Well at least they're tossing the n00bs a bone... how the hell else are they supposed to have a chance against uber-geek Koreans who have been playing the game non-stop for over 10 years now?!?

no lan? WAAAAAAA. Damnit. Lan is the only reason for me 2play. 2play. 2PAC

They are doin it to fight pirates.

You want to play MP, you do it on Battlenet. You don't have a legit copy, no MP...

Sounds smart to me..

It just seems like not having LAN would be shooting themselves in the foot. I am sure it will be a great game when its released but to me it will feel like a gimped product.

The sad thing is, this game will make money hand over fist either way. but the 3rd party lan mod may come into play. that gives me a little bit of hope. However I am still no longer inspired to rush out and buy it as soon as it comes out.

I doubt you will get third party lan support any time soon.

If Blizzard is smart ( and they usually are) they won't include part of the MP code in the shipped version and that code will be running on battlenet.

Good luck duplicating that code :P

Seriously, with how good net latency are these days, what reason would you have to want to play lan over bnet aside from doing it because you are running a copy you didn't purchase ?( and bnet will most likely provide an ELO like ranking for bnet players).

PS : multiple ppls can play wow from the same household off the same router ( and wow actually uses battlenet now for some of the authentication) so I don't expect there to be any issue with Starcraft 2 around that.

I don't get what the big deal with lan is. So what? Just about everyone's internet speed is fast enough to run a well optimized game with minimal lag these days. I like lan games alot, but this doesn't concern me in the least.


Go watch the full interviews on gametrailers, very interesting stuff in there. For one, it being "noob friendly" isn't about dumbing the game down, they are actually going to have what he called "casual leagues" (not final name) where you can go play against other noobs with possible slight alterations to how the game works to make it more accessible, but only in these "casual league" games. All the hardcore koreans can still play the real deal with all the other hardcore players without anything noob friendly getting in the way.

Also I like how he said there are no rewards for playing longer, other than improving your own skill. That starcraft is purely a skill based game, and it is completely against what they are doing if you can "level up" your army in any way by logging 200 hours on the game grinding so your ultralisks have a couple of extra armor points when you play online. They want it to be entirely up to the skill of the player, which is how it should be. They did say that you might be able to earn certain decals or something to put on your troops as a sort of badge of honor, but it wouldn't affect their performance in any way.

Over all, I am super pumped about this game, and I find it really strange the things people find to complain about with this game. They should release all 90 missions in one gigantic package that is far bigger than both starcraft and broodwars put together instead of having it be three separate games! I won't play this game at all unless I can play it over a lan, because this game actually sucks except for the lan support! I mean that all sounds like complete nonsense.

99,99% of PC Multiplayer gaming is done Online, so what the hell is the problem with you?! LAN doesn't matter nowadays because all PC gamers now have internet and almost all of them have good enough connections to play online.

Dude, Blizzard is using korean pro gamers to test Starcraft 2's gameplay and take impressions from them, so I'm pretty sure the korean people is well cared for.

Seperating the game into 3 huge campaigns was one of Blizzard's best decisions on Starcraft. People want big, epic storylines, not stories fragmented and shredded into pieces.

You make no sense. Why would a battle.net subscription affect LAN?! Especially when Battle.net itself is free and the subscription is only optional.

And the subscription idea was something that Blizzard was thinking way before they merged with Activision.

As much as I love Blizzard and already pre-ordered my copy of Starcraft 2 (right now Blizzard games are pretty much the only thing I buy for my PC) they should really include LAN. What if for some bizarre instance SC2 is taken off online to play for free/ a fee? Plus while most people have Internet, not everyone in the world does and I think It was necessary for big tournaments and what not. Now they'll have to host the tournaments on Battle.net which will be a big awkward.

Annoying but not boycott worthy.

@Ail

The biggest issue for me is removing an element that has worked for decades, fairly trouble free, simple and replacing it with more moving parts that can go wrong.
I don't use Bnet at all really, but I enjoy lan games with my friends. even dealing with routers has been in a pain in the ass so we use a switch so people don't get dropped.
From what I read there have been plenty of instances where people have issues with trying to host a game over the internet with the same connection.

essentially why tout a system that is bound to have faults when there is already a perfectly good system set up. I prefer to have more control than handing it off to them and hope everything works out for the best.

Also I dont appreciate what you are implying. Just because I dont like being treated like a pirate doesnt mean I am one.

at any rate it changed from buy when it comes out to not buying it until at least 4-5 people I know buy it first so I can play it with them (most people I know tend to be slow late adopters)