When everything is said and done about Starcraft 2, which was a major disappointment for me, Heart of the Swarm had many redeeming qualities that made it very enjoyable to play. I still think Blizzard has taken a huge step in the wrong direction with their "Battle.net 2.0," but at least HotS redesigned the Battle.net layout completely and made everything more streamlined. I still don't understand why Blizzard would hire a bunch of console online matchmaking designers to design Battle.net 2.0. This isn't a console game whose menu functions with presses of buttons. This is a PC game and we have keyboards! But no utilization of the tool I see. I cannot help but to compare this with Warcraft 3, which had a blooming online community just because the older Battle.net was designed with the awareness that everyone that gets on Battle.net can type, for one, and it further allowed activities that promote such friendship, such as hosting custom games through a lobby system. Starcraft 2 feels so barren in comparison, even with the after-thought additions of chat channels after years of complaints from users, and when you realize that this game feels barren, it should be quite a shock because Starcraft 2 has so, so many more users than Warcraft 3 even in its peak of popularity.
That being said, I still continue to enjoy the game and it deserves a 5 star considering how much fun the core gameplay is. But if I was in charge, I would first fire all the idiots that worked on Battle.net 2.0 and go back to its roots. And I would add LAN for god's sake because anyone who has watched Starcraft 2 tournaments know that it is quite a joke when tournaments with more than $200,000 in prize gets stalled for HOURS because Blizzard denied LAN access.
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