StarCraft II Trilogy will get no LAN mode!

[Sodon]

I'd say with a bigger legal team and a multiplayer coding that may be vastly different from previous Blizzard games, it might be several years.    Personally, I think they can mollify the outcry about the lack of a LAN feature if they make a console version for the Xbox 360 with the ability to play over system link, which is essentially a 360 LAN connection which requires all participants to be physically in the same place.  (Not the same thing, but since the loudest fans are the ones with the most money to spend on multiple gaming platforms, it might work.)

SC2 on 360 is pretty unlikely.

[DrumsofWar]

Until Microsoft drives up to Blizzard's headquarters with $10 million in a dump truck, that is.

[IskatuMesk]

There will always be maps and then there will always be mods.

I already mentioned the LAN thing in the sc2 thread yesterday.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

To me, odds are multiplayer mods (as in full-scale MPQs and not just heavily modified maps) will be played on non-legit battle.net servers in such case. At least legally, it allow them the option to lay a lawsuit against such servers if they prove to be more of a problem instead of trying to make useless witches hunts against pirated games played over LAN.

Which thinking about it, I wonder if Blizzard should have a special server for mods only which anyone can connect with their mod and play with others of the same mod. Then *technically*, legit players would have no excuse to play on non-legit battle.net servers.

Could be an interesting question/idea to propose to Blizzard.

EDIT : Although it might be shot down because Blizzard's idea of modding are heavily modified maps rather than custom MPQs. Oh well.

[Maglok]

Not entirely true. They stated you don't ever need a mod, you can embed anything in the map editor. New models, new sound, music, menu art, etc. Hence you will never need a mod.

There will probably be illegal b.nets eventually though yes.

D3 and changing more than what constitutes a map, aka a mod.

Don't forget the online map size limit unless they do away with it which would still only fix a few things, theres either going a be an internal mod loader or they are going to screw everyone by calling maps mods and bnet 2.0 banning people with modified files because of their new e-sports deal.


EDIT: As an example LoL's model data was over 100mb's in size, good luck sticking that in a bnet compatible map.

You got a point there. Perhaps if you pre-distribute it (since you are LAN-ing anyway) it will allow it? I don't know, good point.

[Hercanic]

Hm, didn't notice this thread.

The No-LAN decision really ticks me off. I've played my fair share of SC/WC3 games over LAN when the Internet has been down. What of LAN parties? Honestly, dozens to hundreds of PCs all bottlenecking through one Internet connection out to Battlenet, then bottlenecking back through again? Stupid. If it's to thward piracy, again, plain idiocy. Look at WoW Private Servers. Look at SC Private Battle.net servers. People will find a way to create fake Battlenet servers, voiding piracy prevention. Really, why inconvenience paying customers to stop people who will never be customers to begin with? Piracy isn't lost sales.

[Marco]

The best anti-piracy method so far has been a persistent subscription based service, ala MMORPGs where the game requires you to connect to a server in order to experience and play.  Of course, even those can be circumvented, but not usually with the best results, or the same kind of experience you could get by playing on public established servers  Some software tried online validation, but even those can be circumvented by fooling software into thinking you are connecting to validation servers when you are really only connecting to your own computer.  I kind of see today as a sort of 'Old West' of the Internet.  People will one day talk about how you could get free software, movies, and music back in the day, and it'll be unbelievable to the youths of the day who can't imagine getting just about anything you can think of for free.  Trust me, this isn't going to go on forever.  It's true that no one has yet discovered the one clever solution that would put an end to this, but that day will come.

[Lavarinth]

@Console SC2 Version: Was confirmed in last week's interviews there wont be a console version.

@No LAN: Personally, I can see why they would do this in terms of business, but it's true that I also still play LAN on StarCraft with friends and family when we all meet up somewhere and want a break from consoles. It's a sad case to know we wont be able to play on LAN, when there tends to be multiple issues with Battle.net and same IP players.

[Mucky]

@No LAN: Personally, I can see why they would do this in terms of business, but it's true that I also still play LAN on StarCraft with friends and family when we all meet up somewhere and want a break from consoles. It's a sad case to know we wont be able to play on LAN, when there tends to be multiple issues with Battle.net and same IP players.

It's not so much Battle.net as it is the game's netcode. Case in point: Two people on a router trying to play SC; shit goes haywire. Two people on a router trying to play WC3; everything is fine.

[Aiursrage2k]

Dont all the Korean programers plan on a lan, how is it going to work

[IskatuMesk]

They'll have to do it through battle.net or a private server. (Blizzard obviously wants to force them to use battle.net)

[ShadowFlare]

As I stated in a previous post, without much difficulty they could make games between players on the same network work just like LAN games (though still needing to connect to Battle.net before being able to host or join if they had no LAN option).  This is more of a server-side thing than client-side, though.  It is possible they already do it with WC3, but I don't really know, as I don't have two keys to test it out on.

As I also stated in my previous post, for games not hosted on the LAN but with multiple players from the LAN, they could possibly make it so that only one LAN player sends and receives data with the host to optimize bandwidth usage.

If you have to log in to Battle.net to play multiplayer at all, a local private server will probably be needed to play when there is no internet connection though.

[Maglok]

Yeah if you go bnet, it will still make one of the comps a host, bnet does not host your games. So you connect to bnet, then it designates a host and you play within the LAN still. Sounds tricky.

[RazorclawX]

I was reading a post on Slashdot about this and it's filled with a bunch of people whining about how they can't pirate the game.

I could care less about the LAN. I always played local network games through Battle.net and there's no lag whatsoever. Not to mention, if the network goes down, you all go down.

The only thing Battle.net does is verify you're using a valid CD key and serve as a matchmaking service. Once the game's started you don't connect back to Battle.net until the game's over.

I thought everybody knew this.

[Sodon]

My friends and I got together in the same room to play against people on Bnet.