Starcraft II jettisons LAN support
Summary
Much to the disappointment of many Starcraft fans, Blizzard has decided not to include a local area network multiplayer option in its upcoming release of Starcraft II.
Topics
As part of Activision Blizzard's pre-2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo tele-press conference, Blizzard Entertainment executive Michael Morhaime confirmed what many had suspected: Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is expected to launch for the PC alongside the newly redesigned Battle.net online networking service before the end of the year. However, when Starcraft II does see release, it will do so without a hallmark of the real-time strategy genre: a local area network multiplayer option.
So much for Starcraft II LAN parties...
Blizzard today confirmed for GameSpot that LAN functionality will be absent from Starcraft II's multiplayer component, as both a piracy prevention mechanism and a quality-assurance initiative.
"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," a Blizzard representative said in a statement. "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," the statement continued. "We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for Starcraft II in the near future."
Speaking with GameSpot during BlizzCon 2008, Blizzard Entertainment cofounder Frank Pearce noted that piracy was a concern for the developer and that Battle.net would play a role in helping to counteract theft of the game.
"We're definitely talking about ways with Battle.net that we can provide the best online experience for our customers so that there's not an incentive to pirate the product but instead an incentive to be part of that community of gamers playing that game and they'd want to be part of that social experience on top of the single-player experience," he said.
Blizzard expects to begin closed beta for Starcraft II sometime this summer and is currently taking sign-ups for the testing phase through the official Battle.net Web site. For more information, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Starcraft II.
This article was originally posted on GameSpot.
Talkback Most Recent of 50 Talkback(s)
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This will last all of two months
before Blizzard caves and puts it back in.
frgough7th Jul 2009 -
That's a novel idea
Remove a core feature and make it less popular. That would certainly be an disincentive to pirate it.
Ruin it for the people that pay for it so they spoil it for the people that don't.
Woow, they are geniuses!!
Maybe if they stop making the program no-one will pirate it!!!
rarsa7th Jul 2009 -
Why so angry?
You can still have your LAN party by hosting a private game in Battle.net.
What's the issue?
The last time I played over LAN was back in college when I had to use Kali (simulated LAN over the internet) to play online.
With the ubiquity of broadband LAN support is not necessary.
tikigawd7th Jul 2009 -
magallanes7th Jul 2009 -
lag?
Lag isn't an issue, and latency is pretty damn good in the newer blizzard games.
I just hope B.net doesn't go down for maintenance often at all, I've experienced that a few times in wc3 and LAN kept me happy during my DotA days.
gregg.judge@...8th Jul 2009 -
No, you need to say more
Sure, lag would be less of a problem in a LAN. But at the end of the day BNet does present a good alternative, especially since these days lag is not as big a deal as it used to be. A very small portion of the PC gaming community actually thinks this is a deal breaker.tikigawd8th Jul 2009 -
You missed the point.
The user you replied to mentioned local private
matches by originating the game over
battle.net. What that means is that everyone
on your LAN connects to battle.net to start the
game rather than listening on the LAN. Once
the game begins, all the major game traffic is
sent within the LAN. That's what a local
private match is. The only difference now is
that you will have to verify that your copy is
legitimate by originating the game on
battle.net first. Minor game information may
still be forwarded to battle.net for the
purposes of other battle.net users wanting to
view the game in progress or see real-time
stats, but it should not and most likely will
not cause the game to lag since it is not time-
sensitive.
So, after understanding how that works, how
does your lag issue change at all from any
local starcraft 1 game? The answer is, it
doesn't. There's just the minor incovnenience
of having to have a live internet connection to
connect to battle.net to begin the game.
Blizzard is making the right move. Steam, Xbox
Live and Windows Live paved the way for this
type of DRM. It's non-invasive and effective
at MITIGATING piracy (certainly not
eliminating).
Uncle Ebeneezer8th Jul 2009 -
I am not quite sure about it.
So You can authenticate the game without needing to identify every time you start a game. Authenticating once is enough, so i don't think this measure is only for fight against piracy.
But even when a hosted game is managed by a personal server, you can't bet sure that the packages will not go through the gateway (WAN)
For example and depending the configuration of the next, if you host a webpage, lets say with a real ip as :200.20.30.1 => www.mypage.com, then you locally (and even in the same server) can't ping to this address but you can't access to the webpage because its point outside instead of inside,but you can access the page directly locally (such 127.0.0.1 => localhost).
Anyways, discarding the lag problem then you can count firewall, proxy and the infrastructure where you want to connect,in the case that you want to lan party on school, or in a lan party convention (usually with a crappy internet connection if any) or in work :-/
magallanes8th Jul 2009 -
Confusing...
Well, of course I don't know how it's all going to work out. I haven't played it or anything. But let me see if I can address your points one by one...
"So You can authenticate the game without needing to identify every time you start a game. Authenticating once is enough, so i don't think this measure is only for fight against piracy."
I'm betting you will not have to connect to battle.net each time you want to play single player. I don't know though. Games that use Windows Live log you in for single player, but I don't know if Starcraft 2/Diablo 3 will do that. With that being said, your CD-KEY will need to authenticate against the server each time you want to play multiplayer. This is because one-time client-side verification is not strong enough. A malicious user could mess with that.
"But even when a hosted game is managed by a personal server, you can't bet sure that the packages will not go through the gateway (WAN)"
Are you referring to a personal, hypothetical server? In a hypothetical LAN game, you can be sure that your packets are not going out to the gateway because they're routed with internal IPs. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.
"For example and depending the configuration of the next, if you host a webpage, lets say with a real ip as :200.20.30.1 => www.mypage.com, then you locally (and even in the same server) can't ping to this address but you can't access to the webpage because its point outside instead of inside,but you can access the page directly locally (such 127.0.0.1 => localhost)."
That's simply incorrect. If you are seeing that behavior somewhere, then it's certainly a configuration issue probably with your firewall. Pings don't always work in general because the server on the other end can refuse to reply.
But, yes, firewalls and proxies and all that will be an issue for users to grapple with in order to connect. UPnP will help. But I'm sure Blizzard support will provide instructions for users on how to configure their firewalls for battle.net and what not.
And after all that, I'm not sure what your point was.Uncle Ebeneezer8th Jul 2009 -
I refuse to drink that Kool-aid
Sorry, but this is a Wait&See issue now. So we force the pirates to generate keys and consume them therefore stealing legitimate keys of those who purchase the game. Either way, I see this as an issue that creates more headache for the end user.
Sorry, I host LAN parties and WOW kills us every time. We run with a 512K up stream and if we host more than 4 gamers, our webbynet is hosed. Then you have the steam gamers and such we spend more time trying to "Authenticate" than to play the actual game.
I remember when EA came out with Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. Both of those games had so much DRM that they wouldn't even play without being cracked on my system. This was after I purchased a legitimate copy of both. I spent more time loading the game, patching the game than playing the game.
Blizzard was awesome with Starcraft. The expansion should have allowed spawns as well, but this spreading it out over 3 games, I could handle. Dropping LAN play altogether, that's a shame.
Considering how many copies of Star Craft/War Craft/Diablo that I own, this is disappointing and most likely a loss of income from me.
nucrash9th Jul 2009 -
RE: Starcraft II jettisons LAN support
Xbox Live isn't the same as LAN, that doesn't stop the
fun for a lot of players. The same goes for WoW's PVP
tournaments... End of discussion for me
Guzhno7th Jul 2009 -
Agreed
I think the only people that are angry about this are the ones that were going to pirate it just for LAN play in the first place. For everyone else its sign on to b-net, make a private game, and there's your LAN party right there, except you actually get some ranking and achievements for it and whatnot. Blizz is keeping this in and I guarentee you that SC2 will make them millions and millions of dollars despite the 'outcry' over no LAN. I think that what folks don't realize is that the days of Blizzard catering exclusively to the the super-******** gamers (the folks likely to actually have said LAN parties) has been gone once they started tweaking WoW with the expenasions. Its an industry wide trend and you are going to see more and more hard-core gamer oriented aspects being dropped from games.
I, for one, am all for it. As a hard-core gamer of days past, I can personally atest to how devstating this 'hobby' is to ones social life. Since I quit MMOs, I've gotten in shape, reconnected with my family and friends, have advances significantly in the professional field, and overall things are better. I realize that there are many out there that can balance these things, but I simply was not one of them and games like WoW have ruined lives for people like myself. A trend away from systems that bait hard-core gaming behavior is probably the best thing that can happen for the industry. There is a difference between being a ******** gamer by choice and having it imposed on you (such as if you wanted to see any end-game content of WoW). If I pay for a game, I expect to be able to experience all aspects of it without dedicating 6hours a day to it.
Sorry for getting off topic there at the end and thanks for reading if you got this far.
Cheers!
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
gnesterenko7th Jul 2009 -
AMEN
I totaly agree with gnesterenko.
Species84727th Jul 2009 -
Nice change of pace.
The attitude here on ZDNet is a nice change of
pace to the typical childish backlash on many
other sites regarding this issue.
It is very likely that battle.net 2.0 will
include the ability for players to make private
local matches all by meeting up on battle.net
first. This means that a high speed connection
is not required, but certainly preferred. LAN
players could share a 56k modem to create the
private battle.net local match. I fail to see
how this minor inconvenience is such a big
deal.
So, I think you're right. The majority of the
backlash must be from people that are upset
that they won't be able to easily pirate this
game.Uncle Ebeneezer8th Jul 2009 -
I don't see this as likely
Blizzard/Activision has lost sight of their gamers and are looking to monetize any way possible. They will continue to push their methods to get gamers to pay attention to their adds as well.
First they split the game into 3 volumes so they could get more money, now this. Next we will have to pay them to host a game.nucrash9th Jul 2009
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