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Battle.net is an online gaming service provided by Blizzard Entertainment . It was launched in January of 1997 with the release of Blizzard's action- RPG '' Diablo ''. Battle.net was the first online gaming service incorporated directly into the games that make use of it, in contrast to the external interfaces used by the other online services at the time. This feature, along with ease of account creations and the absence of member fees, caused Battle.net to become popular among gamers and became a major selling point for ''Diablo'' and subsequent Blizzard games. Since the successful launch of Battle.net many companies have published online game services mimicking Blizzard's service package and the User Interface . HISTORY .]] Diablo When the service initially launched with ''Diablo'', Battle.net offered only a few basic services like chatting and game listings. Players could connect to the service, talk with other gamers and join multiplayer games of ''Diablo''. Besides user account data, no game data was stored on the Battle.net servers. When a player connected to a game, they would be connecting directly to the other players in the game. No data was sent through the Battle.net servers. While this made the service quick and easy to use, it quickly led to rampant Cheating since players using cheats could modify their game data locally. However, since there was an option to create private games, many players ended up playing with people who they knew to avoid cheaters. .]] StarCraft With the release of their next game ''''. Concurrent player counts and games played reached the tens of thousands. This was especially evident in South Korea where ''StarCraft'' become a runaway hit and concurrent player counts on Battle.net would often be many times what they were in the United States . ''StarCraft'' also brought with it a new Copyright protection scheme using CD Key s. Under ''Diablo'', Battle.net would allow anyone who had a copy of the game to connect to the service. This allowed people who Pirated the game to play on Battle.net. With ''StarCraft'', only those players who had a valid CD key were allowed onto the service. In addition, only one person could be connected to Battle.net using a specific CD key at a time. Every Blizzard game since ''StarCraft'' has required a unique, valid cd key to connect to Battle.net. .]] Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition The next year, seeing the popularity of ''StarCraft'' on Battle.net, Blizzard decided to re-release their previous ''. Previously, ''Warcraft II'' could only be played over the Internet using the IPX network emulator Kali or the now defunct online service Engage. The new version also included support for ladders and a host of other non-Battle.net related features. .]] Diablo II See Also: Diablo II on Battle.net The new millennium brought a new game and a new era for Battle.net. '''' in 2001. .]] Warcraft III '''' which was released in 2003 are the most recent games Blizzard released which support Battle.net. The release of these two games brought with them a number of new features to the online service. The most significant feature to be added was probably the concept of Anonymous Matchmaking. This feature allowed a user who wanted to play a game to simply press a button and automatically be matched up with one or more other players who were similar in skill (based on ranking) and also wanted to play a game. This allowed for people to get into games quickly and easily. It also reduced win-trading, where two people would purposely win and lose games to artificially raise their rank on the ladder. The matchmaking concept was also expanded to team games in a feature called "Arranged Teams". In an arranged team game, you could get together with a friend of yours to make a team, which was then anonymously matched up with another team of the same size and rank. Automated tournaments were added in the expansion, where players would compete to be crowned tournament champion in a series of games played throughout the day. In addition to the new game styles, a slew of other features were added including selectable chatroom icons, a friends list, and clan support. World of Warcraft '' World Of Warcraft '', Blizzard's MMORPG released in 2004 uses a completely different server and network structure, and thus does not run on the Battle.net online gaming service. USAGE According to Blizzard's claims, Battle.net is the largest online gaming network in the world. It currently has nearly 12 million active users, who spend more than 2.1 million combined hours online per day. At any one given time, Battle.net averages about 200,000 concurrent users with a peak volume of 400,000 concurrent users. About 50,000 games are being played on typical weekday evenings, more than half of which are StarCraft. There are typically three types of people who go on Battle.net. One type of people are called the gamers. The gamers go on to play either Diablo II, Starcraft, Warcraft III, and sometimes Warcraft II. Some gamers join "clans" that allow them to game together or fight against other clans in games. The second type is the warrers. The warrers join clans and fight (war) with other clans, but they do it outside of the game. Warrers use massload bots to "fill up" a rival clan's channel. Since the channel limit is 40, when they get "full" no more users can join the channel. An example of a warring clan is Clan XK, where XK stands for Xplicit Krisis and members wear the tag (XK). Example: MoD(XK)@USWest. The third type is the chatters. Chatters go on just to communicate with other Battle.net users. A sub-group of chatters is the role-players. They can typically be found in the channel Town Square. BNETD Main article: Bnetd A group of gamer/programmers produced a freely available clone of Battle.net called Bnetd . Blizzard games normally only work over the Internet with Battle.net, but bnetd allowed gamers to run their own private server. In February 2002, lawyers retained by Blizzard threatened legal action under provisions of the (EULA) and the Terms Of Use of Battle.net. {Link without Title} Development of similar software, however, did not end. Upon the base of Bnetd , another program called PvPGN (standing for Player-versus-Player Gaming Network) has risen and represents continued development of Bnetd . COMMUNITY A community of Developers has arisen around Battle.net. Many unofficial Clients are available for Battle.net, and most of the Protocol used by Battle.net-enabled games has been reverse-engineered and published by volunteers. BNLS BNLS, or the '''Battle.Net Login Server''', is a Third Party server used to emulate the hashing and encryption methods required to login to Blizzard Entertainment 's Battle.net servers. It was co-authored by Valhalla Legends (vL), a clan known for its programming members, members ''Skywing'' and ''Yoni'' as a reliable tool to make bot development easier. BNLS is Closed Source and is only hosted by vL. Advantages and Disadvantages Developers often choose BNLS over "local hashing" because no updates are required on the user's end when a Battle.net game is patched, and it requires none of the binary files necessary for local hashing. Some disadvantages cited by critics include slow reactions to patches, a longer time to connect compared to local hashing, and occasional server downtime. Also, some Bot users are uncomfortable sending their CD Key s and passwords to the server in plain text, which is part of the purpose behind the service anyway (BNLS automates calculations required by the client on plaintext data that are difficult in certain situations, including instances where the developer is using Visual Basic because of its lack of support for Unsigned data). Because of the mix of advantages and disadvantages, many developers have included both methods of connecting. Imitators Some BNLS imitators have been made, with varying degrees of success. Most fall short of the popularity of BNLS because it works as it should, comes from one of the most reputable Battle.net development sources in existence, and is the original. On October 19, 2004, ''The-FooL'' released JBLS (Java Battle.net Login Server), an Open Source and somewhat incomplete emulator of BNLS. Immediately, numerous JBLS servers were started. Members of the community that started their own servers and were known to be trustworthy saw some traffic, and indeed, some still receive notable amounts of requests as of November 2005. Although less reliable and often slower, most of the JBLS servers claimed faster response times to patches to Blizzard games. As BNLS downtime became more frequent, some users made permanent switches to JBLS servers. JBLS was also upgraded in somewhat short order to fully support the BNLS protocol by a programmer called ''Hdx'', as at its first release, it did not support the SRP protocol used by Blizzard's new Warcraft III clients. Other Similar Products Related to his Java-based program JavaOp , another member of Valhalla Legends, ''iago'', created a system by which only the Battle.net revision check would be completed. He dubbed this RCRS (Remote CheckRevision Server), which used a plaintext protocol to retrieve only current version information based on Battle.net's logon challenge. This had several advantages, mostly being that a Text Protocol is easier to code for and did not include plaintext passwords or CD keys, but also did not provide for the hashing of CD keys or passwords, leaving users to rely on their own code or to use BNLS for this anyway. Later, another Battle.netizen who contributed to the Valhalla Legends community, ''shadypalm88'', released BNCSUtil , which was an Open-source GPL C++ library that performed all of the local hashing and revision checking. Local revision checks, however, still required local game files to function. Still, this paved the way for already-BNLS-enabled clients to use BNCSUtil for sensitive functions such as CD key decoding and password hashing and using BNLS or RCRS for the revision check. Shortly after, ''MyndFyre'' released MBNCSUtil , a .NET version of BNCSUtil, written in C# , under the GPL. EXTERNAL LINKS
LIST OF BATTLE.NET GAMES EXTERNAL LINKS |