I've read that's how it is on War3, so I can't see it not happening for SC2. If you play on Battle.net with people you're routed to, you play with LAN.

A few million people in China and other Asian countries use LAN over various clients for both SC and War3, especially for DotA. These people can download a copy of the game and play on these fake servers for free, and they do so. "Let's be honest, pirating has never really been an issue for you blizzard." Please do your research before making such a completely asinine and just flat out wrong claim like that.

As far as I can see, Blizzard is doing their best to copy Steam, which from my point of view looks like a brilliant idea. Connecting games to accounts rather than accounts to games means that cheaters, abusers, and other obnoxious parties can be punished across games without the ability to simply make a new account. Other features like being able to download games without buying them, load previous games into the system, etc., all make it incredibly user-friendly.

Low latency (lowest possible) will almost definitely be included in standard multiplayer, they've already had huge complaints about it just from people who have played the Beta.

Thats great, but there's still the problem where not everybody in the world has or wants an internet connection, and some people might have problems with internet, like only dial up or something. Don't forget there's "the world" that will buy this game.

Also I'm pretty certain thats not how War3 works. It's an internet connection no matter what on bnet. So now you're just making crap up.

They're making a killing off WoW, and SC managed to reach the top 10 most sold games again after a decade after its release. So yes, I do my research, the question is do you?

Nobody denies that people pirate the games. But their games and profits are more than any other company dreams of. At this point they're just getting greedy and hurting the legitimate fans. For what good reason do they have for removing it? Little timmys parents wont buy him a rated M game so he pirates it and LANs it with his other 13 year old preteen friends? I wasn't aware little timmy decided what major features SC2 includes.

If they're going to make the game for pirates, then they're not making it for me. They can battle it out with pirates for all I care, but they're going to lose no matter what. You know WoW? That game requires a subscription, has no LAN and is an MMO which you have to be listening to what the server says at all time. And somehow you think the lack of a LAN feature is really going to deter someone from emulating battle.net on the vastly less complex game of SC2? right.

All valve games still have LAN capabilities, even when offline, so I have no point what your point is.

Try having 8 people connect at the same time and then tell me how low ping it is. In some areas you'll have to pay with an arm and a leg to afford such a connection which can do that.

You know, all the anti-lan advocates so far I've heard tend to make up their facts and don't know crap about networking or piracy. It's like, they see LAN being taken away for no good reason and apparently have to jump to blizzards defense for their random decision. Blizzard could include a long rod in the box of SC2 which you'll have to stick up your woo-hoo before you can play SC2, and I bet there would still be people making up facts on why it's the best thing ever.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 1 2009, 7:14 am by Yoshi.

Unfortunately, there are people that stupid out there, I have to agree.

Where exactly can you go to protest the no-LAN feature? I read earlier in the topic that you said something on some site somewhere, and I assumed it was a legitimate communication with Blizzard, but where?

They have a petition, you can voice your opinion on battle.net, but there's already a huge backlash.

What the heck.. lan is always the best feature about any multiplayer game. Playing it at a lan party with your friends and all. Ridiculously laggy to try and do that over battle.net. Not to mention lan let's you test your maps multiplayer without potentially releasing buggy version to other people. Guess now you need 2 cd accounts to test your maps "multiplayer."

The more I find out about Starcraft II the more I am thinking I might just stick to the Original Starcraft Brood War.

Lulz, I think they're all giving you so much crap because they're a bunch of gay WoW players who have no friends so they've never had a LAN party.

Where on battle.net?


Falkoner is wise in the ways of Blizzard.

Simple google search: http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/

I signed it yesterday. Although I doubt it'll do any good, companies rarely listen to petitions. Oh well. Already as it is I'm not buying it launch day. If I buy it at all, or when I buy it, depends on what I hear about it.

Blizzard's really shooting themselves in foot in terms of the choices they're making in terms of multiplayer, and PR concerning multiplayer... Karune might not have LAN parties anymore, but hell, there's still plenty of people who do. Also, with the 12-person games, there's going to be no way to have anything like a LAN party, thanks to great lag. Also:
Totally dodged the question, internet fail is definitely more likely than power failure (Comcast customers know what I'm talking about), and 5% of internet failure + 5% chance of power failure is still equal to 10% likelihood of something going wrong, which is still more than it would be if one of the factors were taken out of the equation... I wish they would just think things through a little more before they go and announce shit no one likes.

If Karune doesn't do it then clearly he is our fearless community leader and we're all supposed to not play lans.

There probably aren't going to be bandwidth issues as long as the game is hosted locally, but if it requires being on Battle.net it will prevent offline multiplayer. Unless they make it use local IP addresses when possible, it will also still require the one hosting a game to have the port forwarded properly.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=96490

7th post down, Swedish poster. There are dozens of others throughout the thread that repeat those sentiments. From that, and from how I know that War3 Custom games are not played over the server because the host has a huge latency advantage in games on Battle.net where reaction time is crucial, logic infers that this feature will remain in SC2.

Your argument is that people want to play SC2, a $60 computer game with reasonably expensive hardware requirements, and can't access high speed internet? Nevermind the fact that even with dial-up you will be able to play over Battle.net, I have to sincerely ask if you're reading your own premises.

"Blizzard is better at making games than anyone else so they should be okay with some people stealing their games."

Is that basically the gist of your argument here, based on that evidence? That's what I'm getting from it. If not, you need to give some evidence that might actually be remotely relevant.

They aren't being greedy, they have over 50 no doubt very well-paid employees who have been working on StarCraft 2's game design for over 2 years, probably closer to 4 or 5, and that doesn't even include the Music, Cinematics, Graphics, or other paid teams which guess what: are separate from WoW. Any venture in capitalism is made for profit. If they are losing significant (read: ENORMOUS) amounts of money because of pirating, which shows no signs of slowing, why in the fucking world would you expect them not to do something about it? You seem to forget the fact that Blizzard doesn't work for people, they work for themselves and always have done so: this isn't anything new nor should anything else be expected. They have a problem, they are doing what they can to remedy it, and you're whining because you will have to plug an extra cable into the wall if you want to LAN? Boo fucking hoo. If it proves to be laggy to do so, then you might have room to complain. Given what I opened with in my first paragraph, I don't see that being the case, and you are arguing as if it's already true without any evidence of this whatsoever.

Wasn't relevant to piracy, more to (as I said) cheating, abusing and what's becoming the next step forward in advancing the competitive nature of the multiplayer. Guess what: that takes money too. The less money Blizzard loses to pirates, the more they can invest in creating leagues, competitions, new games, etc. Big picture much?

Definitely true, if Blizzard decides to use netcode that hasn't been improved in 12 years and they decide to do things differently than WC3 for some reason. If you want to base your argument on that without any experience with the new style of LAN, be my guest.

Already gave evidence of my claims, waiting for yours. The only evidence you provided was a list of top selling games as if that has any relevance whatsoever to what Blizzard should be doing to resolve the huge issue of piracy.

Clearly you're much more knowledgeable about networking than me.

Some people don't live in an area where they offer high speed. I'm one of those people. Even if they did, why should I pay more just to support the massive bandwidth of a battle.net lan, its a waste of money with what should be offered as LAN. There's absolutely no good reason to remove it.

They claim it's because pirates installed virtual lans to play with their friends using the UDP ability. Well if the pirates took the time to find and install a virtual lan, then they're definitely going to take the time to find other methods like lan patches or emulated battle.net. which WILL exist.

Never said that. They're removing features that legitimate users like, because of pirates apparently. That's a load of BS, because it won't stop pirates, and if they don't want to pay for it, they'll find a way.

There are other ways. A steam like system seems to be highly effective. When you remove key features of your game because of pirates, then you're altering the game for pirates and not for what your fanbase actually wants, therefore they're not making a game for their fans, they're making one for pirates. If they're doing this for themselves, then they've just joined the ranks of companies like EA, Epic, and so on. They pump out terrible games to meet a quota.

I'm complaining because it is now impossible for me to have more than 2-3 people at my house playing SC2 at one time. I was hoping for 8+ player games going, that simply isn't going to happen anymore. Evidently you don't even know why my argument is yet. I actually have whats called "real life friends" where we like games and actually do this thing called "see each other face to face" and sometimes play games side by side.

If you ever had a good number of real life friends that would LAN with you, you'd understand why people are so pissed.

You know of course, LAN has nothing to do with cheating. There's no real packet manipulation involved with starcraft hacks. Starcraft hacks work in single player, lan, battle.net, etc. You need figure out that hacks have zero relation to LAN. I don't understand how LANs abuse anything, either.

Huh? How is this relevant to anything? You can pretty much expect that there's going to be more data going back and forth during netplay, its a game coming out 12 years later.

What evidence? Like how the absence of a LAN feature is going to make all pirates all of a sudden go out and buy the game?

I haven't messed around with it enough, nor do I know how much networking knowledge you have. But if your networking knowledge is anything like your knowledge on piracy, hacks and such works, then I'm guessing most of what you know is stuff you just made up.

36633 Signatures Total

http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html

I believe I was the 36,633rd signature.

You aren't getting it because you can't see the bigger picture of how piracy affects a company, and you aren't reading my posts about how LAN on battle.net will almost definitely be possible. I'll just stop.

Then why would they say that they weren't including it?

They've made a few hundred comments about how they are improving Battle.net in such a way that they don't think you'll need anything else. Other than that they haven't gone into any specifics in any interview or comments that I've ever seen, so they're probably not even allowed to, yet. That's what TL was told, as well. They said they aren't including LAN, because they're not.

They are however most likely including the ability to play over your own network at home, provided that you are connected to Battle.net in the first place.

am I the only one who got this?

That's LAN. They said there would be no LAN.

Yea, it's stupid... so then if they ever shutdown battle.net 2.0 and anyone wanted to play Starcraft 2 against someone they wouldn't be able too---though I assume all this is really going to do is piss a lot of there fans off to the point some might not buy the game and will wait for someone to crack a lan option in.