Blizzard confirms no LAN support in Starcraft II

[vern]

@fitz all you and I can do is wait until B.net 2.0 comes out and when SC2 comes out. Perhaps even during a SC2 beta. I am confident however that Blizzard will make games with clients on the same LAN feel like the game is on a LAN even though games are created and set up through B.net.

I do agree as I have mentioned before that you are probably SOL if you have no connection whatsoever and are on a LAN. Perhaps in years past this might have bothered me when I used to go to LAN parties with no connection to the internet, but right now it's really a non-issue for me although I know that not everyone shares the same indifference.

With that said, I don't think Blizzard accomplishes anything with this move. Pirates will always find a way even to go so far as to emulating Blizzard servers itself.

 

[fitz]

With that said, I don't think Blizzard accomplishes anything with this move. Pirates will always find a way even to go so far as to emulating Blizzard servers itself.

That's really the party that bugs me the most sometimes.. what does Blizzard really accomplish by this? It stops the casual pirate who are often the ones that are the biggest fans of the game and really won't stop the series pirates who will have a hack in place by the end of the first week of release.

 

[vern]

Destructoid - StarCraft II may support LAN after all

 

[fitz]

vern: this is still just more info on what was already widely speculated that the multi-player mode would still connect close to peer-to-peer as possible.. this is also the speculated reason that SC2 was delayed because of the new battle.net not being ready to support this fully (or well enough) yet.

Still not straight LAN play as it still requires an internet connection.

Canessa explains, “We are working on solutions with regard to things we can do to maintain connectivity to Battle.net in some way, but also provide a great quality connection between players.”

When asked if this solution would be like a “pseudo-LAN,” Canessa agreed, saying “Something like that,” before continuing. “Maintaining a connection with Battle.net, I don't know if it's once or periodically

Really sounds like they don't know what the hell they are going to do - if he can't answer the question if it will require a the game/computer to maintain a constant connection or if it just on game startup.. in same ways, that is also crucial.. it it requires a constant connection, what happens when a connection flakes out?

I'm still not all that happy with it because it still really does nothing but punish the casual gamer.. the people that are bent on pirating the game will still do so - so what's the point?

edit: I'm still holding out hope that things will work well - Still doesn't solve the problem of those few occasions where we have, in the past, setup LAN games where there is no widely available internet access..

I'm also still upset that they decided to milk the game by basically breaking it up into one game and 2 extra expansion packs..

 

[Nuadormrac]

OH NOES!~!11!!~!!!111

Because of "piracy" we can't do LAN. Bah... :ermm:

Give it some time, and private services will be up and running :lol:

Only thing on the dollars part (outside initial purchases) is that hitherto, battle.net hasn't required a subscription (unlike WoW), unless that's about to change. This said, one can only hope they plan on improving their networking vs. what battle.net had become in Diablo II's last days. Improved customer experience is not always, what some had come to describe it.

Even now, WoW is starting to run into increasing pesky networking issues; and some of them effect raids. Instance servers going down right after the maitenance night had concluded, doesn't leave many raiders or raid leaders all too happy. Especially when it can take an hour of their raid time to get back, up, nd running as people are waiting to get through the "world server down", "no instance server available", and other such problems when trying to reorganize a raid.

Then in Trial of the Grand Crusade, instance server crashes do cut into one's alloted 50 attempts at getting bosses down (and better loot for having more attempts available at time of full clear); which leaves progression guildes less pleased