Blizzard debuts new look for Battle.net game client in North America

Blizzard gave their game client Battle.net a facelift, a much-needed change over its older interface that have frustrated users for decades.

Blizzard just gave Battle.net a long-overdue revamp, twenty-four years since the game client was first released.

New year, new me

Blizzard is making a much-needed change in the aesthetics of Battle.net. The makeover comes just in time for the start of the year. However, users around the world won't be seeing it in effect yet, as the new user interface is only out for the North America server for now.

The new look keeps the same theme and branding as the previous iteration. It focused more on usability and ergonomics above anything else. The new look moved the list of games from a taskbar on the left to a new bar on top. The rest of the screen previews game content, trailers, and news articles. Blizzard also added a permanent friends list on the right side of the game client, which also shows your friends' current status and activity.

The new look is indeed more appealing than what we've been used to over the years. But apart from aesthetic changes, Blizzard also added some important quality of life changes that put it up to date with other game clients by rival publishers. You can use your keyboard to navigate around now. Sadly, you still can't use your controller to navigate the client.

The new Battle.net 2.0

While it's been a while since Battle.net received a full make-over, this isn't the first change that the game client received over the years. Battle.net 2.0 is actually over a decade old, with its first iteration launching in 2009. In 2013, Blizzard released the Battle.net launcher, allowing players to launch all their Blizzard-published games in just one place. Blizzard then released a mobile port in 2017.

The Battle.net name also almost disappeared entirely. For a short period of time, Blizzard retired the Battle.net name in an attempt to consolidate the branding of both Blizzard and Battle.net. However, they soon realized how iconic the name was, and subsequently returned it to the way it was. Instead of dropping the Battle.net name entirely, they elected to call the client “Blizzard Battle.net” instead.