Starcraft 2: No LAN confirmed by Blizzard?

I found this article on the web. Removing LAN support for an RTS sounds ridiculous.

http://www.gossipgamers.com/starcraft-2-no-lan-confirmed-new-gameplay-footage/

What do you guys think?

 

I never played SC with a lan...so I'm not too concerned, except that this'll probably disrupt hamachi =(

 

I can't decide whether they're really doing this to prevent piracy (i.e. hamachi) or if they just want everyone to sign up for their new pay-to-play battle.net... in either case, I can't even begin to say how disappointed I am with this.

I still play dota and sc on lan with my friends who have also bought all of the blizzard games including the expansions. I even have the hellfire expansion for diablo! I honestly hope they're going to reconsider because an RTS w/o LAN is just retarded.

 

playing on lan its sooo fun

i used to play WC3 TFT and CS 1.5... it was AMAZING

 

According to blizzard SC2 is not pay-to-play

 

The biggest advantage of LAN over playing online is the absence of lag. Not everyone around the world has access to a very good internet connection.

I was really disappointed after hearing about this. Really hope Blizzard reconsiders.

 

battlenet will NOT be play for pay.

I wouldn't doubt that they will have extra services for a payment option for battlenet but thats not the reason for their decision.

here is Blizz's reply to this....


"As mentioned by Rob Pardo in interviews, piracy is a serious problem and often times tie in closely with LAN. At the end of the day, we want the best for the community and fans that support our games, and having chunk of the community pirate the game actually hurts the community.

1) Pirated servers splinter the community instead of consolidating all players who love to play the game. Battle.net will bring players together in skirmishes, ladder play, custom games, and allow everyone the opportunity to share a common experience.

2) More people on Battle.net means more even more resources devoted to evolving this online platform to cater to further community building and new ways to enjoy the game online. World of Warcraft is a great example of a game that has evolved beyond anyone's imagination since their Day 1 and will continue to do so to better the player experience for as long as players support the title. The original StarCraft is an even better example of how 11 years later, players still love and play this title, and we will continue to support and evolve it with patches.

We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.

If I were to buy StarCraft II or any other title, I know the money I spent would be going to supporting that title. Personally, I would be upset that others were freeloading while others are legitimately supporting a title that has great potential and goals of making this title have 'long legs.'

If you like a song a lot, buy it, and that artist will only come out with more awesome songs for you. If you like a game, buy it, and we will promise to constantly work to make the player experience better at every corner we can.

Support the causes you believe in (This is applicable to all things, not just gaming).
Don't be a leech to society, innovation, and further awesome creations."

 

Although I'm still going to buy SC3 when it comes out I have to admit it has been one huge disappointment after another in terms of content and features, or lack there-of.

 

I agree. Especially the trilogy, which would eventually maybe cost us to pay 150 bucks for all three.

 

Like Blizzard has to worry about piracy, come ON! Piracy is NOT an issue for Blizzard games, period! I mean between Starcraft, Diablo 1 & 2, and WoW, do they really need to worry about piracy? People will absolutely BUY Starcraft 2. Do you really think eliminating LAN will eliminate piracy? I guarantee there will be workarounds in no time.

I mainly only play LAN multiplayer Starcraft. Having everyone connect to the internet while we're all together is just absurd. I am shocked by this considering their original concept with Starcraft that I loved, is the ability to spawn copies on other machines for multiplayer only. Not that anyone I knew didn't buy it, but originally to introduce someone to it, they didn't have to invest anything.

First, splitting up the campaign into three editions, and now this? I'm seeing pompous written all over their smug faces.

 

Blizzard is pulling in $150 million/month in subscription fees alone for WoW...not to mention all the merchandising...

And that's not to suggest that it's ok to rip off rich people/companies...

I'm just with htwingnut...incredulous that Blizzard is deleting what can be considered an essential feature for fear of not getting enough return on their investment...

EA was once a great company, too...sad to see Blizzard go that way...consumer vs investor...and I begin to see which Blizzard has chosen...*sigh*

 

This is absurd. I'm sorry but Lan parties are alive and kicking here in the US. I am sure it is the same over in the EU and other places around the globe. I've got a regular group of buddies who were all frothing at the mouth over a 2nd starcraft who will now all be pissed if lan isn't supported. This is strike 2 for me. The first was that crap about releasing 3 different games for the campaigns. There are two many other games to play if they are going to be like this.

 

This is the worst thing for an rts, is just stupid...

Come one what about those legendary starcraft LAN parties?

 

it makes sense. Piracy IS always an issue

 

I have never even heard of the hamachi work around, just googled it.

Sounds like a pain, even if I was a pirate I would buy SC2 because the game is so quality and battlenet is also something you want.

Why restrict yourself to friends only games or some lame 3rd party server, get on battle.net and play!

I liked starcraft as a game more than WC3 but WC3 just trumped all with its custom games, so I hope that SC2 managed to get a lot of really cool custom games as well.

DoTA type games seem to be the most popular but me I always enjoyed stuff like, escape the pyramid, ninja vs samurai, tower defense, hero wars, and all the various rpg games.

Shame though last time I played I couldnt find any of those cool games, it was mostly dota and that was all.

Oh and remember pokemaul? that was cool, I even made my own version of that game one time.

 

This puts everyone in a predicament. Best way to show them is to NOT buy it. But considering the popularity of Blizzard games, I'm sure the dozens, even hundreds or thousands that stood against it wouldn't matter to them.

Let's just hope after initial sales that they release a patch for LAN gaming. TBH, I'm even fine if everyone has to "phone home" to validate that they have a legitimate copy, but don't force us to play over battle.net please.

I don't LAN game much anymore, but me and several buddies from ten years ago that played the original Starcraft are all looking forward to SC2, and plan on reliving our LAN escapades with this game. It's one game we all have in common and can play together for fun.

I never thought I'd see the day that Blizzard would sell out. I wonder if being part of Activision has anything to do with it?

 

No LAN in Starcraft 2 = Millions of Koreans just committed suicide.

 

Yes, but try getting 8-10 guys together to play and all sharing a single internet connection. It's not gonna be pretty.

I'm sure I'll use battle.net plenty for the other times when we can't meet in person.

 

But not for Blizzard. There's a reason Starcraft and Diablo are two of the best selling games of all time (not including subscription games). RTS just isn't RTS without LAN gaming.

 

Oh I didnt mean for lan party, I meant for those people using Hamachi and stuff.

If your not in the same room together then get on bnet to play.

Lucky for me my internet connection probably would handle 10 people online at once pretty easy, esp if it lets you do a dedicated server it would run well.

 

Oh yeah. Hamachi, that's a nice little app.

My upload speeds suck. I mean it's fine for me, but for ten people, it wouldn't handle it, as I'm sure many other's uploads wouldn't. How are peeps supposed to LAN?

 

I have never been to a lan party in my life, its something that I think I would severly enjoy though.

I wonder if I can find a local lan party that is at a time I can actually attend, finally I have a good laptop to go with!

Hope I dont look too out of place with my age

anybody know a good source for locating lan parties?

 

I've always just had a group of LAN buddies I met up with. Of course this was about 8-10 years ago. Since then it dwindled quickly, and now I get together with one or two other guys periodically, but I do play online with several of them. Just never the six or seven (or more at times) that we typically did with.

I believe there's a clan called "old farts" for those of us over 30 to game together, because we'll get our arses handed to use by those young whipper snappers.

 

Yup, I've got the same problem. I play LAN games of WC3 with my mates all of the time. I also play WC3 on bnet quite often. However my connection will not be able to handle 8+ people connected to bnet.

My problem's made even worse since I live in NZ. For WC3 I have to connect to the US servers for bnet which means a farly high ping (nobody seems to speak english on the asia server. All Aus and NZ players use US West). Playing on a LAN or through hamachi means we can get much lower pings.

Without LAN games I think we'll just stick to WC3.

 

I don't believe LAN is the main cause of piracy. I had enjoyed to play with my friends by LAN very much. If there is no LAN multi-playing, it's like have 3/4 of game!

 

I wonder if this is something they will stick with, if its true and not false info they maybe will open up LAN via an update later on.

Similar to how they finally let us play WC3 without a disk.

Also I hope they have SC2 on the digital download system like the other games. Its nice for me be able to download my Diablo, Strarcraft, and Warcraft games without hunting down my original disks in my closet somewhere.

 

No LAN? That's a real bummer. Considering I like more to be hooked up to LAN with my buddies on our gaming nights since internet connection speeds here are snail-paced.

 

Im sure there wont be LAN to start with, I was reading this yesterday.

It is a big issue with everyone pirating around the net like idiots.

So I believe, after awhile they will come out with a patch to support LAN.

 

Hopefully sooner than later. I know I'll buy it, but I may hold off until they patch it with LAN.

 

Well I know that I will be playing it the day it comes out, online.

 

Wow....this is totally unnecessary. LAN in Starcraft made it so that you can't even do LAN games unless everyone had a different CD-Key which meant that most pirated games are unLANable.....

Seriously....Blizzard are going to have ALOT of angry people out there.

 

I was reading about this alot around the web, and there are some folks that believe that there will be a different system than the LAN system we know now. Bascially the system works where everyone authenticates to Battlenet then only the host of the game keeps a connection and the people switch to the host for the connection to the game. I don't know how true this system is. It sounds tedious to me. Everyone should at least wait until they show off more info on Battlenet 2.0 before making a final choice on the matter.

 

I will probably be the only person not playing it but the way I feel right now I would rather point to what was done with Ghostbusters as a better move versus this garbage. At least they told us upfront they were not providing multiplayer out of the box in that game and the price was reduced because of it for the PC. It's a great game and I have had nothing but fun with it recently.

SC2 without lan support might as well be 29.99 since it is 1 of 3 you have to buy to have the whole game anyway. I refuse to spend 50+50+50 or more on this kind of Benny Hill themed farce to engage my wallet without providing a full game.

 

The reason Diablo and Starcraft became the way they were isn't because of LAN play, it was because of Battle.net. Which is free.

 

I can respect the piracy problem... so that's why they should do something like require Steam activation. Forcing all MP to go through BNet sounds like the perfect way to ensure modding is stillborn. Blizzard has been permenantly altered because of WoW, I think. Sad. Greed overcomes game making...

 

A combination of the two. There was a reason they allowed you to spawn copies on other machines, and it had nothing to do with battle.net.

As I mentioned, and what lilwisper read, if you have to authenticate through battle.net and then have the LAN through the host machine after everyone authenticates, that's fine. It just seems ludicrous to have to have everyone PLAY through battle.net, saturating your internet connection.

I hear you. If all you have to do is authenticate through battle.net, then I'm fine with that. But they should allow modding for LAN play. Why force users to game with only stock configuration?

 

Online authentication is fine by me, something like Steam as someone suggested.

As long as after being authenticated, game play via LAN is possible I would be OK with it.

Players without hi-speed net connections would be at a huge disadvantage if this goes through. Players with a decent connection may do all right with going online, but think of how it's gonna work when you have a group of friends over. Going online just to be able to play with each other when you're in the same place sounds really stupid.

 

I guess we all just need to wait and see what really happens. Starcraft 2 may not release for another year yet, who knows.

 

if they're trying to stop piracy, this isn't going to do it
someone will manage to hack it sooner or later

 

i admit, i do "demo" a lot of games... but every single blizzard game SC, Diablo, Diablo II, WCII, WCIII I have purchased. and still plan on purchasing SCII.

I think SCII is one of those games that everyone will rush and go out and buy, even for the ones who do pirate.

 

I think they got scared when they saw what happened to Demigod.

Wikipedia: "On April 15, 2009, Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, released a status report to explain recent connectivity issues experienced by the multiplayer component of the game. The report alleged that only about 18,000 of the 120,000 connections were legitimate users, and that an overwhelming amount of illegitimate users were to blame for overwhelming their system. Since then, Stardock has taken steps to stabilize their online multiplayer system."

Looking at this, it would be a smart move to eliminate LAN at least temporariliy so that Hamachi users don't kill the system. Look at the problem with WoW's release when they were overwhelmed. They don't want connection problems to kill their Metascore (although Battlenet's connections are more trustworthy, I admit.)

 

How does this measure affect piracy in the East, specifically Korea where the game is so popular? That might be the most relevant question and concern. Besides if they can provide the same features and experience through Battlenet then the loss is minimal. Unfortunately some of you just lost your incentive to lug you laptop/desktop over to a friend's house. The loss in camaraderie is a downer, but probably the only real loss.

 

honestly tho, its not just about piracy. they really want everyone to come together and be able to play. the more people that play, the more fun everyone will have. pretty common sense to me

 

The Starcraft Professional Gaming scene in South Korea will probably be very disappointed. No matter how good your connection is, it will still probably not be as good as LAN. Professional gaming requires latency that low.

Yes....people will be able to come together now that they can't play with friends unless everyone has a really good internet connection....

 

I was concerned about latency as well, that is why I qualified my statement by saying "if they can provide the same features and experience." Like you, I'm not sure that they can, which would be very unfortunate.

 

I think only one person needs a good connection for hte new LAN that they are talking about.