New Social Features Now in Beta in the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App

I welcome this feature. Normally after every play session I close out of my desktop app. Now I can just go invisible when I'm not playing any games and wanting to watch a movie/shows, browse the internet, etc. Some people who mean no harm see someone whose status is "Online" as ready to play a game or chat you up. My previous alternatives were close the app out entirely, send out a btag broadcast, or set my status to DND and then wait for the inevitable "Yo Yot, I see you're dnd, everything ok?"

Maybe some people have never ran into this type of scenario. It's a possibility I'm a minority in this. Either way this is nice for me because I don't see going invisible for a short time as a rejection of my battletag friends.

What a useless thing. Will still show as playing for other wow players. Well, I guess I will keep my friends list to zero for the years to come.

I can't find the social tab...

blizzard completely missed the point of "appear offline mode" , someone who works there has to be smarter than this?.... "appear offline" means you want to log into a battle net game(any of them) and appear offline to EVERYONE. Reasons don't need to be given, if someone doesn't understand that, so what maybe its not for you but folks out there want that feature implemented in that way for sure. Personal reasons are unimportant , that's on an individual basis. Also yes some folks want to play mmo's alone because they like the game style ,or story, or whatever. I would play Wow if it was single player game for sure - again "YOU" don't have to understand that, everyone is different, its a big world....who would have thought?

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

In the case of World of Warcraft, your guildmates will see your character come online and enter WoW’s in-game chat channels, and anyone who has you as a character-level friend will see you online on their friends list.

Rather defeats the whole point of appearing offline, doesn't it.

Originally Posted by Alayea

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

In the case of World of Warcraft, your guildmates will see your character come online and enter WoW’s in-game chat channels, and anyone who has you as a character-level friend will see you online on their friends list.

Rather defeats the whole point of appearing offline, doesn't it.

That's cuz they're stupid.

Originally Posted by Vargur

I can't find the social tab...

Because you're an EU player, not activated yet......

Originally Posted by Alayea

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

In the case of World of Warcraft, your guildmates will see your character come online and enter WoW’s in-game chat channels, and anyone who has you as a character-level friend will see you online on their friends list.

Rather defeats the whole point of appearing offline, doesn't it.

Seems like kind of a tech limitation maybe.

Originally Posted by cacahuete

Because you're an EU player, not activated yet......

Yeah, pretty shitty of MMO-C to not include a disclaimer and just assume everyone is USArican.

Originally Posted by Alayea

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

In the case of World of Warcraft, your guildmates will see your character come online and enter WoW’s in-game chat channels, and anyone who has you as a character-level friend will see you online on their friends list.

Rather defeats the whole point of appearing offline, doesn't it.

Only if you fail to see the battle.net app as more than just WoW.

Originally Posted by Darth Dracula

Seems like kind of a tech limitation maybe.

Not personally directed at you, Darth Dracula, and apologies to the poster of the BlizzardWatch comment (but it's such a nice summation):

"but the endeavor turned out to be far more technically challenging than they expected and it was soon mysteriously dropped."

This is the pat stock bullshit answer. They didn't want us having an invisible mode. They used to say as such, especially when pertaining to WoW. "WoW is an MMO, which means you shouldn't be able to hide from people."

I don't work for Blizzard, but I know enough about how the Battle.net client works that I can tell you straight-up how to implement an offline mode. In fact, players already did it using another method. Some people found out if you blocked the port the client uses for social communication, you appeared to go offline.

What did Blizzard do? They patched the client and changed the port and made it unblockable. If you block the new one, the entire client disconnects.

They simply didn't want people to be able to appear offline. Keep that in mind every time they roll out the stock bullshit "technical difficulties" excuse.

And before you think the person was "full of it", like one of the replies over there did, here's an excerpt of the followup:

Making shit up? When people first started asking for an appear offline feature, Blizzard kept saying they didn't want one because they didn't want people hiding online. The technical bullshit excuse came later.

What backseat access do you need to read publicly-available comments on their own forums? If you're referring to my knowledge of how the client works, it's because it's not some mysterious, arcane program that only Blizzard knows the workings of. The client continuously pings everyone on your friends list for a status update. All the client has to do is return a value saying you're in invisible mode. That's it. Suddenly you won't show up on the client to other people anymore.

As for the port blocking, go Google it. Players found a workaround, and Blizzard stopped it. That clearly demonstrates that it wasn't an impossible hurdle to overcome and it was more about their own opinion.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Yot

Only if you fail to see the battle.net app as more than just WoW.

Things were a lot different back when appearing offline was first announced on September 20, 2012. Diablo III was only about 5 months old, Mists of Pandaria was just about to launch, and Hearthstone, Overwatch, and Heroes of the Storm didn't exist. You also have to remember that the Battle.net app was still in its early stages, with the mandatory push not being until shortly before the launch of the Warlords of Draenor expansion in fall 2014.

So given all that, you'll have to pardon me if the only thing I care about is getting an ACTUAL appear offline for WoW.

You need to consolidate and harmonize your social systems across games into one social system.

These systems differ across games, with different takes on the same things often for no legitimate reason. It is a mess.

The groups, channels, and chat features of the launcher should be accessible in-game and vice versa.

Originally Posted by Alayea

Not personally directed at you, Darth Dracula, and apologies to the poster of the BlizzardWatch comment (but it's such a nice summation):




And before you think the person was "full of it", like one of the replies over there did, here's an excerpt of the followup:



- - - Updated - - -



Things were a lot different back when appearing offline was first announced on September 20, 2012. Diablo III was only about 5 months old, Mists of Pandaria was just about to launch, and Hearthstone, Overwatch, and Heroes of the Storm didn't exist. You also have to remember that the Battle.net app was still in its early stages, with the mandatory push not being until shortly before the launch of the Warlords of Draenor expansion in fall 2014.

So given all that, you'll have to pardon me if the only thing I care about is getting an ACTUAL appear offline for WoW.

What that guy said though applies to the Battle.net Service. You can appear offline on Battle.net yet still show up to people who have your characters name added on WoW. I've often been disconnected from Battle.net whilst in WoW and I lose access to my Battle.net Friends list and show up as offline to them yet still show online if they add my character to Friends list INGAME.

Hence why I see them as too different types of Lists and why it seems the default friends list in WoW was never updated when they added the B.net friends layer over top of it, and why it seems like it it could be a limitation thing. Since the in-game friend function has NO connection to Battle.net launcher thus would not include the Battle.net coding that makes appear Offline possible as it predates it by half a decade whereas all other Blizzard games have launched with the Battle.net App coded into them.

So they've actually done it. old blizzard network name. cool.

Originally Posted by Sariengrey

blizzard completely missed the point of "appear offline mode" , someone who works there has to be smarter than this?.... "appear offline" means you want to log into a battle net game(any of them) and appear offline to EVERYONE. Reasons don't need to be given, if someone doesn't understand that, so what maybe its not for you but folks out there want that feature implemented in that way for sure. Personal reasons are unimportant , that's on an individual basis. Also yes some folks want to play mmo's alone because they like the game style ,or story, or whatever. I would play Wow if it was single player game for sure - again "YOU" don't have to understand that, everyone is different, its a big world....who would have thought?

Not a single MMO behave like that. Just don't play MMOs if you're socially akward. Like we don't give a fuck you're so special you deserve a super special mode to be super secretly connected but nobody should know in a massively open world game.

So that's where my 15$ went.

Originally Posted by Daish

the appear offline function helps stalkers and harassers more than anyone else gg bliz you cucks

the less than 1% of those people is so minor its not worth worrying about
the rest of the population rejoices

Originally Posted by Vargur

Yeah, pretty shitty of MMO-C to not include a disclaimer and just assume everyone is USArican.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

The Groups beta is available now in the Americas region. Head to the new Social tab to get the party started!

True love between Blizzard and EU players. Well, we must wait, as usual.

Ya, it sucked not being able to play wow on sick days becasue I have co-workers on there, problem solved. Does it work in game too for all your characters? That is the real question.