Starcraft II drops LAN support

Post by **GeneralAdmission** » 02 Jul 2009, 01:19

This is just depressing. LAN support dropped as a security measure:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/30/starcraft-2-blizzard-responds-to-lack-of-lan-support/

I've never once played or wanted to play on Battle.net for Starcraft or Diablo II, but both games were some of my favorite LAN experiences ever. SCII is down to about a 10% interest level for me now, and my gut tells me DIII will soon follow suit.

*sigh*

Soduka · Post by **Soduka** » 02 Jul 2009, 02:04

Err....LAN support is kind of a big important feature? It's been in ever Multiplayer game I've ever played for over a decade and beyond.

Post by **The_cranky_hermit** » 02 Jul 2009, 02:15

Although I don't play LAN, not including it at all is complete idiocy. StarCraft LAN parties were huge. Blizzard already killed the deal for me a long time ago, though, what with selling the game in three different boxes. I'll wait for a "StarCraft II Battle Chest."

Post by **Abram** » 02 Jul 2009, 02:40

Awe man....... why has this stupid idea become so popular? I certainly didnt; expect it for Starcraft.. Good thing there are ways around that.

But still pretty damned stupid.

Post by **dopefish** » 02 Jul 2009, 09:44

SCII is a big money-maker. Dropping LAN support prevents mass piracy.

If they included LAN, then people could just use Hamachi, GameRanger, or set up some other VPN and play the game online without having to buy it.

People will still pirate the game, of course, but they'll be limited to playing SP only.

DaFox · Post by **DaFox** » 02 Jul 2009, 10:38

SCII is a big money-maker. Dropping LAN support prevents mass piracy.

If they included LAN, then people could just use Hamachi, GameRanger, or set up some other VPN and play the game online without having to buy it.

People will still pirate the game, of course, but they'll be limited to playing SP only.

This, it goes both ways. They did say they will have a battle.net feature to replace LAN function so I'm presuming just P2P based servers like LAN would be for <1ms pings which is the only REAL good use for lan play now days.

Like as long as they have an easy system to get that sub 1ms ping for tournaments in battle.net I dont see how you can complain.

Sure it requires an internet connection but if you have a PC thats good enough to run SC2 you should have an internet connection even if its just dial up to log into battle.net.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 02 Jul 2009, 12:08

I'll wait for a "StarCraft II Battle Chest."

This.

I'm not horrified at the idea of losing LAN support - provided they can get some way of allowing low-ping for tournaments (the idea of even four or more players using anything less than a T3 connection is rather... yuck...)

But if they don't... well, Starcraft II won't become the long-lasting hit that Starcraft was.

...

I don't like the idea of having to buy three games to complete one, however. Yeah, yeah, I know... each game is the single player campaign for one race... great. It better be a bloody long campaign, then. In the order of 30 missions, as that would get close to how long Starcraft was. Unless they play to sell it for $25... or less.

I'm probably not going to bother buying Half-Life 2: Episode 3 as I just can't be bothered with episodic content that takes years to arrive. That new Sam & Max game... maybe. Because the episodes came fairly quickly.

chabooka · Post by **chabooka** » 02 Jul 2009, 16:27

wow, blizzard really likes their money now... I always looked at them as respectable. I stayed out of WoW so the last game i bought from them was Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. And now that they're coming back they feel like a different company then what I knew back in the day.

Soduka · Post by **Soduka** » 02 Jul 2009, 18:00

I don't care if they'll replace it through Battle.net, it means we're completely reliant on their network to work 100% of the time for everything. Not interested.

Post by **GeneralAdmission** » 02 Jul 2009, 19:31

wow, blizzard really likes their money now... I always looked at them as respectable. I stayed out of WoW so the last game i bought from them was Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. And now that they're coming back they feel like a different company then what I knew back in the day.

Reading my mind, chabooka? ;)

I think it can be said with certainty that a fundamental change has occurred at Blizzard (and perhaps the gaming industry at large) when they decide that removing a core feature that helped define/popularize their previous games is better for them and their players. SCII, probably more than any other upcoming game, is a guaranteed crazy-million$ hit title. Blizzard knows this, and considering WoW already allows their fat-cats to roll and smoke $100 bills while they laugh their way to the bank, they can do almost anything they want to SCII with very little risk to their bottom line. For most other devs, releasing an MP-centric game sans LAN support would be retail suicide.

Just like the triple-box separation of the SP game, Blizzard can dump LAN play because there is no significant repercussion to deter them.

infernus · Post by **infernus** » 03 Jul 2009, 18:24

Seems the whole "no LAN" announcement suddenly turned into "anti-piracy measures" without them even mentioning it. I'm sure it's at least part of the plan, but I just think they firmly believe Bnet is good enough. Not that I agree.

inb4 Koreans rage enough for them to put it back in

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 05 Jul 2009, 13:38

[quote]SCII is a big money-maker. Dropping LAN support prevents mass piracy.

If they included LAN, then people could just use Hamachi, GameRanger, or set up some other VPN and play the game online without having to buy it.

People will still pirate the game, of course, but they'll be limited to playing SP only.

This, it goes both ways. They did say they will have a battle.net feature to replace LAN function so I'm presuming just P2P based servers like LAN would be for <1ms pings which is the only REAL good use for lan play now days.

Like as long as they have an easy system to get that sub 1ms ping for tournaments in battle.net I dont see how you can complain.

Sure it requires an internet connection but if you have a PC thats good enough to run SC2 you should have an internet connection even if its just dial up to log into battle.net.

<1ms ping isn't the only REAL use for lan play

lan play allows to take anti-cheating measures totally unavailable online
As it is, nowadays, I don't play online much at all because of all the cheating that goes around in 100% of games. (and I insist, 100% of games have cheaters, but of course not 100% of all games sessions)

two examples :
-playing with real life friends in LAN (not quite 100% nocheat secure but if you can see their screen from time to time...)
-playing in a secured paid third party room (no USB, no floppy, no CD, no DVD, preinstalled software, play with what you got ...)

also, <1ms ping is impossible online for some people like me
my internet connection has around 50~60ms ping at its lowest
also considering that I'm not alone on this connection, it easily gets to 150~200ms (who said unplayable ?)

Finally if there's an "online" P2P solution available I guess it will be cracked sooner or later... after all even WoW got its private servers ...

Post by **GeneralAdmission** » 05 Jul 2009, 17:43

Seems the whole "no LAN" announcement suddenly turned into "anti-piracy measures" without them even mentioning it.

Actually Blizzard was completely forthcoming on this point, as noted in the Joystiq article:

here's the official word from Bob Colayco at Blizzard PR:

"We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy."

DaFox · Post by **DaFox** » 05 Jul 2009, 21:38

<1ms ping isn't the only REAL use for lan play

lan play allows to take anti-cheating measures totally unavailable online
As it is, nowadays, I don't play online much at all because of all the cheating that goes around in 100% of games. (and I insist, 100% of games have cheaters, but of course not 100% of all games sessions)

two examples :
-playing with real life friends in LAN (not quite 100% nocheat secure but if you can see their screen from time to time...)
-playing in a secured paid third party room (no USB, no floppy, no CD, no DVD, preinstalled software, play with what you got ...)

also, <1ms ping is impossible online for some people like me
my internet connection has around 50~60ms ping at its lowest
also considering that I'm not alone on this connection, it easily gets to 150~200ms (who said unplayable ?)

Finally if there's an "online" P2P solution available I guess it will be cracked sooner or later... after all even WoW got its private servers ...

But that doesnt have anything to do with the protocol though, that's just lanning you can play at a lan and online and you instantly get double the protection from Battle.net's anti cheat 'Warden' along side your noted traditional methods of anti cheat.

Of course it will be cracked, World of Warcraft and the Warcraft 3 battle.net both had cracked servers when they were still in beta. That doesn't help you at all though because the number of people that play on them is relatively small and your definitely going to ping worse on them since they have to be illegally hosted its usually on some kids computer in the closet. And you will still need to have an internet connection to use it which ultimately means the only reason to use a cracked server is for piracy.

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 05 Jul 2009, 22:12

But that doesnt have anything to do with the protocol though, that's just lanning you can play at a lan and online and you instantly get double the protection from Battle.net's anti cheat 'Warden' along side your noted traditional methods of anti cheat.

sorry but the so called protection from battle.net servers will get defeated
at the bare minimum you can sniff incoming packets, decrypt the data (which takes some skill tough) and then rebuild a map of what's happening on the whole map in real time, which gives you intel which is the heart of any war ...

why I am talking about this ? because it's impossible to hunt & stop a sniffer type program

Of course it will be cracked, World of Warcraft and the Warcraft 3 battle.net both had cracked servers when they were still in beta. That doesn't help you at all though because the number of people that play on them is relatively small and your definitely going to ping worse on them since they have to be illegally hosted its usually on some kids computer in the closet. And you will still need to have an internet connection to use it which ultimately means the only reason to use a cracked server is for piracy.

you missed something ;) I talked about some kind of "online P2P" (Peer to Peer) which would be deployed to get decent pings in LAN while still being bound to battle.net servers. so cracked or not pings to servers aren't going to matter. nor is the number of people an issue in such a quasi-LAN play ...

that is : forbidding LAN to prevent piracy is stupid because it won't prevent piracy ...

Endline, I wonder if I'll buy this one... but I guess they don't the fucking care.

DaFox · Post by **DaFox** » 05 Jul 2009, 23:57

[quote]
But that doesnt have anything to do with the protocol though, that's just lanning you can play at a lan and online and you instantly get double the protection from Battle.net's anti cheat 'Warden' along side your noted traditional methods of anti cheat.

sorry but the so called protection from battle.net servers will get defeated
at the bare minimum you can sniff incoming packets, decrypt the data (which takes some skill tough) and then rebuild a map of what's happening on the whole map in real time, which gives you intel which is the heart of any war ...

why I am talking about this ? because it's impossible to hunt & stop a sniffer type program

Of course it wont stop anything but at the same time if your playing on LAN why not have additional anticheat. Theres no reason not to have it.

[quote]
Of course it will be cracked, World of Warcraft and the Warcraft 3 battle.net both had cracked servers when they were still in beta. That doesn't help you at all though because the number of people that play on them is relatively small and your definitely going to ping worse on them since they have to be illegally hosted its usually on some kids computer in the closet. And you will still need to have an internet connection to use it which ultimately means the only reason to use a cracked server is for piracy.

you missed something ;) I talked about some kind of "online P2P" (Peer to Peer) which would be deployed to get decent pings in LAN while still being bound to battle.net servers. so cracked or not pings to servers aren't going to matter. nor is the number of people an issue in such a quasi-LAN play ...

Exactly so why would someone use a cracked server to play LAN other than piracy?

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 06 Jul 2009, 00:15

Of course it wont stop anything but at the same time if your playing on LAN why not have additional anticheat. Theres no reason not to have it.

well let's just say that I am happy counterstrike (the original half-life mod) had easy LAN play and no internet requirement back at the time. Made the life simpler years ago when setting up a dozen computers coming with every guest for a day of frenetic fragging ...

Exactly so why would someone use a cracked server to play LAN other than piracy?

hu ... I think we both have gone different routes at some point in our thinking
never implied anything on this particular point

Yet I can foresee how a legitimate user would play on a cracked server... if some of his friends don't have the legitimate copy of the game ...

Anyway, I still wonder why this discussion went that route...
all I'm saying is that, this serves no purpose at all since the so called additional security will be nullified soon enough to not matter at all. It will just be a bother to need internet for LAN play for legit users. And it won't protect the game against the ho so evil pirates

DaFox · Post by **DaFox** » 06 Jul 2009, 02:22

[quote]
Exactly so why would someone use a cracked server to play LAN other than piracy?

hu ... I think we both have gone different routes at some point in our thinking
never implied anything on this particular point

Yet I can foresee how a legitimate user would play on a cracked server... if some of his friends don't have the legitimate copy of the game ..

So basically piracy?

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 06 Jul 2009, 13:37

yeah what else could it be ?
you can't really force your friends and people in general to buy a game...

ChainSOV · Post by **ChainSOV** » 06 Jul 2009, 15:41

yeah what else could it be ?

could be a LAN without any internet connection

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