The Starcraft II beta has been out for a few days now, and if the beta forums are any indication a lot of people are still trying to wrap their heads around the new strategies. Sitting down to play for the first time, it feels so much like the original Starcraft, but there are also enough changes present that it feels like a true sequel.

This post won't be about the gameplay, though, as I'm not near pro enough to be talking about a 3 Hatchery Muta build or the Ayumi counter with any kind of credibility. We plan on having a number of videos and unit explanation articles for you at some point down the road, but we're all still getting a handle on the new game.

Today, I want to give you a look at the new Battle.net -- what features are already in place, and what features you can expect to be there by retail.

Welcome to Battle.net!



Step 1: Log in. Predictably, the login screen is pretty basic. You're asked for your Battle.net username and password. Once you've been authenticated, you can select any of your profiles for use in the game (right now, every account is only allowed one profile.) Get your profile, hit enter, and you're at the main welcome screen.

As you can see, since this is the beta, a number of options are grayed out. I'll go one by one across the features that ARE available, and then give some brief insight onto what the grayed out options are.

Multiplayer - The Ladder System



As everyone following the beta should know by now, single-player won't be available until retail. If you want to find out more about the single-player campaign, you can check out my hands-on from a few months back. The main focus of the beta, of course, is the multiplayer. Let's click on the big multiplayer tab in the upper left!

This is the main multiplayer page. Here you can select your gametype and race and jump into a ladder match, play an unranked free-for-all game, or set up your own private game with friends, the A.I., or even randoms if you just want to test out your game in a match that won't affect your ranking.

Currently, the only options available are 1v1, 2v2, and free-for-all. As I mentioned earlier, free-for-all is unranked, but the 1v1 and 2v2 gametypes are on Blizzard's new ladder system. Before I dive into an explanation of the ladder system, I want to point out one nice feature that you can see above -- the map preferences button. Clicking on that brings up a list of all the maps you have, and a number of votes you can put on maps you dislike. By checking off maps you don't want to play, the matchmaking system will attempt to avoid putting you in any games running those maps. So far I've found it useful in limiting my 1v1 matches to actual 1v1 maps, since I generally prefer those over a 1v1 on a map designed for 2v2.

The ladders work like this -- for your first 10 matches on each game type, you're unranked, and you're randomly thrown against opponents in an attempt to determine your placement. Once you complete your 10 matches, Blizzard uses a complicated super mysterious algorithm (probably just comparing win-losses) to place you in one of the tournament leagues -- platinum, gold, silver, bronze, and copper. (Read the official Battle.net explanation of the ladder system here.)

Within each overall group are divisions. Each division has 100 players each, and the idea behind the divisions is to give you a somewhat familiar group of people to play against, so you can start to learn the strategies and playstyles of the people you're going up against. It's unclear if you will ONLY be playing against people in your division for ladder games -- the beta seems to be pulling from anyone in your league to match you against, but that may be because the beta pool is currently very small (My 1v1 division still doesn't have a full 100 yet). You will, though, only be playing against people in your league, so you don't have to worry about getting stomped by a progaming platinum player if you're just starting out (beyond your initial 10 matches, at least).

Once you're placed into a division, you can see your rank, your division, your record, and your points by clicking on the ladder icon in the top left portion of the screen. You can see my pathetic placement in the copper division -- I won my first two placement matches and was proud of myself, and then got crushed in the remaining eight. Oh well! This actually ended up being a good placement for me -- while I wouldn't describe myself as a total noob, my wins and losses are much more even. Guess I'm not as good as I thought! (Although, of course, I was 12 or 13 when the original StarCraft came out, so I was probably just deluding myself back then into thinking I was much better than I actually was).

As you play ranked matches, your score goes up every time you win. You get more points for defeating people ranked higher than you, and Battle.net even suggests to you who is favored to win the match on the loading screen, based on each player's score and rank. At the end of the "tournament seasons," the top 10 players in each division qualify for finals, and matches will be held until eventually there is one clear winner for each league.

Personally, I like this new system a lot, but it's not without flaws. The positives are that you have a MUCH better chance of actually getting to do some tournament play, which is something Blizzard has said they're actively encouraging. If everyone was ranked straight from 1 to 2,000,000, there would be virtually no way for anyone in the middle to move up to a point where they could try to compete. It also, as mentioned earlier, gives you the chance to play against some of the same people regularly, so that you can adapt your strategy and become a bit more familiar with the people you're competing against.

The downside, and one that a lot of people are complaining about, is that this system doesn't always guarantee the absolute best will get into tournament qualifying positions. Inevitably, some divisions will end up stronger than others, and it's entirely possible the 60th ranked person in one division may be better than the top ranked player in another -- some players who qualify within their division may find themselves getting absolutely destroyed when final tournament play starts.

Personally, I think giving everyone a chance is better and healthier for the playerbase as a whole in the long run, as discouragement is a huge reason why people may stop playing the game, but I understand why some of the more hardcore players are upset.

Multiplayer - Nonranked Play & Custom Games



If you don't feel like playing ladder, you can just jump into some casual non-ranked games through the "Custom Games" option on the main multiplayer page.

If you choose to create a game, this is what you'll see. Again, since it's the beta, there's not a ton of options, but this will be the place to go to play all of the user-made maps and mods. Pick your map, create your game, and then invite a friend, add an A.I., or open it up to the public. Pretty simple. Right now, only the "Very Easy" difficulty is selectable for the A.I., as Blizzard really wants people to be playing multiplayer so that they can test balance issues and the matchmaking system.

If you don't want to be the creator of a game, you can join a custom game instead. Rather than see a massive list of individual games, you instead select what map and what gametype you want to play on, and are then matched into a custom game of that type. So far, it seems like a much more effective way of joining games, rather than frantically scrolling through a list of 1,000 to find exactly what you want.

Profiles



You'll be spending most of your time in the multiplayer tab, but there's a few more cool things Battle.net has to offer besides just matchmaking. Clicking on the little "person" icon will take you to your profile, where among other things, you can set your profile picture, see a list of recent games you've played, and view statistics and achievements.

Unfortunately, all achievement data is disabled for the beta (it's what the grayed out box is next to the profile tab in the upper left), as is some of the more advanced stat keeping. You can, however, see your basic ranking in the ladder, your total wins, and a list of the most recent games you've played and their outcomes.

One of my favorite features of the new Battle.net is what you're able to do within your match history. By clicking on any of the games there, you're taken to the screen you normally see at the end of a match -- the score breakdown, economic history, and initial build order of that particular game. The build order is by far the most valuable piece of information, because you can directly compare your build order and times to that of your opponent. It's really nice to see that the reason you got rushed and lost is because you decided to build a refinery before your barracks, and that your opponent had a 4-unit lead on you before you even got your first zergling out.

Information like this is helpful to both new and veteran players -- newer players can learn from those they beat, and vets can see the individual seconds where they fell behind in their macro game. Unfortunately, the build order doesn't show for the entire game, but it usually covers at least the first five minutes, which is typically enough to show you where you went wrong.

Replays

If you want a more in-depth look at the entire game, you can click on the camera icon in the top left area, which takes you to the replay screen (It's grayed out in the above picture because I was in a game lobby.) Here you can see a list of every single game you've ever played (assuming you haven't deleted the replay), and can watch a full replay of the entirety of the match. We'll be throwing up a video of the replay system at some point in the near future, but I'll tell you now that it's REALLY nice.

You can use a freeform camera to bounce around the replay, switch back and forth between the PoV of any player in the game (literally seeing what their screen saw as they played), fast forward and rewind, and even slow down to see mass-scale battles play out. SC1, of course, had replays too, but it's nice to see the whole thing integrated into Battle.net like this. Additionally, the replay files are really small (like around 100k), so it's easy to share matches with your friends, or watch pro player games to try to pick up some pointers.

The Friends List

Finally, the last major feature of Battle.net that we have access to is the Friends List, which you can see down in the bottom right corner. Clicking on that little person icon brings up the friends window.

You can add friends in two ways -- you can add their StarCraft username, or their actual battle.net ID. Adding a friend through the Battle.net ID is the way to go, as it allows you to see and interact with them in any online Blizzard game (*cough*WoW*cough*). While not currently in place, WoW is getting a patch soon to allow cross-game chat, and presumably this will be a feature in Diablo 3 as well. If you're not trusted enough to get a person's email, you can add them just by their StarCraft username.

The friends list functions similarly to Steam: you can invite people to games, start up a regular chat, start up a voice chat, and view their profile just by right-clicking their name in your list. The text chat works well -- my one experience with the voice chat was that it was pretty choppy and had some static, but I'm not sure if that was the fault of Battle.net or the microphone of the person I was chatting with.

Speaking of Steam, just in case you wanted to know, Steam integrates really well with Battle.net -- I've had no problems so far, aside from receiving angry IMs from people while I was taking screenshots for this article.

What's not implemented yet

As you saw in the profile section, the Achievements tab is not active and not yet implemented. When it goes live, though, it will cover both single-player and multiplayer achievements. From what I saw last summer, the achievements will be similar to what's already in place with WoW, which is an XBL-like system with certain achievements being worth a certain amount of points. The other tab that's grayed out that I haven't talked about yet is the social tab.

Currently, there are no chat lobbies or generalized chat where people can talk and hang out, or even private chat channels -- the only way to currently chat right now is through your friends list. I can't imagine Blizzard having cut out lobbies, so it stands to reason that the Social tab is where all the chat & community stuff will be. Once (and if) these tabs become active in the beta, I'll fill you in.

That was (hopefully) a comprehensive look at what Battle.net is looking like at this point in time. If you have any questions, or if I didn't clarify something, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer them all. Also check out the photos in the gallery -- they're bigger than the ones above, the text is much more readable, and there are some extra photos in there I didn't include up here. Also leave a comment if you're in the beta too and looking for people to play with.

If you're not in the beta, the second wave of invites is going out soon! Make sure you're fully registered on Battle.net if you want in!

Click to open photo gallery: