http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii

"One of the reasons Starcraft is still such a big hit at LAN parties is that, like most "older" PC titles, it supports multiplayer over a local network. Starcraft II will do no such thing.

A Blizzard rep has told Kotaku:

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.

Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.

Which will no doubt be crushing to LAN party fiends...if, that is, they still exist."

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Wow, that sucks pretty badly. I thought it was a joke when I read the headline...

What if you have a bad connection and have to share that at a LAN party? What if you have no internet connection at all, or not enough IPs for everyone present?

It's a good thing I'm not a Starcraft fan, or I would probably be really pissed about stuff like this and the triple SKUs. My friends who like Starcraft will probably care, but most of them slaves to The WoW, so if Starcraft 2 can pry them out of that hamster wheel I'll call it a good thing.

I am pissed >:( Starcraft and Counterstrike made lan party fun, who the hell wants to share one connection with 8 computer just so they can get a local 4v4 going. Bah.

Well good, Blizzard just saved me a lot of cash, no need to spend so much money on their game now

Come on, there must be more people pissed about this!

*bump*

repost / already being discussed here: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=78392&page=1

you are being irrational, Starcraft 2 will use P2P so 1 connection is more than enough for 8 people to play 4v4.

Nothing to do with bandwidth, i've had issue with multiple users on the same line going through battlenet before even when it's just 2-3 users, I see getting 8 ppl connected to the net at a lan party as a pain in the ass on top of more things that can go wrong due to the need of a net connection just to play at a lan party.

wow so first their releasing three copies of the same game fully priced and now this?

way to kill off the competitive community, I'm sure it's a good idea to piss off your most dedicated fanbase.

I can't believe people get pissed off over L4D 2 but not over Blizzard clearly screwing over its fans like this.

3 copies!!, now thats milking.