[Malakai]

Alright, so this is super awesome. Blizzard has come out with a unified account structure (thingy) that collects all of their games into one account. I went to battle.net (the website), and made an account. It prompted me to add games, so for shits and giggles I busted out my Diablo 2 CD Keys, and with one copy+paste it added in the game. I did the same for the expansion and for StarCraft.

The best part? I can download the clients from their website.

So, I guess, basically, they've set up something of their own Steam. If you've got those old disks hanging out it's probably worth it, as I know mine are scratched to shit.

[Lukin]

nice, my starcraft cd is scratched useless

[Will]

Set this up a while back when I opted in for the SC2 beta. Great for sure!

[stryfe]

Yeah they came out with this awhile ago. The Diablo II downloads are key :) Not looking for CDs, if you don't have to... priceless!

Malakai, on Feb 08 2010 08:35 AM, said:

Alright, so this is super awesome. Blizzard has come out with a unified account structure (thingy) that collects all of their games into one account. I went to battle.net (the website), and made an account. It prompted me to add games, so for shits and giggles I busted out my Diablo 2 CD Keys, and with one copy+paste it added in the game. I did the same for the expansion and for StarCraft.

The best part? I can download the clients from their website.

So, I guess, basically, they've set up something of their own Steam. If you've got those old disks hanging out it's probably worth it, as I know mine are scratched to shit.

[Fluidbat]

It'll be like steam, eventually, they're going to have buddy lists, messenger, etc...

[Kevin]

Only with more issues.

[panzer]

Early steam sucked, it was buggy as hell and most of the extra features didn't work right. The chat feature was down more than it was up.

It's come a looong way since... hell, I don't even use regular IM on my home PC since I've got everyone I want to talk to on Steam.

[Dwayne]

I would prefer a single IM window with tabs from them, but yeah.

[Fluidbat]

Yeah seriously steam where the FUCK are the tabs.

Also, I don't see the new battle.net having too many issues. I'm not sure if they're selling any games on there like Steam does, and if they do it'll only be their own titles, but it's a step in the right direction, even tho I do prefer the a physical CD over digital distribution as long as the DRM isn't too hitler.

[Kevin]

It fails because it is reliant on the Blizzard authentication servers which go down atleast once a day.

[Fluidbat]

Really? I haven't noticed...

[Will]

I actually wish Steam would open up their chat protocol so it could be connected to by external clients. That would be rad.

[Speckz]

Will, on Feb 08 2010 05:16 PM, said:

I actually wish Steam would open up their chat protocol so it could be connected to by external clients. That would be rad.

Ditto!

[Brennan]

Never ever going to happen tho.

[Dwayne]

So, grow some balls, nancies. It was never done by AOL or Yahoo or MSN, either, but people have done a decent enough job reverse engineering the protocol and implementing it in libraries like libpurple. Brennan has a lot of free time - get to work, you damn noob.