EPTSteam left beta in September 2003, but the release which added Offline Mode didn’t arrive until March 2004
Slashdot interviews blizzard - Page 3
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zerotol
Belgium508 Posts
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outrage
United States10 Posts
Its marketing. He's swaying all the kids who might otherwise think LAN is a necessary feature of a multiplayer game. They've just gotten greedy after all that WoW money and an easy 25 million from Starcraft 2 isn't enough for them anymore. Now they want to charge for new content and probably popular maps, etc.. And Pardo is making it all look good. | ||
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Tsagacity
United States2124 Posts
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FieryBalrog
United States1381 Posts
You won't be able to play ranked matches over LAN. What a surprise, but I bet some idiots will whine about that, too. | ||
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CharlieMurphy
United States22895 Posts
On August 25 2009 14:08 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: god i hate how rob pardo makes comments on how the "vast majority" of wc3 players used b.net over lan when blizzard never even collected stats on their lan usage i call steaming smelly bullshit yea lol, how can they even know this at all. For the first year of wc3 all me and my friends did to play it was go to lan centers to play big 3v3s and 4v4s. At least like 300 games or something. Shit the whole reason I got into computer and competitive gaming was through LAN back on warcraft 2/quake/duke 3d before there was even a bnet. Not to mention all the consoles and arcades that are not internet involved at all. | ||
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Thats_The_Spirit
Netherlands138 Posts
It would be a disaster: people trying to PM or guess the game password and mass join. LOL So blizzard has to come up with something good. | ||
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Orphan
Australia49 Posts
When Blizzard did their presentation on the friends functionality they stressed the importance of things such as keeping your friends list when new games are released, etc. Well, alot of my friends which I made from SC and D2 are all over the world, so if it were to be split then I'd lose the ability to play with my friends, which seems detrimental to Blizzards plans. If SC1 can pull it off, then I don't see why SC2 (in this age of broadband) can't. | ||
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DeCoup
Australia1933 Posts
On August 27 2009 09:40 outrage wrote: Rob Pardo knows that people like LAN. Blizzard is making a huge effort to make "LAN" look bad. In one article he says that its a "footnote" in history like its low tech when its the same TCP/IP that's under battle.net. In this article he says LAN might be for people who are crazy and living in a closet. Its marketing. He's swaying all the kids who might otherwise think LAN is a necessary feature of a multiplayer game. They've just gotten greedy after all that WoW money and an easy 25 million from Starcraft 2 isn't enough for them anymore. Now they want to charge for new content and probably popular maps, etc.. And Pardo is making it all look good. What does lack of LAN have to do with selling new content/maps or greed? | ||
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floor exercise
Canada5847 Posts
The removal of LAN is twofold, one is piracy/limitation of play ability to curb resale of games. If you can only play the game by logging into their service that uses your master account that holds all your games, you can't easily resell that game, and your options of playing without being connected is severely limited so you aren't getting the same experience. Secondly, it funnels all the players onto Battle.net where they are free to monitor and record usage patterns, system hardware, demographics etc. It's an extremely powerful tool. It sounds tinfoil hattish but it's true, having that sort of access to data is incredibly helpful to them from a business perspective. I wish he would say these things instead of making ridiculous statements. As far as LAN play itself, the addition of some sort of low latency mode would probably appease the majority of people. When you are at a LAN you will have to log in with your account, or maybe Blizzard will sell LAN licenses the same way Steam does. From which point you can play the game with "lan latency". Or hopefully there will be no hugely distinguishable difference between online latency and LAN latency. That would obviously be ideal if they could get it that good | ||
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Eury
Sweden1126 Posts
Sure, for people in rural areas this is unfortunate, but most gamers tend to live in more populated areas. There are advantages and disadvantages for living out on the countryside. For people living in South America, South East Asia etc you are pretty much out of luck. You are just too few paying customers for Blizzard to cater to. | ||
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Tsagacity
United States2124 Posts
On August 27 2009 23:19 Eury wrote: Although I agree that the need for internet-less LAN gaming is dying off, I would be careful about confusing that with LAN parties. LAN parties definitely aren't dying off LAN is dying off, I don't see how anyone can argue against it. When I was a kid back in 98 we were attending LAN parties all the time, today that activity is a lot less popular. My youngest brother, that is the same age now as I was back then, rarely attend LAN parties, and he is a big gamer. Sure, for people in rural areas this is unfortunate, but most gamers tend to live in more populated areas. There are advantages and disadvantages for living out on the countryside. For people living in South America, South East Asia etc you are pretty much out of luck. You are just too few paying customers for Blizzard to cater to.  Just more and more of them have internet connections. | ||
Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
On August 27 2009 16:54 FieryBalrog wrote: Sounds like there'll be LAN functionality eventually implemented through Battle.net, just as Steam does it. You won't be able to play ranked matches over LAN. What a surprise, but I bet some idiots will whine about that, too. Yeah, belittle a legitimate complaint with total BS, you'll fit right in with Blizzard. Nobody - and I do mean NOBODY - has ever complained about being unable to play ladder/ranked games on LAN. | ||
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Eury
Sweden1126 Posts
On August 27 2009 23:26 Tsagacity wrote: Although I agree that the need for internet-less LAN gaming is dying off, I would be careful about confusing that with LAN parties. LAN parties definitely aren't dying off Just more and more of them have internet connections.I meant smaller LAN parties that you have with friends. In the mid to late 90s it wasn't rare that you organized small LAN parties with friends pretty much every weekend, as a good Internet connection was a luxury. For better or worse that tend to be more and more a thing of the past. Big LAN parties, like Dream Hack, will most likely live on for years to come, because they are pretty much social events more than anything else. And as you said, they got Internet connections. | ||
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Tsagacity
United States2124 Posts
On August 28 2009 00:11 Eury wrote: I meant small ones as well. I meant smaller LAN parties that you have with friends. In the mid to late 90s it wasn't rare that you organized small LAN parties with friends pretty much every weekend, as a good Internet connection was a luxury. For better or worse that tend to be more and more a thing of the past. Big LAN parties, like Dream Hack, will most likely live on for years to come, because they are pretty much social events more than anything else. And as you said, they got Internet connections. | ||
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Eury
Sweden1126 Posts
I can't imagine that being the case if you got access to DSL or better. Sure, they still exist but they are way less popular today, and their popularity will continue to shrink. | ||
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DefMatrixUltra
Canada1992 Posts
On August 27 2009 22:55 floor exercise wrote: The removal of LAN is twofold, one is piracy/limitation of play ability to curb resale of games. If you can only play the game by logging into their service that uses your master account that holds all your games, you can't easily resell that game, and your options of playing without being connected is severely limited so you aren't getting the same experience. Secondly, it funnels all the players onto Battle.net where they are free to monitor and record usage patterns, system hardware, demographics etc. It's an extremely powerful tool. It sounds tinfoil hattish but it's true, having that sort of access to data is incredibly helpful to them from a business perspective. I wish he would say these things instead of making ridiculous statements. These are the issues laid out exactly. They are removing LAN because they want people to play online using their service so that they can collect useful statistics for their business. They require a CD key to be tied to a master account because they want to kill the used games market just like every other developer - because developers/publishers don't get money from used games. This isn't in itself a bad thing, but people that can't enjoy the game because of this decision have a valid complaint. I really find it hard to defend Blizzard for this decision. A lot of people are doing it, but ask yourself: what harm is done if LAN is included? Does it affect you at all? You can play online with your roommates all you want, but people that are stuck behind a router or filtering service that they can't control (mainly, people that live on campuses) will be able to enjoy the game too. Sure, not having LAN will probably make it take longer to pirate the game, but Blizzard could at least say that LAN isn't a launch feature like 100 other things they've mentioned. Honestly, though, this topic of people that have no control over their internet is not some mythical devil's advocate - it is a real problem. Telling everyone that LAN won't be included (even at a later date) is just giving people under bad conditions one more reason not to buy the game in the first place. If the pirates come up with the only LAN-enabled SC2, everyone involved in this debacle will just look like idiots. Requiring online registration at installation should be good enough to prevent easy piracy, just put LAN into the game. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17185 Posts
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fusionsdf
Canada15390 Posts
On August 28 2009 00:45 DefMatrixUltra wrote: Sure, not having LAN will probably make it take longer to pirate the game, but Blizzard could at least say that LAN isn't a launch feature like 100 other things they've mentioned. The more you restrict a game for legitimate customers, the more people pirate it. See Spore. | ||
Zelniq
United States7166 Posts
real lan latency and fake iccup/chaos lan latency arent comparable either, lan is definitely faster as long as they have LAN support in some way, such as having to connect to bnet first, i'll be happy | ||
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outrage
United States10 Posts
Forget the word LAN. Forget the idea of LAN parties where you're all in the same place. LAN is just TCP/IP, direct connect to a host you or you're friends are running. Its part of the game to begin with. Blizzard isn't not adding it, they're removing it. Why? Piracy is, in their own words, a minor concern. Its going to happen anyway. The only thing removing LAN does is force mainstream players to play on battle.net, view battle.net ads, and pay for battle.net premium content. Premium content? RTSs should not have premium content. There's no good reason to remove TCP/IP direct connect except that blizzard wants to make more money. That's it. And what's happening is something gamers have taken for granted for forever is being pulled and not everyone seems to care. | ||
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