News Lack of LAN in StarCraft 2 is "no big deal"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/08/24/lack-of-lan-in-starcraft-2-is-no-big-deal/1

Blizzard executive Rob Pardo reckons that the lack of a LAN option in StarCraft 2 is not really a big deal.

 

I think that sums it up pretty well...

 

Removing features is always risky business.

 

I guess LANers are small groups, huh.

Never mind that thousands get together at times. Never mind the uni students with their own hub.

Blizzard have gone rather astray with this one. Three different games to get the full picture, delayed, removing features that're core to the RTS genre.

I hope it comes back to bite them in the ass.

 

the death of the games industry wasnt caused by piracy, but casuals!

 

don't worry, pirates will have LAN games up and running before the game is released.

the legit buyers always suffers in this cat and mouse game

 

exactly

 

Yay! P2P networks are lag-free! Finally! Thank you Blizzard!

YOU EFFIN MORONS!

 

FFS. Me and my three housemates next year are massive fans of RTS games. I have been waiting for SC2 so long, and now there is absolultely no point in convincing them all to get it, since we would have to play over battle.net, even though we are in the same frickin' house.

I can see the amount of people rebelling against this by pirating it being very high, much like with Spore. In fact, if they just left LAN in, I think they would be affected less by piracy than they will now.

 

idiots...me and a bunch of mates get together every year to lan it up, there's probably 5 of us who are regulars, now a game like the original always gets played, and supcom, some cs, left4dead and so on, this game has just ruled itself out by not including lan, especially as this year the house we are crashing has a restricted download limit, thus come the end of the week battle.net would just sotp working as we reach our limit, niche case, but still an effect, and that there is 5 sales of the game that wont happen. boillox

peace

fatman

agreeing on the piracy comments too fellas!

 

How much will they be charging for access to battle.net again? Seems like every Blizzard decision these days is based on how much money they can get out of you...

+1 on the Piracy comments too.. you know it will happen

 

Hamachi ( https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp) is your friend.

 

Okay, so because of this more people will pirate the game? BS. Those who pirate the game would have done so anyways.

The removal of LAN play is slightly annoying, but won't really affect me at all. I wonder why Blizzard did that, though.

There are many MP games that don't have LAN modes... doesn't make this right, but doesn't mean the end of the world either.

 

First they divide the game into bits, now they remove LAN support.... f*** you Blizzard!!!!!

 

no one said people will pirate the game because of this. i only said i am sad that pirates will get a better deal by not paying for the game. implying that this is not the best way to combat piracy on a LAN party blockbuster game such as this one.

 

That's just blind goody-two-shoes BS, sorry to be so blunt. SC1 is (as mentioned) a LAN blockbuster, and SC2 is about the most anticipated game in the LAN community, be it small LANs like dorms aor a few mates coming together or the bigger organised ones. All those people will be urging to play it. Those among them that would normally pay for the game will certainly turn to a pirated version to be able to play it on a LAN. Also, people like me who play a pirated version for reduced hassle and then pay for the original will surely be less inclined to pay for the game, i know i would. That's just two instances of people being driven into the arms of pirates, not to mention the much bigger group that sees all the negativity and then just thinks "fk it".

The removal of LAN might not affect you, but you can't deny that it does affect a large group of others. Why should we all conform to your model of play?

Your 3rd point is that many other games are without LAN also. Those games aren't the second part of a franchise that thanks a big part of it's popularity to LAN though.

 

Then I'll say it.

In this day and age, any big-budget game that includes multiplayer but not multiplayer over LAN is broken. Period. That goes triple for a game like SC2, which would have been easily bound to become the most-played LAN game of its generation.

And yes, I would have paid for this game. Even with the splitting it up into three parts crap, I would have paid for it. Maybe I would have waited six or eight months to buy each individual part so I was only paying $20 or $30, but yes, I absolutely would have bought each one.

Problem is that I'm not any more eager to pay for a broken game than I would be to pay for a broken plate. If I bother with the game at all, it will be pirated - but then the big "if" is whether or not I bother. I'm just not sure that even pirating the game and hacking it to work over LAN will be worth the manhours it would take to set up correctly. There's a fairly large chance that I just won't consider it to be worth my time.

I hope Blizzard has the foresight to fix their game before it launches (they certainly seem to be giving themselves enough time to do so). But I'm not holding my breath.


- Diosjenin -

 

WRONG!!

 

I don't see your point? I use Hamachi for a few games, but those games still require LAN functionality. Hamachi isn't going to help at all. Hamachi tricks the program/computer into thinking an internet connection is a LAN connection. If Starcraft 2 does not support LAN connections, Hamachi will get you nowhere.

 

battlenet is free. It will stop a few sales. Bet the only thing to beat it on sales is wow cataclysm . And when you have the market so wrapped up does it make a blind bit of diffrence.

If it doesnt sell a million copys in the first day id be shocked.