Blizzard: StarCraft II Will Re-Energize RTS Genre

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[citation][nom]Jonnydough[/nom]Everyone that doesn't live in the city like your ignorant self.[/citation]

Which I may add, is actually a rather large portion of the U.S. population.
 
[citation][nom]stradric[/nom]I'm reasonably confident that many people decrying "no-LAN" are just upset that they won't be able to steal the game on piratebay and play with their pirate friends via Hamachi.[/citation]
So you seriously believe that game this popular won't be hacked into oblivion? Orly? It WON'T harm ILLEGAL customers IN ANY WAY. They'll get what they want unlike legal customers.
 
[citation][nom]Syon[/nom]Anywhere you're going to hold a LAN party will almost certainly have broadband available and I don't believe b.net blocks multiple connections from the same IP (correct me if I'm wrong.)[/citation]

And what about Events like Million Man Lan? You've got 60+ people all trying to use the same business class internet pipe. Even *if* you could get that many players through without issue, you'll always have the douche that is downloading something killing the bandwidth for the actual game.

The bottom line is they (Blizzard) are taking Ubisoft's fail based approach to controlling piracy in their game, and no amount of wink & nod is going to hide that behind a "LAN tech is old" excuse. The guy above that suggested keeping the CD check over the net, but running the game via LAN was right, and it is a much better way to administrate a game that really was made popular by the LAN party to begin with.
 


Had you actually read the rest of my post...

"So Blizzard's goal is not to stop piracy. It's to make the legit version of the game far more desirable than the pirated version."

How is a hacked version of the game going to get balance and bug-fixing updates from battle.net? Pirates are going to have to wait for some cracker group to come out with a new patch every time blizzard releases an update -- which is frequent. That alone makes the pirated version much worse. Then throw in the fact that the pirated version won't work on battle.net.

Also by pirating the game, you're just contributing to the problem of DRM. So despite your huge sense of entitlement that makes you think Blizzard owes you LAN, you're actually just making it worse for yourself and everyone else while legitimizing Blizzard's decision to require an internet connection. If you don't like the fact that the game has no pure LAN support, don't buy it. Don't steal it either. Actually have some integrity and pass it by completely. Until then, your argument has no merit.
 


Sounds like the popularity of LAN parties is waning in your town (and everywhere else). I'm not sure why you think adding your anecdotal evidence to this discussion supports your argument. It seems to me it supports the argument to the contrary -- that pure LAN's popularity is on the decline.

Lugging the entirety of one's computer to a LAN party makes no sense when there's an alternative available that's far more simple and effective. You need to let go of this LAN party nonsense and grow the fark up. I'll say it again: If you were a teenager for starcraft 1 and you're still going to LAN parties, you have bigger issues to deal with.
 
Woah woah woah guys, lot of misinformation here!

SC2 will be playable over lan, and will not consume internet bandwidth to do so. You will require an internet connection just to authenticate with blizzard first, but that is it. Battle.net does not host game servers, it's like xbox live. It's simply a matchmaking service to connect you to other peoples computers. Once you have used battle.net to find your buddies game at your LAN, all game traffic will be localized entirely within your network, battle.net wont be used for anything at this point, other than stat tracking once a winner is determined.
 
Not worth $63.59 IMO, I might wait awhile (maybe a long while, who knows) for it to pop-up in a bargain bin at the local game store. Not that into it anyways.
 
No lan. No problem. I haven't played a game over lan in 10 years. Sure there are some diehard old fogies out there who are still firing up Warcraft 1 over lan, but the rest of us are playing badcompany 2 over the internet and loving it.

Blizz is right though about rtses. What was the last conventional RTS made? Conventional as in you build a base, harvest resource, build an army and crush an opponent over and over again? I mean geez, nowadays everyone is trying to do something unconventional just for the sake of it. DOW2 and CnC4 are the posterchildren for this jokes compared to their predecessors. No base building? No harvesting? Crappy story? They're basically second rate RPGs with a distant camera angle.
 
Not sure if everyone knows this, even if it seems obvious, but assuming Battle.net and your internet connection are functioning normally you can still gather a bunch of dudes in the same room and 'LAN it up', even if you are all connecting to Battle.net to create and run the game.

Assuming it works as intended, and you are not interested in 'stealing' the game, this setup should only provide additional advantages (compared to straight LAN play).

From a technical perspective, it seems stupid to send all that traffic over the internet and back when the guy is sitting right beside you. Somebody needs to validate how much of an issue this may cause for the average internet connection. We need somebody to set up a 4 versus 4 match of the beta, where all 8 computers are using the same internet connection, and not only see how well it runs but measure how much bandwidth it uses both upstream and downstream.

 
it seems to me that people are saying they don't like to hang out with their friends and would rather only talk to them over the internet. Why ever meet your friends when you can Facebook/Myspace them? another concern is if you live somewhere like downtown Anchorage, AK (pop.300k) where internet fast enough to get 8 people on a server costs well over $100 a month(10 mb/s down).
 
I couldn’t care less about a LAN party…my PC is a fixture in my office.

I’ve been to one LAN ‘party’…in an office, after work…wow.

My PC is huge…many (many) wires all over the place, speakers, monitors etc. Cables tied together…threaded through the desk…tucked under baseboards…Am I going to pull my multi monitor display apart to take it to somebody’s house? Does everybody have portable shuttle type pc’s? How do you get a multi graphic card/OC solution in a tiny carry case? Are we all going to plug our PC’s into the same outlet/line? I draw pretty close to the max as it is…better bring my UPS.

What about my desk…do I have to bring that as well? Where am I going to put my keyboard and mouse? We’re all going to sit around one table (akin to an electronic circle jerk)?...I’ll have to get the 4 large delivery men that delivered it back to my house.

Or, I could just connect to the internet (a.k.a. the information super highway) and put a headset on.
 
I think people are forgetting that the original purpose of a LANParty was to get the benefits of the speed it offered over the internet connections of the day, and those don't really apply anymore. The social aspect was not the main driver for the original movement. You can still have a LANParty with ST2 - you'll just be going through the (amply fast) internet connections that we have available today. Social aspect preserved.

Seriously, we have cell phones that can move data a hundred times faster than my old modem, in our pockets. Lets not forget the whole history of the LANParty here.
 
Since the last few replies obviously didnt see my post, I'll state again:

SC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LAN
SC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LAN
SC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LAN
SC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LAN

SC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAY
SC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAY
SC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAY
SC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAY
SC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAY


BATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVE
BATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVE
BATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVE
BATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVE
BATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVE

Once you use battle.net to find your buddies LAN GAME, all internet traffic will be conducted strictly through your LAN, and NOT the internet.
 
[citation][nom]bill filmaff[/nom]Since the last few replies obviously didnt see my post, I'll state again:SC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LANSC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LANSC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LANSC2 IS PLAYABLE OVER LANSC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAYSC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAYSC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAYSC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAYSC2 DOES NOT USE INTERNET BANDWIDTH FOR LAN PLAYBATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVEBATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVEBATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVEBATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVEBATTLE.NET DOES NOT HOST GAME SERVERS, IT IS A MATCHMAKING SERVICE LIKE XBOX LIVEOnce you use battle.net to find your buddies LAN GAME, all internet traffic will be conducted strictly through your LAN, and NOT the internet.[/citation]

What exactly are you getting at?
 
I always played DOW 1 and supreme commander on LANs with my friends all the time. This was only a couple years ago.

I'll wait for scII. Not worth my time.
 


Um, if it seems that way to you, then you need to go back and read the comments again. Boiling down "LAN parties are dead" or "Battle.net is more convenient" into "I don't like hanging out with my friends" is quite a leap.

Any well-equipped gaming machine involves a lot of wires, a monitor, surround sound setup and peripherals like mouse, keyboard and headset (not to mention comfy office chairs). If you think dragging all of that around to LAN parties is more convenient than sitting at your desk and clicking a few buttons to join a game on battle.net, then you are not being honest with yourself.



What do you expect? You live in Alaska. Are you saying that developers should cater to the lowest common denominator? Maybe Crytek shouldn't make amazing graphics engines because graphics cards are expensive...


 
There is no LAN, Blizzard dropped the hand-off before the beta started.

Battle.net is also hosting every game you play on SC2, there is no local hosting at all.
 
[citation][nom]stradric[/nom]Um, if it seems that way to you, then you need to go back and read the comments again. Boiling down "LAN parties are dead" or "Battle.net is more convenient" into "I don't like hanging out with my friends" is quite a leap.Any well-equipped gaming machine involves a lot of wires, a monitor, surround sound setup and peripherals like mouse, keyboard and headset (not to mention comfy office chairs). If you think dragging all of that around to LAN parties is more convenient than sitting at your desk and clicking a few buttons to join a game on battle.net, then you are not being honest with yourself.What do you expect? You live in Alaska. Are you saying that developers should cater to the lowest common denominator? Maybe Crytek shouldn't make amazing graphics engines because graphics cards are expensive...[/citation]

i think what he was trying to say is that hed rather be in a room full of friends playing sc2, than alone in his bedroom playing sc2 with people he doesnt no...
 
Honestly, I can't think of a situation, including a typical LAN party, that won't have an internet connection. I don't see what the big problem is.
 
On the point that starcraft hosts online games. That doesn't bother me, becuase its a rts. And it seems to run smooth when all players are not getting spikes because of there own connection.

But what i will say, is that the idea of no LAN play is just crap....so in the instance of a lan. the game must be hosted online? Instead of locally? Thats just stupid.

I can take it when games have to activate themselves online to prevent piracy, but when you cannot even LAN due to being a suspected pirate....thats just bullshit.

And the people who think PC Gaming is dieing. They are correct. Games have gone down hill with console ports, Paying for DLC and Digital Distribution.

Pffft......Gaming is just dieing in general.
 
I live in a very rural area, and my only option for internet is satellite. The latency on satellite internet is upwards of one to two seconds. It is IMPOSSIBLE to play real-time games with it. So, I have no way of playing SC2 multiplayer.

It isn't just me. College students live through university internet connections, many of which block gaming ports. Those students, many of whom grew up on the original StarCraft, won't get to play online.

I've waited so long for this game. The thought that I won't get to enjoy it fully makes me sick.
 
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