Blizzard Entertainment announced today that it will be “transitioning away from” using the Battle.net name over occasional confusion caused by the name. Also affirmed existing Battle.net tech “will continue to serve as the central nervous system for Blizzard games.” The company will refer to its online and multiplayer technology more simply as “Blizzard tech”.
“We’re going to be transitioning away from using the Battle.net name for our gaming service and the functionality connected to it. Battle.net technology will continue to serve as the central nervous system for Blizzard games—nothing is changing in that regard. We’ll just be referring to our various products and services using the Blizzard name instead. You’ve already seen this recently with things like “Blizzard Streaming” and “Blizzard Voice,” and more changes are on the way.
When we created Battle.net, the idea of including a tailored online-gaming service together with your game was more of a novel concept, so we put a lot of focus on explaining what the service was and how it worked, including giving it a distinct name,” Blizzard wrote. “Over time, though, we’ve seen that there’s been occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities under which everything falls — Blizzard and Battle.net. Given that built-in multiplayer support is a well-understood concept and more of a normal expectation these days, there isn’t as much of a need to maintain a separate identity for what is essentially our networking technology.
Battle.net launched in 1996 alongside the original Diablo and offered players chat rooms and multiplayer game listings. Blizzard launched a major revamp for Battle.net, called Battle.net 2.0, in 2009. Many of the company’s websites and forums are still hosted on Battle.neomains.””
Source – worldofwarcraft.com
Includes several titles.
Which was showcased at E3 2003.