StarCraft II Will Have LAN After All - Almost

[AceDiamond]

Starcraft 2 is Blizzard's property. If they don't want you to play it online after a certain date, then come Hell and high water, you won't be playing it. It's their property, not yours. You've no more right to play it online than anyone else. They may drop a patch at some point to disable the need for Battle.net, but don't expect to see it for years.

I'm sorry, I believe that is a flawed analogy. If I buy software, it's now mine. I do not expect some Blizzard rep to come to my house in a few years saying "Starcraft 2 no longer works, we're here to take it back." Saying that a product that somebody sells you is still the seller's the property is bogus.

OT: I think at this point I'm not going to buy Starcraft 2 purely out of spite.

This analogy is also flawed especially considering that 3rd-party/independent developers have been able to create their own Internet servers for games after the company has stopped supporting them. For example, Mechwarrior 4 still has a huge online community because of the MekTek servers that were created once Microsoft shut down hosting on their own servers. More amazing is the fact that Microsoft was ok with this arrangement. Really throws a wrench into the "game is the property of the devs only" if Microsoft is cool with something like that.

 

[toapat]

Hopefully this will quiet the 100,000 people bitching about LAN. You had to know that Blizzard is usually pretty damn good at customer pleasing, one way or another.

when the number hits 1/4 the legal population of the USA there are 2 things:
Bow before them
why the fuck is SC still ranked the 6th most popular game ever? it should be 0th

 

[UnravThreads]

Starcraft 2 is Blizzard's property. If they don't want you to play it online after a certain date, then come Hell and high water, you won't be playing it. It's their property, not yours. You've no more right to play it online than anyone else. They may drop a patch at some point to disable the need for Battle.net, but don't expect to see it for years.

I'm sorry, I believe that is a flawed analogy. If I buy software, it's now mine. I do not expect some Blizzard rep to come to my house in a few years saying "Starcraft 2 no longer works, we're here to take it back." Saying that a product that somebody sells you is still the seller's the property is bogus.

OT: I think at this point I'm not going to buy Starcraft 2 purely out of spite.

This analogy is also flawed especially considering that 3rd-party/independent developers have been able to create their own Internet servers for games after the company has stopped supporting them. For example, Mechwarrior 4 still has a huge online community because of the MekTek servers that were created once Microsoft shut down hosting on their own servers. More amazing is the fact that Microsoft was ok with this arrangement. Really throws a wrench into the "game is the property of the devs only" if Microsoft is cool with something like that.

EDIT : Whoops, didn't see the second post. What the one I quoted said.

Blizzard own the software, you own a license. Blizzard can revoke said license when they want.

 

[Whistler777]

Online LAN? Fabulous, now people won't be able to play with each other without an internet connection!

What's the bet that within 2 weeks of Starcraft II's release, RELOADED or Razor fixes this little LAN problem once and for all?

 

[AceDiamond]

Starcraft 2 is Blizzard's property. If they don't want you to play it online after a certain date, then come Hell and high water, you won't be playing it. It's their property, not yours. You've no more right to play it online than anyone else. They may drop a patch at some point to disable the need for Battle.net, but don't expect to see it for years.

I'm sorry, I believe that is a flawed analogy. If I buy software, it's now mine. I do not expect some Blizzard rep to come to my house in a few years saying "Starcraft 2 no longer works, we're here to take it back." Saying that a product that somebody sells you is still the seller's the property is bogus.

OT: I think at this point I'm not going to buy Starcraft 2 purely out of spite.

This analogy is also flawed especially considering that 3rd-party/independent developers have been able to create their own Internet servers for games after the company has stopped supporting them. For example, Mechwarrior 4 still has a huge online community because of the MekTek servers that were created once Microsoft shut down hosting on their own servers. More amazing is the fact that Microsoft was ok with this arrangement. Really throws a wrench into the "game is the property of the devs only" if Microsoft is cool with something like that.

EDIT : Whoops, didn't see the second post. What the one I quoted said.

Blizzard own the software, you own a license. Blizzard can revoke said license when they want.

And what I said sorta points out it is not that cut-and-dry as you may think

 

[Skratt]

This sounds reasonable.

Nothing more to comment on.

While I am not a Starcraft fan, the lack of LAN play or "offline" play is kind of a big deal. I travel and at times I like to play games but don't have access to the internet.

I know that "offline" play support is a numbers game (how many people NEED it really?), but still even if it is only 1-5% of the players, is it really necessary to disable "offline" play?

I think Blizzard is trying to copy Valve's model of gaming (at least in part). Let's hope they figure out that while their fan base is ravenous and will eat up pretty much anything Blizzard put's in front of them, "offline" mode is still nice.

 

[John Funk]

This sounds reasonable.

Nothing more to comment on.

While I am not a Starcraft fan, the lack of LAN play or "offline" play is kind of a big deal. I travel and at times I like to play games but don't have access to the internet.

I know that "offline" play support is a numbers game (how many people NEED it really?), but still even if it is only 1-5% of the players, is it really necessary to disable "offline" play?

I think Blizzard is trying to copy Valve's model of gaming (at least in part). Let's hope they figure out that while their fan base is ravenous and will eat up pretty much anything Blizzard put's in front of them, "offline" mode is still nice.

There will be offline play for the singleplayer, you just won't be able to log in (and get any achievements/etc)

 

[Skratt]

This sounds reasonable.

Nothing more to comment on.

While I am not a Starcraft fan, the lack of LAN play or "offline" play is kind of a big deal. I travel and at times I like to play games but don't have access to the internet.

I know that "offline" play support is a numbers game (how many people NEED it really?), but still even if it is only 1-5% of the players, is it really necessary to disable "offline" play?

I think Blizzard is trying to copy Valve's model of gaming (at least in part). Let's hope they figure out that while their fan base is ravenous and will eat up pretty much anything Blizzard put's in front of them, "offline" mode is still nice.

There will be offline play for the singleplayer, you just won't be able to log in (and get any achievements/etc)

Cool. I stand corrected. Thought they were requiring internet connection for play.

 

[Hexenwolf]

There will be offline play for the singleplayer, you just won't be able to log in (and get any achievements/etc)

I was under the impression that it was going to have online activation and you would need to be online to play the game at all?

Of course, if you can play the singleplayer offline (especially with how interesting the campaign looks), I'm a happy camper.

 

[John Funk]

There will be offline play for the singleplayer, you just won't be able to log in (and get any achievements/etc)

I was under the impression that it was going to have online activation and you would need to be online to play the game at all?

Of course, if you can play the singleplayer offline (especially with how interesting the campaign looks), I'm a happy camper.

Online activation, yes. But they announced at BlizzCon that you'd be able to play offline as a "Guest," which means that you don't get any achievements or anything accredited to your B.net account - but you still get to play through the campaign.

 

[Calobi]

What of LAN Party gaming? All the ones I've gone to had no Internet connection at all. Steam had to be in offline mode, and no one could do anything other than look at other people's computers on the network. If it requires a connection, then it wouldn't work, unless I'm missing something huge.

 

[Hexenwolf]

There will be offline play for the singleplayer, you just won't be able to log in (and get any achievements/etc)

I was under the impression that it was going to have online activation and you would need to be online to play the game at all?

Of course, if you can play the singleplayer offline (especially with how interesting the campaign looks), I'm a happy camper.

Online activation, yes. But they announced at BlizzCon that you'd be able to play offline as a "Guest," which means that you don't get any achievements or anything accredited to your B.net account - but you still get to play through the campaign.

That's good enough for me!

Oh, but the save files probably won't transfer so you'll have to start over... Ah well, just a chance to try a different path, I'm loving the look of the campaign.

 

[John Funk]

There will be offline play for the singleplayer, you just won't be able to log in (and get any achievements/etc)

I was under the impression that it was going to have online activation and you would need to be online to play the game at all?

Of course, if you can play the singleplayer offline (especially with how interesting the campaign looks), I'm a happy camper.

Online activation, yes. But they announced at BlizzCon that you'd be able to play offline as a "Guest," which means that you don't get any achievements or anything accredited to your B.net account - but you still get to play through the campaign.

That's good enough for me!

Oh, but the save files probably won't transfer so you'll have to start over... Ah well, just a chance to try a different path, I'm loving the look of the campaign.

The campaign is pretty awesome, from what I saw at BlizzCon

 

[Stonebear]

Whats really a shame is my friends and I were really looking forward to SC2 as a way to kill time between classes, but as we no longer have access to wireless internet on campus guess we'll keep playing DoW on our internet free lan.

Don't get me wrong, I'm more then willing to come to a compromise. I'll agree to pay Blizzard money if Blizzard agrees to let me play with friends completely offline. Doesn't sound so unreasonable to me, but if Blizzard doesn't like it we've been meaning to get around to trying dawn of war 2 and relic entertainment doesn't seem to have a problem accepting my cash.

 

[jayman52]

Good for you stonebear. I agree completely with your sentiments. I still believe Blizzard has lost their grip on reality. I say this mainly because of the Diablo 2 1.13 patch they said they were going to put out but still haven't yet because they want to invest more time in Warcraft 3.

 

[laserwulf]

Guess us soldiers that buy games off of amazon.com from Iraq & Afghanistan get the shaft again. A ton of us have laptops over there, with games being a common way to unwind, but almost all of us have NO internet access for a year (except when we go home for two weeks of Leave). And yes, LAN games happen over there.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I'd say this is still a FAIL! Some of my best memories of Starcraft is turning up at my friends house and just wiring all our PC's together for LAN sessions. With Starcraft one, we didn't all need the game either as it could do that awesome "spawn" install so all they had was a client.