no LAN support is really disappointing and the game being region locked will hurt my experience as well since i expect that the online activity in the Australia region will quickly disappear a few months after the game is released.

As for me i plan on buying the game then getting a second pirate copy that lets me play the game with family members / friends who will not buy it....

Glad I'm not interested in the game. That said, I'm more than just a little worried about Diablo III... Oh well, guess I'm going to save some money then.

Balancing aside, currently when you play there just aren't enough viable units. When playing against Terran you will just about almost always see dozns of their tier 1 units, or banshees. Protoss you will see dozens of their tier 1 units, or void rays. With zerg you will see dozens of their tier 1 units, or mutalisks. Maybe, just maybe, if you play long enough you will see a thor/BC, cruiser/colossus, or a brood lord. But what I just described is literally everything you can expect in the game currently.

Archons just absolutely suck for the price. Psi storm is very weak compared to SC1 and combined witht he shitty archon the HTs are alamost useless. Dark Templar are a huge gamble because by the time you get the the other person will already have their detectors. Ultralisks are not worth the money, and infestors are just barely a nuisance, nothing like the defiler from SC1. Same thing for the Terran basically. There are just not very many viable strategies in the game with the way it is now.

Man, Activision must really be f*cking Blizzard over for them to be doing this...

I wouldn't pay more than 15€ for it anyway :P

Blizzard has killed any community aspect with StarCraft 2. And I was pretty hyped for it.

Everything Activision touches, dies.

Indeed, I am worried about Diablo 3 as well. I wonder if Blizzard had all this planned out beforehand or if this was influenced by Activision.

They would have to be extra retarded to remove things like chat from Diablo 3. Then again I thought they would have to be extra super retarded to remove LAN and chat from SC2 as well and that came to pass. Wouldn't be surprised if Diablo 3 gets ruined too.

No LAN is a joke. LAN = the best online PC multiplayer experience bar none. Online multiplayer is more convenient sure but nothing can replace the local multiplayer experience. Thing is I bet Activision-Blizzard are gonna get away from this. Starcraft is like crack to millions of gamers. They will willingly bend over for Activision-Blizzard. When it comes to mega-popular games that gamers just gotta play, gaming companies can get away with making the end-user bend over. But this isn't going to work with most videogames. Personally I'm not gonna buy Starcraft II. While it may be fun for the first couple of days getting pwnd by my Starcraft veteran buddies, after that it's gonna get old and then I'm probably never gonna touch Starcraft's online again. lol. I'm just gonna wait until theres a crack out then pirate the game and play Starcraft II's singleplayer campaign to see what the game is like. I haven't bought a PC game in a year and a half and I don't think I'm going to start doing so again anytime soon. Personally I think game companies have every right to fight piracy. But punishing the consumer and eroding consumer rights is going too far.

Is there a Starcraft 2 Boycott? Maybe we should all sign up!