That would be good to know. When i initially got starcraft 2 it used a new version of battlenet that didn't have any chat channels. You could start a private conversation with other people when viewing their multiplayer profile stats or if they were in your contact list, but there was no chat channels in the traditional sense of the word for people with similar interests to hang out in.
Apart from it being nice having a chat channel for you and your buddies, this was also a problem for most organized gaming communities. It forced people who organized tournaments to invite every single person manually each time, then kick the ones who were about to play the next match before it would start (so as not to be receiving text and "spoilers" on how the others in the channel viewed their game), then invite them back in and kick the ones who would play the next match, and so on. With a standing channel however, players could join and leave on their own as they were alternating from player to spectator.
Needless to say it was one of the most complained about issues, it got acknowledged by Blizzard with a commitment to fix it within 2-3 patches and that's exactly what happened. After getting to work on some bug fixes and gameplay balance changes they sat down and implemented chat channels for the next update. I think it still took them a couple of months (don't exactly remember now, but game was released in the end of July and chat channels were implemented around early autumn), but just the fact that it was acknowledged early on prevented most of the fuss.
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03-09-2011, 02:24 PM
Hadn't thought of that. I haven't used Steam for ages...I wonder if you can have chat lobbies for a whole game in that way?
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