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Hi, I was watching the TLO vs NaDa game ealier and I noticed that there was a disconnect in the first match they played.
Ofcourse, it's always been an issue ever since the announcement of not having a LAN function in SC2. And people have frowned upon this, but not only people. Tournament hosts and organisations are probably getting hit the hardest from not having the LAN function. Cause they rely on external servers which they cannot control, and although Blizzard probably has good maintenance on these servers, there is a possibility of crashed occuring.
Now, I get that Blizzard doesn't want to implement a LAN function because of piracy. I can relate, if I put my money and effort into creating a game for a couple of years I wouldn't want half of the people playing it to be playing without me getting anything in return for it. It's a company, and like most companies, they are not charities and aim to make profit. This way they can continue creating games that pleasure us for over 12 years.
But I feel that we cannot deny that not having a LAN function hurts... deeply.
I think everyone has had a little LAN event with some friends where you just want to play eachother. So why would you do this over the internet. I'm not an expert at this (even though I sorta study for it) but if you're on the connection and both computers sending and receiving alot of packages at the same time will cause higher pings to occur. This whilst your probably sitting in the same room. Well, I feel that the same problem occured in the TLO vs NaDa showmatch.
Now, I thought about this long and hard. Actually... no, for about 5 minutes. But I believe I've found the solution for this problem without the nasty piracy issues.
So now I'll start with my "what if?" part.
What if, Blizzard introduced a patch for SC2 totally remodeling the game with minor interface adjustments and such, but mostly so that it HAS a LAN function. I've seen this happen with another game, in particular with HoN. They did a patch and the interface and all changed completely after without changing the gameplay however.
So, this patch will be autodownloaded AFTER loging in to B.Net, after is the key word in this sentence. This will avoid most piracy threats. However, people can share accounts for a small amount of time to download this onto all the computers they own and so install the patch. So, it's not waterproof. However, if people who want to use this LAN fuction had to login to B.Net first? You will have to need an internet connection for this ofcourse, so in a way the whole purpose of having a LAN function in the game is completely demolished.
But not entirely. Because when you're playing on a LAN, you'll no longer be depedent on external servers for you're connection. You'll nulify the laggs almost, if not entirely. And so, great events such as IEM can continue without having the technical difficulties that it had and programs such as ICCup and Garena can also start endorsing SC2.
I know probably some, if not alot of people with not agree with me and will find this a ridiculous idea. So please comment below whether or like or dislike the idea and don't forget to mention why exactly.
I apologize for any possible spelling mistakes that I've made, english is not my mother tongue  .
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I thought a out of game client could work for this.
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Blizzard would have thought of this and had it included if they wanted to. I think what they really want to do is to be able to control the tournaments and make money off of it. If you just give LAN to anyone, anyone can run tournaments, but if Blizzard releases special LAN games to specific organizations then Blizzard can control it.
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Blizzard,, Im sorry, Activision does not like LAN, and do you really want LAN? (lol)
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I think your really missing the point here. Blizzard didn't include LAN with SC2 for the main reason to try and stop people pirating the game. The secondary reason they did not include LAN was to prevent KeSPA from using Starcraft 2 without Blizzards permission (there is nothing to stop Blizzard simply cutting them off or banning them etc.).
The big problem with this though is the following.
1. You can't stop piracy. Its been tried and its failed so many times I have lost count. The guys cracking the stuff are much smarter than the guys trying to stop them. You can't stop it so there is no point in trying. SC2 has already been cracked for multiplayer play and it hasn't even been released for a month. - Case and point right there. If someone wants to steal software, they are gonna.
2. It hurts not just eSports, but everyone. It really damages Blizzard themselves because battlenet 2.0 is so unstable, if it worked as advertised then it wouldn't be a problem, but as IEM demonstrated you cannot rely on battlenet 2.0, if that changes then having no LAN might be less of a problem.
What is the real solution to the problem?
Simply use the cracked LAN version for tournaments and tell Blizzard to fuck off if they say anything about it.
Like DJ Wheat said recently "I cannot believe someone actually sits there and thinks this is a good idea". That sentence basically applies to everything Blizzard do at the moment, almost nothing they have done in the last few months has ever worked out well, and it just begs the questions as to who is actually making the decisions at Blizzard.
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you wont get lan sooner than pirates figure out server emulation... so, most likely never 
now, do you really want chat channels?
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On August 24 2010 00:50 Uhh Negative wrote:
Blizzard would have thought of this and had it included if they wanted to. I think what they really want to do is to be able to control the tournaments and make money off of it. If you just give LAN to anyone, anyone can run tournaments, but if Blizzard releases special LAN games to specific organizations then Blizzard can control it.
Yes, I think you make a valid point. And if this IS the case, than I think we direct our fingers towards KeSPA for not following the rules that Blizzard has set up for BW and taking control of the scene.
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You underestimate hackers badly.
If there's any form of LAN at all in SC2 it will be hacked and people will be able to download starcraft 2and play LAN with each other without paying.
But what blizzard are missing is... Who cares? Honestly if anything the addition of LAN will make pirates more likely to buy the game after seeing how awesome multiplayer is. Currently people will pirate the single player and never be able to try multiplayer at all.
Instead of games company's thinking "How can we stop the pirates", they should be thinking "how can we make the pirates want to buy our game"
edit: And someone above mentioned, I think the main reason for not including LAN isn't piracy, it's to stop 3rd party servers like iccup and to stop people running unauthorized tournaments (If someone tries they can just cut their battle.net connection)
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I thought that once two players had been matched, the game is based on a p2p system. Surely it should be a simple job of packet sniffing the matchmaking process, and building an external client to facilitate this?
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On August 24 2010 00:55 shawabawa wrote:
You underestimate hackers badly.
As do you, apparently. It's only a matter of time before someone comes up with a way to play LAN, Blizzard's intentions be damned.
Trying to blame KeSPA for something that's so obviously a Blizzard power-grab is foolish. It would be all but impossible for Korea to hide the fact that they were using LAN to hold unsanctioned tournaments. The game was already cracked and the entire campaign playable the day of release. In many cases, it was out before the official retail version was out. So again, the argument that they did this to stop piracy is also a joke.
It's a power-grab, plain and simple.
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Someone will definitely come up with server emulation. Its only a matter of time and effort.
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It isn't necessarily that the people who are trying to crack the game are smarter than blizzard employees. It's that there is a lot more of them than there are of blizzard. The game crackers outnumber the people trying to stop this. I can understand blizzard not wanting to give LAN upon release, but I'll be expecting some sort of LAN patch sometime in the future or I'll have lost all faith in blizzard as a company
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Sc2 was still pirateable on day one of release, so the prevention of piracy argument is gone.
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On August 24 2010 01:05 nihoh wrote:
Someone will definitely come up with server emulation. Its only a matter of time and effort.
how long it took for bw, and bw had lan... by that point sc2 will be well established as blizzard controlled esport (or dead)
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On August 24 2010 01:01 ta2 wrote:
I thought that once two players had been matched, the game is based on a p2p system. Surely it should be a simple job of packet sniffing the matchmaking process, and building an external client to facilitate this?
This is entirely wrong. Blizzard hosts every game, even custom games. There is no p2p system in sc2.
I'm one of the Aussies who has 500ms to the SEA server. I wouldn't be so upset if I didn't also get 500ms to every custom game as well. I even get 500ms to my own host.
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If someone comes out with a 3rd party LAN "hack" and people use it or tournaments use it, can Blizzard take any sort of legal action against them? If so, what justification would they use?
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If this were 1999 maybe even in the early 2000s, you might have a case that a game releasing without lan support hurts the players.
95%+ (just an imagined stat just to say "most" but so someone doesn't come back to me saying that well alot of players still need lan) will go thru an entire year of this game without feeling the incline or need for lan support or go to an event that doesn't have some Net support over the Lan.
Technical difficulties and server problems happen even with Lan support, and while the odds of having problems with connecting to a Battle.net server are higher than say a power outage or a network node going out (and these things have happened, check Flash Vs Jaedong at one of last years events) in 2010, the odds are well in the tolerable range, and getting closer and closer to the odds of hardware failure.
On the subject of live events and lag... It can become an issue, but at the same time the odds of these issues are quickly becoming lower and lower (in scale they are getting closer to the odds of Hardware issues) and if it helps them slow down or discourage piracy, I'm all for it...
Why? Because the next possible step in the evolution of Bnet, is to start charging for usage of the servers. Which obviously would meet many objections, but if Battle.net and starcraft as a whole becomes too expensive to run because of piracy or because they to hire to many moderators for the chat channels to keep the game profitable... They might have their hand forced, and I'd rather they just not get to that point and be happy with all the cool stuff they give me just for the entry fee.
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I for one, think Blizzard will end up giving a private server to tournament organizers, so they can mount it at every tourney and host the games themselves.
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On August 24 2010 00:53 Necrosjef wrote: SC2 has already been cracked for multiplayer play and it hasn't even been released for a month. - Case and point right there. If someone wants to steal software, they are gonna.
source?
First time I heard mp is cracked - or did you mean sp?
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Simply require the user to log on b.net before each LAN game would solve the problem, no?
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EPT
