http://www.gossipgamers.com/blizzard-calls...-losing-battle/


Good for them.

It's the truth too. Hell, in more than enough cases, the DRM they try to set up is the exact thing that keeps people from buying the game anyways, so at least someone managed to keep their head from being inserted in their ass.

You know those are nice pretty words, and I do agree, but then they turn around and do a thing like eliminate LAN play, and I have to call bullshit a little bit. I commend them for not throwing up some retarded activation scheme but they aren't exactly practicing what they preach in all areas.

http://www.starcraft-fans.com/page/Blizzar...+No+LAN+Support


Oh and let's see...region locking in this interview: http://www.incgamers.com/Interviews/270/bl...rce-interview/2


So it sounds to me like someone doesn't practice what they preach. Looks like Activision is already running the show. This is not the Blizzard that I remember. Yay, we don't have a ridiculous activation system...they've just done other retarded shit instead.

It was made clear after the announcement of the merger that Blizzards operations wouldn't be effected even slightly. They refuse to even use the merged logo on their products and will continue to use the standard "Blizzard" only one. For them the whole thing didn't seem to be much more than an effective pooling of resources.

It was announced quite a while ago that there are plans to allow LAN play once the game has been authenticated through Battle.Net. The same announcement was made separately for Diablo III as well. The only thing they didn't make clear was whether or not it would be a one-time authentication or if it would have to be done per use.

This is pretty much the same thing that Half-Life 2 had uproar about when it was announced that it would require authentication through Steam. And everybody seems to have an incredible hard on for Steam anymore so I don't see what the big issue will be in the long run.

The region-to-region game play thing is a bit lame though. But not overly shocking in the grand scheme of things. It wouldn't surprise me if there will be a way around it before long whether Blizzard initiates it or not.

Where is this announcement about LAN play? I haven't seen it anywhere. Link me to where you read this. I want to make sure that's all there is to it because I don't think that is. They even said in my links still no LAN.

None of it matters anyway because SC2 is just going to be SC with a fresh new coat of paint split into 3 60 dollar games. Fuck them again for that. Why is it 60 when every other PC game is 50? Hm, I recall another game pulling that shit...oh yeah...it was Modern Warfare 2.

Except the part where it isn't.

Oh I see, good points you bring up there. I'm glad you were so specific. Same type of game with new units and stuff. I dunno, I mean we'll see. I'm sure it will be fun but honestly they've already pissed me off so much I'm not even sure if I care how fun it is. I'll probably buy it anyway, like a hypocrite, because I'll want to play with everyone. They can kiss my fucking ass if they think I'm going to buy 2 copies to play online.

To that all I can really say is...Londos...please buy US copies since Blizzard is full of fucking fail?

Anyway, the only thing I can THINK that you're referring to for LAN play, Kyle, is that they said you'd have to be playing THROUGH Battle.NET to set up private games or something retarded like that. That is not LAN play. That is a private online game. A LAN game does not require me to connect to Battle.NET...ever. Even Steam games I can set to Offline mode, for fuck's sake.

Not for multi-player. There was nothing but bitching from people when HL2 came out because they couldn't do multi-player on a closed LAN without Steam installed (can be activated in the offline mode, but still requires Steam as far as I know). Don't know if that was ever changed or not though. Don't play the games. But SC2 and Diablo 3 will be the same way: for single player, there's no issue. Multi-player is where all the bitching is centered.

And that's more or less it, yeah. Will still function much like a LAN though with the low ping, etc. because of some thing or another (can't remember where I read that much though). But quite frankly if you CAN'T do that then you probably don't have a computer capable of playing the game anyways. They made mention of in interviews (though no official announcement) of giving B.net a way to detect for potential peer-to-peer play and allow it at such a time. But I don't know if you can really put much stock in that without a real announcement.

Looking into it a bit more though I found a dev site with people working on cracking the beta were talking about the fact that there will be LAN play via Battle.Net. Still not going to make you happy obviously, but it WILL function like a normal LAN game post-authentication (or so they claim). If you don't like that though, people are working on battle.net server emulation already to make pseudo-LAN play possible.

And for some reason I can't find what I was referring to originally so consider it a null point of you wish until I can back it up. >_o

My original point though being: Blizzard is more than capable of being money hungry all on their lonesome. Activision likely doesn't have anything to do with it.

Nor is this, technically speaking, anything out of the ordinary on either account. Something will likely be done on the region to region play gripe too just like was done with WoW for a while (until it gets quashed at least).

Seems like as long as the Battle.net upgrades make it function akin to Steam on the subject of authentication there shouldn't (ultimately) be any real issue. Anything else will be worked around by someone else if Blizzard doesn't step it up.

Having to be worked around isn't a particularly good option. I could probably hack Modern Warfare 2 as well, but I don't want to encourage that kind of asshattery. It's not like Steam. The activation is like Steam. Steam can still be put into offline mode and SC2 can't. I still just think they're saying one thing and doing another. I don't like it.

Once it's validated online you can play it offline. SC2 will work the same way for offline play. Any game played through Steam has to be started while connected to the internet the first time before you can play it offline. I had this issue when I tried to play Portal after I downloaded it and tried to play it while I was not home and as such not connected to the internet. It just tells you that the game is not ready to be played. After which you can run Steam in offline mode and play a LAN game, but it effectively did away with using one code for an entire LAN (though I'm sure there's some way around it by now).

Anyways, B.Net seems to be moving in that direction from everything I've seen. Doesn't sound like it'll be doable at the onset, but that's how HL2 was presented as well. All in all they're using rather vague terminology when referring to it specifically so I guess it'll be a matter of seeing what happens once it's released. Only time will tell, but I don't see why it wouldn't turn into a Steam style of functionality before long considering how important massive LAN-style play is to the StarCraft community.

Time will tell. I'm not trying to come off as a huge fan boy for them as Blizzard certainly has taken to some less than clear cut ideals over the past few years, but it yet remains far below the level of companies like Ubisoft and EA, etc. Seems like more of an onset of "woo we're rich and can do what we want" than corporate evil incarnate though. Hopefully they'll settles into Valve's style of doing things over Activisions though. What little I've seen of Steam gives me a slight sense of annoyance, but nothing that I can't come to terms with. I can hope that Battle.Net will end up in the same league. Cause most other companies' methods make me never want to touch a PC game.

Settling for being just a bit less evil than EA, Ubisoft, and Activision isn't what I expect from Blizzard. I expect them to be awesome and it makes me sad a bit. Whatever anyway. Half the people responsible for the Starcraft and Diablo games have gone to other companies anyway. I'll just see what happens with SC2. They're just so fucking...good at making games. I know that regardless of what happens, I'm almost certain to get Diablo 3 because...I'm fucking addicted.