Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Stop Confusing Us Blizzard!

Stop Confusing Us Blizzard!

Don’t you hate it when you wake up one day, look around to see what’s new and happening in the world of games, and find that we’re still talking about something extraordinarily silly? Well, that’s what happened this week. Blizzard, instead of going off and being productive by making StarCraft III or a Switch version of Overwatch , is playing the name game again. It’s trying to mess with our minds again.

As you may recall, Blizzard Entertainment decided to drop the Battle.net name back in September 2016. It decided to pull all those services together and call them Blizzard. Nevermind that we all knew it as Battle.net. Suddenly, we were to refer to things as Blizzard Streaming or Blizzard Voice. Battle.net would still be there, but no one would refer to it as such. Okay, fine. We’re used to it and will probably still call it Battle.net anyway, but fine. Except now, it’s making things even more convoluted both by bringing Battle.net back and keeping the Blizzard name.

Now, everything is going to be Blizzard Battle.net . That’s the new branding. Which is ridiculous, because now the name is even longer and more unwieldy. Battle.net was simple. We all knew it. We all used it. Having to call things Blizzard Voice or Blizzard Streaming was a bit annoying, but we adapted. Now, everything has changed again to add even more words to an already overcomplicated situation. Blizzard Battle.net isn’t just going to be some logo. Even in press releases and other important posts, the company itself is going to shove in that Blizzard name so it can be Blizzard Battle.net.

With business, you want things to be as succinct as possible. We don’t want to waste all this time typing things out. I mean, that’s why people tend to use emoji or rely on shortened acronyms like FTW, BRB, LOL, WOW, and so on. Blizzard trying to stretch things out by shoving its own name ahead of Battle.net is taking up too much time and attention. No one is going to bother with the whole thing, unless they’re in a position (like me) and have to put Blizzard Battle.net in because it is the most precise means of saying a thing.

It’s not like people need to be reminded of who Blizzard Entertainment is all the time. The company has been around since 1991, we’re familiar. As for Battle.net itself, it has existed since 1996. This is a platform that is 21-years-old. If it’s old enough to drink, I think it’s old enough to not need some sort of qualifier to constantly remind us which company it is irrevocably tied to. Beating us over the head with it reeks of those articles that abuse terms in the hopes it is good for the SEO by inserting the full name of a product in every other sentence.

Stop Confusing Us Blizzard!

And, if anything, all of these changes in a short span are only going to make things more confusing. That’s one of the reasons Blizzard Entertainment decided to go with Blizzard Battle.net. To supposedly keep things clear for all of those people who suddenly decided to get into the company’s products and services in that less than one year span between September 2016 and August 2017 when the Battle.net name was suddenly as unspeakable as Voldemort’s name. It hasn’t been that long. We know. Keep it simple.

Listen, reinventing yourself is great. Everyone should be willing to think outside the box and change their perspective. But for some people and companies, it just isn’t reasonable. Blizzard Entertainment is an industry legend, a company that has outlived many others and will likely prosper far into the future. Instead of trying to screw around with people by changing its name, it should stick with what works. Let Battle.net be Battle.net. What do you say?

To top