Blizzard Declares LAN Will Be a "Footnote" in History
- Thread starter Keane Ng
- Start date
Blizzard from the LAN option from Starcraft 2 highlights 2 things which has led, in my mind anyway, to the detrement of modern PC gaming (if not gaming as a whole).
1) The rise of multiplayer. Back when Starcraft was released most games were primarily single player with a multiplayer option tacked on for those lucky enough to have a LAN setup or an internet connection. The reason why spawn loading was allowed was becuase Blizzard expected you to be more interested in the single player game and so only being able to play multiplayer would be a bad thing. However, the popularity of multiplayer only games (starting with BF1942/Quake 3 Arena) has shown that more and more people are willing to fork out money for a game which only lets them play against other people. This has meant more and more of these games are being made to the detrement of the single player experience. Not including LAN play means Blizzard have a tighter control over who can play their game and forces anyone wanting to play multiplayer to fork out for the full game rather then just copying a CD key.
2) Lack of a reality check. Computer game companies seem to constantly believe that everyone has access to high-speed internet, large hard-drives and powerful PCs. This means they make games which require high-speed internet to play without local multiplayer content and the recent move to Direct Downloads means you need plenty of space to store your games. Sadly, this is not the case. As Root said, there are still a number of people on dial-up and there are now modern PC games that require over 10Gb of space to install. This is really going to make me sound old, but I remember when you used to be able to choose how much stuff got installed and how much the PC had to read off the CD as you played. I know there is probably a complicated technical reason, but if consoles can play games without any installations needed, why can't they go back to PC games being able to do the same?
The 3rd thing this brings up (not just PC gaming here though) is the decline in local multiplayer. Fewer and fewer games seem to let you play with others in the room, be it LAN or split-screen, which really takes all the fun out of gaming.
1) The rise of multiplayer. Back when Starcraft was released most games were primarily single player with a multiplayer option tacked on for those lucky enough to have a LAN setup or an internet connection. The reason why spawn loading was allowed was becuase Blizzard expected you to be more interested in the single player game and so only being able to play multiplayer would be a bad thing. However, the popularity of multiplayer only games (starting with BF1942/Quake 3 Arena) has shown that more and more people are willing to fork out money for a game which only lets them play against other people. This has meant more and more of these games are being made to the detrement of the single player experience. Not including LAN play means Blizzard have a tighter control over who can play their game and forces anyone wanting to play multiplayer to fork out for the full game rather then just copying a CD key.
2) Lack of a reality check. Computer game companies seem to constantly believe that everyone has access to high-speed internet, large hard-drives and powerful PCs. This means they make games which require high-speed internet to play without local multiplayer content and the recent move to Direct Downloads means you need plenty of space to store your games. Sadly, this is not the case. As Root said, there are still a number of people on dial-up and there are now modern PC games that require over 10Gb of space to install. This is really going to make me sound old, but I remember when you used to be able to choose how much stuff got installed and how much the PC had to read off the CD as you played. I know there is probably a complicated technical reason, but if consoles can play games without any installations needed, why can't they go back to PC games being able to do the same?
The 3rd thing this brings up (not just PC gaming here though) is the decline in local multiplayer. Fewer and fewer games seem to let you play with others in the room, be it LAN or split-screen, which really takes all the fun out of gaming.
I guess they will be doing this with diablo 3 too then 
I will probably still buy it as I love the single player but me and my friend would use LAN alot.
The only reason I would get starcraft 2 though is LAN, online multiplayer and single player do not interest me at all. So this is a shame.
I will probably still buy it as I love the single player but me and my friend would use LAN alot.The only reason I would get starcraft 2 though is LAN, online multiplayer and single player do not interest me at all. So this is a shame.
I didn't like blizzard splitting starcraft II into 3 games, and now i'm laughing as they're taking away a feature that their fans love. The truth is, they know you're going to buy it regardless, and you'll just have to put up with whatever decision they decide to make on anything. You can blame WOW for this.
I think you're missing the point about that. For one, playing on the same connection while maintaining a constant connection with a game server can make things extremely laggy because you're both communicating on the same pipe. You know those pipes they have at the bank drive through window? Your buddy sends something to them. Then you try sending something to them, but wait, something's coming back through the pipe so you have to wait till it gets here, and then you can send your message. All the while everything you were wanting to do was put on hold. Fun times.Samman said:
Also, what the hell are you supposed to do when the internet goes out? It happens, and when it does it really sucks. I have satellite internet for lack of ANYTHING ELSE where I am. When it rains, heck when there's some scary looking clouds in the sky the internet is gone. It's bad enough when I can't log onto Steam in offline mode (because you can't do that when not connected to the internet, wtf!?). We shouldn't treat the internet as this infinite resource that will always be there, because it won't be.
You do understand how the world works right?Samman said:
This is a really odd decision that I would never expect of Blizzard. Usually Blizzard releases extremely high quality games WHILE catering to the crowd. Getting rid of LAN seems to go against that.
I actually like the idea of 3 seperate games, as that allows them to increase the single player campaign 3 fold. Unless the Wings of Liberty campaign is horrendous, this is a good decision. Blizzard is known for polish, and this allows them to do it.
Who knows, maybe LAN was causing problems, somehow? A long shot, but if it means a closer release date, I'll give up LAN.
I actually like the idea of 3 seperate games, as that allows them to increase the single player campaign 3 fold. Unless the Wings of Liberty campaign is horrendous, this is a good decision. Blizzard is known for polish, and this allows them to do it.
Who knows, maybe LAN was causing problems, somehow? A long shot, but if it means a closer release date, I'll give up LAN.
This is purely a business decision to fight piracy. When you connect to Battle.net they have a tool for combating piracy. When everything is local LAN, it is essentially offline and you can all be using pirated copies.
Oh and also, it seems a lot of people are forgetting that you can still have a "LAN" party, you just all hook up to Battle.net/Live/PSN whatever and play in the same room. No big loss.
*headdesk* Fail analogy is fail.Byers said:
Proper LAN parties of 20, heck LAN parties of 6 people would chug out if you had them all going through the same connection on BNET to play someone sitting five frakking feet across from you, LAN is not obsolete in the slightest, and I really wonder what else goes through your brain if you think a lag free, self contained network that has hardly any chance of having problems is obsolete. Then again you've probably never seen the fun in spending two days drinking cider, scoffing pizza and mowing down zerg with your friends.
I'd say lowering costs and not placing un-needed burden on a publisher to keep cloud computing up and running is not unnecessary. Lan itself might not be that needed but having low cost readily available severs in the form of each game that's connected to it this of course makes lan something to look too to make inter connections faster(lan party's for PS3/360,ect). Then all publishers really need are master severs giving out info,updates and other fancy stuff.Byers said:
IMO this is like throwing the baby out with the bath water, only your not throwing the baby out and using old stagnant water.
/rambling
There's a reason the LAN party enthusiast, living off cheetos and drinking coke intravenously, aren't even a substantial enough social group to be poked fun at silly movies or TV shows, unlike pretty much every other group of "geeks".Amnestic said:
I've played computer and video games for nearly 20 years, most of my friends play them, most of my online acquaintances play them, yet none of them ever frequent LAN parties.