Rob Pardo spoke with The Escapist about how Battle.net will approach smurfing or “noob-stomping” when StarCraft II is released. Some good players would create multiple Battle.net accounts in the original Starcraft to pick on noobs, and to quickly rise in the ladder by cheating the system. Some would use the multiple accounts to beat people with hacks, or to load 99+ bots.
With one centralized account, smurfing and all types of abuse will hopefully end to offer players a more controlled and fun environment. Matchmaking pits players of same range of ranks, discouraging progamers from crushing the less experienced and skilled players.
Pardo: “Really good players, they don’t necessarily want to play themselves. They want to go beat up on the noob because that’s really fun,” he said. “When you look at WarCraft III, one of the mistakes we made with that game was that you could make unlimited accounts. All someone had to do, once we knew what their skill level was, they’d just go and make a new account. As far as we were concerned they were a noobie.
“In StarCraft II, we’re making sure that you can’t do that. You can only have one account and if you want a new account, because you want to go beat up on noobs, you’re going to have go out and buy a new copy of StarCraft,” he said.
>>“There are some people who will still try to cheat the system by paying for new copies of the game to create multiple accounts, …… to try and fool the system.”
>>“In StarCraft II, we’re making sure that you can’t do that. You can only have one account and if you want a new account, because you want to go beat up on noobs, you’re going to have go out and buy a new copy of StarCraft,” he said.
they are taking the VAC approach here “If you cheat, you get banned, but feel free to pay us another $50 dollars!”