Blizzard's answer to the many woes of the StarCraft community is The StarCraft League Development Kit (LDK). These tools will allow Blizzard approved parties to manage and run their own custom StarCraft leagues within Battle.net.
For years the StarCraft community has seen the rise and fall of many StarCraft ladders around the world. Game-i, WGTour, StarGate, PGTour, Carrier, and soon the new TLTour will be open. All the ladders in the past faced many pitfalls, one of which was legality. The LDK should solve the legal issues of hosting private Battle.net servers to host ladders, however there is still the issue of a third party anti-hack which interferes with StarCraft. This is one legal issue that the StarCraft Extension by Ashur violated.
The issues of server legality is no more as the LDK will allow sites to host their own leagues on Battle.net itself.
Requirements for the league owners as stated by Blizzard:
A potential league provider will have to do the following:
* Create a database to track players' accounts, passwords, and statistics.
* Create a website that will respond to the required queries (i.e. login, statistics, replay-file upload).
* Create league-specific artwork, including four icons and one background image, in a StarCraft-compatible format to be displayed in-game.
* Provide Blizzard with the information to create and approve a file package ("mopaq").
* Distribute the league's mopaq along with any league maps, once they have been approved, to players in the league.
Creating a league does not seem like a task for the average StarCraft player, but rather users who are running websites such as those at WGTour.com or even TeamLiquid.net. The league benefits boasted by Blizzard are reliable statistics uploaded to league websites, replays uploaded to league websites, as well as customized league icons.
So what are the implications to the StarCraft community? Recently TeamLiquid.net had officially released their news of the TLTour ladder, a legal ladder played on Battle.net with a launcher. Could this be Blizzard's answer to the news? Also could this be the reason to WGTour's stagnant development in their own ladder?
Could this also have been released to coincide with the rumored release of the StarCraft 1.15 patch? As the 10th anniversary of the StarCraft release draws nearer more and more is released from Blizzard to the community.
More info on how the system works and images in the link below.
Links
Battle.net - Info, Images, and Source
