On August 15 2011 12:52 koonst wrote: not having lan evens the playing field for the little guys like myself i can practice witho ut worry that theres always gonig to be some lag . and i can access evens far away from my home town .. i am a poor man i cant aford to make trips to lan having lan will only exclude people like myself from alot of things. just my two cents.
So by that logic you should also hold world class sports events at run down school gyms. Also why do you get excluded from anything if dedicated lan tourneys are held on local servers, its not like you can remotely participate in a local lan event anyways.
It is absolutely grotesque that we live in a world where two people playing a computer game sitting next to each other have to waste massive ressources sending all their game data halfway across the fucking continent. This type of absurd decadence could be coming straight from a Douglas Adams novel.
Creating LAN hack may be illegal, but it is also an act of common sense.
People like you need to calm down. Yes, having LAN would be beneficial for us. But having LAN doesn't make sense for Blizzard. You can argue all you want - Blizzard has crunched the numbers and looked at a data and has realized that LAN would cost them more than it would gain them.
Not having LAN is a reasoned and researched position. There is nothing "absurd" about it. Just because you aren't happy with it does not make it an atrocity. You cannot blame Blizzard for doing what makes the most sense for them.
So you basically say its not idiotic practice to send local game data over half the world using up lots of bandwith because you assume that somebody at blizzard carefully researched that it is reasonable for blizzard.and therefore its must be a reasonable thing overall.
Guess with religiousness declining in the west, people just find new entities to put their blind faith in ...
It's not idiotic if more profit is gained by not having LAN than the cost of "send[ing] local game data half the world using up lots of bandwith".
It has nothing to do with "blind faith". It's me assuming that Blizzard acts rationally. Which is much more reasonable than the half-assed theories that involve Blizzard willingly throwing away profits and the goodwill of their consumers.
Eh, I think most SC players in Korea played via PC Cafes, where I would imagine piracy is less of an issue.
Actually, PC Bangs were one of the major issues. Tons of people could play Starcraft there, where the PC Bang would mostly purchase none (or, at most, 1) copy of the game.
Their refusal to add LAN is about what happened between Blizzard and KESPA as well, the way SC2 is currently set up allows Blizzard direct control to who plays and who doesn't. If you could play through a LAN, a second KESPA could happen, where they refuse to pay Blizzard broadcasting rights and just completely ignore Blizzard on the issue.
From a business perspective, it makes 0 sense to add LAN for Blizzard, so they won't. 99% of the people won't use it ever. So yes, games in tournaments will be played with 50ms instead of 2ms, and 1 in 500 tournament games will drop because of battle.net connection. That's, at best, an inconvenience, and just not enough of a reason to add LAN.
I would think it would be easy to audit the PC cafes much in the same way it's easier for M$ to enforce licenses on businesses, schools, and government.
Eh, I think most SC players in Korea played via PC Cafes, where I would imagine piracy is less of an issue.
Actually, PC Bangs were one of the major issues. Tons of people could play Starcraft there, where the PC Bang would mostly purchase none (or, at most, 1) copy of the game.
Their refusal to add LAN is about what happened between Blizzard and KESPA as well, the way SC2 is currently set up allows Blizzard direct control to who plays and who doesn't. If you could play through a LAN, a second KESPA could happen, where they refuse to pay Blizzard broadcasting rights and just completely ignore Blizzard on the issue.
From a business perspective, it makes 0 sense to add LAN for Blizzard, so they won't. 99% of the people won't use it ever. So yes, games in tournaments will be played with 50ms instead of 2ms, and 1 in 500 tournament games will drop because of battle.net connection. That's, at best, an inconvenience, and just not enough of a reason to add LAN.
I would think it would be easy to audit the PC cafes much in the same way it's easier for M$ to enforce licenses on businesses, schools, and government.
It's actually not easy, though. Microsoft (Adobe, etc) don't actually handle most of the work themselves. There's a whole separate third party involved (in this case, the BSA), and they rely almost entirely on disgruntled employees first reporting the problem.
Blizzard probably just doesn't want to deal with that level of bureaucracy.
That said, I would personally love a LAN version of the game. I thought there were talks back in beta about a specially licensed version that they would allow huge tournament organizers to use. Either that's a pipedream, or the idea fell through.
On August 15 2011 12:52 koonst wrote: not having lan evens the playing field for the little guys like myself i can practice witho ut worry that theres always gonig to be some lag . and i can access evens far away from my home town .. i am a poor man i cant aford to make trips to lan having lan will only exclude people like myself from alot of things. just my two cents.
So by that logic you should also hold world class sports events at run down school gyms. Also why do you get excluded from anything if dedicated lan tourneys are held on local servers, its not like you can remotely participate in a local lan event anyways.
It is absolutely grotesque that we live in a world where two people playing a computer game sitting next to each other have to waste massive ressources sending all their game data halfway across the fucking continent. This type of absurd decadence could be coming straight from a Douglas Adams novel.
Creating LAN hack may be illegal, but it is also an act of common sense.
People like you need to calm down. Yes, having LAN would be beneficial for us. But having LAN doesn't make sense for Blizzard. You can argue all you want - Blizzard has crunched the numbers and looked at a data and has realized that LAN would cost them more than it would gain them.
Not having LAN is a reasoned and researched position. There is nothing "absurd" about it. Just because you aren't happy with it does not make it an atrocity. You cannot blame Blizzard for doing what makes the most sense for them.
So you basically say its not idiotic practice to send local game data over half the world using up lots of bandwith because you assume that somebody at blizzard carefully researched that it is reasonable for blizzard.and therefore its must be a reasonable thing overall.
Guess with religiousness declining in the west, people just find new entities to put their blind faith in ...
It's not idiotic if more profit is gained by not having LAN than the cost of "send[ing] local game data half the world using up lots of bandwith".
It has nothing to do with "blind faith". It's me assuming that Blizzard acts rationally. Which is much more reasonable than the half-assed theories that involve Blizzard willingly throwing away profits and the goodwill of their consumers.
Blizzard is of course acting rationally for their business.
But why do you want to conclude from that, that the results therefore are safe from being completely idiotic - especially if you look at them from any other than their very own financial perspective? Why not rather evaluate for yourself instead of doing unpaid propaganda work?
Mind the harsh example, but you could, in the same vein, claim that its a completely rational to bribe researchers to produce articles denying global warming, and also conclude its ok.
To decide for us whether it is a good idea or not in general having to send game data halfway across a continent at the cost of us all even when it seems to be not necessary it is of no importance if Blizz is actually acting rationally for their business. They could base their own decisions on the color of their parrots morning poo-poo for all I care.
But the question is if the consequences are appropriate in relation to what is intended. And while denying the obvious absurdity that everybody can see, you rather speculate about Blizzard probably knowing what theyre doing, assuming some sort of goodwill underneath economic decisions. Thats blind faith if you ask me.
On August 15 2011 22:21 Logros wrote: Everyone has internet nowadays and it's not hard to set up anywhere so I never understood the big issue with no LAN.
It depends where you live, in some more rural areas latency is a huge issue.
On August 15 2011 21:47 ryan1894 wrote: If a company releases LAN support in any way: they're essentially giving away the game for free. (VPN services)
So unless you REALLY want Blizzard to not profit from this game, and thus not make future games I don't see why everybody's complaining. Its like people complaining about a $2 season ticket for GSL or something.
Considering that you can't play on Battle.net with a pirated copy I doubt they'd lose many customers.
On August 16 2011 01:47 branflakes14 wrote: Google is failing me. I don't suppose anyone has a link to any kind of graph plotting Starcraft 2's sales over the last year?
On August 15 2011 19:51 marconi wrote: Although this is a great effort and I really support it, you guys have to realize that it's not about the players, it's about the money.
I am 99 percent sure that blizzard will NEVER EVER implement LAN support, cuz in their eyes it's a loss of money ( pirating ), and we all know how corporations as huge as blizzard work.
A lot of stuff is missing from bnet 2.0, there were countless pleas from the community ( integrated chat channels, lan, clan support etc. ), and blizz just ignored them. You see, it's not the programming or time that's the problem, it's their financial calculation at the end of the day that counts.
Unfortunately for all of us, blizzard is not the company from 10 years ago,
Today's blizzard is the same shit as EA or Microsoft, a money-milking company.
When Blizzard got really huge with WoW, it got bought by greedy rich share holders who's only concern is how to make as much money as possible, while minimizing losses and removing the "outdated" parts of the game. I mean, they fucking charge money for CHANGING YOUR NICKNAME.
I don't see how you guys can expect something more for the players when a simple thing like changing you nickname is not so simple.
So you see my dear fellow starcraft and blizzard fans,
it's not our opinion that counts,
It's our money that counts.
And as long as we are obedient little fanboys who give them money, they won't give a fuck at what we want.
Sadly, blizzard is not the only company that got ruined by money, for example, just look at bioware when they got bought by EA, the quality of their games dropped drastically. Money ruins everything, and the video game industry is no exception, games today are just money milking tools with awesome graphics and 0 content ( 90 percent of them ), and it's a trend that will continue. Sadly, we the players are those who are at fault, we allowed for this shit to happen cuz we kept on buying shitty games, and the game companies know this.
That's why today you have bnet 0.2 and terran edition starcraft 2.
But there's more: zerg edition starcraft 2 is coming up! And after you spend another 50 bucks on it, there's more! that's right, protoss edition kids!
Who gives a shit about balance or chat channels when you have 1/3 of a game on the market? there's plenty of time !
So let's all be good fanboys and buy HOTS.
You're talking as if SC2:WoL wasn't worth the money. To me it was. The reason they don't implement LAN is because it will make thousands of different ladders where noone is in the official one. That wouldn't really be good for you or me now would it?
SC2:HoS will also be worth the money, if you don't think so. Don't buy it.
That's the plan at this rate. Blizzard doesn't deserve my money. I will keep paying for tournaments that do.
On August 15 2011 12:52 koonst wrote: not having lan evens the playing field for the little guys like myself i can practice witho ut worry that theres always gonig to be some lag . and i can access evens far away from my home town .. i am a poor man i cant aford to make trips to lan having lan will only exclude people like myself from alot of things. just my two cents.
So by that logic you should also hold world class sports events at run down school gyms. Also why do you get excluded from anything if dedicated lan tourneys are held on local servers, its not like you can remotely participate in a local lan event anyways.
It is absolutely grotesque that we live in a world where two people playing a computer game sitting next to each other have to waste massive ressources sending all their game data halfway across the fucking continent. This type of absurd decadence could be coming straight from a Douglas Adams novel.
Creating LAN hack may be illegal, but it is also an act of common sense.
People like you need to calm down. Yes, having LAN would be beneficial for us. But having LAN doesn't make sense for Blizzard. You can argue all you want - Blizzard has crunched the numbers and looked at a data and has realized that LAN would cost them more than it would gain them.
Not having LAN is a reasoned and researched position. There is nothing "absurd" about it. Just because you aren't happy with it does not make it an atrocity. You cannot blame Blizzard for doing what makes the most sense for them.
So you basically say its not idiotic practice to send local game data over half the world using up lots of bandwith because you assume that somebody at blizzard carefully researched that it is reasonable for blizzard.and therefore its must be a reasonable thing overall.
Guess with religiousness declining in the west, people just find new entities to put their blind faith in ...
It's not idiotic if more profit is gained by not having LAN than the cost of "send[ing] local game data half the world using up lots of bandwith".
It has nothing to do with "blind faith". It's me assuming that Blizzard acts rationally. Which is much more reasonable than the half-assed theories that involve Blizzard willingly throwing away profits and the goodwill of their consumers.
Blizzard is of course acting rationally for their business.
But why do you want to conclude from that, that the results therefore are safe from being completely idiotic - especially if you look at them from any other than their very own financial perspective? Why not rather evaluate for yourself instead of doing unpaid propaganda work?
Mind the harsh example, but you could, in the same vein, claim that its a completely rational to bribe researchers to produce articles denying global warming, and also conclude its ok.
To decide for us whether it is a good idea or not in general having to send game data halfway across a continent at the cost of us all even when it seems to be not necessary it is of no importance if Blizz is actually acting rationally for their business. They could base their own decisions on the color of their parrots morning poo-poo for all I care.
But the question is if the consequences are appropriate in relation to what is intended. And while denying the obvious absurdity that everybody can see, you rather speculate about Blizzard probably knowing what theyre doing, assuming some sort of goodwill underneath economic decisions. Thats blind faith if you ask me.
...trusting businesses to act like businesses is not blind faith.
And I don't know where you got the idea that I think Blizzard has any sort of "goodwill" behind their actions. As long as their actions aren't morally questionable (like bribing researchers) - there is no reason for the amount of anger towards Blizzard that you have shown. The results are not idiotic because they came from a rational, reasonable, *culturally acceptable* process.
And no. The decision making process matters. If Blizzard was withholding LAN b/c of a trivial reason, I'd be pissed. But because I know it's rational for them to withhold LAN, I understand their decision. I'd rather have LAN too... but all this hate at Blizzard is completely unwarranted. If you were Blizzard, chances are you would make the same decision as well.
If not having LAN ruins the game for you, you should not have brought SC2...instead of being pointlessly angry at it after the fact.
EDIT:
On August 16 2011 05:30 lolsixtynine wrote: That's the plan at this rate. Blizzard doesn't deserve my money. I will keep paying for tournaments that do.
Yes. Because Blizzard does not profit in anyway from you watching Starcraft 2 tournaments...
Blizz/Activision, PLEASE LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE ENABLED YOUR COMPANY TO GROW... Lan for SC2 would be amazing, and seeing the massive amount of people who signed, they should atleast have some kind of sensible respons except the good o'l '' piracy'' argument.
On August 15 2011 21:27 Eleaven wrote: People actually defending having less consumer rights year by year... interesting..
There's a difference between trying to defend consumer rights when its a product where safety is concerned or when it falls under necessities of life kinda thing. You make it sound as if they're the government trying to take away freedom of speech.
lol customer rights. What about the right of the creator of intellectual property having the right to protect themselves? Its not as if they told you there would be LAN on the box and when you installed the game it wasn't there. LAN or lack of LAN isn't going to seriously hurt any one. It's just annoying as hell.
They tried to protect themselves with there always-on approach, and it didn't work. sc2 one of the most pirated games of 2010 iirc. Now there's also a working lan crack.
Not adding lan to the official game at this point is ONLY punishing the legitimate players and tournaments. It can't "hurt blizzard" like you'd try to tell us, if the option is there to play lan, and people pirate it.. okay.. they would have pirated the lan version that's already out too.. either way it's not a sale for blizzard, but for legitimate organisations it's a lose-lose scenario.
They want to protect their IP from not just pirates but also from potential KeSPA situations arising again. BW was hugely successful but they had no control over it. iccup, kespa etc. This time around they want to maintain control. Why should organizations that didn't contribute to their IP be successful using it without them being a part of it (financial/vision/whatever)?
They want tournaments etc to happen but they don't want to relinquish control. Its fair that they don't want to do so. As a company with shareholders, they're goal is to develop games for PROFIT not for your entertainment. Entertaining games are the road to the goal of profit. You can have an idealized view where you can say profit is a side effect of entertaining games etc and try to argue but the reality is its all just risk vs reward. Is the risk of adding LAN worth it for them. Even with the hacked LAN out there, tournaments wouldn't risk using it. And just cuz some rogue group is hacking their game doesn't mean blizzard should release a LAN version and make it even easier for them.
Theres also the LAN cafe situation, but I'm not too aware of how rampant pirating is there.
Until you prove to them not adding LAN is costing them more than the losses they will face by adding LAN, they're not going to do it.
And then sc2 turned out not be very popular at all on Korea despite a huge marketing campaign and complete blizzard control. I wonder if it would have turned out to be more profitable to let kespa run sc2 tournaments and put them on tv for the next 10 years even with little control or fees from blizz.
remember broodwar sold 4.5 million in Korea (almost 10% of the population! and that number is from 2008 when it sold 9.5 million worldwide. It is now 11 million worldwide how many of those do you think are from Korea?) I doubt blizz likes losing large markets like that even if it is popular elsewhere. All it takes is blizz overestimating sales gained in places where piracy is popular like china by having no LAN and the costs of bandwidth for being a middleman in every game that will ever be played of sc2 ever might be more than any pirates converted to sales. Is sc2 selling a lot in China?
On August 15 2011 19:51 marconi wrote: Although this is a great effort and I really support it, you guys have to realize that it's not about the players, it's about the money.
I am 99 percent sure that blizzard will NEVER EVER implement LAN support, cuz in their eyes it's a loss of money ( pirating ), and we all know how corporations as huge as blizzard work.
A lot of stuff is missing from bnet 2.0, there were countless pleas from the community ( integrated chat channels, lan, clan support etc. ), and blizz just ignored them. You see, it's not the programming or time that's the problem, it's their financial calculation at the end of the day that counts.
Unfortunately for all of us, blizzard is not the company from 10 years ago,
Today's blizzard is the same shit as EA or Microsoft, a money-milking company.
When Blizzard got really huge with WoW, it got bought by greedy rich share holders who's only concern is how to make as much money as possible, while minimizing losses and removing the "outdated" parts of the game. I mean, they fucking charge money for CHANGING YOUR NICKNAME.
I don't see how you guys can expect something more for the players when a simple thing like changing you nickname is not so simple.
So you see my dear fellow starcraft and blizzard fans,
it's not our opinion that counts,
It's our money that counts.
And as long as we are obedient little fanboys who give them money, they won't give a fuck at what we want.
Sadly, blizzard is not the only company that got ruined by money, for example, just look at bioware when they got bought by EA, the quality of their games dropped drastically. Money ruins everything, and the video game industry is no exception, games today are just money milking tools with awesome graphics and 0 content ( 90 percent of them ), and it's a trend that will continue. Sadly, we the players are those who are at fault, we allowed for this shit to happen cuz we kept on buying shitty games, and the game companies know this.
That's why today you have bnet 0.2 and terran edition starcraft 2.
But there's more: zerg edition starcraft 2 is coming up! And after you spend another 50 bucks on it, there's more! that's right, protoss edition kids!
Who gives a shit about balance or chat channels when you have 1/3 of a game on the market? there's plenty of time !
So let's all be good fanboys and buy HOTS.
My thoughts exactly. I've actually recently started taking more of an interest in Brood War again because of it. I just can't be interested in a game that exists purely to try to milk me.
I actually am starting to think its impossible for a company to intentionally create an 'esport'. The only cut of the money they're getting is the purchase of the game, and if they require tournaments to pay them some sum of money to run the tournament- but a buisiness will want to create as many sources of income as possible. Its just what its going to do.
I also feel 'E-Sport' is going to be a fad of games for awhile now...
On August 15 2011 21:27 Eleaven wrote: People actually defending having less consumer rights year by year... interesting..
There's a difference between trying to defend consumer rights when its a product where safety is concerned or when it falls under necessities of life kinda thing. You make it sound as if they're the government trying to take away freedom of speech.
lol customer rights. What about the right of the creator of intellectual property having the right to protect themselves? Its not as if they told you there would be LAN on the box and when you installed the game it wasn't there. LAN or lack of LAN isn't going to seriously hurt any one. It's just annoying as hell.
They tried to protect themselves with there always-on approach, and it didn't work. sc2 one of the most pirated games of 2010 iirc. Now there's also a working lan crack.
Not adding lan to the official game at this point is ONLY punishing the legitimate players and tournaments. It can't "hurt blizzard" like you'd try to tell us, if the option is there to play lan, and people pirate it.. okay.. they would have pirated the lan version that's already out too.. either way it's not a sale for blizzard, but for legitimate organisations it's a lose-lose scenario.
They want to protect their IP from not just pirates but also from potential KeSPA situations arising again. BW was hugely successful but they had no control over it. iccup, kespa etc. This time around they want to maintain control. Why should organizations that didn't contribute to their IP be successful using it without them being a part of it (financial/vision/whatever)?
They want tournaments etc to happen but they don't want to relinquish control. Its fair that they don't want to do so. As a company with shareholders, they're goal is to develop games for PROFIT not for your entertainment. Entertaining games are the road to the goal of profit. You can have an idealized view where you can say profit is a side effect of entertaining games etc and try to argue but the reality is its all just risk vs reward. Is the risk of adding LAN worth it for them. Even with the hacked LAN out there, tournaments wouldn't risk using it. And just cuz some rogue group is hacking their game doesn't mean blizzard should release a LAN version and make it even easier for them.
Theres also the LAN cafe situation, but I'm not too aware of how rampant pirating is there.
Until you prove to them not adding LAN is costing them more than the losses they will face by adding LAN, they're not going to do it.
And then sc2 turned out not be very popular at all on Korea despite a huge marketing campaign and complete blizzard control. I wonder if it would have turned out to be more profitable to let kespa run sc2 tournaments and put them on tv for the next 10 years even with little control or fees from blizz.
remember broodwar sold 4.5 million in Korea (almost 10% of the population! and that number is from 2008 when it sold 9.5 million worldwide. It is now 11 million worldwide how many of those do you think are from Korea?) I doubt blizz likes losing large markets like that even if it is popular elsewhere. All it takes is blizz overestimating sales gained in places where piracy is popular like china by having no LAN and the costs of bandwidth for being a middleman in every game that will ever be played of sc2 ever might be more than any pirates converted to sales. Is sc2 selling a lot in China?
I'm sure they wonder too, but businesses don't make decisions like this blindly. You and I can wonder if it would have been more profitable all we want. Our pondering isn't strong enough of a factor for Blizzard to make the decision to add LAN.
I do believe open standards will do better when you're looking for adoption, but in the grand scheme of things their decision making process went against LAN.
And at this stage, SC2's lack of success relative to BW could be attributed to many things that are just as possible as lack of LAN. Some of the obvious ones that come to mind are simply 1. BW already has a strong following and those running BW tournies see no motivation to stop as long as it remains financially viable. 2. The game landscape has changed from the 90s. There are far more competition (although the market has also grown dramatically) 3. Time, its only been a year. Comparing sales of a game thats been selling for 10 years vs 1 year.
But you see what I'm saying. As long as Blizzard feels its not in their best interest, they won't do it. If we want LAN, we have to prove it IS in their best interest, not just ours. And what I've read from the majority of the thread yours is probably the first one that even gets close. Everyone else is simply content in saying:
1. Blizzard is a evil money making machine - Because all successful businesses are evil and sellouts /sarcasm 2. I can't play with my friends - This is silly because you still can play SC2 with your friends at a LAN party, you just need a broadband net connection which is pretty fair to expect in 2011 unlike it was back in the 90s. Even back in my highschool days when I had LAN parties, we had broadband internet available. These days with wireless routers and far faster broadband connections available makes me wonder if the lack of LAN is really stopping anyone from having a LAN party. I've personally never hosted a LAN or been to one where a slightly higher ping would ruin the party (50 instead of 5). It was always a social event rather than a competitive one, but that's just anecdotal on my part. 3. x# of games lag out of y# of games in tournaments - This is a compelling reason, but for us as a community, not for blizzard as a company.
Blizzard placed a value on LAN and made a decision based on that. They could be wrong or correct. Regardless its their decision to make because that's how decisions are made in business. They don't sit around and say how can we stick it to the community or screw up their tournaments as much as possible. No one really has quantified or attempted to on the value of LAN to Blizzard. Your post is probably as close as it's come.
On August 15 2011 19:51 marconi wrote: Although this is a great effort and I really support it, you guys have to realize that it's not about the players, it's about the money.
I am 99 percent sure that blizzard will NEVER EVER implement LAN support, cuz in their eyes it's a loss of money ( pirating ), and we all know how corporations as huge as blizzard work.
A lot of stuff is missing from bnet 2.0, there were countless pleas from the community ( integrated chat channels, lan, clan support etc. ), and blizz just ignored them. You see, it's not the programming or time that's the problem, it's their financial calculation at the end of the day that counts.
Unfortunately for all of us, blizzard is not the company from 10 years ago,
Today's blizzard is the same shit as EA or Microsoft, a money-milking company.
When Blizzard got really huge with WoW, it got bought by greedy rich share holders who's only concern is how to make as much money as possible, while minimizing losses and removing the "outdated" parts of the game. I mean, they fucking charge money for CHANGING YOUR NICKNAME.
I don't see how you guys can expect something more for the players when a simple thing like changing you nickname is not so simple.
So you see my dear fellow starcraft and blizzard fans,
it's not our opinion that counts,
It's our money that counts.
And as long as we are obedient little fanboys who give them money, they won't give a fuck at what we want.
Sadly, blizzard is not the only company that got ruined by money, for example, just look at bioware when they got bought by EA, the quality of their games dropped drastically. Money ruins everything, and the video game industry is no exception, games today are just money milking tools with awesome graphics and 0 content ( 90 percent of them ), and it's a trend that will continue. Sadly, we the players are those who are at fault, we allowed for this shit to happen cuz we kept on buying shitty games, and the game companies know this.
That's why today you have bnet 0.2 and terran edition starcraft 2.
But there's more: zerg edition starcraft 2 is coming up! And after you spend another 50 bucks on it, there's more! that's right, protoss edition kids!
Who gives a shit about balance or chat channels when you have 1/3 of a game on the market? there's plenty of time !
So let's all be good fanboys and buy HOTS.
My thoughts exactly. I've actually recently started taking more of an interest in Brood War again because of it. I just can't be interested in a game that exists purely to try to milk me.
Same mentality with pirates.
Entitlement issues.
D2/D1/SC1/BW/LOD/Wc3RoC/TFT all gave the players the ability to create as many accounts as they wish with just one cdkey and access to all servers.
On August 15 2011 02:22 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: they're not going to release LAN, doing so would mean they basically stop making money from SC2 which has only been out for a year
the only way i can see them releasing LAN is after several more years, as incentive to keep playing (make it free basically)
Also, what is blizzard's stance on this lan project? why isn't it taken down yet?
Exactly, its a perfectly valid reason. I would love if they would develop a tournament version of lan and release it to the biggest ones, but that is not a deal breaker for me.
Actually, the perfect solution to the LAN problem would be to implement a "peer-to-peer custom game" option in Battle.Net.
That way, during tournaments games between players can be played directly, thus allowing for LAN pings, while Blizzard still retains full control over who owns the game and who can play it.
EPT
