when banned.)

This will also minimise "smurfing", where a pro level player purposefully makes a new account that is ranked a lower level in order to play games against low ranked levels and stomping them with glee.

Connecting the Blizzard Community

The new system is designed to keep players informed about all the Blizzard games you have, with news regarding all the games you own on a widget when you log in, much like the WoW Launcher displays news now.

The chat system will be more IM style, with different windows for chats involving different people, allowing you to manage multiple channels and chats with more ease than the previous single-stream solution.

Blizzard also thought about who people wanted to play games with: people usually like to play with real life friends, they make real life friendships based on in game relationships, and people like to play with the same friends as they move from game to game.

To address these, Blizzard is implement a new system that complements the current character based friend system, called Battle.net Real ID.

The Real ID system works much the same way as social networking sites do: friend requests must be mutual in order to add each other to your friend lists, and your friends show up with their real life names on your list.

Since the Real ID is complementary to the normal friend system, your Real ID friends will show at the top of your friends list, with the normal character based friends showing below them.

There will also be a new system called "Toast" that will let users broadcast a message to their friends, showing the message as a popup on the friends list (e.g. "anyone up for some heroics later in WoW?")

Because of the level of information contained in your Real ID, there will be privacy and parental controls, making the system even more like a Blizzard version of Facebook.

This system will ensure that your friends network stays intact across present and future Blizzard games.

Custom Maps and the Map Marketplace

In recognising that the custom map community has contributed much to Blizzard games (e.g. DotA), Blizzard is providing the most powerful map editor yet with StarCraft 2.

They're also making map sharing easier with a central map repository, letting you search and rate maps, and download them without having to join a game featuring the map.

To encourage even more top notch custom map work, and more original works in the maps, Blizzard also intends to debut a map marketplace. This marketplace will allow custom map makers to develop premium maps and sell them for a price, with part of the revenue going to the map creator.

Mapmakers can also release their maps for free if they wish in the marketplace, emulating a model like the iPhone App store.

If your map gets popular, Blizzard will even add custom matchmaking and achievements to it!

While there was a lot of information regarding Battle.net to digest at this panel, I'm sure we'll encounter even more as we attend the StarCraft 2 gameplay panel, so stay tuned right here to GayGamer.net for all the latest news!