Battle.net as a launcher has only been a thing since 2013. I miss how Battle.net used to be before the launcher. 

It'll end up staying, like how Uplay (Sorry, Ubisoft Connect lol) and EA's Origin is like now.

Bethesda Launcher ended up the way it did because it didnt exist as long and they werent making much from it like Rockstar's attempt.

I didn't realize it wasn't on steam yet. It was such an amazing year of games, I ultimately decided to just wait to play Diablo 4 until it eventually comes to gamepass.

None of the Blizzard games were on Steam.

Only Overwatch 2 and now Diablo 4.

Aside from Battle.net - the only other place that had any Blizzard games were GOG.

I thought it was launched back in the 90's for the first Diablo game.

Couldn't Microsoft acquiring them change things? If they don't care about the legacy aspect it'd make sense to not wanna split things up between multiple different launchers.

Prior to becoming a launcher, Battle.net was an in-game online service. So instead of clicking on “multiplayer” on the main menu, you would click on “battle.net” login to the account you created, and it was everything you would figure would be in a multiplayer menu. Text chat, voice chat, friends list, etc. 

Steam didn't start to become the defacto way of getting and playing PC games till the late 2000s, so studios had to create their own online services. I used to play a lot of Age of Empires back in the day as well and the studio had Ensemble Studios Online for AoE multiplayer. You created the account and you'd have to login every time you wanted to go to Multiplayer. That's how you could talk and play with friends or online matchmaking.

Ah ok, I get it now. When I got into PC gaming Steam was already firmly established so I completely missed that era.

More PC games to Steam is always good.

I haven't felt like getting back into Diablo 4 since they announced that disasterous balance patch, which they later walked back and apologized.
Wel'll see if I get back into it before Season 1 ends. if I miss Season 1, then I may not want to play the rest since there will be items you can potentially only get in Season 1.

I expect a big review bombing no matter the results which is merited for what they tried to pull post-launch on the players.