LAN support not included in StarCraft II

That is just ridiculous. I cannot fathom how a person come come to the conclusion that this was a good idea.

Arent they planning to monetize Battle.net? Its so obvious that by removing LAN you are forced to play over Battle.net. I bet this order came from up above in Activision/Blizzard. How can we screw our customers more? I can understand a business trying to make money but this is just being too cheap. Also, LAN play fucking rocks. lag free playing is really really fun!!!

We already had SC2 lan parties planned :(.

If the issue is piracy, make SC2 run through a client ala Steam that can be logged in with while in "Offline" mode.

I feel like just not including lan is purely driven by money, and Blizzard is completely taking advantage of their status by pulling things like this, and splitting the game into a "trilogy". (I'll be curious to see how many campaigns there are in the full "trilogy" vs the original)

Downplaying it only makes it worse, I want new stuff, I don't want basic, fun features excluded because it's "not a big deal".

(forgive me for the wall of text...)

Three words: Dealbreaker. Dealbreaker. DEALBREAKER!

The whole "trilogy" thing is a huge gripe, but could be overlooked if the game is anywhere near as good as the original.

Then we get the news that B.net will be subscription-based. Again, they push, not satisfied with the obscene amounts of money gained from WoW. I don't care what new bells and whistles they add to it, at its heart, it's still just a match-making service. I'm absolutely sure the $120+ ticket price they'll be pillaging from their loyal customers would pay for a simple match-making service 100-fold!

And now this? The ONLY game, to this day, that not only introduced me to LAN parties many many years ago, but also keeps me coming back for more, is SC. Whether or not most people could connect to B.net is irrelevant. They are charging almost 3 times more while omitting *KEY* features! And please, don't give me this bullshit about pirating... the original SC is one of the most pirate-friendly games in existence, yet still consistently hits extraordinary sales figures over a decade after it's release! Pirating is NOT AN ISSUE! They know this better than anyone.

Blizzard is really starting to show their true colors as no longer being a beloved game company, but just another corporate media conglomerate-in-the-making. As almost all the good ones eventually deteriorate to nothing more, I feel like this SC2 fiasco is the beginning of the end (I don't mean to say they will fail, on the contrary, they'll probably make more money than ever, but I simply mean they will only be a mere shadow of the company most of us know and fell in love with).

At least for me, while I'm sure it won't make a shit of difference to them, this is the proverbial straw. No LAN, NO DEAL!

This is a bad decision. I don't even like Starcraft series that much, but it still stinks. I'm really hoping they don't repeat this mistake with Diablo 3. I'm thinking of another game (Hellgate London), which had an online component, and no LAN support. For hell's sake, I'd still be playing that game if I could direct connect or LAN play with my buddies.

Having the option open does basically invite pirate multiplayers in, but realistically, why should paying customers have to suffer because of the not-paying-consumers? LAN play is great for practice, if the SERVICE GOES DOWN (never heard of a WoW server being down? maintenance? updates? BAH!), for private games amongst friends, etc.

Not sure what my buddies will do, but without LAN it's a no-purchase for me. WoW really did wreck Blizzard and this is more evidence of it.

see? this is why people hack and do work-arounds :(

My friends and I had a Starcraft LAN Party just last week. Looks like those days will be over...

I was never a big SC player, but I was panning to buy SC2 and change that.

Not anymore. No, this is not an overreaction -- LAN play is that important to me in RTS games.

Stupid ass Devs. Look what that shit did to Red Alert 3...LAN play Forever!

If you guys thought about it and were smart enough, you would know that Blizzard has made a wise decision, because they know that lots of people pirated StarCraft and only played the game using LAN play. However, now that they are not supporting LAN play for StarCraft 2, just about everyone is forced to buy the game.

well... that's stupid

Hah, things like these will be bypassed very soon seeing as how popular SC2 will get.

One Word to blame:

ACTIVISION

¬¬

It may be fine in America/Japan/Korea to have internet only play, but in other parts of the world trying to have a 4 or 8 player match over the one internet connection would completely fail due to link speeds and servers being in other countries. I'm in Australia and having 2 people on 1 internet connection can be slow at times. average ping is over 300ms... imagine that with 4 or 8 people on the one connection. Total fail.

you know why they're doing this, don't you? hint: $$$

*** Battle.net will stop being a free service when Starcraft II launches
*** EVERYONE has to use Battle.net to get multiplayer

it's not rocket science.

Blizzard used to be my favorite game developer. that changed a little with World of Warcraft (games are for entertainment, not for grinding). now this turned it the other way completely.

i see your distasteful ways of trying to rip every penny out of your loving fans, as response i will do everything i can to obtain and enjoy your games without paying you a penny.

the best thing is, i know i'm not alone.

How stupid is blizzard getting now that Activision is with them, Really?
They think lan is dead yet ID still runs Quakecon which has a huge amount of people showing up. It's also nice to have a lan party now and then so you can actually teabag people when you win.

...simply awful and a horrendous decision by Blizzard if it is in fact true. I hope this eats heavily into sales if it actually goes through. If they include LAN, I'll buy the irrationally-priced inevitable collector's edition. If they axe LAN capability, well, TPB here I come. Effing effers.

Well, I guess Blizzard doesn't want my money then. They can have it when they bring LAN play back.

I blame Activision.

Also, I submit that Blizzard should no longer be considered a gaming company.

Fuck Blizz. This is one step too far downhill. I ain't fucking buying this any more.

In fact, I'll torrent it to specifically play Single-Player then be done with it.

Bite me, Blizzard.

Thanks, piracy LOL

I still like to believe Blizzard is good at heart, but fuck you Activision

It all depends on how SC2 and Battle.Net is working in terms of matches.
If the matches is hosten on Battle.net servers and all the net code is interpretated and dealt with online it might be a bit hard to make a fully functional server, but if its just Battle.Net as a "game finder" and the net code is only parsed through the Battle.Net servers then we are in luck and will easily be able to make a Battle.Net emulator.

Blizzard have never worked with any big obfuscation in their net code and only the header of the packets in current blizzard games are encrypted making it easy even for newbs to mess around with it.

great another steaming shit platform (battle.net) to have to run before you can play the sodding game.. screw you blizztard!

the more I see and hear of SC2 the less interested I become. No LAN support is taking the piss now, its not a huge feature which is exactly why I expect it to be there. Why play through a crappy internet connection if the people you are gonna play against are in your own fecking house or wherever you're having LAN party. -idiots

Well Fuck you Blizztard! -bunch of assholes

This is very stupid not to include LAN play capability. Argue as much as you want that the internet is everywhere, LAN parties are dead whatever. There is no reason not to include a multiplayer element that has been around since the dawn of well multiplayer capable PC games. This is a step backwards and for those who would argue otherwise... you will see my point when you want to play multiplayer, have more than 1 PC capable of playing the game, yet you can't do it b/c you have a situation where the internet is not there for you! I will let blizzard know they lost my purchase of this game!

Activisions Checklist
-Only include one campaign and release a new one and make users pay for it. (Check)
-No LAN support in Starcraft II. (Check)
-Take out all existing maps in Starcraft II, leave only a couple maps in and make users pay for extra maps. (Expect sometime soon)

Haha, the people that are obsessed with the franchise will be forced to buy the game and no one is going to hack anything.

or we just wait for open source pvpgn for sc2... so we can play on private server on private network