Shamus Young said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
I still think the whole LAN thing is being blown way out of proportion, myself.
Ten years, and it's all we ever played.
And we played a lot.
I don't doubt that it was instrumental to the success of the first StarCraft, and I remember bypassing the security in our computer lab on campus to install spawns and do 3v5 compstomp. I just question the need for it in this day and age. The last time I played a LAN game was... maybe a session of DotA a few years back, and for the most part we just went over B.net with that, anyway.
I understand the very real concerns over having EVERYTHING be over B.net, what with latency being a problem if you A.) are running a big tournament, B.) are playing competitively and every bit of lag counts, or C.) are behind some sort of restrictive firewall, like at college. These are very real complaints, but I think that the whole "ping to B.net to set things up, then run off of LAN" addresses it nicely. I mean hell, the last time I LANned, I still had an internet connection so that I could check MSN and email while we played.
It just seems so rare to me to be off the grid these days. Now, granted, that's from the perspective of a PC lifestyle gamer in a developed nation, but even knowing other PC lifestyle gamers, I was hard-pressed to find any in the area who have LANned at all recently.