Why Blizzard Should Enable LAN to SC2/D3

[gerohmygosh]

It's sad that they will do this to SC2 and D3, but I completely understand why. If anyone has been playing WC3 they will notice games under the name LC in custom games. With the LC program, people are able to play on battle.net with just one cd-key if they are under a LAN. By removing the LAN option people will not be able to do this and honestly it's because of such reasons that it is understandable that they do so. I'm not saying I want them to do this, but people should realize where they are coming from as such programs and piracy have hurt their profits. Are they trying to be cash cows? Yeah, but isn't that what a company's goal?

 

[Ogdin]

I haven't played a lan game in years,all my old lan buddies are 1-100+ km away now,so we just play over the internet.They should still put lan play in though.

 

[Guest]

Well I just wont buy the game. I just keep playing star Craft 1 until the good folks from Blizzard or rather Activi$ion change their minds. People will be complaining about lack of lan support and Activision just wont care...for now. Every one, i know it will be hard, just dont buy star craft 2. Seriously if our efforts in not buying SC2 and Diablo 3 hurt Activision's bottom line they will cave in and will finally add lan support. Rememember these companies only respond to money not words.
Fight the good Fight!!

 

[jrsdav]

Why target a audience that will only make up at best 15-20% of your end player base? I loved Diablo II and Starcraft on LAN, simply because online play wasn't as easily accessible due to the lack of fast and readily available ISP's. That fact created these so called glory days of going to a friends basement to battle it out with anyone who had a PC.

Now that a web based PC connection is everywhere, there is no need to not be blunt about saying LAN is dead. Its not that hard to accept that a now outdated way of PC interaction will become irrelevant to game designers (FPS developers aside).

I'll be buying these games, Blizzard has yet to release a title that wasn't complete mind blowing-life-sucking-carpel-tunnel-inducing-muscle-atrophy-fun. I'm sure the gameplay and reinvented Battle.net will make up for not having LAN.

 

[adrianoabobora1]

I bought every blizzard game I played... won´t by one that doesn´t have LAN support. period.

 

[CR0W M@GN3T]

Finally! An internet site that is actually calling out Blizzard for their huge mistake.

 

[stufmenatooba]

[citation][nom]gerohmygosh[/nom]It's sad that they will do this to SC2 and D3, but I completely understand why. If anyone has been playing WC3 they will notice games under the name LC in custom games. With the LC program, people are able to play on battle.net with just one cd-key if they are under a LAN. By removing the LAN option people will not be able to do this and honestly it's because of such reasons that it is understandable that they do so. I'm not saying I want them to do this, but people should realize where they are coming from as such programs and piracy have hurt their profits. Are they trying to be cash cows? Yeah, but isn't that what a company's goal?[/citation]
^^^
This right here is exactly it. People using 1 copy to allow multiple people to LAN is not good business sense.

 

[stradric]

[citation][nom]echdskech[/nom]This issue might just follow the way of Spore and their DRM fiasco. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 would be pirated to hell and back just to prove their "protection" is less than useless. I wouldn't be surprised either if someone cooks up a hacked server to provide LAN capabilities as well.Then that makes one wonder why pirates and hackers seem to care more about Blizzard's (potential) customers than Blizzard.[/citation]

Um, a "hacked server"? But I thought the issue was no internet? If you can connect to a hacked server, then you can connect to battle.net. So, the only purpose of a hacked server is to allow pirates, which completely validates everything Blizzard is trying to do.


People are jumping to bad conclusions here. It is quite likely that you will be able to create local private matches on battle.net with people on your LAN. Therefore, LAN play. You just need to initiate the game on battle.net first. Sure, that eliminates the hypothetical situation of "being on the road with your laptop", but what can I say? Hook up your cell phone to your laptop to get your battle.net connection to start your LAN game.

By Blizzard leaving out LAN play, it means that someone is going to have to reverse engineer LAN play into the game -- quite a bit more difficult than cracking the CD-KEY. Quite a bit more difficult than using the LAN option to connect to rogue battle.net servers.

Blizzard is making the right move. Only a very small (and vocal) minority will be affected to the point of not being able to create a game.

 

[Guest]

No LAN play is a serious bummer, I played the original Star Craft and Diablo I & II all the time over the LAN with friends. Hell last weekend I played some Warcraft III with a friend who brought over his laptop and had some custom maps set up to be tough as nails coop survival. Still, I'll buy SC2 and D3 when they come out, just don't hate me too much if they sit in the box because the torrent version has ripped out all the DRM.

 

[stradric]

[citation][nom]cr0w m@gn3t[/nom]Finally! An internet site that is actually calling out Blizzard for their huge mistake.[/citation]

And quite ineffectively I might add. Nothing like throwing out arguments like: "In one sense, that's like Ford saying that your new truck can't drive on dirt roads" to tell Blizzard not to take you seriously.

Sorry, Kevin Parrish, but the only thing that sounds bogus to me is your argument. Starcraft 1 is still a fine game. If you want to play LAN games on the road from your laptop, whip out your copy of Starcraft 1 and get goin. You can even spawn the damn thing. Or just play single player SC2.

 

[dietrious]

Is everyone crying here running 10baseT networks and AOL dial-up connections?

It's not that hard to pile a bunch of people in a room and play SC2 in a room together over battle.net.

How the hell often do you find yourself LANing a game during a roadtrip? SC2 over Wifi... in a car... sounds like you might make it through one game at best. If you're that desperate to play just stay home.

LAN enabled games allow companies without the resources to do server side hosting a way to add multiplayer capabilities.

If Blizzard doesn't have to waste resources on an outmoded feature they can then in-turn use them to better the game as a whole.

 

[stradric]

[citation][nom]lostalaska[/nom]... Still, I'll buy SC2 and D3 when they come out, just don't hate me too much if they sit in the box because the torrent version has ripped out all the DRM.[/citation]

NO-CD is one thing. Building LAN play into a game that was not designed for it is quite another. And even if someone was able to do that, how would you patch such a modified game when Blizzard eventually releases new balancing and bug-fixing patches? The only thing you may see are rogue battle.net servers that allow you to set one up locally to emulate LAN play. But then you have to go through the effort of setting up a rogue battle.net server and hosting it on your LAN. Why not just connect to battle.net, get your legit patches and play local private matches? It seems a hell of a lot easier and safer than downloading and installing software from pirate web sites.

Of course, you could always just continue to play Starcraft 1 and stop acting like Blizzard owes you the Starcraft 2 that you want.

 

[matt87_50]

does L4D have true LAN support? more to the point, can you play it in offline mode? can't remember...

anyway, ironically, if blizzard had been (bigger) bastards and not warned us about the lack of lan, they probably would have copped less flak.

I wish that - if they are gonna go ahead with this - they would at least use steam, with all your friends already programmed in, only one account to remember. if security/piracy was really the only issue, they would just use steam.

 

[mdillenbeck]

I have heard one solid argument why LAN support should be included in the game, and it (with some expansion on the argument based on comments read since) goes as follows:

1) My friends and I buy the game ONLY because we intend on competing against each other in-game, and if we can not do that then we will have no reason to own or use the game ever again.

2) If multiple player features are only accessible via battle.net (or a LAN playable mode requires activation via battle.net), what happens if - god forbid in these highly uncertain economic times - the game company folds and the servers are unexpectedly shut down?

3) On the argument of it being installed and already activated for LAN usage - what happens when my system gets a virus or undergoes a major upgrade and I need to reload all my software (including OS)? If the company has folded and battle.net no longer exists, I can no longer play a LAN game with my friends and the software is worthless to me.


So what is the argument for including LAN play? There are small groups of consumers who are purchasing the game only because they wish to "play together", but that feature could disappear should the company fold. Thus, many small groups are considering not buying the product - and thus the company, worried about loosing profits to piracy, are going to loose profits due to diminished sales. This will also help break people from their brand loyalty, as they will feel "betrayed" by their game company.

 

[Kaiser_25]

I really think that Blizzard has gotten too big for its own good after WoW, they dont apprecaite the customer anymore... im really thinking about stopping my support of their games..SC and Diablo and old Warcraft were industry changing..and they made the games we wanted. now..they only care about cash...ya maybe they wont get anymore from me. I think we need to make a stand against this kind of disrespect to us gamers.

 

[spikey_monkey]

Even if we wanted to get together and "LAN" at a friends house, we have to be sure they have a fat internet connection for everyone to get through BNet. No LAN support really just destroys our nerdy community of real-life friends.

I know my "crappy" 1.5 mb/s connection wouldn't handle eight people, and it already costs more than I want to pay for internet.

 

[IzzyCraft]

Blizz probably still will just use peer over peer connections for the games anyways with recent coding lag is equal to the slowest person when done right.
[citation][nom]echdskech[/nom]This issue might just follow the way of Spore and their DRM fiasco. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 would be pirated to hell and back just to prove their "protection" is less than useless. I wouldn't be surprised either if someone cooks up a hacked server to provide LAN capabilities as well.Then that makes one wonder why pirates and hackers seem to care more about Blizzard's (potential) customers than Blizzard.[/citation]
Frankly Spore so call retaliation pirated is bull shit. The people that downloaded spore to play would have done it if spore had no drm. Spore was pirated so much due to hype not do to any drm protections EA tried to use in foresight of the piracy.

 

[turboej25]

What about lag? I hate playing Diablo II on Battle.net because of random slowdowns and lag not associated with my connection even in single player Battle.net games. Are their overhauls really going to be that impressive? I am still using an on off site server.

And what about when the server goes down? what a pain, imagine you do plan a big (fake) LAN party, only to have the server go down.

It hurts more then it would logically seems because:
A) Blizzard is supposed to be the good guys right?
B) It's not like I have a choice about buying and playing these games (I mean really boycott are you kidding me? will see about that two weeks after the release when you've gnawed off your fingers trying to stave of the hunger for sweet RTS perfection)

 

[mook33]

There's valid points on both sides. I wish it WAS in there, as LAN play for Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Diablo, Diablo 2, and Starcraft were pretty much always how my friends and I played. But, this was back in the dial-up days, or early broadband days; much has changed. And, you know that piracy is an issue for games, especially popular ones. While I really wish LAN play was in there, I can understand why it won't be. I myself don't get together and play over a LAN anymore, but I know many will...and the comment someone made above about dorm games made me LOL. Maybe Battlenet 2.0 will address many issues...we'll see!

 

[formin]

sc and d arent latency demanding games. 50ms ping in these games doesnt effect gameplay unlike first person shooters.
so if a bunch of friends are playing over a lan with 0ms ping or connected to a bnet server with 50ms ping, there is no noticeable difference.

so from blizzards point of view, why support lan when there is no benefits only negatives, piracy.

my view is they should support it. piracy is all part of the game. if sc wasnt pirated so much it prob wouldnt be as popular as it is. its not like blizzard is a suffering company either. All their games are hugely popular and those millions of wow suckers paying out monthly. lol

 

[Regulas]

Good article, I agree. Not buying SC2 because of the 3 part to get the whole game crap.

 

[dapneym]

I was considering buying SC2 when I heard it was coming out. I enjoyed very much the LAN plan of the original, yet now that they've come out and said that there will be no LAN play they can kiss the money I would have paid them good-bye.

 

[caretaker444]

What about the LAN parties Blizzard? What about 8+ people sitting at the local gaming competition that didn't have the cash to get a T1 line. How are these kinds of players supposed to "enjoy" the multi player aspect of the game? I know I couldn't care less about how my stats stack up against somebody in Europe or Asia or even elsewhere in the US, I only care about how I compare to my friends that I play with.

Sadly this is just one more reason not to by SC2, the first being the separation into 3 segments fluffed up so they can pretend to be full games unto themselves... I also fear for the following 2 games, will they require owning the 1st? or will they drop the cost as typical for an expansion?

 

[IronRyan21]

LAN Play is what made these guys money... Not a smart move Blizzard.

 

[stufmenatooba]

[citation][nom]demonhorde665[/nom]this is getting real old .. "piracy" is the cause of every thing these days. If i loose my toast in the morning , "its priacy". if my sister gets hit by acar next week "it's piracy!". if my dog dies of rabies .. it was piracy. Hell, if the world fucking blew up tomorrow and all that was left was some astronuats in orbit , thye'd say "IT WAS PIRACY!" give me a fucking break i'm tired of the industries claiming piracy as a reason to gain more control over citizen's. it's jsut a industrial greed thing THAT IS why they are removing LAN , support any one who states otherwise is fucking full of bullshit.[/citation]

Problem with this situation is... it actually IS piracy. They removed LAN because of people using 1 CD key to allow multiple people to play. That is bad for business. So they changed it so you cant do this anymore. And it's only piracy because you are breaking laws in your illegitimate use of the CD keys.