StarCraft II, Diablo III Getting Pseudo-LAN

[roadrunner343]

Double Post to respond to more stupidty:

So what then Ridik? I work 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Can you say the same? Is it so wrong for me to enjoy a video game for an hour or two after I work 12 hours a day? Guess what else...? We still pay taxes too jackass.

I know Blizzard can't please everybody, but LAN is something that obviously affects a lot of people, not just soldiers.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

^ I totally agree.

 

[mindless728]

still doesn't help some lan parties where the host doesn't have internet (and yes, i have some friends like that)

 

[airborne11b]

Well, other then the fact that unless you don't have any sort of constant broadband connection, I say it solves the issue quite well. Sounds like it will prevent wide-scale piracy while allowing for low-ping lan games. Sounds like a fair trade. I think personally all blizzard games are low-grade trash, designed for people with low-grade PCs, but I think this move is a step in the right direction for PC gaming. I hope other game companies adopt this mindset as well. If a game is fun enough to spend 10, 20, 40, even 60+ hours a week on, it's well worth paying the retail price. People who are not happy with this kind of LAN-set up are just people who never pay for PC games. You can't tell me that you have a gaming PC, like multiplayer PC games, chat on tom's Hardware, and NOT have some sort of basic DSL or better connection. No one believes you, and no one cares.

 

[roadrunner343]

You realize there is still quite a few people in the less urban areas with no broadband, right? Especially those living on or around mountainous areas, it's not that uncommon for dial to still be the only option. Don't believe it if you want, you are feel to be as ignorant as you desire.

 

[saucysoup]

The argument is moot. You're never going to get offline LAN -- Blizzard wants B.net integration for at the very least the obvious piracy reason, and probably some kind of achievement tracking thing too; that's all the new rave and it's addicting and wouldn't work nearly as well without all the LAN plan going towards that. Cheating, then, would also need to be enforced such that these achievements were legitimate. Blizzard has learned that the best way to enforce these things is constant checks with their servers -- exactly what they are suggesting to keep for LAN play while stripping everything else of online play.

Be happy that they are looking towards a compromise at all... which, frankly, isn't surprising given the quality standard of Blizzard and the fan outcry.

 

[maigo]

It's what they should have done from the first

 

[Rahbot]

At Roadrunner343, What if people like myself use Dial-Up and where in an area where DSL and cable havent gotten here. Also in the small town I live in we have LAN partys at a place like a TownHall / Communtiy Center. Some times we get up to 30 people ranging from 8-40+ year olds. We have tried to use the Cell Phone Internet Hook up but with that many people you get disconnected all the time. Oh and just a few games we play at the LAN Partys are, Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo 2, Mechwarrior 3, Unreal T, CounterStrike, ZPS, HL2 DM, and very few of us play Vegas 2, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and thats just a few we play mostly we play older games, because like everyone that comes has a computer slower than a 2.4ghz PC, 1GB Ram, less than 60Gbs of HHD space, and Onboard or an older 5500 Nvidia card or something in that range, Includeing myself and 6 others we have a pc with 2.8Ghz or better, 2GB of Ram or better, 6800 Nvidia or better, 100GB or better. And for me I have a pretty much a super computer comparied to theirs. Oh and I was the one that pretty much started the whole lan partys for the town.

2 processors running - AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6400+ BE
3.2 OC to 3.54 GHz Performance Rated at 9.60 GHz
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
8.0 GB of 4x2GB DDR2 OCZ GOLD 800MHZ
2x NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB/320BIT)
ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition
160GB Sata Main, 160Sata Data, 200GB Sata Data, 250GB Sata Data, 80GB Data
Lite-ON Sata DVD+RW DL
Writemaster IDE Lightscribe DVD+R DL
Antec 900 Case, 1000 Antec PowerSupply, Hanns-G 19" WS LCD
ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 CPU Cooler


Now that im about to get a new PC, I will use this one for a server for the games.

 

[mrsandoo]

This whole dial-up argument is getting old. While I understand how not everyone can have cable, especially in the country side, that's really your problem.

When Crysis first came out and I couldn't run it on my computer without risking a fire, well I had to upgrade my computer.

At some point you have to play catch up. Using dial up today is like living without a cell phone. Everyone assumes you have one.

So if you don't well tough luck. I am not trying to be an ass about it, but that's just the way it is.

And seriously for once, if you guys want to bring LAN back, why don't you suggest a way to do it while preventing wide spread piracy so common at LANs (anyone who has stepped foot in an Asian country knows what I am talking about). Because right now, if you kids haven't noticed, Blizzard cares more about preventing piracy than the concerns of a few minority.

 

[matt87_50]

[citation][nom]Ridik876[/nom]people are going to be unaffected by this 95% of the time (unless they were planning on pirating).[/citation]

yeah, pirates will be unaffected by this 100% of the time... they'll get cracked lan.. you idiot.

and I'm sick of the "n00bs you should just have internetz in this day and age!!1".

thats not the point! it isn't necessary for lan! having it as a prerequisite for lan play adds NO benefit for either the consumer OR blizzard (cause it wont stop piracy).

 

[Guest]

DRM creates pirates. This will have the exact opposite effect of what Blizzard wants. I guarantee this will be cracked, look at Spore. Starcraft would NEVER have stayed popular as long as it did without LAN. And battlenet has ALWAYS sucked and had tons of hacks and exploits. I've no reason to believe after ten years blizzard finally figured out how to make it a quality service. Blizzard is so overrated, WOW may be popular but honestly the graphics are years behind and the server performance is still average at best.

 

[kartu]

Soo, with Starcraft it was OK that you had 1 copy of the game but still could LAN with your friends. With Starcraft II it's suddenly a "piracy" thing and Blizzard absolutelly needs money from all parties involved in LAN play.

Too greedy become they have...

 

[kslghost]

It is quite an overstatement to say that Blizzard is greedy at this point. They are a company, and they still provide some of the better service and recognize the wants of the people who buy their games. Their choice of removing LAN is a conscious one, and they know it will piss off a number of (still a small minority) to the extent that people will not buy the game. However, the gains here are likely larger than the losses.

A company exists to make money. Blizzard has been enormously successful with their WoW franchise, but don't fool yourself in believing that WC3, SC, and Diablo were such runaway hits of profitability. Consider also that the gaming companies today generally aim for the "WoW crowd," not the hardcore PC gamers. There are only a handful of those left today, in comparison to the casual market.

People should recognize the world today for what it is. You may not like paying for non-essential goods... or scratch that, this phenomenon really only exists with software, music, and movies.

 

[kartu]

[citation][nom]kslghost[/nom]Their choice of removing LAN is a conscious one, and they know it will piss off a number of (still a small minority) to the extent that people will not buy the game. However, the gains here are likely larger than the losses.[/citation]
So, what kind of "gains" do you expect them to have? Guys, who would pirate the game otherwise, for whatever reason would buy it? For what reason? Undefeatable battle.net integration? Orly?

 

[ssddx]

Since when has DRM created pirates? If there was not pirating in the first place, DRM would not exist.

I agree. Offline LAN or no LAN. They should stick with a simple check-disk option. However, that leaves the game more open to hackers/pirates. any ideas? Perhaps someone who is familiar in this field could offer some ideas.

 

[hemelskonijn]

If its possible to run all the authentications over my very limited but flat fee mobile internet thing (T-Mobile G1 using PDAnet) i wont mind to much since nearly any one i know has one or a device like it (iphone or winmo MID).

However i somehow think that if i drop in a dedicated machine as a gateway using the G1 it wont be able to handle 50 connections.
For those wondering why i would play and setup 50 man lans at places that have no stable internet connection ... its easy because i can rent those places cheap.

A vacant office building including use of toilet fridges and kitchen costs me 200 euro for a period stretching from Friday afternoon till Sunday late in the morning.

The local bingo hall costs me 100 euro or some times even less for a Saturday morning till Saturday midnight (though there is no one to check for any thing till Sunday afternoon) including the use of toilets kitchen and unlimited beers and soda's for 0.50 euro each!
If i would ask them to they would even service us during the evening and they clean for us!

So to conclude ... since i organise the thing i need to be sure i can run 50+ people on one very limited connection though we all know that wont be possible.

 

[zelannii]

This is no surprise... In order to avoid the issues with basic DRM (and how easy it is to circumvent and how it only punishes actual buyers of the product) forcing online connectivity is not a big deal as long as traffic between machines on the same local LAN isn't passing through the net.

Honestly though, they're doing this to pacify the less than 1% of their fan base that's making a complaint that would never actually require this solution. Even 6-8 people playing in a LAN should have more than sufficient bandwidth to reliably play over a common DSL connection, since each connection to battlenet is less than a 56K uplink. (provided voice chatter goes over point-2-point links and bypasses battlenet, and given the bandwidth of voice and how other games handle this, that's a good bet, if voice chat is even included...).

 

[zelannii]

Soo, with Starcraft it was OK that you had 1 copy of the game but still could LAN with your friends. With Starcraft II it's suddenly a "piracy" thing and Blizzard absolutelly needs money from all parties involved in LAN play.

Too greedy become they have...

Um, Kartu, just because you could launch one PC at a time by swapping the disk around, and get 4 players all connected concurrently to the same LAN game did NOT mean that was "approved" or "expected" by Blizzard. Doing that (or using a virtual CD) was a hack that bypassed you needing the proper licensing. You were actually expected to each own a copy of the game!

Back then, we didn't mind only one of us being able to hop to the next level at a time, and blizzard really didn't mind since it was pretty much impossible to copy the CD, and even virtualizing it and hosting a shared disk image was difficult and rarely done. Now, that's WAY to easy, and people who are not even on the same LAN could potentially replicate the disk across WAN connections and bypass licensing.

Also, forcing online play also helpt to prevent cheating, item duping, and more. I bet the "contunual connection" is because the central server will be determinging item drops, not your local machine, and even if the local GAME traffic stays in the LAN, the central system will be tracking everythign and keeping the game fair (since your local character and online character are now one and the same) a LOT of people left DII because after a while, it became impossible to play online outside of locked rooms without some 99th lvl guy walked in and killed you just for fun!

 

[itadakimasu]

If this is going to further delay the release date... I could care less. I went out and bought the battlechest on friday ( 4th total copy purchased !) and have been playing the past few nights : )

the reference to "next years release" is disappointing because of how they've had the release date hyped, and jumping around. Online retailers all have SC2 on their pages for pre-order but nobody has an accurate date of course... and it looks like another year goes by of the same situation.

I was having some hope that it would be out by the end of the year, but now I'm not so sure.

 

[astrodudepsu]

[citation][nom]ssddx[/nom]Since when has DRM created pirates? If there was not pirating in the first place, DRM would not exist.I agree. Offline LAN or no LAN. They should stick with a simple check-disk option. However, that leaves the game more open to hackers/pirates. any ideas? Perhaps someone who is familiar in this field could offer some ideas.[/citation]

Exactly!

Laziness and cheapness created piracy. Kids, mostly HS and College kids with no money but a desire to play the games turned to torrents. Because of this (somewhat foolishly) the devs OVER-compensated with draconian DRM. Which of course did way more harm than good in creating more pirates.

But put yourself in their shoes. Someone is stealing your product, for better or worse, you are sure as shit going to do something to try and stop that. It's hard for a lot of the younger folks to understand that, not earning a real living and all. But if someone tried to steal my paycheck I'd be cracking heads too. NEVER screw with someone's money, that's rule number one guys.

I'll buy this game, more out of nostalgia than anything. Blizzard has always produced good games in the best (IMO) so I'll give them a try. Although it should be said that I have never played a single minute of WoW.

 

[itadakimasu]

I'm no expert in anti-piracy measures but Starcraft 2 is going to be ridiculously huge. The people who are going to legitimately buy the game I think will far outweigh downloads if it means online play... Online play is most of the games appeal..

getting on bnet the past few days playing broodwar, there are still like... 120,000 people playing.

 

[feenyxfire]

Half the POINT of lan play was so that you could play somewhere without internet. All you needed was enough electricity (portable generators anyone?) and table surface and you could have a party. Now that's impossible unless someone has a cellphone/satellite downlink that isn't going to go China syndrome with that much flickering traffic.

Second point: Patches. What happens when your "broadband" (really more like

 

[feenyxfire]

Cut off...

Patches was the point. Does anyone recall Battle.net refusing to authenticate without patching? That was fun. What happens when you squeeze that many players onto a single connection to download patches? It takes hours or more. 1Mbs / 20 clients =

 

[feenyxfire]

Why am I getting cut off?

Cut off...

Patches was the point. Does anyone recall Battle.net refusing to authenticate without patching? That was fun. What happens when you squeeze that many players onto a single connection to download patches? It takes hours or more. 1Mbs / 20 clients =

 

[zelannii]

@feenyxfire
If you have a rig capable of playing these games, you have internet. Face it... Even Dialup will handle BattleNet. If you're out an about, and can't find free wifi, and don't have a cell phone that can tether, then you're in a place where you don't play games out of your home... and you'll either get the appropriate cell phone plan, or just play from home like the rest of us.

If you;re really out in the boonies and can't get dialup anymore, and DSL isn't there for you yet, then you don't have internet basically at all unless you have cell access, and as such, likely don't own a performance rig! (or you take your rig to where theyre's wifi, since it is also the only way for you to surf, download patches, and more.

Quit bitching about access requirements. For the most part (preventing piracy without using DRM, preventing tweakers, and more) its a good thing... Battlenet is not at risk of going away anytime soon, and I'm sure they'll release a patch in the future should they ever feel the need to enable endless play if it ever is dismantled...