Blizzard Declares LAN Will Be a "Footnote" in History
- Thread starter Keane Ng
- Start date
The omission of LAN support from SC2 has always struck me as a move that is inconsistent with Blizzard's clear main goals. Anyone who is a WoW player and is up to date with all the PvP class balancing changes and its developers's interviews knows that Blizzard's number one goal is for their games to be "e-sport platforms". That's a clever strategy. E-sport status adds longevity, hypes the game and makes it a "big deal", which translates to an increase in sales.
Now, WoW is just an RPG. Anyone who has ever played an RTS (or FPS) competitively can tell you that pings higher than 10 while in a professional tournament are legit reason for the players to protest and ultimately stop playing. What separates normal players from professional players in FPS games and twitchy RTS games like Starcraft are split second reactions and moves that are not doable with a "normal" online latency of 80-100, which is why online tournaments almost always offer lower quality games than LAN tournaments and are not worth watching unless something extraordinary happens in any of those games.
Removing LAN support from Starcraft 2 seems like a self-mutilating move for a developer who is so focused on their games being e-sport worthy, since LAN is, till this day, the number 1 platform of choice for e-sport tournaments due to its reliability and close-to-zero latency. If they expect Korean players to play SC2 games with 250ms over Battlenet, then I can't help but think they are a bit out of touch with reality (which is not unexpected from Blizzard).
Now, WoW is just an RPG. Anyone who has ever played an RTS (or FPS) competitively can tell you that pings higher than 10 while in a professional tournament are legit reason for the players to protest and ultimately stop playing. What separates normal players from professional players in FPS games and twitchy RTS games like Starcraft are split second reactions and moves that are not doable with a "normal" online latency of 80-100, which is why online tournaments almost always offer lower quality games than LAN tournaments and are not worth watching unless something extraordinary happens in any of those games.
Removing LAN support from Starcraft 2 seems like a self-mutilating move for a developer who is so focused on their games being e-sport worthy, since LAN is, till this day, the number 1 platform of choice for e-sport tournaments due to its reliability and close-to-zero latency. If they expect Korean players to play SC2 games with 250ms over Battlenet, then I can't help but think they are a bit out of touch with reality (which is not unexpected from Blizzard).
Hmm, you make a good point there, or maybe... Are you thinking of those who got real life friends? Those exists too. I have played games that I have legally purchased a lot of times. I also have a high speed connection, but I still play a lot on the local area network. Where do you want to place me in those 2 little boxes? Legally game and high speed connection. I like LAN because when you got real friends you can play at home while talkign to your friends and not through a crappy microphone that sometimes lags.Samman said:
Nice uh...counter argument you got there. Pointing out that I said "headdesk" and my BSG tendencies don't count for anything. As you can tell most people in the thread don't think LAN is obsolete and have provided decent points as to why, you and the 1 or 2 people who think otherwise just say "it's not needed" and leave it at that. Also using 1 "meme" and one instance of "frak" doesnt really count as speaking in memes and bsg. you'd just need to remove 2 words from my post and it would still make the same amount of argument.Byers said:
AS a LAN Party host, I'm sorry to here that Blizzard has decided to pursue this development path. I personally know 30 individuals who will no longer purchase the as a direct result of this decision. I have no problem with games having anti-piracy security, but actions like this will only hurt their sales, as people will flock to piracy groups who design LAN support for these games. Here's hoping they reverse their decision.
Yeah, we're heading for the dystopian future from "Wall-E" where we use computers to talk to a person sitting right next to us.thousandfaces said:
Gaming is so awesome BECAUSE of the social aspect, and I don't mean playing online against complete strangers. If you're not going to play multiplayer games with friends, why bother?
Kyprioth said:
It's illegal, but morally acceptable...I think.
It's not like "I bought a car but it was faulty so I stole it from other car dealers". You already purchased the product and by then "stealing it" you harm nobody...I think ;]
Bwahahaha, sure thing Blizzard, you try letting a couple of hundred people play Starcraft 2 against eachother at a LAN party over an internet connection. Blizzard really needs a reality check here. Because of this decision, I doubt that SC2 will see the level of competion as we see now with SC1.
You need to go WAY further back to see when corporate business took over gaming. When Nolan Bushnell was booted out of his own company (Atari) by Warner in 1979, Corporate America had officially bootfucked gaming.ZippyDSMlee said:
After the crash in 83, with the rise of nintendo as largely an independant, and japanese to boot, corporate america took a backseat, but it was still there. It's always been there.
As for the topic at hand, I don't know too much about Pardo except that he created the most addictive game of all time, so he must have some chops.. but saying LAN is dead like DOS is just silly.
What's replaced LAN? Is B.Net going to replace it? Honestly? Graphical Operating Systems were built ontop of DOS for years.. and then finally DOS wasn't needed to hold up the graphical interface anymore so they phased it out.
What's replaced LAN? I would say nothing. If you want to play a game on a LAN, and the game only have online capabilities, that's very inefficient. You have to send stuff through your internet connection, to the server, then recieve it back, along with all the information from other computers.. Instead of just getting it directly from the computers themselves.. it's an extra unnecesary step, and another thing is bandwidth. Sure, having a home lan party with 4 friends isn't going to rip a hole in your bandwidth, but Pardo, of all people, should understand that if you get 400 people in a huge lan party, 400 computers playing games on the internet.. It just seems like a waste, when LAN offers none of those potential problems.
Well, I was referring to "fail analogy is fail", which is pretty much the perfect way to wear your immaturity on your sleeve right from the getgo. At least I have problems taking anyone using that kind of 4chan talk seriously in a discussion.elvor0 said:
As for the majority of the people in this thread being in favor of LAN support, well obviously the people who are in favor of it will gravitate towards this thread to voice their discontent and wave their pitchforks about, whereas most others probably won't care enough to comment. As a long time Blizzard game player, however, I threw the original post a passing comment of approval.
I agree with this. Also you need to consider that DOS is not 100% dead even now. A lot of programs still rely on versions of it, for example a program I have that scans my hard drives for surface errors and so on, is built on a free version of DOS and boots via a CD.Altorin said:
So saying DOS is dead is pretty dumb, and saying LAN is even dumber when many gaming conventions still have massive LAN parties.
I agree to a point though IMO it was not such a huge problem you still had innovation and drive for innovation as the 90s went on we can see a shift from mechanics to models and textures this combined with non gamer "business men" entrepreneurs becoming more and more part of the middle and upper echelons it just all adds up for a quick over simplified answer to "how can we sale this" and that answer is and has been graphics.Altorin said:
but... i love playing with my brothers and friends at my parties on my custom maps (they love it too!) so why can't we have LAN anymore?!!! Is this because they wanna make us pay for BNet? or because they want to prevent something? This is just stupid, I don't wanna buy a game that I can't play with my friends in the same room without some jerk joining the game and ruining our fun 