Starcraft 2 - NO LAN PLAY!?!?

[Action]

Ok, Blizzard is definitely not known for making huge mistakes, but from what is going around on the net today, there will be no LAN play for Starcraft 2.  You will have to play on battlenet! WTF?

Wow this is absolutely one dumb move.

[z0id]

Good to prevent piracy, but i guess blizzard thinks no one LANs anymore.

[Rock8104]

Seems to me its all an Anti Piracy thing. I hope this doesnt become a trend in new games.

[Infamousd]

Blizzard game using Battlenet for multiplayer?!?   WTFBBQOMG!!!1!!!one!!!2!    

seriously though in this day and age it should be a given that games come with LAN support. Hasn't Blizzard made enough money yet?

[Cra2hgirl]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

[Renegade]

I really see this as a non issue.  I mean everyone has internet you can still have a lan an play starcraft 2 you just have to connect to each other via bnet.    As for larger LAN they just need to have a good inet connection if they wanna run tournaments etc of this game.  

I can't blame Bliz one bit with how high the pirate rate is of PC games.  By doing this most of the people that would pirate it for multiplayer play will not an need to buy it, and in the end someone will crack it an make a local bnet server like they did for war 3.

[Rock8104]

Thats the thing. This sucks for LANs without a good inet connection or larger LAN. Im sure it will be cracked but now they are just making it more of a challenge. Ill buy it any ways Just hopefully we have a way to play it at the lan without going through Bnet

[Action]

Yeah I do not see this as being a popular LAN party game now.  Look how BF2 was... a great game but so hard to get going at a LAN party (without good internet) that hardly any LAN parties had tournament's are bothered tryin to host it.

[Renegade]

I am still getting this game as SC1 was a killer game.   As for large LAN play. If the connection is stable it will play fine as RTS games take up very little bandwidth.  Unlike FPS games that take up much larger amounts.

[Fax]

I give it a week before a workaround is present.
Either way Starcraft was kick ass and I'll be buying SC2.

[Cyphis]

I think as well as Blizzard has done with BattleNet, I don't think there will be major issues there.  Other game manufacturers have not been able to keep as stable a platform as Battlenet has been.  I can't recall getting problems meeting up with friends online to play Diablo 2 or what not.  But will this cut off in-game voice chat?  Hmmm.

[Renegade]

SC1 didnt have ingame chat.  Dunno if sc2 planned that or not but WoW has it so I am sure it will work fine if its in the game.   I prefer to use a ventrilo over ingame chat.

[Action]

Blizzard has issued and official response to all the upset fans about the NO LAN:

"Hundreds of negative comments are found nearly anywhere the LAN news has been posted, petitions are launching, and some long-time Starcraft gamers are even considering a boycott despite their desire to play the highly-anticipated and long-time coming sequel.

Why would Blizzard do this considering that people are still playing the original in a multi-player LAN setting over a decade after its release in 1998? Blizzard claims it is to safeguard against piracy. "

What still is not clear is what this will do to the South Korean market where Starcraft is a televised professional sport.

Here is Blizzard's Official Response to the Fan Outcry:

"We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future." said Bob Colayco at Blizzard PR

Follow link to read more: http://www.starcraft-fans.com/page/Blizzard+Responds+to+No+LAN+Support

[Renegade]

I have to side with Bliz on this one.   They didnt do with some horrid DVD protection that causes shit to not work, wont run if a DVD mounting software is installed etc.  They just set it up so for multi you have to use thier free b.net online system.  I see why they did it and it makes sence.   And in todays day an age an inet connection is available just about anywhere the game will be played.   

[Action]

If it only uses the bnet system for login, chat, skills, etc and still does peer to peer to each machine on the LAN that would be ok as that is basically how steam games work.  But, if it requires to go out on the net and back then I can see it being a possible lag issue at most LANS.  For example, most lans have 3MB for the most part and just from experience of running LANS that 3MB gets completely saturated fast.   Though this is an RTS so might not need much BW, i dunno but I assume it will use much more than say WoW for example. Guess we will not know until we try it.

Eitherway Bliz is getting alot of negative flack for this on the net.