What do people have against the battle.net launcher?

[LilSaihah]

More clicking and more updating. It's frustrating to have to go through windows to get to what I want. Not strictly relevant to WoW, as this is the WoW forums and not the Hearthstone forums, but:

I want to play Hearthstone; have to boot the launcher, launcher wants to patch, close launcher, reboot launcher, hearthstone needs to patch, wait until it's done, launch hearthstone. That's, what, 7 steps before I've even opened Hearthstone.

Compared to, say, ye olde starcraft;

Open game, sign into battlenet. There's an update, starts download. When the download's done, close starcraft, restart starcraft. 4 steps.

On top of that, 50% of hearthstone's development and the jibberjabber from the devs about Hearthstone has been that you can "get right in and play a game". When you get stonewalled by two sets of patches, you're waiting for anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour. That might seem trivial, but it shoots that idea right in the face.

[cidic]

I've had the launcher since it was in closed beta (when it required Blizzard giving you access to it to even use) While being able to chat from it was something they talked about which is not there yet and they have given good reason for it (server side problems they are looking into) the fact that it just makes things a ton easier is nice. I keep a super clean desktop (zero icons period) On first boot up of my machine yes the launcher does take a minute to load up but that is really NOT an issue. Once it is loaded and tossed into the system tray it's forgotten about till I want to look at it.

I've seen the arguements about people just wanting the icons and you can still make/have them if you wish. I for one find the launcher great any games I own from Blizzard are a click away with the launcher to either install or start if they are already installed. I don't HAVE to log into any game to see which one of my friends is currently online and playing I can just look at the launcher and see who is around and if I want to join in.

[Kiteh]

I have 2 accounts, on 2 seperate drives.

You would think i'd just be able to change the install path in the launcher on a patch day, right?

Turns out the launcher doesn't like to update a 2nd copy of the game once it has done the first.

It gives an error which takes you to the Blizz site where the advice is 'restart your pc and try again'. The actual fix was removing the launcher from the wow folder.

I know these things are put in to try and make life easier, but it truly is one more thing to go wrong.

[alexkeren]

wait can you not just run wow.exe or wow64.exe anymore to go straight into game?

and i agree they are just unnecessary except for patch days.

You can for now, eventually it'll only be the launcher you can use to start the game.

Why wait for patch day to get the patch though? That's one of the big pluses of the current WoW launcher and the Battle.net App, they download the patch for you ahead of time so on patch day you do NOT have to wait.

[Deleted]

Crying about having convenience given to you by Blizzard...why am I not surprised?

I swear blizz could hand some of you a sack of gold and you would just bitch about how heavy it was...

as i said once before ppl will complain about anything.
for example give 100 random ppl a free cookie
-some will be happy
-some will complain about the flavor of the cookie
-some will complain about how the cookie looks
-some will complain about the package the cookie came with
-some will complain that they only got 1 free cookie

really you cant please everybody.

[Redpanda]

Im gonna get called a blizzard fanboy or whatever for this but....well its mmocforums so lol. But this is blizzards first foray into a consolidated launcher, something like Steam. Steam is streamlined af but it took them a while to get it how it is now. Blizzard will fix the buggy shit with the launcher till then if you dont like it launch wow from the folder till it works smoothly. Its not that big a deal to me though :>

[ablib]

More clicking and more updating. It's frustrating to have to go through windows to get to what I want. Not strictly relevant to WoW, as this is the WoW forums and not the Hearthstone forums, but:

I want to play Hearthstone; have to boot the launcher, launcher wants to patch, close launcher, reboot launcher, hearthstone needs to patch, wait until it's done, launch hearthstone. That's, what, 7 steps before I've even opened Hearthstone.

Compared to, say, ye olde starcraft;

Open game, sign into battlenet. There's an update, starts download. When the download's done, close starcraft, restart starcraft. 4 steps.

On top of that, 50% of hearthstone's development and the jibberjabber from the devs about Hearthstone has been that you can "get right in and play a game". When you get stonewalled by two sets of patches, you're waiting for anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour. That might seem trivial, but it shoots that idea right in the face.

Your problems are that you're not leaving the launcher open. If you left it running in the tray, you never see the game updating. You never see the download. You just get right in and play. Waiting for your game to be patched on patch day is a thing of the past.

[Jester Joe]

I want to play Hearthstone; have to boot the launcher, launcher wants to patch, close launcher, reboot launcher, hearthstone needs to patch, wait until it's done, launch hearthstone. That's, what, 7 steps before I've even opened Hearthstone.

That could easily be fixed though on Blizzards end, just put in feedback that they should have it like Steam, which asks you if you want to reboot the launcher for the update now, rather than force you to take it. It's not a perfect launcher right now, but it is in beta(?), and it's a lot better than some people were making it out to seem like.

Recently my battlenet opens 5-7 agent.exe and they use 100% of my CPU memory pretty much. (with wow running).
So i have to exit battlenet and close agent.exe in task manager.
No virus what so ever, runned endless of scans from various acclaimed virus scanners.

Honestly it is probably a bug, since it's still in beta I believe?

[cidic]

Honestly it is probably a bug, since it's still in beta I believe?

They removed the beta branding from the looks of it about I think 2 months ago? I've not seen it say beta for awhile now. However I would agree that is most likely a bug that is going on.

[Creotor]

I love it. Got it set to automatic login, but have the "Start with OS" disabled and clicking the close button actually shuts it down so that it's not running all the time. I simply launch it when I actually want to play (which is pretty much never for the past few months).

[banur]

Why do I need to do this extra step? why not have it so I can hit a desktop shortcut and in the background the game will load the launcher and hit play for me? Does blizzard feel the need an extra confirmation that I actually want to play hearthstone.

Anyway I still think launcher is better than no launcher because I no longer need to enter my password every single time I log into wow.

What happens when you launch WoW, D3 or SC2 through the exe? It starts WoW, D3 or SC2 and presents the login screen. Have you seen a login screen for HS? That is why you are redirected to the launcher.

[alexkeren]

The thing I don't like is when I have a hearthstone.exe shortcut and I launch it what happens is. Instead of launching the game it redirects me to the launcher and then on the launcher I need to hit "Play" Why do I need to do this extra step? why not have it so I can hit a desktop shortcut and in the background the game will load the launcher and hit play for me? Does blizzard feel the need an extra confirmation that I actually want to play hearthstone.

Anyway I still think launcher is better than no launcher because I no longer need to enter my password every single time I log into wow.

Why not click the launcher icon to start with? What if after you're done with HS you want to play another Blizzard game, why not just select play from the launcher that is already open and get right in INSTEAD of waiting to go through the entire login/authentication process AGAIN.

[Jester Joe]

They removed the beta branding from the looks of it about I think 2 months ago? I've not seen it say beta for awhile now. However I would agree that is most likely a bug that is going on.

Ah, I haven't seen much about it honestly, I expected some "It's out of beta!" advertisement, unless I missed that. Although it would make sense, since even Hearthstone is out of beta, and that's what it was launch with/near.

[Deleted]

I like it. It's pretty convenient. I think people just don't like it when they feel something is being pushed on them. I mean, did you see that guy who got a blue response on the frontpage who felt Blizzard was assuming he couldn't keep his desktop in an orderly state and got all butthurt and offended by it? I can't remember the last time I saw such a wee delicate flower.

[Maoli]

My only issue is the flaky integration with the games. For example on my machine when I time out playing WoW it takes me back to the WoW login screen within the game. It's got my email filled it but no password. The launcher should set my password so when I time out I dont' have to type it in. That would make me happy.

Aside from that I like the launcher. I NEVER load other games and usually get annoyed when I end up having to update. I'd rather have the launcher there and update when need be.

[Mihalik]

Fuck if I know it.

I actually find the Launcher very convenient and comfortable to use, and consider it a major upgrade.

- - - Updated - - -

Sip.

If you time out, just hit escape, exit to launcher and hit the WoW icon again.

[Joey Ray III]

Why wait for patch day to get the patch though? That's one of the big pluses of the current WoW launcher and the Battle.net App, they download the patch for you ahead of time so on patch day you do NOT have to wait.

well with 10MB per second download it's really not much of a wait tbh.

[Underverse]

I think it's great. It's like steam, but not shit, and with fewer sales.

[OneSent]

Not really. I agree whole heartedly. I don't like having programs for the sake of having programs on my computer; and that's exactly what launchers are.

Now that every game imaginable is tied to a launcher (origin, steam, battle.net, minecraft, yada yada) soon you'll need a launcher launcher to organize all of your launchers. Or we could just take a step back to a simpler time...when I knew what program I wanted to run, so I ran it myself. Instead of clicking on a launcher, and then selecting it in a launcher.
Because at the rate it's going, in 2020 if you have a power surge in the middle of the raid, it won't be like in 2010 when you could have just rebooted double clicked WoW and logged back on like a bat out of hell... No... First you have to wait for all of your launcher launcher launchers to load so you can select the appropriate launcher launcher so you can boot up your battle.net launcher and then launch WoW.

This pretty much sums it up for me as well. People keep calling it a convenience, but it's not really a convenience when you have to jump through multiple hoops just to get to the game you want to play. And besides, it was a never a "convenience" I asked for.

I miss the days when you could simply double-clicked the .exe to the game you wanted to play and "bam", you were at the login screen. When the WoW launcher was first implemented with Cataclysm, I was like "okay, don't really see the point, but it's no big deal."

More recently in MoP, when I launch the .exe for WoW, I am taken to the Blizzard launcher as before, except now, there's a period of initializing that can last several minutes. I'm a very patient person, but when you disconnect during a raid at peak hours, the last thing you want is to get stuck in a server queue because the Blizzard launcher had to "initialize" a game you were literally just playing seconds beforehand.

[Duffie]

I love the launcher so far. I can see what friends are playing what games before logging into a game. This helps influence what game ill play first that day.

i think the only "problem" I'm having is that if my launcher minimized and i click a game icon that it doesn't open the game outright but opens the launch on that game instead.

Then again like i said before it's nice knowing who's playing that game before jumping in. That way i know to hop on a alt or my main.