If you are an online gaming enthusiast, chances are that you surely know about Battle.net. Being Blizzard Entertainment’s very own gaming platform, Battle.net came online back in 1996 with the first Diablo game. But very soon, there might be no more ‘Battle.net’, the title, as Blizzard recently announced on the World of Warcraft’s website that they would be “transitioning away from” using the name as it creates “occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities.”
The official statement from the company read, “We’re going to be transitioning away from using the Battle.net name for our gaming service and the functionality connected to it. Battle.net technology will continue to serve as the central nervous system for Blizzard games—nothing is changing in that regard. We’ll just be referring to our various products and services using the Blizzard name instead. You’ve already seen this recently with things like “Blizzard Streaming” and “Blizzard Voice,” and more changes are on the way.”
The statement further read, “When we created Battle.net, the idea of including a tailored online-gaming service together with your game was more of a novel concept, so we put a lot of focus on explaining what the service was and how it worked, including giving it a distinct name. Over time, though, we’ve seen that there’s been occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities under which everything falls—Blizzard and Battle.net. Given that built-in multiplayer support is a well-understood concept and more of a normal expectation these days, there isn’t as much of a need to maintain a separate identity for what is essentially our networking technology.”
The change will be brought about in the course of next several months. The new name might just be “Blizzard Tech” just like Blizzard Streaming or Blizzard Voice.
