Why Blizzard Should Enable LAN to SC2/D3

[zak_mckraken]

Well, they have the right to exclude LAN support from SC2 or D3. It's their game after all. However, that's just bad marketing. It doesn't take a genius too know that to make money, you have to offer the customer what THEY want. They might want to get you to go through Battle.net to play the game but, if you don't buy it, they're screwed!

It's sad to say but, in the end, they will go on with the Battle.met thing and people will still buy it and play it. It just sucks to be us. There will always be the "P" option...

 

[s4fun]

It's like stupid COD World At War. You can't LAN co-op or multiplayer, you must connect to some stupid server. That is just wrong.

 

[mustseehdtv]

I didn't see anyone comment about the Korean Market. I saw a US show that say Starcraft I is still huge over in Korea and that they have televised tournaments. There are professional players that earn a living play SC:I and are treated like Rock/Sports Stars. I wonder if Blizzard is going to make a "special version" for Korea because I'm sure that Bnet will be laggy.

 

[MitchMeister-]

Honestly, this sucks, but I don't think it's the end of the world like most people are making it out to be. Yes, I played tons of SC and WC3 at lan centers and in people's basements, but is it going to be that much of a big deal to connect to battle net and play with your friends online? I mean, my last LAN party at my apartment (like two months ago) we all played L4D, and there's no LAN option for that either, yet I bet a lot of you have played that game. I was a hardcore starcraft player and wouldn't miss the next one for this. I loved the storyline and lore, but i guess that's just me. But that's also enough for me to buy the games, cause if theres one thing blizzard does well... is make a great storyline.

 

[hispeed120]

[citation][nom]bigredfed[/nom]There is a petitition,go sign it:http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html[/citation]
Wow, over 50,000 signatures thus far, that is pretty impressive.

Assuming that SC2 will cost US$50 (which I think is a safe number), that will total in $2.5M. Quiet the sum. Great job guys, we will see how/if Blizzard reacts...

 

[rooket]

Why don't they just make it so only legit keys work on LAN. Sounds like cutting costs for R&D to me and nothing more.

 

[cjcrusader]

If you really care, follow the link and prove it to Activision Blizzard. It's a petition to include LAN support.

http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html

If you're hesitant about the link, just google "Starcraft petition".
SIGN IT!

 

[dig_o_bot]

Me, my son and my daughter have been playing Starcraft and Diablo II together over my home LAN for years. It's quite a shame to hear that the new versions won't be supporting LAN. It makes absolutely no sense to have all three of my computers go out to a internet server just to play each other all in the same room. There's three copies of Starcraft II and Diablo III I will not be buying now.

 

[Guest]

I can understand people defending BNet. They have fast internet connections. However, from an efficiency point of view, as should be fitting a real-time strategy game, BNet is inefficient if:

You want to play with your flatmate who is on the next room, why send packets halfway across the world and back so that your flatmate can see your zealot move for fraction of a second? A direct connection would be more efficient and smoother. Why does every packet, every upgrade, every troop movement, every build queue, every stat update need to go through BNet? If I wanted to nuke my flatmates' Zerg expansion do I need to ask permission from BNet before I can see that mushroom of destruction before me? Thats just so inefficient, and stupid. The advantage of lan is it removes a lot of the uncertainty of latency from being connected to an open network like the internet.

I mean think about it for a moment, If my flatmate and I wanted to play MP SC2 and we are 3M from each other, whats the purpose of sending all our info to BNet when the action will be confined to such a small area? Does anyone else think its odd?

Piracy? We will have legit copies, but why will our experience suck when we have a bad connection? We paid for a game, we expect to be satisfied. Thanks Biglizzard.
Fast Internet? Read above, not everyone has internet access, at last check, it was 20% of the world's population, but then again, why connect when you can play locally?
Its Biglizzards choice? Of course it is! We are just stating to them that we, as their loyal fans, who are likely to be the fist in line to get SC2, do not approve of this absurd stupidity.

My conspiracy theory? The SC2 team is not the same as the SC team. They don't know how to program for LAN. They are just covering up their asses because their LAN codebase blows, and making up excuses such as piracy and security.

 

[jugzor]

I think Blizzard has good enough reason not to include LAN. For one, their lawsuit against Shanghai Haofang Online Technology that used lan protocals to provide pirates online service fell apart because they found a legal loophole that made then pretty much untouchable… there was nothing Blizzard could do about it. Also, it WILL reduce piracy by some amount - sure pirates will always find other ways around and games will always be pirated, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to reduce piracy. Should the police not try to stop drug trafficing and such because drug dealers still get drugs through and find new ways to get around cops? No. Also, I’m hearing this alot.. but just because Blizzard games sell MILLIONS each, doesn’t mean that they don’t get pirated and does not mean that they should stop trying to stop piracy. It’s like saying they should just start handing out free copies of their games, they’ve made their money. Anyway, I don’t actually think piracy is their only reason for removing lan. I think they want to centralize everything to battle.net, especially since they probably make more money if we’re all on battle.net. However, I DO think that piracy IS a good ENOUGH reason.

It does suck that the people that genuinely used LAN are penalized for this.. and it would be nice to have it, but sometimes your hands are just tied. Besides most gamers in 2009 have a decent internet connection for battle.net by this time, even in third world countries. LAN is old technology and it’s slowly becoming obsolete. I think for those with internet connections, LAN is really just a luxury or a backup.. not a necessity. You can still have lan parties with friends, just it wont be LAN exactly.. it’ll be through the internet. And you can still go to those tournaments or 500+ lan parties, just maybe this time there will be a 10$ entry fee for everyone to cover the internet bill.

And for those that really just don’t have a internet connection when they game… that sucks, it really does, and I feel for you (and Blizzard probably does to), and maybe you shouldn’t buy the games. But you have to understand that Blizzard can’t satisfy everyone’s needs (this also applies to the arguement that you may not have an internet connection where you normally have a LAN party or any other special circumstance. And it goes back to what I was saying about luxury), sometimes they need to make sacrifices, especially when they’re a business losing money.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]Wont see me buying a lan-incapable game[/citation]
Same! Although I did buy blood bowl before realizing both hotseat and lan games had intentionally been crippled to the point of being useless.

Anyway, if piracy was a problem with diablo and starcraft, then I'm quite shocked really. I have diablo 1, diablo 2 and starcraft as originals at home! Granted battle.net employees ate all my diablo 2 keys, but I still paid for them.

Without lan support I won't buy starcraft 2, but I'm not going to claim I might not play it - I just won't pay for it

 

[Guest]

LAN was the KEY reason why I play Diablo I for years,
LAN was the KEY reason why I play Diablo II for years...
LAN is why I wait for Diablo III...

Piracy.. IS !! And support of LAN will not change this fact.. But it surely angry the fans...

They want to play us on battle.net, because the basic BN will be free, but anything "more" will be pay-for. .. more "customers" -> more money..

People want to play... everywhere... and 60% of potential places are still without possibility of (fast) internet connection...
We want to play when we are bored (sudden vacation in mountains..with no Internet included...If you can play...you will become the biggest fan for ever...)

We want to take our laptops/PSs and play, not to wait, login, wait for patches, LAG, reconnect, LAG, reconnect, LAG, reconnect, LAG....

We want be sure to play after WW3 or simply in times when is internet inaccesible...

 

[Guest]

Bliizzard exclude Lan because they hate piracy. Now, without Lan loyal fans hate Blizzard. Blizzard were does your heart belong.........your pocket.

 

[slaggat]

[citation][nom]jugzor[/nom] Should the police not try to stop drug trafficing and such because drug dealers still get drugs through and find new ways to get around cops? No.[/citation]

i agree with a lot of what you said but using your drug trafficing analogy, what blizzard is doing is saying because we know that most drugs are transported using planes we will now prevent air travel.

the negative impact it will have on users of their title outweighs the potential blocking of pirating.
i have often played on hacked copies of a game, if it is a title people want to play at a lan and you dont have it, then a hacked copy will be readilly available... but in most cases if this game was then worthy of repeated play i would go out and buy the game, not only because i felt it was the right thing to do but because the valid copy would then allow me to get the latest patches and expansions. When we look at a game like starcraft i think Blizz would be surprised at the amount of legitimate users of the game that was first introduced to it by some hacked copy.
hacked copies have a valid marketing role to play i know it sounds weird but its like having a trial version before commiting to the real thing.. take WoW.. there are many emulators out there, i myself started playing WoW on an emulator... found the game enjoyable and wanted the support of fast patches and expansions and have been a loyal customer for more than 5 years now all because of a 2 month exposure to a hacked copy.
I just think that if piracy was the real concern here, there is surely better ways to combat it that removing LAN capabilities. they can release the game and introduce regular updates that require a valid copy and an connection to battlenet for patches/ new maps/dungeons... sure even these will make its way into the hacked copies eventually but there is always a few weeks lag and anyone that plays the game seriously would then make sure he had a valid copy to get the latest updates.

talking about the asia market where the hacked versions seem to be the biggest problem, Starcraft has become like a national sport there... would this have been possible without the hacked copies ? probably not, sure blizzard lost out some revenue, but think of the massive marketing exposure the game has gotten because of it.. and the loyal fan base they have now built up in the process... all those 14 year old kids that played their hacked version are all grown up now and have incomes of their own... these are now all potential buyers of the new release. so sure piracy can be devistating for a new release small company developer, but this is blizzard!!!! the marketing they get out of it is probably worth more than the initial loss in sales revenue.

 

[bildo123]

It's interesting seeing people reply with totally obscure one in a million situations, basically grasping any reason to keep LAN. Face it, just like in WoW, I can bet you 3/4 of the player base doesn't even know what LAN stands for(gee what a thought). All they know how to do is press the button, check facebook/myspace, and open WoW. Blizzard isn't going to cater to a minuscule percent of players vs the risk. They've been in the business for awhile now, they've already crunched the numbers and figured out whats going to happen.

 

[o0 zeno 0o]

Everyone seems to forget one obvious reason to include LAN... It's acceptance in professional gaming is going to suffer without it. Warcraft 3 made it's mark as a staple RTS via world-wide tournament play. They're making that difficult now, as no one is going to want to deal with battle.net lag in a pro tournament.

 

[yayaqay]

It doesn't matter how important LAN support is for the decision Blizzard made. What matters is the trade-off between the loss and the gain.

Here is the question: how many of the potential buyers will back off or switch over to the pirate version with LAN enabled if Blizzard insists on no LAN support for D3 and SC2? Give Blizzard a number and they might reconsider their decision, no matter whether LAN is their real excuse or not.

 

[gereth]

I don't understand all those who are backing blizzard's decision to remove LAN support. Bottom line is, if you were planning to pirate the game before, the removal of LAN isn't going to push you in the direction of buying it. All removing LAN does is push people who were not sure on if they should buy the game in the direction of not buying or pirating for the single player experience.

I really don't understand how this will make Blizzard more money. It would be just as easy to allow LAN after an online validation of a CD key, and in my opinion, is really the right decision. This is a slap in the face to those who have been buying blizzard's games for the past decade, all of which have come with LAN in the past (excluding diablo 1, which might account for its horrible following in comparison to the others).

 

[tommysch]

I was primed to buy the game, now Im thinking about pirating it and playing on private servers... Way to go Activi$ion.

 

[Guest]

This article seems fairly oblivious to the real issues at hand. Toward the end it points out that previous battle.net games had LAN support, so how was piracy and hacking handled there? The answer? Extremely poorly.

With the ability to requires players to play over battle.net, they can link CD Keys to battle.net accounts, helping fight the extremely rampant piracy that plagues many games (and is much better than limited installs, SecuROM, etc.). In present titles, there is no such protection.

Also, for non-battle.net players on other games, it is very easy to go in and hack characters (for diablo games) and units/armies (for starcraft) and play those for a rather large imbalance. Playing on battle.net allows not only for Blizzard to have an online "check" to make sure your files connecting to the server are not modified, but it can also allow for stats and characters (in the case of a diablo game) to be stored on the server instead of having to be stored locally, in which case you would have to hack Blizzards server to hack your stats, instead of simply modifying a file on your own system.

 

[Guest]

Still, not a single person has addressed one point I made. When Blizzard forces you to use Battle.net, THEY have control of your characters. On Diablo 2, they delete characters that haven't been used in a few months. Personally, I hate this. I don't have the amount of time to game that I used to have and I can very easily take a break for a few months. I also hate their "anti-mule" tactics where they force you to play a couple of hours with a character or they delete it quickly. Why the heck should they have a problem with people who want to store items on other characters ? I don't want THEM to have control over my characters like that. I prefer to be able to do what I want with them, and that does NOT include hacking.

 

[Guest]

starcraft without lan... its like a chicken sandwich without chicken...

 

[Guest]

starcraft without lan... starcraft without lan!? are they insane!? is this how blizzard show their appreciation to their avid fans and players?
say no to no lan!! MY LIFE IS FOR AIUR!!

 

[Guest]

What will be another e-sport King if the LAN Tournament can't be held?
We, consumers, have to use our right. Say NO to Starcraft II and Diablo III until they have LAN support. Damm Blizzard, I'm losing faith in you!

I believe this stupid move will cost the CEO seat when the game releases but consumers refuse to buy. If you do buy, you encourage them to do the same in their next releases, and neglect our opinions.

 

[wempa]

We, consumers, have to use our right. Say NO to Starcraft II and Diablo III until they have LAN support. Damm Blizzard, I'm losing faith in you!

I'm 100% with you. I've been a loyal supporter of Blizzard, sometimes buying 2 legitimate copies of their games so I could plan with a friend on my LAN. I will not buy either D3 or SC2 without LAN. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people claiming this will still end up buying it. For me, it's easy to stick to my word since I am a little older now and don't get a whole heck of a lot of time to game anyway.