Karune talks about the LAN issue

[n00bonicPlague]

I'm quite surprised that no one has posted this yet. Am I the only one brave enough to visit the battle.net forums? :P Anyway, after many postings in regard to Blizzard's move to drop LAN, Blizz CM Kevin "Karune" Yu finally spoke-up a few hours ago in one of the many threads regarding the issue.

Source: LAN parties and free Bnet are the reasons...

I think the reasons starcraft has lasted so long as a game and community are because:

1) Well designed and fun to play game.

2) Free battle.net - Having a place where gamers can come together and play the game 24/7 helps to foster a bolster and lively community.

3) Continued support for the game even after 11 years, they still patch it when it needs a patch.

4) Pro-Starcraft gaming. This is a big deal to serious starcraft players or to anyone that enjoys competition. These games are fun to watch and makes casual players want to play the game.

5) Lan support. - Lan parties are fun.

If you take away LAN support you will still have the 4 other pillars for a strong starcraft community. Plus if LAN support helps rid battle.net of hackers, cheaters and piracy because the network traffic is harder to decipher then all the better. That only strengthens the spirit of fair competition on battle.net.

The first 4 pillars are ALL being made better.

1) Development time for StarCraft II have far exceeded the original StarCraft in both the standard of quality and duration, to ensure the highest in quality RTS experience we can possibly create.

2) Not only is it free to play online for people who purchase the game, Battle.net 2.0 is designed with the new generation of online community and eSports in mind.

3) As long as there are people playing our games, we will continue to support them, and we have continued with this tradition with our legacy titles like the original StarCraft.

4) StarCraft II was created with eSports as a cornerstone in design philosophy. StarCraft evolved into an eSport.

5) Map Editor will be better than any we have ever released.

and:

6) ??? - will have to wait and see

For me personally- I loved LAN parties, but the direction in which Battle.net is headed, I would always choose to play on Battle.net > 99% of the time and even if for whatever reason I did decide to lug my computer to a friend's house in this day of age (<1%), I would still be playing with them on Battle.net against others at their place.

That's his point. Even if you do lug your "beast" around, he is saying that battle.net will clearly have better abilities than regular LAN.

I for one have full faith in Blizzard, and though I do disagree with taking LAN out as a whole, I do feel that in the end whatever they provide as an alternative will not only suffice, but make things all the better.

Ye of little faith shall perish.

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.

A question I feel is really pressing, requiring Internet to play over LAN means one more thing for people to maintain at large gatherings. What happens if the Internet goes out at a SC2 LAN tournament? A Proleague game?

Dreamhack is often referenced as the largest LAN party in the world... but in today's age, that LAN is also connected to the internet.

I definitely hear your concern about the internet going out, which would be a huge, huge bummer! But as equally as unlikely, the power could go out...

Karune, what about latency issues involved in online play.

ICCUP in Starcraft and LC games in Warcraft 3 are all attempts to reduce Battlenet lag. What is Blizzard doing to combat this lag if they are removing LAN play?

This is definitely a legitimate concern that would be best to be brought up again if needed when we talk about Battle.net 2.0.

Oh, Karune, you know as well as I do that anti-piracy and LAN are not mutually exclusive.

Step 1: Connect to Battle.Net
Step 2: Authentication
Step 3: Access LAN games thereafter

There you go. Authenticated LAN play. Low latency. LAN parties. Happy customers.

I will be sure to forward ideas in regards to LAN as described. I too have many fond memories of LAN parties.

You forget that as a Blizzard employee, his internet doesn't work by the conventional scientific means. Indeed, it would be best if we were to use the analogy of magic to explain how it is that Blizzard accesses the internet.

See, it's magic, it never fails. He has no clue what you're talking about.

Looks like the trolls are back. Hope I was able to address some of the LAN concerns. Honestly, there isn't much more to be said until we start talking about Battle.net 2.0, so if there are other threads about the recent Battle Report or press visit, going to divert some attention over there.

[Warsaw]

Great post dude.

The only thing I didnt like was them worried about piracy. I really dont think piracy is that bad for blizzard. I meen its a blizzard game, everyones going to buy it! And I wonder how much money they would really loose compared to how much there going to make with the sequal to the best RTS ever made and to the best RTS still. Eh. Oh well.

[kyama]

It is bad. Imagine you become a musician and no one buys your ablum. Since it's free to download. You'll never get paid and most likely you'll never make a second album.

Piracy is when people don't buy their game. Iccup, let's people without legit cd-keys enter their servers.

[sandwich_bird]

Musicians get their real money buy doing shows, selling mercs and being used as advertisement icons, not buy selling albums... At least that's what a lot of interviews showed.

But anyways, connecting to the internet to make lan parties is ridiculous for the majority of us. Sometimes way too complicated. All sort of problems can come and not just unlikely stuff like power going out(btw, connection fucking is way more likely than the power going out...). For example, me and some friends tried to all play on b.net on the same connection once. It took forever to work because we all had to forward our ports and all that crap so that we can play normally. This is a really frequent problem which is hard to solve. Also, not anyone have the bandwidth to support 12 people on the same connection. Indeed, before I move to Ottawa, we weren't able to have a better connection than 56k because no one offered the service to the region.

Anyways, I don't see why some gamers could possibly support Blizzard's move. "Yeah I want less things in my game".

[Gifted]

Sandwich, before you read my post, let me explain that it's speculation. I want to give "possibilities" that could maybe open some of your concerns:

- Bad connection/56k & Complicated to do.

Let's say that their "Planned technology" that replaces LAN works like this:
1. Everyone logs into battle.net (It's separate software)
2. Everyone clicks on starcraft 2, it starts
3. Click multiplayer, someone makes a game
4. Everyone joins, the game identifies that all players are of the same internet IP (identifying them on the same network)
5. They click start
6. The game starts on your local network and doesn't throw packets to b.net during the game.

In other words, you'll be able to authenticate online and it "disengages" the need for the internet during the fight. In other words, you could essentially start a local game through the battle.net interface. Since the authentication is only before the game there won't be a need for a massive connection as it only checks the status of the game.

- Port Forwarding:

1. This is something that will always have to be done in any lan part with any game. If it's not setting the ports on a router, it's ensuring that the network addresses or subnets line up. IPX protocol helps with some instances but complicates others. I'd rather not digress on this subject though.

[smoshrobotics]

I gotta say, I'm not really disappointed. If being around friends is that important to you (you, random mythical person) then you can just all lug your computers together and play using battle.net in the same room. It's no different really.

[stephen]

Dreamhack is often referenced as the largest LAN party in the world... but in today's age, that LAN is also connected to the internet.

I definitely hear your concern about the internet going out, which would be a huge, huge bummer! But as equally as unlikely, the power could go out...

Karune here is basically making the argument that instead of having one known point of failure (power) Blizzard are forcing us to have two known points of failure. Not only that but power is notoriously more reliable than internet connections, which can be on poor quality phone lines or connect to poor servers at the ISP end.

His statement basically says that they are giving us a worse quality service than what we had in the original SC.

For me personally- I loved LAN parties, but the direction in which Battle.net is headed, I would always choose to play on Battle.net > 99% of the time and even if for whatever reason I did decide to lug my computer to a friend's house in this day of age (<1%), I would still be playing with them on Battle.net against others at their place.

Just because Karune would choose to play on BNET does not mean that everyone will want to. Even going by his numbers, given sales figures of 10 000 000 (not unreasonable given figures of the original SC/WoW) there will be 100 000 players who wish to use LAN play.

Not only that but many people host LANs to have a good time with some friends. I know I regularly attend LANs at places where there is limited or no connectivity. I bought a gaming laptop *specifically* to attend LANs.

This is an abhorrent decision and one that will not decrease the amount of pirated copies. This decision has the stench of activision all over it. It seems that the worst fears of the merger are being realised.

[stephen]

I gotta say, I'm not really disappointed. If being around friends is that important to you (you, random mythical person) then you can just all lug your computers together and play using battle.net in the same room. It's no different really.

It always makes me sad when people argue in favour of getting *less* from products that they buy. Why? What is the reasoning? It is not like they will have to add in any new code, so it will not increase development time.

Please shed some light on why people argue in favour of removing important features that have already been developped.

I am a software engineer and if we pulled that kind of crap on our clients we'd be without customers.

[PosImpos]

It is bad. Imagine you become a musician and no one buys your ablum. Since it's free to download. You'll never get paid and most likely you'll never make a second album.

Piracy is when people don't buy their game. Iccup, let's people without legit cd-keys enter their servers.

that's not really how it works (with regards to music).

piracy is definitely worse for video games. but i think most of the time people who pirate the game wouldn't have bought it anyway.

people who pirate sc2 aren't going to pirate it to play online, they're going to pirate it to try it out or to play the single player campaign.

[PosImpos]

Musicians get their real money buy doing shows, selling mercs and being used as advertisement icons, not buy selling albums... At least that's what a lot of interviews showed.

thank you. one of the more annoying myths is that downloading music somehow kills the music industry. it's patently false. in fact, i'd argue it helps the industry more than it hurts it.

but that's totally off-topic.

for the record, i think taking out LAN is unnecessary. it's not a big deal, but it's an unnecessary removal of a product feature and therefore i think it takes a little bit away from the game.