Karune talks about the LAN issue

[Triceron]

If they can hack the game enough to allow both bnet 2.0 access and LAN, they might as well add LAN into the current LAN-less SC2 in their 'superior' copy.

It's a fantasy situation you're talking about.

[Norfindel]

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.

However, there's a comment from Karune that says:

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...

Which makes it look like the data is always flowing thru Battle.net, not just peer-to-peer like it was. On the positive side, that probably allows better anti-hack, on the negative, if the internet connection gets down, or just is performing poorly, i fear the game would be affected.
Of course, in the 1st world, internet connections are maybe rock-solid, but that's not always the case around the world. Here, internet connections thru ADSL, and most other methods, get much slower on weekends, when everyone is using them, because of the ISP having lower bandwidth than needed for all the connected users. Also, in SC1 there wasn't any server near, and you connected to a server that was more than 10000km away, with who knows how many routers in beetween. Lag is nearly always on the yellow/red side.

Also, i have a friend that once said "it's not the same to play by internet, than just meet to play LAN" you're there, with you friends, having fun. Playing by internet is kinda colder.

And i really hope the netcode is much better than in SC1, back then two people doing NAT on the same LAN couldn't even play by Battle.net at the same time.

[Edfishy]

the power could go out...

I've got a gas generator. :P

It seems to me like they (Pardo) have only recently made this decision, and are rapidly attempting to defend it. The trouble is, the outcome of this will effect the whole gaming industry.

If Blizzard is successful in corralling their players through their on-line service and disrupting LAN capabilities altogether, other companies will follow suit. Remember those Battlefield 1942 LAN games? Call of Duty? Marathon? On-line achievements and 'security' (let's not bring up that little Franklin' bit) will be worth more than you and your buddy having 0 ms in a local match, when all the technology for it is sitting right there.

Oh, and I'm sure companies with those popular splitscreen games will eventually want in on this too. Want to show your buddy how fun your new co-op game is? Well, even though the technology is there, your buddy hasn't paid for the game yet and would be a freeloader... "pirate" even... but hey, no problem, get him to cough up $50 to sign up and he'll be able to enjoy all the stat tracking he wants!

End of an era.

Asinine.

[Mercatosis]

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.

It's nice to see someone else with some good networking experience .

I've been trying to tell people that what blizzard is planning to do will not affect the gameplay. If they're trying to make this an e-sport, they won't take a step back by decreasing performance in games.

[SaharaDrac]

I'm sorry, but it's not 2001 anymore guys!

[Warsaw]

I'm sorry, but it's not 2001 anymore guys!

Ohoo Sarcasm but as you could tell there are a lot of people who still want LAN. Not everyone agrees with you.

[SaharaDrac]

Ohoo Sarcasm but as you could tell there are a lot of people who still want LAN. Not everyone agrees with you.

A lot of people don't know the full details either. I can't believe so many people would blindly sign a petition based on partial information. Also, that wasn't sarcasm, that was a direct statement meaning exactly what it said.

[Edfishy]

Karune has already confirmed that local LAN is currently not planned, and that they believe "Less than 1%" actually use the feature.

Someone had suggested to Karune that LAN-play should be allowed after authenticating the game, and Karune responded with Blizzard possibly "looking into it", but the fact is that we know right now that Blizzard considers the feature irrelevant.

[SaharaDrac]

Karune has already confirmed that local LAN is currently not planned, and that they believe "Less than 1%" actually use the feature.

Someone had suggested to Karune that LAN-play should be allowed after authenticating the game, and Karune responded with Blizzard possibly "looking into it", but the fact is that we know right now that Blizzard considers the feature irrelevant.

So do I. I love LAN parties too, but I've never been to one where every single person wasn't also connected to the internet, and I've been going since the late 90's.

[Edfishy]

You may have been connected to the internet, but you weren't using your internet connection to play with one another if you were playing LAN.

If you have a 1.5 meg down .5 meg up DSL connection (mediocre), you've got 150 killobytes worth of data packets that your DSL router can possibly receive, and 50 killobytes it can send out.

If you were playing with 8 friends, that's only around 18 kilobytes down / 6 kilobytes up (almost dial-up), with a combined and progressively degrading ping for each player (the router has to send each player's signals through one-at-a-time, delaying the signal of each player when out of turn).

Or, instead, you could all just play on your already running 10/100/1000 megabit network hub with 0 ms.

I understand this is a situational thing, but we've got the technology already here. Denying its use makes zero sense.