No Lan in SC2

@ Sueco. From your lack of concern and your ignorance, I'd say you're from the US, but even if you're not, you're certainly not from Australia. Not unless you've got extremely peculiar sleep patterns. Anyway, believe it or not, the problems of others do not gravitate around you.

Firstly, the twenty ms that Battle.Net gives 'us', is not universal, so I hardly know who you're implying 'us' is. LAN, to 'us' means begin able to play against people without lag.

Secondly, some of 'us' either have a little something called siblings, or a big something also called siblings. Having siblings require to buy a copy of StarCraft2 each, plus expansions, just so they can play against each other is completely unreasonable.

Third, connection. No, we don't all have a fantastic connection, and there's also another little thing known as a download cap. If people need to start paying more for a better connection so that they can play StarCraft2 multiplayer whenever they want to, as opposed to the beginning of every month, then it's no different to them having to pay to play Battle.Net. On top of that, there can be problems with servers, distributors or whatever they're called like Bigpond, Battle.Net 2.0, being down for maintenance, etc. For people who have a tight schedule, limiting the times they can actually play is just another frustration.

Lastly, removing LAN will not do anything to solve piracy. Seriously, Blizzard are the people who said Diablo2 was unhackable. People will create a LAN-enabled version of StarCraft2, and it will be free. The same people who were going to download it illegally are still going to be able to do it.

Here's a nice snippet of a post from the B.Net forums, entitled "Removing LAN isn't such a big deal, is it?"

Seriously, if Blizzard thinks removing LAN will stop piracy, they're damned fools. All that it will achieve is dwindling the sense of enthusiasm.

 

You mean expecting each individual, related or not, to actually buy a copy of the game they love so much? I'd say its completely reasonable. And even if it wasn't, its their game.

As for Bnet going down, I cant recall a single time in the last 5 years that has happened. In fact, the likelihood of the power going out is higher.

The reason why WoW is such a resounding economic sucess is that pirated servers can't offer anything close to the real thing. Thats what "added Bnet functionality" really means. Creating a whole online community that so totally outclasses pirate communities that you won't feel like its SC2 at all, therefore forcing you to buy the game if you want to experience the real thing.

To be honest, the way games are going today, getting fast internet will be as much a requirement to play any multiplayer as getting a fast graphics card, there's really no nice way to say this.

LAN meant a lot to me and my friends and siblings back in the day, but nowadays we all go on Bnet together to find other people to compete with. So I won't miss LAN at all. And neither will you once you get good connection.

I'm half latin-american half swedish and I'm certainly nowhere close to that proverbial ignorance you talk about. I understand LAN is important because you and the ones close to you may not have disposable income, and difficult access to high speed internet, but I'm afraid Blizzard is targeting sc2 for another group of buyers.

I remember myself when i lived down in latin america that it was so annoying to not have any real Bnet servers other than the ones up in the U.S, and there was no WoW server for Latam untill a year ago. Unfortunately Bnet is not a god-given right, its their choice and thats governed by shrewd economics, not good will.

 

im just gunna remind everyone...caring...about this thread that Blizzard hasnt told us the SYSTEM that is replacing LAN...which they told us will be replacing LAN...

until fully toled losing LAN is a big deal for EU players moreso than Asian, Asians can get around it with more secure net and connections not too big a deal however EU have some more...issues... (i think)
go back to your fight -.-

 

Easily five times in the last month, PItz...

 

Fantastic post IHG! Respect up!

I agree with you on all point, nothing to discuss IMO, removing lan is a big mistake.

 

Sueco, you're forgetting that they would already otherwise have the game. And no, it's not the game they love so much. He'd be more than happy to give it a miss if it meant keeping three hundred dollars in hand. Regardless, it's an option between paying three hundred bucks for a game, or six hundred bucks for the same game and the ability to play with each other.

Paying three hundred dollars to be able to play with siblings is not, by any means, reasonable.

As for World of WarCraft, what experience was missed when playing on private servers? I haven't personally, but from what I've been told, the only thing that's missing is the crowd of people who you never talk to and whose only purpose is to create lag.

About high connection becoming a necessity, having a larger number of requirements is not, and will never be, a good thing. LAN is the simplest connection, and it's fool proof. The only reasoning for high speed internet becoming a requirement would be with the circular logic of removing LAN from most games due to the fact that it's thought to become a requirement anyway.

And why do I care if you and your friends play on Battle.Net now, and why does that justify its removal? This is what I meant with being ignorant. Just because it doesn't affect you, it doesn't mean it's not a problem. Not unless you're totally and utterly selfish, which I trust you're not. As for me upgrading my connection, why should I have to upgrade and pay more for Battle.Net, and how is that different to Battle.Net being pay-to-play? On top of that, there's a good chance I will miss LAN due to being in Australia, and regardless of whether anyone would miss it or not, you've still got to acknowledge that removing LAN will punish a lot of people who need to for buying the game legitimately.

You're position is basically that of someone supporting the removal of the single player campaigns, because they don't play the campaigns themselves.

And I asked where you lived, not of what decent you were, and that assumption was based off of your seemingly lack of concern for other, not the other way around.

As for Blizzard's buyers, no. They're not targeting people with money coming out of their ears, they're not targeting people with high speed internet connections, and they're not targeting any group of people who could be considered to be on better terms than others. They're physically aiming for the game to be playable to as many people as possible, which they've stated several times. That's why they are aiming for such low system requirements, that's why they've set up a casual gaming league specifically for average players, that's why they have to many tutorials and so many tips for new players, that's why they've translated it into so many languages, that's why they've added so many different levels of AI, and that's why they've stuck so true to the original StarCraft while adding new concepts and mechanics, often strongly influenced by other RTS's. They're aiming for as many people as possible. Regardless of whether you played the original StarCraft or whether you've never heard of the franchise before, regardless of whether you were good at StarCraft or still lost with six comp allies, regardless of whether you've never played an RTS before or whether you own every single RTS that's ever been released, regardless of whether you've got a top of the line computer or whether your computer takes up your whole room, they are aiming for you to be able to play.

I would like to point out here that I'm not so strapped that I'd never be able to afford StarCraft2. My point about the money is that they're expecting brothers and sisters to pay an extra three hundred dollars per sibling, just so they can play together. It's completely unreasonable.

 

^ And Blizzard's decision destroys lan party's seriously. I often have lan party's with my mates, and yes we dont have the best net - so we would probably lag a bit on battle.net - something we avoid by playing on lan.
And I agree very much with your sibling reasoning. When I was little I often played games like aoe2 with my much older brothers and his mates, and ofc. we only had one version of the game. But later when I wanted to play online I ofc. brought another version.

 

They have said that their primary goal for the game is eSports. Well, if that's really the case, then making it as easily as possible for everyone to play together (whether they pirated it or not) should quite simply be encouraged as much as possible.

A LAN feature will probably cost them a lot of money due to piracy, but it would also give a ton of people (who otherwise might not be interested in the game) the opportunity to experience the competitive side of StarCraft 2.

The greatest fear for Blizzard in my opinion is NOT piracy and profits, but simply that a great deal of the game will be outside of their control. For example, it would not be surprising if a lot of the more competitive players seclude themselves on their own private servers with something like iCCup. Then there could be a private server for competitive players that play DOTA, etc. etc. Some kind of hacked LAN will likely eventually come out, but it is going to be a heck of a lot less enticing for the masses to use than a proper LAN filtered into a tool like Hamachi or Garena.

Both sides hold weight, but at the end of the day there is simply no best answer to this without somehow being able to predict the future. Not to mention that we do not know exactly what B.Net 2.0 offers yet.

 

They should have just released the Bnet 2.0 unveiling...that way either:

A: ) It would have not caused any alarm like this, because the alternative would have been shown...

B: ) We would have all the facts and be able to make a REAL judgment, not just a haphazard one with limited information.

 

I don't really understand the siblings argument... from a provider point of view, every player that plays simultaneusly on a computer is a user, wether or not his brothers have the game too is not relevant to the case, the product is not sold as a family package.

Sure if you want to be nice then its not very nice to do so... but if your doing business... can't say im shocked at all. As far as im concerned, LAN will go the way of dial-up and direct cable protocols as the world gets ever more connected with high-speed bandwith.

When i LAN party with my clan, we all hook up to bnet and find opposing teams to beat there... we usually set up a real LAN only if we want to share some files. Bliz knows what they are doing.

 

Sueco kind of does have a point with the siblings. The game is a single copy. Though, I can't say I'm not guilty of copying my Warcraft 2 CD and playing with my step-brother until the odd hours of the night, but when it comes to business....that's the way it's supposed to be...

 

Aye im guilty myself but you can't rave at them for fighting piracy, no matter how family oriented it is.

 

Well I guess everyone ignored my post.

Guys, they said they are replacing LAN with something different INVOLVING Battle.net, they never said they were completely removing the concept. Again, this is most likely just so they can authenticate online that we have actually bought the game. I wouldn't be surprised if we will still be able to directly connect to the host via the local network once we are authenticated through battle.net, thus, no Battle.net lag.

If you're too cheep to buy the game, too ****ing bad.

HOWEVER, if you have siblings in the same household who plays, then I can understand where you are coming from. That sucks. We can only hope that they will show some mercy and maybe allow 2 people to play from the same key IF you are doing a local game.

But yeah, we really don't know any details one way or the other yet so let's just wait and see instead of whining and saying we're not going to buy the game anymore.

 

Edit: EtB513 - if I knew how rep worked, I'd give you some...you're the only person on topic, and part reason I mentioned you near the end of my rant.

I hardly ever care to post on such topics,(where the arguments become swayed from the actual point of the topic) yet I suppose I'm fairly bored to par-take.

Firstly, ItzaHexGor,

ItzaHexGor going after Sueco is nothing that bothers me, if they don't agree, then they'll duke it out - yet ItzaHexGor is using reasons that baffle me. Such as generalizing the first sign of ignorance he spots he out right claims Sueco is from US; whether or not he is would be aside the point, all countries have people...and people are Ignorant. Even if more appear to sprout up from a certain country in one person's eye does not justify you to use such a line to win or sway the argument your way.

The reason he chose such a line is bound to this topic's 2 key points, or as far as I see them being; Lag, and lack of blizzard control over their past game open to use of LAN.

As a side note, Sueco(I'm not taking his side on his opinions just the way ItzaHexGor shot at him in a unusual way) did make note of the cost(downside) of losing LAN, so he was not blind from the penalty, yet he never mentioned ItzaHexGor's issue about siblings/friends playing for free.

I don't see it as an issue at all for justification to keep LAN.

If you brought that up to Blizzard or any company doing this as a way to prevent your siblings or friends from playing with you for free...you both, 1) have no case, and 2)bluntly show how ignorant you your self are of a business standpoint; whether you disagreed or not with it is aside of how they run things.

Your other beef was about bad connection...and that's not fault on Blizzard(How well they manage to keep B.Net running is). I'm not saying you have to like it, but you do have to deal with that. As with anyone here, as myself, we have had to deal with the lesser of technology at one point or another. This is the very reason we upgrade our computers or technology to keep up with the entertainment we like. So yes, you must upgrade your internet to play games that prevent you from experiencing the game in a decent manner.


Your other argument was very childish, regarding your feelings that this step will not remove piracy, so why bother? Well...if it's a step to make it harder to pirate, or even prevent for awhile...then they have every sense to pursue it. Saying cheaters will cheat, why bother? That's a golden damn excuse for all company's alike to not try...yet wait, some do - because they want to break that cycle and limit if not stop cheating if they can so do that.


Now with that whole detour aside, the only other issue with this is lag. It has been mentioned in this topic that they plan to replace it, and such as EtB513 giving his example of how it might be done...whether he is correct or not is aside of the point that Blizzard will try something like this...to where you get the benefits of LAN with out using it as a means to cheat or even allow others to play for free.

 

Regardless of all pros and cons having been posted here, the fact that you need any kind of internet connection to host a LAN party with SC2 is weird. The whole point of a LAN party is to game together in direct contact, oftentimes at abandoned places where not only would it be illogical to pay for an internet connection, but might also be physically impossible.

However, the pros for this decision could in fact outweigh the cons. I can see it helping fight piracy, and if this way SC2 will be free of authentication software then so be it. I've long given up on LAN parties so chances are I won't even notice it missing from multiplayer.

 

RationalThought I will reply to two of your statements, perhaps also to some of the others later.

"Edit: EtB513 - if I knew how rep worked, I'd give you some...you're the only person on topic, and part reason I mentioned you near the end of my rant."

"So yes, you must upgrade your internet to play games that prevent you from experiencing the game in a decent manner."

On topic? The headline is No lan is SC2.

And if you cared for reading all the posts, you would probably be a bit more informed. The idea of LAN is that you dont have to acces battle.net, perhaps of various reasons, one could be that you are playing without cd-key (hacked version), but others could be the fact that you are at a lan party, where the internet isnt established so that 8-100 people can play on it.
Any feature on battle.net cant replace this. The lag cant be removed with any new features, because servers are placed in like france etc. With hamachi you could play localy in countries or remote places where its hard to gain acess to good internet (I know some places in scotland where I have family where its near impossible to gain anything like good internet at all) , something not possible when it has to go over a server, which it automatticly does when you log into battle.net - I cant see them remove this.
Blizzard too has also always cared for people with bad internet and bad computers (im not included in these, but I still fell an urge to defend them ), so I dont understand they are removing LAN, because IMO I see no way they able to make anything near LAN. Perhaps they can make anti-lag rooms for the pros, but nothing more than that.

 

@ Furrer;

My apologies,

On the first note, On topic, I tend to re-edit my posts alot to correct false statements/grammar, yet that one I felt was marginally passable...due to the point most comments refereed to what I was replying too.

I don't know a vast amount about LAN, so I tried my best to reply to what I could - I'm very unaware of the circumstances with what you referred too.

However, you seem resistance 100% that anything blizzard offers could patch up the loss of LAN, yet you also admit you believe Blizzard is on the side of those that would have issues with the loss of LAN that use it in legit means.

Those two statements puzzle me...because that means you 'should' keep your faith in what they may have in store will still make up for the loss of LAN, or you should flat out disregard the fact you think Blizzard cares for people losing the most out of this deal.

I for one feel they will keep this in a professional manner of making sure only people that pay for the product get to play - while rewarding them with what they can to keep the experience the LAN brought to players. It may not be perfect, but I don't see how it can be reasoned the other way...make me see otherwise how such a cost for what LAN offers now can be made up for in pros.(can't figure out how to word that but, basically how can you argue to keep it for it's weak points over what it dose offer?)

I noticed this after my post too,
http://www.starcraft2forum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10482

I agree with a good chunk of what Karune is quoted on.

 

RT it just buffles me why Blizzard is doing this when you look at what they normally do (thats why I wrote the part with blizzard caring etc.). It feels like its an order they got from above. I dont agree with Karune though, he seems like that kind of person who never valued lan - but that can be because i still have all the hatred left to him from thw wc3 scene The fact that they are forcing you to use battle.net also feels for me that the next step is payment, something im very much against. I always thought: Ok, if this get to be p2p, we can atleast play over hamachi. Now I fell like they found this, what they call a hole, and closed it.

I just fell 100% resistance because I cant see any way them making it seriously. But we will have to wait and let them show us battle.net 2.0.

All this just fells wierd. Blizzard normally doesnt say: Lan is removed, but there are som great new features we wont talk about. I still think the lan part is an order from above.

Edit: My opinion on karune: he doesnt know what he talks about - seriously. I have followed the warcraft 3 tft conflict, each day he seemed more stupid.

Edit 2 (i líke to edit too): This is just one example of many: "This is definitely a legitimate concern that would be best to be brought up again if needed when we talk about Battle.net 2.0." Only me thinking: "if needed" - as if it isnt needed.

But lets w8 with this discussen till battle.net 2.0 is revealed.

 

@ RationalThought. You've completely missed what I way saying. No, I did not assume that Sueco was from the US because he was ignorant, I assumed he was, or at least from a country that has their own dedicated server, because he is completely unaffected by the removal of LAN. In all seriousness, saying the US was really just a lucky guess, albeit, with two possible options.

Let me explain my reasoning. He said himself that he gets twenty ms off of Battle.Net. That alone shows he's from the US, Europe or Asia. The time at which he posted suggested he was not from Asia, leaving the US or Europe. Then it was a simple task of choosing which region has it the easiest, not which I believed was more ignorant. The US, being smaller than Europe, and having twice the number of servers, was the obvious choice.

Supporting removal of LAN, to obviously being in a region with its dedicated server, to not caring if others who may be worse off, to being ignorant of their concerns.

Not ignorant, therefore from the US because they have the greatest number of ignorant people, or, from the US, therefore ignorant because all Americans are ignorant.

Now, onto cost, what Blizzard is doing is prohibiting siblings from playing the game together, and forcing them to pay for three extra copies of the game just for that feature. You may think it's laughable for me to suggest that certain people should be able to play for free, but spending in the proximity of three hundred dollars for a single feature is absolutely ridiculous. Playing over Battle.Net 2.0 is free, ladder is free, the casual gamers league is free, the new feature supposedly replacing LAN will be free, but playing with siblings costs three hundred dollars.

As for needing to upgrade computers to experience Battle.Net 2.0 properly, a one-off payment is one thing, but constantly paying for a better connection is another, but, that's not the point I'm going to make. The point I'm going to make is that there is no need for this requirement. It's like Blizzard adding tonnes of shaders to a single part of the game, just so you can't run it without sufficient pixel shader capabilities. There's no reason for forcing all the other people with insufficient pixel shaders to upgrade, and really, they shouldn't want them to have to because they're aiming for the greatest number of people possible. For those people, it's not only no different to adding a cost to Battle.Net 2.0, but it's unnecessary as well.

Lastly, as for stopping piracy, it won't. In fact, what it's doing, in this circumstance, is getting people who would have otherwise have bought the game legitimately, to start pirating. My brother's already all but said he'll simply find a crack to play LAN. Being the good widdle boy that I am who gets his movies from a store, I've obviously tried to dissuade him, but from the looks of it, we'll have to wait two years for the most reasonable solution, and even then we're still having to pay extra for it.

 

If I play with my brothers, it will cost each one of us the full game price to play. We are, in fact, different people so why should we only pay for one copy? Thats like going to the rollercoaster and expect to only pay one ticket because your brothers and wanna ride together.

Games are no different, its only that due to software's nature we've been able to piggyback whenever someone close takes a ride, if blizzard tries to end this, then its harsh but I can hardly call it a bad business decision or unjustified.

Bottom line is, they want to turn Bnet 2.0 into one big LAN for everyone to play in together. It will never be as fast as true LAN, but close enough that they can justify eliminating the LAN feature alltogether. That gives the added bonus of controlling that every user is legitimate, which creates a huge incentive to buy a legitimate copy. This screws over people living far away from existing Bnet servers, but unfortunately this is entertainment business, not red cross charity.

Again, its harsh, but not unreasonable. Your best shot is getting a fast connection and/or petition Bliz to eventually put up a regional server close to you. I wish everyone could be happy, but raving against them won't change the fact that they are a corporation and they need to do business. There's nothing surprising about that.