Blizzard Confirms No LAN Support For Starcraft 2 737
Kemeno writes "Blizzard has announced that they will be dropping LAN support for Starcraft II, citing piracy and quality concerns. Instead, all multiplayer games will be hosted through their new Battle.net service. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this move, but wasn't LAN play how the original Starcraft became popular? Blizzard said, 'More people on Battle.net means ... even more resources devoted to evolving this online platform to cater to further community building and new ways to enjoy the game online. World of Warcraft is a great example of a game that has evolved beyond anyone's imagination since their Day 1 and will continue to do so to better the player experience for as long as players support the title. ... We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.'"
Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Insightful)
World of Warcraft is a great example of a game that has evolved beyond anyone's imagination since their Day 1 and will continue to do so to better the player experience for as long as players support the title.
I find it odd that a comparison is being drawn between a stateful monthly payment role playing game and a stateless (allegedly subscription-less) real time strategy game. I definitely see how World of Warcraft is enriched by the spider webbed interaction of thousands of players on a server. However, I fail to see how Starcraft II would benefit from this if you've got a single digit cap on number of players in any given instance of the game.
And can we give up on the piracy concerns? It's just getting embarrassing [gamesites200.com].
Also, if you're going to force everyone to use Battle.net, I hope you have improved its quality since I was last one it several years ago.
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Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow I think not...
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:4, Insightful)
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Where are you getting this information that Battle.net is blocked from universities?
I told him. And I'm a very reliable source.
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Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, would you block 40% of your target demographic? how about 20%? 5%? You will have plenty of new gamers that were not playing when SC1 came out. Plenty of older gamers that are no longer interested.
It's a veiled attempt to combat piracy that's likely to work against them in the end. Just because it worked for WoW I think someone got it in his or her head that this is the greatest idea evar. Piracy of Wow is, essentially, zero. Sure, there are rouge servers, but if you look at the total number of players on legitimate (that is, account/key/subscription enforced) realms vs. other the 'loss' is negligible.
It's unfortunate that bliz is treating a much smaller, simpler, less involved game the same way they do WoW. Hopefully they'll add LAN support back in at some point...or someone will hack it in and P2P it.
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, there are rouge servers . . .
It's ROGUE dammit! Rouge is a face paint!
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Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, think of it this way. I'm a fanboy and I'll buy this game.
I own eleven fucking copies of Starcraft and Broodwars. I can have my own 8 man LAN party and then some. That's how big of a SC nut I was. Will I buy multiple copies of SCII? Fuck no. No LAN party, no reason to.
Blizzard is going to make "fuck-you money" with this game one way or another, but I'm telling you now, that's 7 copies unbought because you're greedy and removing LAN support.
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You can still have 8 computers set up in your house to play through battle net if you so desire everyone playing in the same room. Realistically, your style of game play is not effected (Out side of being required to have an internet connection, that you probably already
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While you purcahsed 8 copies for your 8 computers, someone else purchased one and placed it on all 8 of theirs.
And now instead of buying one copy, they won't buy any at all.
You can still have 8 computers set up in your house to play through battle net if you so desire everyone playing in the same room.
Sure, if you have a fat enough pipe. Of course, then you still have to deal with lag issues, and you won't be able to play at all when the internet connection goes down. Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that it's way more convenient to just set up a LAN.
But hey, if blizzard doesn't want to sell to several million of their potential customers, that's their problem. If they don't want my money bad enough to make a good product, that's their loss
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Sure, if you have a fat enough pipe. Of course, then you still have to deal with lag issues,
I keep seeing people say things like this. This is not true. The majority of the packets will be peer to peer and never leave your Local area network. Only the talking to the battle.net servers would go out to the internet, and this will not be happening hardly at all during game play. Having to maintain a connection to battle.net will not lag your game for the people who are connected all on one router,
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Two problems with that though:
1) You could play starcraft for free on a LAN legally. They had a LAN copy on the disk which had no single player and could only join.
2) I can't count how many LANs I've been to or hosted that had no internet because of problematic DHCP servers.
3) This thing better not lag like a mother with 8 people sharing a cable modem.
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"Blizzard has announced that they will be dropping LAN support for Starcraft II, citing piracy and quality concerns. Instead, all multiplayer games will be hosted through their new Battle.net service. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this move, but wasn't LAN play how the original Starcraft became popular?
It's the typical "I got mine" ploy. Games, piracy, music, immigration, whatever. Immigrants should be free to come and go, unless my wage will be lowered. Foreign goods should be free to come and go,
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:4, Informative)
There are other MMOs that are like that. For example, guild wars has many people in towns, but where you do most things the number is 8 (or 16 for certain missions). It is not as big as WOW but it has a good number of people. Guild wars has no monthly fee and totally online. No LAN based play.
As for batttle.net, if it is like the diablo II days, they are in trouble. It sucked back then.
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It's a lot better than it used to be - the latency is good, communicating with people is easy, stability isn't half bad and it can handle more people.
Still, sudden spikes of latency are a daily problem and the accounts are deleted after 90 days of inactivity. It's better, but it's still not perfect.
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everyone has a high speed connection now either. Also, last time I used Battle.net, the process for hosting a private game was annoying and cumbersome.
Also, since most "broadband" connections are only fast on download, and Battle.net will require all game data to be uploaded once for every person playing at a LAN party, ADSL is likely to be too slow for more than two or three players.
Wouldn't bother me if I played multi-player RTS games in any environment *other* than LAN, but every time I've tried, latency, bandwidth, and crappy lobby systems have leeched all the fun out of it.
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Informative)
In it's current incarnation, Battle.net requires you (like most online services faced with connecting through a firewall) to open or forward ports to the machine running the game. Normally this is no problem, for example XBox Live works the same way. Unfortunately, Battle.net wasn't forward-thinking enough to use multiple ports! As only a single port is used for communication between the server and the client, only one client may communicate with the server through the firewall or router.
This should have been fixed back in the day through an update, but alas it's still true. A couple months ago my friends and I decided to pick the old game up and try playing it. I was surprised at how everything worked well after setting up the firewall. Unfortunately the minute I had a few other friends over and we all tried playing over my cable service, a realization quickly dawned. I could host fine, everyone could connect... but there was an inorinate amount of lag once the game started. This lag was only alleviated when the people physically there weren't in the hosted game, or the remote players were sitting it out. Any mix of the two resulted in the game being outright unplayable.
And I'll echo your point. I'm house-sitting for a close friend now and there is no internet at his place. He said having the rest of the guys over for LANs or Rock Band or whatever be it would be fine. If StarCraft 2 were out, it would (have) probably be(en) the game we'd play the most. I don't like this one bit.
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of everyone connected over a 100mbps local network, you now have 8 players funneling out through the same shared Internet connection.
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Insightful)
"What's the difference other than everyone has to own the game?"
The big obvious one is that battlenet was slow, crashed a often and was flooded with other problems. Back when starcraft was out I had high speed internet, along with very few others, but we still had LAN parties because social interaction was (and may still be) fun, and there is just no way you're going to out perform my LAN, even with today's high speed Internet. There's probably a lot of people out there who would just rather play online, typing or talking through a cold microphone, i'm not one of em.
"We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better."
I highly doubt it.
Just one more reason I no longer support Bizzard. Just as soon as I begin to forget why I dislike them they give me more reasons.
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, no. There are plenty of people without high speed connections, you obviously live in, or in the vicinity of a city. (In a country with an Internet infrastructure not consisting of snails and mud.) Many people in many countries have crappy DSL-connections at best. Many still connect through dial up-modem. (I know this is hard to believe for someone born on the Internet through a 1000 Mbit connection.)
This gives, as many has already pointed out, a situation where you could have 8 guys connected to a 1000/100 Mbit switch. Lovely, no problems at all.
Or, the same 8 guys, with 8 great modern computers could be connected through that same 1000 Mbit switch, but then linked to battle.net through a 8 Mbit down/1 Mbit up connection! This is nothing short of madness.
Some of the best LAN-parties I've ever been to has been in cabins in the coutryside. It's peaceful, we disturb no one and no one disturb us. Obviously, Blizzard think we're better off playing something else nowadays.
To throw out LAN-support as of 2009 is not just a mistake, it's a god damn disgrace to the gaming industry.
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I'm surprised it took this long for the news to hit Slashdot's main page, it's already a few days old yet it's the kind of thing that we nerds definitely consider "news." Sites BluesNews reported on the initial Lan issue on the 29th and has been feeding details since then.
Personally I don't mind that much, I haven't attended a LAN party is years. However I can definitely see how this will anger SCORES of people.
Re:Confusing Comparison: RTS vs RPG (Score:5, Insightful)
Between this and trying to sucker people into buying the same game three times for single player (one version for each race campaign, though this might have been changed since I last looked), I'll just pass out on Starcraft 2 entirely.
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No, LAN, then I won't buy it.
It is bad enough being the recipient of a Protos carrier storm, or a Zerg rush even on 100Mbut switched LAN. Now you want me to send all of my LAN party's packets over a 2MBline? No F-ing way.
Sorry Blizzard, but you're now out of touch with the people who made you great. Bye.
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It would be better for everyone if Blizzard licensed out battle.net software for a price that a small fan community could afford, between $100 and $500, may be? Beats implementing LAN code which almost no one is going to use.
I wish they didn't bring up piracy though. Is anyone really buying this bullshit anymore? Hacking units will rush this title like a swarm of Zerg, they will.
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There was an OSS/FS implementation of Battle.net -- Bnetd. Problem is, Blizzard didn't like the idea of that (OH NOES THEY'LL USE IT TO PIRATE OUR GAMEZ! O WOE IZ US!) and sued the Bnetd developers.
There's PvPGN as well, but I haven't had a chance to play with that. Looks like it's still being updated, though.
luckily! (Score:5, Insightful)
luckily we have bnetd!
oh wait...
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nope, you dont have to wait
http://www.gamesites200.com/wowprivate/ [gamesites200.com]
Re:luckily! (Score:5, Informative)
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Hmm
Makes one wonder if internet connectivity will be required to run the game, period. As in, 'either touch base with your battlenet account, or no game for you.'
Re:luckily! (Score:5, Insightful)
God, I thought I was the only one who still remembered what douchebags Blizzard were about bnetd.
What happened to all the wankers who hooted and hollered about boycotting them after that?
Re:luckily! (Score:4, Insightful)
What happened to all the wankers who hooted and hollered about boycotting them after that?
Still here... still boycotting... just not as vocally anymore...
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What happened to all the wankers who hooted and hollered about boycotting them after that?
Well, we tried, then this happened [penny-arcade.com].
Remember your wireless card! (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to go Blizzard.
$2,880 per year for four players (Score:5, Funny)
So now, aside from locating a place where you and your friends can setup your computers and play - you now get to find someplace with an internet connection that can handle all of them at the same time.
Or you can just pay $60 per computer per month with a 24-month minimum commitment for mobile broadband, like a lot of proponents of cloud computing on Slashdot have been recommending.
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Not exactly true AFAIK. Starcraft is still peer-to-peer once the game starts, so you'll still be interfacing with your lan buddies over your LAN. I'd imagine if everyone in the game is local, the WAN will see very little, if any, traffic
That won't increase the "quality control" as they're suggesting. That only increases the amount of things that can go wrong. Besides, that's a bloody insult to everyone who bought the game. "Let nanny look in on you and decide whether you've been good enough to play the game you paid for!" and btw, nanny has a 5% downtime for scheduled maintenance, and may be discontinued in 7-10 years.
Re:Remember your wireless card! (Score:5, Informative)
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Right, so computers A and B on the same LAN, communicating to the internet through router X would each send messages to X's IP address... The request would go out over the LAN, the router would see it and say, "Hey, that's my IP address! I don't need to forward this out onto the Internet at all!"
Actually, my router doesn't talk. I think it would be fun if routers did actually speak things like that out loud, as though they were going through some kind of thought process and sharing it with the room. "He
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No - now instead of everyone just clicking "Local Area Network game" and joining the one game that shows up, people have to:
1) log in to battle.net
1A) remember the password, or
1B) create a new account
2) Set up a private game
3) On everyone's computer, find the game in the list (do you have to join the right channel first? I forget, it's been a while. If so, that's another step.)
4) Get everyone joined, after communicating and properly entering the password
Why, exactly, did you think things would be easier u
Battlenet Server Clones? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are they at least going to release a battle.net server clone source/ dedicated servers for private hosting? Similar to how Valve has a source dedicated server they release for all their major games? A lot of large LAN events only allow limited net access, if any.
For the record I think this is really,really dumb idea.
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While at the beginning Blizzard may not allow play without having connectivity to Battle.net, I am fairly sure that at some point in the future, functionality will be released that will either allow for multiplayer private servers or possibly LAN.
Remember, Blizzard did release a patch that allows you to play Starcraft 1 without having to insert the CD in. It's simply that eventually computer games reach end of life - and rather than have to continually support a base of players it is easier to simply let t
Disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Shame the official reason is to combat piracy as well, since it seems this will cause more players to find BNet emulators and won't solve the piracy problem.
I wouldn't have considered piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Until I read about this. HOLY crap am I pissed. I used to work somewhere with a 5$/hr gaming machine rental on a lan of about 10-15 machines. Starcraft, Q2, CS, TF were HUGELY popular lan games we allways had people doing group play 2v2 etc. We did tons of tournaments too that were often won w/ a zerg rush or an a carrier warp.
Those were the good ol days!
We're all going to have to wait for Total Annihilation 3?
Effin A.
Re:I wouldn't have considered piracy (Score:5, Informative)
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.
1) Pirated servers splinter the community instead of consolidating all players who love to play the game. Battle.net will bring players together in skirmishes, ladder play, custom games, and allow everyone the opportunity to share a common experience.
2) More people on Battle.net means more even more resources devoted to evolving this online platform to cater to further community building and new ways to enjoy the game online. World of Warcraft is a great example of a game that has evolved beyond anyone's imagination since their Day 1 and will continue to do so to better the player experience for as long as players support the title. The original StarCraft is an even better example of how 11 years later, players still love and play this title, and we will continue to support and evolve it with patches.
We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.
If I were to buy StarCraft II or any other title, I know the money I spent would be going to supporting that title. Personally, I would be upset that others were freeloading while others are legitimately supporting a title that has great potential and goals of making this title have 'long legs.'
If you like a song a lot, buy it, and that artist will only come out with more awesome songs for you. If you like a game, buy it, and we will promise to constantly work to make the player experience better at every corner we can.
Support the causes you believe in (This is applicable to all things, not just gaming).
Don't be a leech to society, innovation, and further awesome creations.
Bolding is his.
Re:I wouldn't have considered piracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't have considered piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I like hamburgers, but that doesn't mean I need to go spend $60 on a burger to "support" the beef industry. I spend $3 on a burger because I want to eat the damn burger.
Re:I wouldn't have considered piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that it's odd that none of the linked articles or well-moderated comments have raised the most salient and powerful issue against this measure: that you can play the game only as long as Blizzard desires to support it or, more pertinently, for so long as Blizzard continues to exist. Blizzard is doing well, but recent events have demonstrated that that can change.
As recent shutdowns or attempted shutdowns of DRM servers have shown (Major League Baseball, MSN Music, Yahoo Music, Wal-Mart Music, Adobe ad-supported PDFs), once a revenue stream dries up, your continued enjoyment of multi-player will be subject to a simple calculation: is the PR cost of cutting off support greater or less than the expense of maintaining the servers and support. The MSN, Yahoo, Wal-Mart servers were only used sporadically in order to shift DRM authorizations from one computer to another. The MLB servers were used every time someone attempted to play a purchased video. The Battle.net servers will be used by far larger numbers of people virtually every time that they want to play (once players exhaust the single player potential). World of Warcraft is the only Battle.net game that generates a continuing revenue stream to justify the expense. Even if there is support for 15-20 years, at some point discontinuation is inevitable -- and there are surprising numbers of people who still play legally purchased 15-20 year old games.
Considering the importance of multi-player in Starcraft 2, players are justified in planning for reality and demanding some form of LAN functionality. Blizzard has legitimate concerns about piracy, but purchasers have legitimate concerns about being able to play the game long after Blizzard has lost interest in it. Blizzard should be willing to develop LAN functionality as a patch, place the code in escrow, and include a contractual provision on the box which automatically authorizes release of patch by the escrow agent if online service is terminated. If it is not, then players should browbeat them with every DRM failure that they can think of, because ultimately they are the only ones who are likely to care.
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Who the fuck wants to be consolidated into a community experience? I want to play my game with my friends. Fuck the rest of you. I don't know you, and you're not invited over for whiskey, cigars, poker, and RTS gaming. It's my game when I buy it, and I'll play it how the hell I want or I won't buy it.
Re:Disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Blizzard stopped needing to care about gamers after they got popular with WoW. Fuck 'em.
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Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe if BNet is just used for a quick auth and lobby, then a LAN game is started, that might not be so bad, but it's not looking that way.
Blizzard will obviously be doing it this way, they're just being unnecessarily cryptic. Not doing so is a surefire way for Blizzard to piss off everyone involved in E-Sports/competitive gaming.
Also, the piracy issue isn't small scale piracy at private LANs, but large scale piracy in China:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=96603 [teamliquid.net]
A few thing about Haofang: It is biggest gaming site in China, it has millions of users for many games including SC and WC3. It is free and using LAN(TCP/IP protocol) to allow players to play.
How Haofang works: You download a small program for Haofang, run it, tell it where your SC folder is. You join a room(max 255 players because TCP/IP can handle max to 255)then hit RUN, the little program will load your SC up and instead of log on to Bnet you go to LAN, and can find many games their to play since 255 players in the same room is a lot.
Why it is bad: Cos millions of players in China were/are/going to using pirated SC/WC3 to play without any limitation.
Why Blizzard cares: Of course they care, if even SC2 is going to last only half the life of SC the next big market is definitely China(cos Korea is given). If things going on like SC/WC3 Blizzard is going to lose tons of money.
Did Blizzard do anything about it: Yes they did but failed. A few year back Blizzard sued Haofang but lost and Haofang is continue to grow and now become the most recognize site in China(among gamers of course).
Why is Haofang able to sneak pass Blizzard: Haofang told that they only allow players play via LAN(TCP/IP) they do not do anything to mess with Blizzard Battle.net and thus can not be judged. I know it is bullshit since it allows players with pirated copies play multi play which is the life SC, but it holds true in the EULA and Blizzard can do nothing about it.
Re:Disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Sad.. (Score:2)
There was some thought that Blizz isnt completely stupid and will have client to server authentication over the net, and then P2P the clients on the LAN. At least with this method you could have as many LAN stations as your power will permit.
Uhuh... (Score:2)
I may sound cynical but... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, Blizzard, you wouldn't take out LAN support (which is obviously popular) unless you thought you could make money by forcing everyone to use battle.net.
Or maybe requiring battle.net allows you to check everyone's serial number without generating a bunch of bad publicity by using SecuROM.
Now I'm gonna have to let all the LAN-party machines access the public Internet. Oh, goody!
Sheesh...
Bonus! (Score:5, Insightful)
As a purely coincidental side effect, I'm sure, this will make sure that everyone on the LAN has their own copy, as battle.net will only allow one CD key on at a time.
Quite a reversal of the "Ghost Copy" feature or whatever of StarCraft 1 that allows many people to use one copy over the LAN.
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It was called spawning. To spawn a copy.
I'll buy it...but... (Score:5, Interesting)
but it definitely won't keep it's longevity without LAN support, I mean the best thing about games like Starcraft or even FPS like BF1942 was the LAN aspect of getting your friends together ordering a pizza, talking shit and zerging each other. Sure, I can throw on a headset and play with friends, but what if battle.net is down? What if I'm getting a lot of lag...fast paced game players don't have the tolerance of players who are into mmo's exclusively. I think Blizz is making a poor decision.
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This. You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been, and I think Blizzard has forgotten that. I don't think they realize they're not making an infinitely upgradable game for people with no lives. They're making a RTS that will have a few patches and maps added for people who just want to pick up and play the game without wading through bullshit.
GG, Blizz.
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You've never been to Korea, have you.
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Don't be so sure... Blizzard seems to be one of the companies that actually takes an interest in the quality of their games, and they're really interested in giving SC2 the same longevity SC1 has had.
Even if they sell a bunch of copies, if it looks like popularity is dwindling because of lack of native LAN support, I would be surprised if they don't patch it in. (There's already precedent for this; SC1 shipped with IPX support but no TCP or UDP; UDP support was added later.)
Lies can justify anti-piracy inconvenience efforts (Score:5, Insightful)
We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.
How is connecting all the computers in the room to a server across the state going to ever be better than connecting all the computers in the room to each other? This man just told everyone that his bullshit is going to start tasting better than icecream. He just needs a neon sign over his head that says "Do not trust this man or anything he says."
Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
The most jarring thing to me is the worry that they won't at least let you meet up with specific people on bnet and form a closed game to at least simulate a LAN game (fat chance, with the lag back to Blizzard's servers =/ )
The only form of DRM that works (Score:5, Insightful)
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In 11 years (present age of SC), will Blizzard still be running SC2 servers so you can play against your friend next door? I can do that with SC today - pop in the disc & play a few rounds head to head, no trouble.
Look at what happened to people who'd bought music from MS or Yahoo when they shut down the DRM servers. This sort of DRM only harms the customer - if the server goes away, the software you've purchased (yeah, I know it's only a license, blah blah) becomes crippled or completely non-functional
Does anyone remember when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Monetizing Battle.net (Score:2)
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You induce an interesting point... Maybe they're thinking of starting to charge for Bnet and are worried that VPN will eat their lunch...
Nah....
Then again...
Maps (Score:2, Insightful)
Bunch of BS (Score:2)
"While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with Starcraft II and safeguard against piracy."
THis is the result of a great gaming house bought by a corporate whore. Good job Blizz, not only are you selling the integrity right out from under WoW, you are going to let them fuck up your other franchises too. I still dont understand why Starcraft II has t
Leverage, then extend away (Score:2)
Not only did Blizzard's RTS games gain popularity as LAN games, but they capitalized on casual LAN gaming (in offices, etc.) by allowing multiple players players on a single purchased copy of the game. That feature became standard for other RTS games for awhile, but at first it certainly helped Blizzard propel over the crowds (and it certainly was a crowded genre).
So I'm contrasting the old "free" partial copies of the games to gain popularity, to the server = copy-protection methods now that they have the
No LAN support? Time to smack someone in the head (Score:5, Interesting)
So how is this going to play out? If SCII is any good, the community will just produce a local battle net server e.g. (bnetd) for playing games on the LAN. Blizzard is making very a bad, short-sighted move. As for piracy, everyone I know owns at least one copy of the Blizzard Battle Chest, which costs $20 or less for SC and BW. It is the best entertainment one can buy for under $20. The mega mineral maps require internet access though
If anyone from Blizzard reads Slashdot, please go up and smack your management in the head and tell them to make SCII LAN playable. If they don't build it, someone else will and writing a small server to emulate BNET isn't going to be that hard. Even with encrypted session, it will be reverse engineered, just ask Sony about ShowEQ and their futile attempt the encrypt Everquest Traffic. Everyone on planet earth is going to buy the game the day it hits the shelf. Please go smack them in the back of the head now.
Re:No LAN support? Time to smack someone in the he (Score:4, Insightful)
And this piracy thing is strange. When I invite friends, we can play at 8 people on a board game I was the only one to buy. It is strange that multiplayer video games should work another way around.
Re:No LAN support? Time to smack someone in the he (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone on planet earth is going to buy the game the day it hits the shelf.
Therefore they don't give a shit.
Soo... (Score:2)
This sounds like it might make playing as a group from behind a household NAT router much more difficult, no? There at least will be a speed penalty.
That takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.
The human factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly the best decision ever... (Score:2)
At least it'll have local campaign play, right? You can still play that forever and ever.
Battle.net, I lose my faith in thee (Score:4, Informative)
I continue to play Warcraft III fairly regularly, mostly in the form of the custom map DotA [wikipedia.org]. My thoughts:
Battle.net has failed to evolve and I feel is discouraging to communities rather than promoting it. I've seen nothing really appreciable since War-III came out with the sad "clan" system. Bots are officially disallowed, but required to develop any sort of reasonable group. The new Warden service makes running a bot far more of a challenge.
The necessity of the bots is this: you can't functionally setup an organized game any other way. There's no mechanism for taking a private game public once you get your friends in it. Game names can't be changed. Custom (non-ladder) games without an external mod have no disincentive to them to deal with the burgeoning population of juvenile tools who like to bail on their first loss in a team game, or worse find a way to actively ruin the game. Blizzards clan system itself is lacking and hasn't been improved upon at all. It's nearly useless outside of ladder games. Players end up creating new accounts with clan tags in the name to "fly their colors." Simply being more prominent in displaying the affiliated clan would have gone a long way.
And come on... the game came out 7 years ago. Fix the damn pathing issues! Blizzard makes amazing games, but their handling of B.net lately has been horribly disappointing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't agree more. I'm a bot author (the chat and channel-management type, not the game hosting type), so I have a front row view of how Blizzard has created a market for these third-party programs by keeping Battle.net outdated and stagnant. Chat bots allow you to perform really basic tasks, like keeping someone you don't like permanently OUT of your channel, or disseminating more than one line of information to your guildmates; Battle.net does not support any of this.
In the world of custom game hostin
Trends (Score:2)
More and more companies are dropping co-op games (except for strategy games), pushing off PC onto consoles (or at least developing on consoles so the control schema sucks), and now droping LAN games?
It seems like the industry is trying desperately to get me to stop playing games.
Oh, and it won't really do much to damp piracy, just shift it from stolen images to stolen keys, thus increasing the harm to legit gamers. Not having a whole "way to go" moment here.
Recently got UT3, BTW, which is so buggy as to be
I think they just increased piracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever a company does something that hurts the consumer in the name of "fighting piracy", it seems to me to be taken by the community as an open invitation to pirate their game. Given the choice between pirating and buying the game, frequently the reason the individual consumer chooses to pay money for the game is the impression one has of the company. Sure, no one is going to pay for a crappy game, but look at the difference between Spore and Starcraft. Spore was seen as a slap in the face of the consumer and consequently was one of the most pirated games in history. The original Starcraft, despite the fact it is easily pirated, is still profitable enough to be sold for $20 in stores.
You want to insure piracy? Piss off your users. Removing LAN and telling LAN users they're nothing but pirates seems to be going down that road pretty nicely.
I don't think piracy is their main concern here (Score:2)
Bzzzzt...Logic flaw detected (Score:4, Insightful)
If Blizzard were offering something better, they would not have to remove the game's LAN capability. Customers would just use the "better" thing, right?
Oh wait. Better for Blizzard. Ah, now it makes sense.
Stationed in Iraq (Score:5, Interesting)
Feeling a huge sense of meh towards starcraft 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
I was a big fan of RTS from the early days with Dune 2 up to Total Annihilation. But Starcraft was where I finally started to ask "Is there nothing else?" Sure, it was an incredibly polished game and I would have been astounded by it five years before. But the thing is, it really was little more than Orcs in Space. Snazzy voice acting, high production values, but the gameplay was little more advanced. Now I'm sure that there are a million South Koreans who are ready to flame me on this so fine, let's say it's the pinnacle of RTS gaming, we'll run with that for a second. Has anyone done better since then? No.
No matter how advanced the graphics have become, no matter how much more bling has been shoved onto the disc, at the end of the day the AI's still suck and the controls are maddeningly primitive. Here, five units I want to move! Select, click move, watch them run into each other and eventually form a ragged column and then approach a target one at a time, allowing themselves to be crushed in detail.
I've been away from PC gaming for a few years and am catching up on demos of games that have come out in the meantime. So far there's little evidence of any advancement in all these years. The videos for Starcraft 2 look like 3D representations of exactly what went on in Starcraft 1. I suppose if Starcraft was the pinnacle of RTS design for you then a graphics buff is all you need.
from battle.net forums (Score:3, Interesting)
From battle.net forums; Karune is a Blizzard Poster.
Q u o t e:
I think the reasons starcraft has lasted so long as a game and community are because:
1) Well designed and fun to play game.
2) Free battle.net - Having a place where gamers can come together and play the game 24/7 helps to foster a bolster and lively community.
3) Continued support for the game even after 11 years, they still patch it when it needs a patch.
4) Pro-Starcraft gaming. This is a big deal to serious starcraft players or to anyone that enjoys competition. These games are fun to watch and makes casual players want to play the game.
5) Lan support. - Lan parties are fun.
If you take away LAN support you will still have the 4 other pillars for a strong starcraft community. Plus if LAN support helps rid battle.net of hackers, cheaters and piracy because the network traffic is harder to decipher then all the better. That only strengthens the spirit of fair competition on battle.net.
The first 4 pillars are ALL being made better.
1) Development time for StarCraft II have far exceeded the original StarCraft in both the standard of quality and duration, to ensure the highest in quality RTS experience we can possibly create.
2) Not only is it free to play online for people who purchase the game, Battle.net 2.0 is designed with the new generation of online community and eSports in mind.
3) As long as there are people playing our games, we will continue to support them, and we have continued with this tradition with our legacy titles like the original StarCraft.
4) StarCraft II was created with eSports as a cornerstone in design philosophy. StarCraft evolved into an eSport. Preview Options Submit Continue Editing Preview Cancel Get More Comments Reply Prefs Search Everything will be just tickety-boo today.
5) Map Editor will be better than any we have ever released.
and:
6) ??? - will have to wait and see :)
For me personally- I loved LAN parties, but the direction in which Battle.net is headed, I would always choose to play on Battle.net > 99% of the time and even if for whatever reason I did decide to lug my computer to a friend's house in this day of age (<1%), I would still be playing with them on Battle.net against others at their place.
[ Post edited by Karune ]
Simply Stated - Vote with your wallets! (Score:3, Insightful)
No Lan support for Stacraft 2 (or Diablo 3) then I wont be buying it.
I advise you all to do the same, and I don't even have to tell my friends not to as we all only play LAN.
Blizzard games I own.
1 Warcraft 1
1 Warcraft 2
1 Diablo 1
1 Warcraft 2 Bnet
2 Starcraft
2 Broodwar
2 Diablo 2
2 Diablo 2 LoD
2 Warcraft 3
2 Warcraft 3 frozen thrones.
Oh, and try playing with a few people behind 1 router/firewall. It doesn't work so well on most game patch levels and on most routers/firewalls.
Re:Not suprising: Piracy and cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
I buy games, and bought SC1 [and Brood War] and played the hell out of it [spawn copies at LANs!]. might not want to buy SC2 if that's how they want to play...
Re: (Score:2)
An interesting thing is, how the hell is this going to work if both players are behind the same nat and thus share the same external ip address.
It was something that newer worked on starcraft 1, where 2 players on the same external ip address simply meant that they could not play against each other on battle.net (But lan worked).
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Broadband killed LAN parties (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't been to a LAN party in about 10 years. It's really easy to get the same experience nowadays with broadband and a microphone.
Then no offense, but your friends suck. There's still no way sitting at home alone in your basement playing with friends online and yelling at them over teamspeak compares to packing 12-15 friends into same basement and duking it out all night long. Sure, you can trash talk over the mic, but there's still going to be times you just need to grab something soft and wail it at your friend when he curbstomps you... Or the joys of building a massive tower of dew from everyones empties.. or waiting to see who crashes first and then raiding his hard drive for that uber pr0n collection he's been hiding....
Don't get me wrong, broadband has changed the world, but there are some things that just aren't the same even with broadband. Hell, my wife's computer is upstairs in her own little room, and I always feel bad that's she's getting left out of the fun when the party's at our place (I keep trying to convince her to move her gear downstairs for the even, but no love).. it's a world of difference being in the same room together versus even being on separate floors, let alone zip codes. (yes, a wife that enjoys lan parties... granted she's more apt to enjoy the simple classics, ala Q3 and Unreal then "complicated" ones in her opinion, like TF2.. but it's a start).
Overall, I think this is a mistake on Blizzard's part. There *are* those of us who still do actual physical lan parties, and in some instances, network dependency in a game can be a BITCH... case in point, new fangled games that have *one* way to patch, direct from the internet. You have 15 people sharing a broadband connection, you know how long it takes for each of them to download a separate 1-2 gig patch? And if it's an EA game, good lord, forget it, I think they're using C64s as their patch servers.... Before all this "lets assume everyone is connected to the internet all the time" mentality, one person could grab the latest patches (from home, before the lan party), bring them to the party, share out the EXEs, and everyone could patch direct from that... now, especially with Steam games, it's always a crapshoot to see who all is upgraded to the latest and how many people will need to download (at the same time) slowing everyone to a crawl. Even trying to plan ahead you can still get burned (last lan party I think it was, there was a TF2 update that came out the night before before the lanparty.. some people had patched the previous weekend, but nooooo, we still had to sit through the mess)
Re:Broadband killed LAN parties (Score:4, Informative)
Are you aware that you can just copy the gcf files from an up to date SteamApps folder onto everyone else's machine? Just be sure to close steam first before copying over the files.
We do this all the time when there's a big TF2 update during a weekend LAN at uni (we have the uni's internet connection mostly to ourselves at 11pm but it's still quicker to copy the files over the network or pass round an external drive).
While I can see the piracy aspect, there are a good few games in my drawer that I wouldn't have considered if I hadn't "borrowed" them for a weekend at a lan party. If you really do have to have 1 CD key per player then I guess SC2 will join the growing list of games which are good but we never have big games with because not enough people own it. (Currently DOWII, CoH. TF2 is the only exception because it's that awesome.)
-1 Sycophant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, it's tiring to have companies actively inconvenience their users just in case some people might steal it. To throw a company a bone to help protect their IP, strange how Blizzard did just fine until wild success of WoW got them gobs of cash. Now, suddenly, with the most successful MMORPG, with the most revenue, they need to be careful about people stealing their games or else they will go poor?
I suspect that the sudden success of WoW has attracted unfortunate decision makers who tend to jump into successful companies/products and sink them. I see it all too often, a brilliant idea brilliantly executed draws the people who don't achieve success on their own to take it over and enforce the same decisions that keep them from succeeding on their own onto the otherwise capable group.