10 Things Blizzard Want You To Forget

10. Rebranding Battle.net... And Then Changing Their Minds

Battle.net is an industry icon. Released in the lofty days of dial-up internet in 1996, alongside the release of dungeon crawler epic, Diablo.

The Battle.net name has been synonymous with some of video games greatest accomplishments, and players fondest memories. This made Blizzard's decision to move away from the Battle.net branding to the much blander "Blizzard" in 2016 very confusing.

At the time, Blizzard cited "occasional confusion and inefficiencies related to having two separate identities" as the core reason for the shift away from its iconic brand name. Naturally, hardcore Blizzard fans were outraged. The name Battle.net had been there through the good times and the bad for 20 years, and choosing to change it over "occasional confusion" felt like overkill.

This change didn't stick.

Less than 6 months later, Blizzard advertised that Destiny 2 would be running through their service Battle.net. Fans, and seemingly employees at Blizzard, were confused about what the name of the service was now. It took Blizzard another 4 months to finally clear up confusion, by releasing a statement saying the official name for Blizzard's online client is "Blizzard Battle.net".

It was a messy attempt at re-branding that could have been a lot smoother had the company been transparent from the off.