EPT1) An enormous devotion to the Blizzard games they play and
2) In inability to stop bitching and moaning about the company that makes them.
There are reasons for both these things. In the first instance, the games are simply that good. I've had periods where I've been bored with WoW and gone off and played other things, but lately, for example, I've been playing more WoW and less Rift. In a sense I'd be quite happy not to play SC2 at all since I'm terrible at it; the problem is that the game itself is so compelling that I feel that it's worth the inevitable frustration of being so bad at it. Of course, it's a close thing at times.
The second is in part a reflection of how seriously people take these games. People care and therefore are vocal about what they like and don't like. Actually... who are we kidding? This is the internet! They're only vocal about what they don't like!
Now, I think it's kinda funny to watch people froth at the mouth about these things; the thing that really irks me though is the way people proceed to argue in support of their pet cause. Since it came up in the Q&A that Kennigit posted, we'll use everyone's favourite lost cause, LAN, as an example. But first, we need to make set one thing straight about Blizzard.
Corporate morality (insofar as such an idea isn't inherently laughable) says that Blizzard is only allowed to do one thing: make money for its owners and shareholders. Everything Blizzard does has to be justified by the bottom line. If you want to persuade them to do something, you need to explain to them how it is going to make them money.
Now if we look at LAN, there are a couple of obvious reasons why Blizzard doesn't want to make it available. The first one that usually comes up is piracy. I don't have the technical insight to work out whether the whole piracy argument holds water, but most of what I've read suggests that it probably does. Let's just say for the moment that anyone arguing that LAN doesn't make piracy a problem needs to be pretty persuasive about it. If you have a solution to the problem, hell, go and make some money off it. I also think that a big part of why Blizzard won't release LAN is control. Blizzard effectively lost control of their BW product a decade or more ago, and that's not something that looks good to the suits. Blizzard has also recently been in court in Korea essentially over who controls the BW. This issue more or less went away, but I'd lay London to a brick that Blizzard let this slide because they didn't expect the BW world to be around for more than a couple more years. As things stand in SC2, you can't play a single game in SC2 without Blizzard's permission. In a world where a bunch of companies that aren't Blizzard will be trying to make money off Blizzard's games, that control is important to Blizzard. In fact, it's more than important; it's *valuable*. It give Blizzard the leverage they didn't have in Korea. This isn't necessarily even about Blizz getting paid at this stage. They can control who gets associated with their product and who doesn't. Some porn site wants to run an SC2 competition? Tough...
Now you can like these reasons or not, be persuaded by them or not, but let's assume for the moment that Blizzard believes them, or something like them. How do you argue against them?
Here's how not to:
Blizzard, you *)#&$)( cocksuckers, give us our *(#&^ LAN ffs!
As a relative newcomer to this community, it seems to me that there are a bunch of assumptions from long term SCers about what is good, what is bad, what is needed and what players are entitled to that are based on the experience of BW. The simple way of saying that is that "We had LAN in BW therefore we should have it now." The hell with that. Personally, I reckon people should think themselves lucky that Blizzard wasn't prescient enough to take LAN out before BW shipped. If they'd known what was going to happen in Korea, they certainly would have. I mean, that might have strangled e-sport at birth, but going back to a previous paragraph, e-sport is not Blizzards thing. Shifting lots of product is Blizzard's thing.
The status quo is no longer Brood War; the status quo is what you have now. You can use BW to illustrate a point (such as... chat channels... please implement chat channels like in BW) but you can't use Brood War as an justification on its own (i.e. BW had chat channels therefore we must have chat channels). I throw the chat channels thing in because it's a useful contrast with LAN. A bunch of people asked for them, there's no real danger to Blizzards bottom line other than the cost of implementing them, and so, eventually, we got them. LAN has implications for the bottom line, so you need to marshall a better argument than "it would be nice if...", and let's be clear here: when you yell and scream about the absence of LAN and call Blizzard names, all you are doing is saying, in a fairly childish and unconstructive manner, "it would be nice if we had LAN". What you need is an argument!
Now, to be honest, I can't think of an argument for making LAN generally available. This doesn't mean I wouldn't like to have it; of course, it'd be cool. However, I can't think of anything that would overcome what I would understand to be Blizzard's reasons for not making it available. However, I *can* develop the skeleton of an argument for developing a LAN server for tournaments available though, so I'm going to use that as an example of how to develop a case. I'm also going to switch to point form before I fill up the internet with dependent clauses.
Competitive SC2 has an enormous following amongst gamers, including those who do not own, or do own but don't actively play SC2;
This represents an enormous benefit to Blizzard in the form of free (or if not free, at least fairly cheap) marketing;
All these eyes watching SC2 online represent potential sales of Blizzard products;
With the extended SC2 product slate and other products, this marketing is likely to be useful to Blizzard beyond the short and medium term;
With this in mind, the connection problems that have arisen at tournaments lessen the value of this marketing and reflect poorly on Blizzard, even where these connectivity issues have nothing to do with Blizzard;
It is therefore in Blizzard's interest to ensure the tournaments like MLG, IPL, GSL and so on have a reliable connection at all times;
The only way to do this is for Blizzard to develop a portable server environment for tournaments;
Some of the development cost could be defrayed by charges to the tournaments for use.
Now, this is only an outline. It would need some work and fleshing out, and I suspect Blizz doesn't really need to be persuaded on this anyway. However, if you feel you can do the job for making LAN generally available, have at it! Just spare me the ranting unless you have a real talent for it.
**EDIT-- I should make it clear that this piece isn't about LAN or no LAN; it's about how to argue whatever you want to argue. In order to persuade someone, you need to know what drives them. **
