Blizzard and Facebook are now listed as “It’s Complicated,” as the new Battle.net 2.0 will give players the option to link their Facebook profiles, importing friends from one service to the other.
Yes, you read that right: If you link your Facebook profile with your Battle.net account, you’ll be able to instantly add all of your Facebook friends to your various Battle.net friends lists for all of Blizzard’s games, including StarCraft II and Diablo III.
That is the only major feature of the new “integration” that has been announced thus far, and given Facebook’s recent crackdown on the sort of messages games can automatically send out, whether we’ll see much more or not is completely up in the air.
“We’re pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players,” said Blizzard COO Paul Sams. “This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together.”
I have to admit, the ability to instantly import your friends list from Facebook into StarCraft does sound pretty handy, rather than just individually adding everybody. As long as it’s just that, I think it’s a positive move.
Spamming your friends with notifications, though? I can only hope they leave that part out, lest you want your feed to look something like this:
*July 29th, 9:05 PM: Jeff needs to construct additional Pylons.
*July 29th, 9:07 PM: Jeff needs more Vespene Gas.
*July 29th, 9:07 PM: Jeff just got Zergling rushed.
*July 29th, 9:11 PM: Jeff was an idiot and didn’t have any Detector units for those burrowed Roaches, gg.
On second thought, that might be kind of hilarious.
The new Facebook functionality in Battle.net will be tested in the near future in the StarCraft II beta test, and will be available to everybody when the game ships at the end of July.
