A request was made yesterday to implement a feature allowing gamers to customize the channel they join when accessing battle.net chat.
Rethek, of the Legacy Game Development Team, responded:
Official Blizzard Quote:
I actually implemented this feature in 1.13, but unfortunately we didn't get this into the patch notes. You can set a Diablo II registry key to the specific channel you want to join.
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Diablo II
Type: REG_SZ
Name: Default Channel
Set the data for this string value to the channel name you'd like to join. Now when you enter Battle.net chat, you should be in the channel of your choice. If you do this, you will miss the intro information printed out by Battle.net, such as how many users are using the Battle.net service and when your last logon was. This may also hide any indication of previous failed login attempts on your account.
Official Blizzard Quote:
It should be noted that editing your registry is definitely not for everyone. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, please don't.
For those unfamiliar with making registry edits, see here for a guide to making this one.
So while it does have the small drawback of bypassing certain official information, and involves some manual tinkering that could prove unfortunate if done incorrectly, this could be a handy little feature for clans and others who might wish to avoid the various downsides of being dumped into the default public chat channels when traversing battle.net.
It also makes one wonder if there are any more hidden gems still to be found in the new patch...