I may represent a minority voice here, but I feel oddly compelled to reply.
In the village I live in (yes, I live in a village, we have a post office, a bank, and had a bar till recently, that's it), internet is neither overly fast nor reliable and I have to deal with high latency even when playing against locals. No matter how much Blizzard improves Battle.net, if the latency/connection issues I get are between me and my isp (when I try to play with friends, the route is to the ISP and back) cannot be improved.
Why would someone want LAN? My internet is only really usable if it hasn't rained recently. Otherwise I get the 15 minutes on, 1-5 minutes off. Surely all I should do is get better at blitzing right?
I consider myself boycotting Blizzard, not because I hate them, but because without LAN, I won't play StarCraft 2. I don't particularly like single player RTS's, and I don't hate myself enough to spend good money on a game I can only play when the weather is good. I also have made games and wouldn't want to be on the other side watching people enjoy my work while I am forced out of employment.
Would I pirate it? No, there is no point. I won't play it without MP. Have I pirated anything? Yes, but I usually pay for it. The only reason I can only say "usually" is because I will download something (without buying it first) when they don't provide a demo (if they add DRM after the demo release and the full version won't work for me, I will download it, but I still paid for the game). If it works and I am still playing after 10-15 minutes, I buy it, otherwise I delete it. I wouldn't even do that if I could return it if it doesn't work.
For the record, I have purchased SC battlechest 3 times. Second only to Rome Total War (5 times). I now make/download backups in case I lose the disk/roll over it with my chair while looking for it after I drop it/move and have my box of games go missing when the movers are done.
@ Ali
If I install a game on multiple machines, lets say I purchased the game a few times, but cannot locate all the keys (hence why I bought multiple copies), if I use the same key for all of them, is it piracy?
What if I install a game I purchased one copy of on two machines so my brother visiting from out of state can play even though he didn't bring his copy he purchased (the important part is we both purchased the game).
