First off, most people these days have medicore DSL connections. While it could support a few people connecting to battle.net, first off it'll cause a chokepoint in your network if you have too many people, now making it impossible to play it side by side (one of the biggest reasons why SC was so fun was to LAN beside your friends), not to mention it's an unnecessary 100 ping or whatever when you're right beside your buddies.

Second, it's stupid to expect every single person at a lan to show up with a copy of the game. It just doesn't happen. So yes, while people will be copying it around, they still lack the online play capability, and LAN play and campaign only goes so far. Heck, you even provided a spawn version for the original SC cd, meaning you wanted people to be able to play with their friends on LANs. The only difference between spawn versions and pirated versions is that the pirates get the campaign, and how much do you really think that does? If they like the game, which most people do, they'll go out and buy a copy and get the battle.net.

Third, it's a significant downgrade from what your other games used to be. Whenever people think about blizzard games, they think about quality, improvement, and getting far more for their moneys worth. Usually blizzard games are a huge improvement over their predecessor, but if you're removing some of the bigger features, this is not a trait of the blizzard we once knew. Ever since you had the cash cow wow, and merged with activision, we only have to wonder if you're interest is with your fans or with the amount of money you'll be making.

Last, there is only one reason you'd be removing LAN. Let's be honest, pirating has never really been an issue for you blizzard, and you know if battle 2.0 was good enough that it'd make people go on there automatically over LAN whenever possible. Plus you and I both know you're going to make a killing no matter what on launch day, so why offer a significantly worse product unless there was more to be gained by not offering it? You know, such as a subscription fee to play online. But then people might use virtual lans and stuff because they don't want to pay. Oh no, gotta remove that so we can pump out more money. If you really are planning a subscription fee for battle.net, SC2 is ruined, period.

I'm not buying it on launch day anymore. I'm going to wait and see for other people to find out what you've decided to screw up in the name of making money and decide later if its worthwhile. You buy SC for the multiplayer, and if you're removing large parts of multiplayer for more money, you're not making a sequel to SC, you're making a cash cow. If thats the case, you should of merged with EA.

A LAN hack will be extremely easy for pirates to pull off. This move is completely useless for everybody.

It's a weird decision really, would it really take a lot of programming to include a LAN mode?

Edit: Wow Yoshi, they are really giving you alot of crap. They have even resorted to calling you some cry baby with a crappy internet connection to can't afford to buy games. Not so mature over there.

Holy shit, people on Battle.Net forums are either idiots or assholes.

I personally never used LAN (expect for Hamachi) but I think Blizzard's just being Blizzard and making extra cash by forcing them to use BNet.

I do believe it was confirmed that you will be able to fully use SC2 on b.net without subscriptions. Some blizz rep said something like "customer goes to retail, they will get a fully functional game without having to pay subscriptions".
However, by not saying there will be no subscriptions what so ever, I'm positive a subscription based account will be enhanced in multiple ways.

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.

We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.

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.