Blizzard have revealed, by way of an interview with incgamers.com, that the hotly anticipated StarCraft 2 won't support multiplayer over local network, only via their battle.net online service.

The reason given for this from Blizzard VP Rob Pardo was a vague "because of the planned technology to be incorporated into Battle.net". Obviously this doesn't mean people on a LAN won't be able to play against each other, just that they'll need to have internet connectivity and login to battle.net in order to do so.

Perhaps it's not such a huge deal these days, as most anywhere you'd be playing on LAN would have Internet access. Still, we can't help but feel a little stung. It's arguable that much of the original StarCraft's popularity is owed to it's strong local network component and WarCraft 3 was well supported on LAN as well, so why the sudden lack? Will Diablo 3 suffer the same fate?

Never fear ... some crazy asian organisation will come up with a solution that will allow it ... it always happens (fingers crossed).

Oh man that's total ass.. 99% of my Starcraft multiplayer was LAN and not over b.net.

Smells like an anti-piracy move, Kali and B.Net emus were blamed for a lot of SC and War2 juarez popularity. Tightening the network stuff no doubt wil lmake this sort of shenanigans harder.

Aside from making more moneys there doesn't seem to be any need to just hack out the LAN multi and reduce the game's multiplayer surface? I wonder if we'll see a B.Net subscription as well? No doubt Vivactivision love the s*** out of pay to play with all the blow and whores their fat wow stacks buys them.

last edited by Hogfather at 09:37:22 30/Jun/09

question is when will it come out!

its an obvious anti-piracy move, but pretty much expected. unfortunatly Lans are dead, or at least dying, which is a shame cause its just not the same playing online.

I blame trog and his anti-qgl lan stance.

Actually I should blame myself, I used to run a 20-30 person lan every few months and then just got lazy.

Yup I'm placing my bets on anti-piracy. It really is no surprise.

Well that kills the good ol' Starcraft LAN party with friends. I miss those days...

o wells they won't get my coin. lan multiplayer was the way i intended to play it. i rarely play online.

Oh man that's total ass.. 99% of my Starcraft multiplayer was LAN and not over b.net.

Exactly.

I still play Broodwar over LAN :(

Goddamnit, this is going to be more frustrating then trying to install Orange Box without an internet connection.

question is when will it come out!

Blizzcon in late August, will probably announce the release date for Starcraft2 then. Hopefully Diablo 3 as well but doubtful. The big news will probably be the details about their new MMO or another Wow expansion

Well that kills the good ol' Starcraft LAN party with friends. I miss those days...

How many LANs would you go to now where you don't have Internet access though?

I still agree it's totally lame, but realistically I can't figure it interfering with that many people's games.

How many LANs would you go to now where you don't have Internet access though?

All our LANS essentially have no internet.

10-20 people on someones home internet connection (often ADSL1) is a complete failure.

I remember being able to play LAN games when it first came out and only 1-2 guys had copies. 1 Key would allow up to 4 (?) people to plan the same network game.

I hadn't even really heard of it untill I was getting my ass handed to me in a LAN game with a mates Key. I guess these days Blizzard doesn't need the same sort of exposure because everyone knows their Name/Games and I can totally see why they would goto a bNet only system.

I really should stop spending money on the Jeep for a little while so I can afford to get a system that can play the new Blizzard games :/

10-20 people on someones home internet connection (often ADSL1) is a complete failure.

For authentication-only purposes I'm sure it'd be adequate

I'm sure once you connect to B.Net and create a game and have your LAN buddies join it, the peer to peer service will kick and it will be pretty much a LAN game. I would think Blizzard would have that s*** sorted out.

It just sounds like a little bit more fart arsing around. It also ensures that 10-20 people have purchased the game and not just copied it from their mates at the LAN. ... until a B.Net emulator for SC2 arrives anyway, at which point Blizzard have most of their sales and don't care.

ahh i didn't read dan's post properly... if you can play on lan where it just auths to an online server that's not so bad. i thought it made you play on bnet with lag n s***... n that would blow goats.

We'll wait and see.

I hope as trog said, the Battle.Net authentication will be enough to play LAN games through and Starcraft II's netcode will be smart enough to figure the machines are on a LAN and swap packets with each other rather then out via a router.

Otherwise we'll be in strife at LanSmash! :P

Respawn LAN is still alive and very well, with a player count of 450 and over 600 rego's it seems dissapointing to me that Blizzard have done this.

For authentication-only purposes I'm sure it'd be adequate

yeah im sure it would be too. Im just envisioning when 10-20 guys are all setup and the internet goes down for some reason and everyone sits around being pissed off.

Yeah the Spawn version was a big plus for SC at LANs. You could even log onto bnet with a spawn. I just hope this isnt a plan to make Bnet Pay to play.

SC2 is sounding worse the more I hear about it.

I just hope this isnt a plan to make Bnet Pay to play.

Im sure they will still let you play for free online but will probably make a "premium" service, with extra features, which are basically normal features that they take out and call premium.

Sounds like an anti-piracy move to me as well. Trying to stop Hamachi, OpenVPN, and the like.

Smells like an anti-piracy move

Exactly. To be fair - i'm going to be buying the game so it doesn't affect me. Its more everyone else at a LAN who doesn't have it won't be able to leech it.

You know - way back when, Warcraft 2 used to have a "Install Spawn" option, same with diablo 1 i think. You'd install the full game and it could host 3(?) other people on its network. The idea was at a LAN you could still play with your mates as long as one of you owned a copy. Just needed one legit version for every 3 spawns or something..

Not that i think they'd bring it back. But could kind of work. Tied in "spawn" style bnet login restricted to joining your friends LAN game only.

You have a point there Skythra ... +1 on buying the game as well. Either way it won't be affecting me that much as i prefer to play on Battlenet. The only downsider would be having to pay for Battlenet per month ...

They'll have a hard sell making BN a pay to play service with that being the only SC2 multiplayer option.

But this, combined with the consolidation of Battle.net and WoW authentication / account systems screams a new subscription revenue service for SC2 multiplayer. I can totally see a subscription for BN that includes a bunch of s*** that should be free (like Spawning to mates for example), with some sort of all-access system for multiple games.

It all just reeks of someone in the accounting / financial department who is in love with the monthly pile of cash from warcraft wanting to leverage a subscription for the new game somehow.

After all the e-rage millions of people will open their wallets too, and I guess I'll probably be one of them.

it is an anti-piracy measure. just like you can't play head to head CoH on LAN. You have to login into relic online. No biggie really. Internet is everywhere.

Yeah this is no big deal. Probably only unless you wanted to give your cdkey to all your mates for cheap lan.

They actually said that you will be able to play online for free with SC2. Although I'm sure they will end up having some 'premium' paid for option too. Maybe to enter tournaments etc?

I suspect you will need to login to b.net to authenticate, but if you host a game with all local people on the LAN, then it will probably only run locally. So essentially there is no LAN option, but it will act like a LAN game with LAN ping times etc. Well that's what I hope, and it makes sense when you think about the tournaments running locally.

Calls local EB store to cancel pre-order

Could be they are looking at some kind of Steam client thing for DL expansion Packs etc. Ive got a lot of enjoyment out SC so i prolly owe Blizzard some more money. Might buy all three race versions.
I wonder if you could sell 2 of the three keys that i would assume come with the 3 single versions.

You will most likely require to link the Cd-key's to your battle.net account.. which in turn is used to login to the in-game battle.net.

infi summed it up nicely.

@infi

You can play CoH on LAN without internet, if you can't authenticate with Relic it checks for a DVD (Assuming you don't have the Steam version).

yeah the dvd authentication rarely works, it's a real c*** actually.

As long as the internet is only required for authentication and you can still play using quota-free, faster LAN traffic, I'm happy.

Doesn't sound like that's the case though :( Surely they must realise people will definitely buy this masterpiece?

Noooo. It will still be a LAN game just you will have to login to Bnet. Plenty of RTS games do it now including CoH.

Sweet then. Who the hell doesn't have the net at their home these days?
I can't see you guys caring about that problem, and surely you'll be buying the game anyway. No big deal IMO.

this is crazyy maybe in USA the game is cheap but in other country is too high and in this case i think it will appear somethink..a realm or somethink!!the game is play a much so it will be modifited aa soon as he appear:D

This is crazy! Maybe in the USA the game will be cheap but in other countries is too expensive

Yeah, but if its cheap enough over there, you can still buy it and have it shipped. Obviously waiting is a bit dull but if you're concerned about the minor price difference then sure go ahead

The game is played so much so it will be modified as soon as it appears :D

No doubt there, half of the reason I'll get this game is because there is likely to be a million tower defenses and DotA style maps. When bored of getting beat up by Koreans, it will be nice to fall back to one of the million user generated maps.

Playing this on a LAN is what I was most looking forward too, it seems to me since the Big Blizzard merge it's all been about the money, like they weren't making enough as it is. First this Paid cross faction announcement on WoW, something they always said would never happen as it would spoil the game and now this.

Money, Money Money

I for one won't be playing on no paid battlenet, roll on the new Star Wars MMO so Blizz will be loosing my sub

cancel now. dont be like "oh ill cancel when starwars mmo comes out" because that makes you a loser.

No asian has ever bought starcraft and blizzard is having a cry.

I for one won't be playing on no paid battlenet, roll on the new Star Wars MMO so Blizz will be loosing my sub

Wait what? Bnet is paid for? Or do you mean you disagree for paying for games in general? Like you don't want to pay for starcraft the game just because you have to authenticate on bnet before playing lan?

I'm not suprised Blizzard would opt for online only, its there way of combatting piracy. If you have ever seen Steam by Valve you will know how hard it would be to pirate that material because it is all online and through a secure interface where each user is given an account. The only way people can pirate and play Valve games is by either accessing old versions pre-steam or by using hacked programs, both of which only work on Lan. If someone can only play through internet, the same thing will happen with Starcraft 2, it will make it much harder to pirate. However, someone will come up with a hack anyway and sooner or later you will be playing a hacked version of Starcraft at your local internet cafe-- mind.. it won't have internet connectivity!

No it wont make it that much harder. SC2 will be available for download at least as soon as it is released.
A crack for it will follow within 1-5 days.

People won't be able to play online with a pirated version, not until someone comes up with a B.Net emulator that works for SC2. However, by that time Blizzard have made a large percentage of their sales so they don't really care after that.

no one will be able to walk in off the street and play starcraft 2 at a internet gaming centre with out forking out 80 dollars for a SC 2 battlenet account, Sounds like bad news for internet gaming centres worldwide, as they will have the game installed but everybody in the room needs to pay 80 bucks,

At the monent MMORPG's are the only game that do this at a cost,

I can see it now,
"welcome heres your free battle net account" wow cool
log on to starcraft2
"Sorry it appers your battlenet account does not have a SC2 cd key would you like to purchase now" :(

and why shouldn't you have to own the game to play it, even if you are playing it at an internet cafe/gaming centre?

They are providing the computers and internet connectivity, not a license of every game you want to play.

Besides internet cafe/gaming center's were only good for those few short years between the emergence of broadband to almost every household having broadband.

meh i'm making money i can afford gamez

Eh, the gaming center can just buy a license per machine, and lock the details into the client somehow. Then you the player just logs into bnet as quicknet-32-15 :p

no one will be able to walk in off the street and play starcraft 2 at a internet gaming centre with out forking out 80 dollars for a SC 2 battlenet account, Sounds like bad news for internet gaming centres worldwide, as they will have the game installed but everybody in the room needs to pay 80 bucks

But what people will want, is the ability to log into their starcraft 2 linked battle.net account because it contains their ranking and other important information that's stored against their account.

You can make pretty straight forward assumption that battle net will contain a lot more useful account bound information, in the efforts to make sure people purchase an account. Think of it like WoW. Who cares if you copy the client? The trick is to make all the useful and fun multiplayer stuff bound to an online service, hence its impossible to pirate if you want to play multiplayer.