Karune talks about the LAN issue

[Norfindel]

You're an idiot.

In fact what he says makes perfect sense. With SC you need a power outage to stop playing. With SC2, if you lose your internet conection, or it simply sucks, the game will stop, or behave like shit.

If they can make it so that the game won't lag on shitty but functional connections, it's ok, but if the game lags just because it needs to be connected 100% of the time with battle.net, that would suck balls.

[Nicol Bolas]

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

Do you have any reason to believe that the LAN code is somewhere in the game?

As for why you would argue for getting less, it's a matter of him/us simply not caring. We're simply not asking Blizzard for these things. So them not delivering on it doesn't matter.

You can use that argument for getting anything in SC2. Should StarCraft 2 come with a toaster? Hey, you might not have one, so there's a chance you'd be appreciative.

[stephen]

Do you have any reason to believe that the LAN code is somewhere in the game?

Yes. Given that it has been in every alpha version so far I'm fairly certain that it's there and ready to roll.

As for why you would argue for getting less, it's a matter of him/us simply not caring. We're simply not asking Blizzard for these things. So them not delivering on it doesn't matter.

Yet people still feel the need to comment, jeer and make ad hominem attacks on those other people who do want the feature.

You can use that argument for getting anything in SC2. Should StarCraft 2 come with a toaster? Hey, you might not have one, so there's a chance you'd be appreciative.

Straw man argument. We're not talking about a side issue here. This is something that goes down to the very core of the way the game is played. Even more so than other contraversial changes such as MBS.

I and many others find it ridiculous that we will be forced to use battle.net to play even while we are on a LAN.

The great hope is that they listen to their fans and allow LAN play out of the box, or if not, then after a couple of patches.

Blizzard better not pull this for diablo 3 or I simply won't buy it and nor will many others who were avid diablo 2 fans.

[Hav0x]

Yes. Given that it has been in every alpha version so far I'm fairly certain that it's there and ready to roll.



Yet people still feel the need to comment, jeer and make ad hominem attacks on those other people who do want the feature.



Straw man argument. We're not talking about a side issue here. This is something that goes down to the very core of the way the game is played. Even more so than other contraversial changes such as MBS.

I and many others find it ridiculous that we will be forced to use battle.net to play even while we are on a LAN.

The great hope is that they listen to their fans and allow LAN play out of the box, or if not, then after a couple of patches.

Blizzard better not pull this for diablo 3 or I simply won't buy it and nor will many others who were avid diablo 2 fans.

I smell a pirate.

[abarame]

I smell a pirate.

Just because someone wishes for features that were originally the spirit of a game does not automatically make them a pirate.

I played Starcraft for six years everyday via LAN in my home (dial-up internet) with a friend of mine. We played because we could not stand the kind of people who played online. I still can't I would much rather gather with a group of people I enjoy talking to and playing with and just playing with them.

There is a spirit of gaming that comes with Blizzard games and requiring people to play on battle.net is destroying a piece of that game, that camaraderie of being in the same room with your friends and not lag dropping because your IP has an upload limit.

[Nicol Bolas]

We're not talking about a side issue here. This is something that goes down to the very core of the way the game is played. Even more so than other contraversial changes such as MBS.

In what way?

For the people who relied on LAN for being able to play the game, they have my sympathies. But for people who have a reasonable internet connection, I just don't see the problem.

I smell a pirate.

Things like this is why I couldn't smack down his "ad hominem attacks" comment. There's no need for comments like this.

I still can't I would much rather gather with a group of people I enjoy talking to and playing with and just playing with them.

And that's part of the problem. Playing with the people you want has nothing to do with LAN play! You can play with whomever you want, including not playing with the vast majority of people. So long as Battle.Net has a halfway decent friend system, you can basically ignore all of the random games on B.Net and just play with your friend.

[Edfishy]

There is no real issue if Blizzard is intelligent enough to have a game connected through Battle.net use your local IPX or UDP LAN connection for a locally routed game instead of consuming your bandwidth and send your packets the long way around for every other playing in the same room with you.

It's not that difficult (I'm speaking from experience here). There's the same amount of protection, players would still have to go through Battle.net, but those of us without broadband could still get the thing to work.

[stephen]

I smell a pirate.

Your argument might have validity if I had not purchased every single Blizzard game and expansion since they released Warcraft I.

I can live with this change in SC2, provided it is done intelligently (even though I will resent it) and will still buy the game. If they pull this crap with diablo 3 I won't buy it. I live in Australia and playing diablo on US based servers is something I won't tolerate (the Asian servers are worse btw).

This decision has made myself and many others I know cynical towards Blizzard.

[Triceron]

Piracy is an issue, and I'm sure it had its effects on SC.

For the most part though, you can't make the argument that someone pirating music from a band makes them go out of business and apply it here. SC came out during the height of internet piracy, a time when napster was on everyone's machines. Despite the piracy, Blizzard still came out on top with SC being one of the most popular games of its time. What matters more is that people are playing and talking about the game. Battle.net is what got the casual pirates (casual gamers, skeptics, lazy gamers) to get a legit copy and go online with friends. As for the people who never intend to buy the game, nothing would change their approach to piracy.


As for the LAN issue, although it has little to no effect on me now, since I have an easy-access stable broadband connection. I don't know when I'd ever use the LAN feature, but it'll be missed. I remember playing it on school LAN's when internet was not available. I think times have changed though, and BNET2.0 makes sense.

[don]

wouldn't blizzard loose more money because those that would buy an original game would instead turn to a LAN-capable pirated version.

they may essentially be making the pirated version of the game better than the crippled original.

imagine if a SC2 copy that can use bnet 2.0 AND play LAN started floating around the internet a few days after release.