Blizzard Entertainment's Rob Pardo revealed the planned features for Battle.net 2.0, which will launch in 2010 with StarCraft II and be incorporated into World of WarCraft. The biggest change is the introduction of what Blizzard is calling "Real ID" that should eliminate "smurfing" accounts and ensure better matchmaking. Games will be tied to a specific account much like Steam or other digital distribution services. Battle.net 2.0 will be free, however.
Pardo believes that the new matchmaking system is more powerful than Microsoft's TrueSkill and when paired with Real ID, it should help players of all skill levels get into games that they have a chance to win. On this point, the ladder system has been improved to take player skill into account. After a player completes around 10 games, they will be placed into a skill tier. Within each skill tier, the player is matched up with 99 other players in 100 player divisions. The focus of the season is on competing with these 99 other players with tournaments taking place at the end of each season between division leaders.
