Rumor: Starcraft 2 Professional Edition with LAN?

1) Blizzard, currently, seems to view serious tournaments as something for pros. We'll have to come to terms with the fact that we're amateurs.

2) Criticism has been levelled at BN 2.0 (rightly so, I think), and I trust that Blizzard will see to it that we have the features we want/need. You're judging a product based on the Beta --as you noted, this is the current iteration; wait for the final release.

 

Do you really think that the final release will be much different than the current state of the beta? I don't think so. As a software developer myself, it's a suicide to make major changes in the last moment before the release.

So basically BNET 2.0 will be what we see now and the game will be what we see now. Maybe change some numbers +/- 1 and that's all. Eventually there will be more changes with the expansions.

 

Mark my words, Blizzard WILL implement changes to BN 2.0, and there WILL be a patch on day 1. Will it be everything that we wanted? I'm not sure. We'll see, won't we?

 

and cosmetic changes, including revised models, textures, sounds, and backdrops.

 

It is not Blizzard's duty to lose millions of dollars to give free download-illegally-and-play copies of the game to people in those circumstances.

For WC3 and SC1, Blizzard included multiplayer support in all the clients. Setting up free servers for online play was extremely easy as all that had to be done was connect people online and let the client's professional multiplayer support take care of the rest.

In SC2, the client does not have any capability to run a multiplayer game. To make a pirate server that can run multiplayer would involve recreating the entire multiplayer support from scratch, a task that would take years. No one in their right mind would attempt that for free, especially if their only reward is a lawsuit from Blizzard for trying to steal their game. And even if some crack team did it, it would probably be extremely poor quality with laggy games and constant disconnects.

True that B.net doesn't work at all well for tournaments... in it's current state. But why do you think that the entire beta is down right now? It's blindingly obvious that Blizzard is hard at work implementing new features to make B.net global tournaments much more feasible.

Blizzard still has a few weeks to test and fine-tune their changes before release. This is not a "last moment" situation by any means.

 

If you check the official forums you can see that there will be quite a lot of B.net 2.0 changes after release or at the day one ptach.
Some links to blue posts:
Chat Channels and Identifiers http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25399622869&sid=3000
Region Locking http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25171934229&sid=3000&pageNo=3
I mostly check the official forums for blue posts, since they are quite good unlike the normal QQ from "the community"

 

Clearly they'll have everything bnet2.0 needs before the expansion is done.
I have no problems with this, after all I get to play Starcraft 2. Bnet2.0 features can wait.

By the way, custom ladders (that you can buy) would be really cool for those tournament organizers..