StarCraft 2's Non-existent LAN Support Explained, Piracy Cited as Key Reason
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. 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. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.
The first entry in Blizzard's planned StarCraft II trilogy, Terrans: Wings of Liberty, is planned to hit PC by the year's end, with a public multiplayer beta expected this summer.
-
OMGzImBurning
replyso lame. Pirates will just get fake battle.net emulation crap running and the rest of the real buyers of the game will have to download that trash and crack their legitimately bought software just to play offline with their buddies.
Fucking lame, -1 blizzard.-
[deleted]
-
I could kind of see this.
Step 1: Announce Starcraft 2
Step 2: Make them wait.
Step 3: Announce no LAN support to combat piracy.
Step 4: Announce that due to piracy of battle.net emulators, they can no longer support free battle.net play and will have to charge.
Step 5: Count cash.
This is, in my humble opinion, a bad mistake on Blizzard's side. Emulators will be made and the game will be pirated. The reasons they gave (stats, achievements and advanced comms [more advanced than talking?]) are frivolous micro-rewards to keep the addicted fanboys even more addicted.
I hope there's enough people ready to boycott purchasing the game to urge them to at least patch LAN support in pretty quickly. I've given Blizzard a bit of my money in the past. Purchased multiple copies of Warcraft III, WoW, Starcraft and even purchased Warcraft II battle.net when it came out. But I can't rationalize giving them money for what I see as an 'unfinished' product.
-
-
[deleted]
-
I think he's trying to say:
Hacker/Cracker does one of the following:
Provide local BNET emulator that routes BNET verification syncs to a local client to emulate interaction with the real service. This local client can then spoof auth/verification allowing either a legit or cracked copy to participate in a local (emulated online) bnet match.
If Blizzard actually went the route of what hackers/crackers are most likely going to forge through and exploit, that would be pretty sweet.
E.G. Blizzard releases local bnet emulator which checks a MD5 hash of somesort to verify your copy of SC II is legit to your localhost. If it is indeed a legit copy, allow access to LAN client. Each subsequent client that wants to participate in LAN play must be verified by thier local emulator, and so on. There are a few possibilties here, that could meet the community's needs / address thier concerns of offline user engagement / piracy, etc. Hell if internet is present, you could do stuff like Ad injection to the LAN lobby client to help ensure BNET awareness is made to the consumer, or whatever they'd like to advertise.
Just thoughts.
-
-
