[digibri]

I've played Blizzard games for years and years. All the Warcrafts, Starcraft, both Diablos. When I was younger I played them more obsessively, these days my gaming has been rather casual.

I've been in the beta for a couple months. SC2 is great. The matchmaking is fantastic. The loss of LAN play doesn't seem that big a deal (to me) when compared to all the gains.

However, I feel that not being able to create a custom chat room for you and your friends to chat is a big miss. The chat feature of Battle.net 1.0 is probably the biggest reason why the Starcraft / Warcraft X / Diablo X community is so strong and so persistent. It is the various custom chat lobbies (friends, public, clan, special interest, etc.) that created the community in the first place. Facebook integration simply cannot compensate (and, in fact, seems rather silly).

My concern is that Activision-Blizzard is doing THEMSELVES a great disservice by eliminating chat rooms (well, that and the fact that I enjoy the community aspect). The reason I'm concerned is that I want the company to continue to thrive and make more good games. (That and also because I own a bit of their stock in my ROTH.)

Additionally, I think the lack of LAN play and aggressive legal pursuit of alternate servers is currently aimed more at getting Activision-Blizzard a slice of the eSports pie than preventing piracy. Anti-piracy is probably as solved as it's going to get.