No LAN Play For Starcraft II

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BoneyardBrew Member

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Posted

That's a little disappointing. Most of my family (meaning my brothers etc.) loved playing Starcraft via LAN in my house being we are all connected to the same network.

Now I have to deal with Battle .NET just to get a game in. With that said they better fix the 1 person per network on Battle .NET issue that plagued the first Starcraft.

Grand Master

Miuku.

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.

And how will this thwart piracy? They'll crack battle.net authentication out of the product alongside any copy protection, quickly develop a server emulator and whoosh they'll be playing just like they were before. Poor excuse is a poor excuse.

The only people who will be butt-funked here will be the legit owners who now have to resort to dubious hacked servers/software to allow LAN gaming. Hooray for that.

Seriously, it's 2009. There's Internet everywhere, or well, if there's a place without Internet there probably won't be Starcraft 2 either anyway.

What happens if battle.net goes down during a tournament? What if the customers ISP goes down? What if Blizzzard decides to ban you from their battle.net? What if..

Yes, there are several reasons why having a non-auth-LAN-only gameplay is a good idea and having 0 ping vs your opponent is a good reason if any.

Enthusiast

Dhalamar

Posted
Posted

If it was really that easy to just hack LAN gameplay in to a game we'd see more games with that kind of hacks, but we don't. Besides, Blizzard will most likely supply tournaments (the big ones with cash prizes etc) with special LAN enabled copies of the game, like they have those WoW Arena things used at tournaments.

Grand Master

Nagisan

Posted
Posted
Now I have to deal with Battle .NET just to get a game in. With that said they better fix the 1 person per network on Battle .NET issue that plagued the first Starcraft.

The old battle.net was 4 connections per IP (network, that is), I had no problem playing online (Starcraft or Diablo II) with me and 2 friends being on the same IP. If we tried launching more clients, 4 would connect fine, 5 would cause 1 client to randomly disconnect.

Proficient

Crompee

Posted
Posted

Ok to clear up a few misconceptions in this thread...

Battle.Net 2.0 is working in the same way Battle.Net 1.0 is, its P2P. So, if all players are on the same network.. then players will send the information over LAN, not the internet.. The same it did in the original starcraft.

The only thing that has changed, is that there is no direct LAN option.. You are required to login to Battle.NET first for authentication and thats it. So you can still get LAN speeds, without disconnects.. As long as you have a intnernet connection.

Guest

Posted
Posted (edited)
Ok to clear up a few misconceptions in this thread...

Battle.Net 2.0 is working in the same way Battle.Net 1.0 is, its P2P. So, if all players are on the same network.. then players will send the information over LAN, not the internet.. The same it did in the original starcraft.

The only thing that has changed, is that there is no direct LAN option.. You are required to login to Battle.NET first for authentication and thats it. So you can still get LAN speeds, without disconnects.. As long as you have a intnernet connection.

Still, what if your internet is down or b.net is down? It's pretty shoddy if you ask me :/.

Edited by Guest
Experienced

Buio

Posted
Posted
Still, what if your internet is down or b.net is down? It's pretty shoddy if you ask me :/.

It's like MMOs, if the servers are down or your net is, you don't play. But Blizzard tend to have fairly good uptime on the servers, leaving downtime to a minimum.

Wonder if single player is gonna demand you to be logged in too.

Grand Master

PGHammer

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

AFAIK, there will be no charge for playing SC2 on Battle.net (there wasn't, and still isn't, for the original SC (now SC Anthology) on BattleNet today).

Has AB said differently?

Mentor

HeartsOfWar

Posted
Posted

I don't really think this is a "money hungry" gimmick. Blizzard has stated many times before that Battle.Net will always remain free. It's certainly not about stopping piracy, because the game still has a single player mode, and although Blizzard's spawn technology was incredible back in the day, it's just not practical anymore.

Blizzard wants to capture as much of a 'community' feel as it possibly can with the new Battle.net, because it promotes striving for goals, which boosts the replay factor. It's purely about stat tracking...

Veteran

lalalawawawa

Posted
Posted
I don't really think this is a "money hungry" gimmick. Blizzard has stated many times before that Battle.Net will always remain free. It's certainly not about stopping piracy, because the game still has a single player mode, and although Blizzard's spawn technology was incredible back in the day, it's just not practical anymore.

Blizzard wants to capture as much of a 'community' feel as it possibly can with the new Battle.net, because it promotes striving for goals, which boosts the replay factor. It's purely about stat tracking...

But they also said that there may be some paid services, like creating custom leagues/tournaments and stuff related to pro gaming.

Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
hmm well the game data would only travel between the clients, it shouldn't route through bnet. So the pings for a LAN game should still be 1ms, I hope

I don't think so. Without any LAN play, you're forced to log into Battle.net to play against other users. That means any online activity will be carried out with that service. Essentially, you won't get the same reduction in latency as you would in a LAN game.

On the plus side, this will mean more players on Battle.net at any given point in time. And more players means Blizzard will put more money and resources into powering Battle.net. Hopefully, this will translate into better ping, features, etc.

Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
Thankfully, Real-Time Strategy games aren't 'sensitive' to ping times as much as other games, like First Person Shooters. Yes of course you'd want smooth gameplay and that you will have, even by going through Battle.net when in a LAN "environment".

Indeed. Unfortunately, the side effect is quite daunting. For example: If Player A joins with a ping of 200ms and plays, he'll slow down Players B, C, and D. Fortunately, there's an option to drop a "laggy" player from the game.

It could be an issue with a regular game over Battle.net, but I don't think that'll be an issue with pseudo-LAN games. Why? Well, think of it this way: If you're with a bunch of friends who want to play some StarCraft II, then chances are you'll be playing from the same Internet connection. Logically, one would assume that each person's ping would be similar.

Grand Master

Sikh

Posted
Posted

I think battle.net will be free, as long as you pay for the game.

Its like this, my teacher who got me to play SC(yes a teacher, 7th grade social studies) hooked us on SC becuase 1 day close to summer we were done and had old school macbooks(yes ibooks) haha and he had 1 copy but installed it on all 10 lappys.

He wasnt pirating or anything since he installed a "spawn" i think its called and we played local.

But I dont play blizzard becuase I know a few people who lately passed around 1 copy between 15 people to install it and play and its working just fine.

I have a legal copy so im fine. But I undersatnd what there doing. Now if they truly DO make battle.net paid service like WOW is, then **** that. I dont need SC that bad.

Then they will put a bad taste in 1/2 of the SC Fan Group.

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