No LAN Play For Starcraft II

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Grand Master

(Spork)

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A Blizzard rep has told Kotaku:

We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. 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.

Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.

http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii

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https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/791084-no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii/
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Grand Master

Miuku.

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"We found that by offering LAN gaming to people, not everyone was donating their hard earned pennies to our coffers. We found that having to drive a month old Lamborghini was getting to our CEO and causing him rash around his balls."

I know where this'll lead tho' - local area server emulators.

Grand Master

Berserk87

Posted
Posted
but I thought SC2 battle.net was supposed to be free? or at least for the basic gameplay modes?

ya, i thought battle.net was completely free.... :huh:

the only way i could see this decision profiting them, is that since there doing the game as a 3 pack, if everyones all playing on battle.net, it will be a lot more obvious if you only have 1 pack, and will be limited to game types and the amount of matches available, making you want to upgrade.

Grand Master

Slimy

Posted
Posted
ya, i thought battle.net was completely free.... :huh:

the only way i could see this decision profiting them

If most people (of course there willk be workarounds) are forced to play on Battle.net even for LAN games, Blizzard will make more money off the ads that it places there.

Community Regular

drbobiii

Posted
Posted
but I thought SC2 battle.net was supposed to be free? or at least for the basic gameplay modes?

It is and will be free. It's just that connecting to Bnet to play someone sitting next to you is at best inconvenient, and at worst impossible if you have a slow connection and/or lots of computers.

But yeah, I'm sure some kind of emulator/hack will be made before SC2 is even out of beta.

Neowinian

Sean Adlerr

Posted
Posted

Blizzard is really turned into quite the money hungry company. Although now that I think about it, I will bet you a hundred to one that Activision is the one really pulling the strings on this one.

I highly doubt that Blizzard would do such a crazy thing to their fans. They have always been good at listening and responding to fan feedback. I'm assuming Activision saw what people would pay to play Wow, so they are capitalizing on the idea. Piracy or not, I don't think that is the real reason.

If I recall correctly, the original Starcraft was quite the shareware game anyhow. You could pretty much play the entire game on a friends CD key, but they had to start the game, etc. Not to mention you could use it up to 5 times. Me and my friends all played on the same CD key for years. Sure there were some restrictions, but we always made it fun.

..This Blizzard acquisition by Activision is getting worse and worse every day.

Grand Master

+Audioboxer Subscriber²

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  • Subscriber²
Posted
Blizzard is really turned into quite the money hungry company. Although now that I think about it, I will bet you a hundred to one that Activision is the one really pulling the strings on this one.

I highly doubt that Blizzard would do such a crazy thing to their fans. They have always been good at listening and responding to fan feedback. I'm assuming Activision saw what people would pay to play Wow, so they are capitalizing on the idea. Piracy or not, I don't think that is the real reason.

If I recall correctly, the original Starcraft was quite the shareware game anyhow. You could pretty much play the entire game on a friends CD key, but they had to start the game, etc. Not to mention you could use it up to 5 times. Me and my friends all played on the same CD key for years. Sure there were some restrictions, but we always made it fun.

..This Blizzard acquisition by Activision is getting worse and worse every day.

Starcraft was released in 98, before most people were completely desensitized to actually handing over money for a PC game through easier methods of obtaining things (eg torrents) and fast internet.

It'll still sell millions but one thing you're right about is the Activision CEO's probably did have a good say in this. Activision are turning into a bunch of fat bankers.

Grand Master

Miuku.

Posted
Posted
..This Blizzard acquisition by Activision is getting worse and worse every day.

Actually Blizzard bought Activision, or rather their parent company Vivendi did - not the other way around.

It does not lessen the fact that this is purely a cash cow decision.

Grand Master

Nagisan

Posted
Posted
I suppose we can thank all the pirates for this. Abusing Hamachi, Garena and other LAN-over-Internet software for internet play with pirated copies.

I disagree.....any game that has been any good and has multiplayer (as well as LAN) I have bought. There are a few games I used LAN only to play with a friend, but I have never bothered getting into large servers through hamachi and what not. I would rather buy a game to play online than download a game to play over LAN (even if that means using Hamachi to play with loads of other people).

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