Now that a post exists since lot of day and nobody of Blizzard stops the subject (here : http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2973007615?page=1 ), I think that we can discuss here about the apparition of this hack without a violation of the TOS... I don't see why we can speak about the hack on the official forum moderated by Blizzard salaried employee and can't here...
This hack was developed since a lots of time and support 1.3.6 clients (enGB,enUS, ... ) by a team named StarFriend. I see that you can use the legal Starcraft 2 and this hack on the same Starcraft 2 without any problem... Personnally, I think that LAN is the heart and soul of StarCraft. It wasn't Battle.net that made SC1 popular, it was LAN.
More of that, the team of developers of SF(StarFriend) states that if Blizzard release an official LAN, the team will stop their project.
And I don't support guys who say that LAN is dead... If you don't use LAN, cool bro but you are stupid. An extra LAN button is going to confuse you when you log in to play?
Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
For me personaly lan is nothing i miss. I mean me and my 3 friends who play SC2 do not often play against each other cause it got kind of boring after some weeks, and so I want to play ladder... I see the need for Lan for the tournaments, but for the normal player... not.
It's very tedious to use, and not very recommended for tournament use IMO. There have been less lag spikes and DC... And when using this LAN you have to accept your username will be "Slayer" and also it's important to understand they don't have an English version yet.
On August 15 2011 01:49 ImsorryKarelyn wrote: Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
Their reasons are piracy and making battle.net 2.0 the best multiplayer platform, which is funny considering how fucking terrible it is. It's speculated that maximising profits is one of the main reasons too. Sadsadsad I still can't believe this game doesn't have LAN.
On August 15 2011 01:49 ImsorryKarelyn wrote: Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
Nobody can take Starcraft away from Blizzard because every game is played through their servers and they can make sure everybody plays the latest version etc.
Personally, having LAN wouldn't affect my play very much. I play with friends over B.Net and am usually pretty satisfied. From an e-sport standpoint however, not having LAN is borderline ridiculous. In addition to the potential for lag, there is always the possibility that the internet at the venue could experience issues <cough> MLG Dallas <cough>.
Thankfully, there were no such internet issues in Columbus or Anaheim. However, until there is at least a LAN option for these massive Blizzard sanctioned events; there is always the threat of a very important and exciting moment in SC2 to be tainted by a very solvable problem. If you want e-sports to truly be successful, you have to provide the viewer with the best possible experience. I can tell you from personal experience that watching them fill time on the stream while they try to work out internet issues is not entertaining. Even if Blizzard doesn't implement it for the common player, at least make LAN available for these huge tournaments that they support.
On August 15 2011 01:50 FiWiFaKi wrote: It's very tedious to use, and not very recommended for tournament use IMO. There have been less lag spikes and DC... And when using this LAN you have to accept your username will be "Slayer" and also it's important to understand they don't have an English version yet.
The next release is really soon... So for info, the next release ( 1 week, maybe 2) will support patch, username and english version
On August 15 2011 01:49 ImsorryKarelyn wrote: Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
Their reasons are piracy and making battle.net 2.0 the best multiplayer platform, which is funny considering how fucking terrible it is. It's speculated that maximising profits is one of the main reasons too. Sadsadsad I still can't believe this game doesn't have LAN.
Are you serious? Have you played Warcraft 3? The lag on Battle.net was almost one second for even the best connections in Europe. So yes they have greatly improved the latency for bnet 2.0, and it's nowhere near as horrible as you make it to sound. And yes they don't want LAN because they don't want piracy ofc. Saw that comming since WoW came out to be honest.
Even if people figure out how to make a proper bug free LAN version of SC2, nobody would use it.
Progamers would not practice on it because they would get used to no delay and any legitimate leagues would of course not use a hacked SC2 version unsupported by blizzard to run their league.
I hope Blizzard bans this thing as anything that fragments the player base is bad imho. What Blizz should be working on is features like a proper DND and viewing replay with friends
All this LAN Hack does is encourages piracy with is the death of most PC games. Playing Online is where it is at and as you can see games like WOW and console games such as COD with massive player bases. The Internet is the future not LAN.
On August 15 2011 02:03 RafikiSC wrote: Personally, having LAN wouldn't affect my play very much. I play with friends over B.Net and am usually pretty satisfied. From an e-sport standpoint however, not having LAN is borderline ridiculous. In addition to the potential for lag, there is always the possibility that the internet at the venue could experience issues <cough> MLG Dallas <cough>.
Thankfully, there were no such internet issues in Columbus or Anaheim. However, until there is at least a LAN option for these massive Blizzard sanctioned events; there is always the threat of a very important and exciting moment in SC2 to be tainted by a very solvable problem. If you want e-sports to truly be successful, you have to provide the viewer with the best possible experience. I can tell you from personal experience that watching them fill time on the stream while they try to work out internet issues is not entertaining. Even if Blizzard doesn't implement it for the common player, at least make LAN available for these huge tournaments that they support.
There was still lag during anaheim, it wasn't as bad during day 2 and 3 though. There's a pretty big difference between playing the two and I can see that in a tournament where every player needs to be playing their best it makes a HUGE difference.
Play a game against the AI in single playeer then again in multiplayer and you'll notice it.
To stay on topic though, I personally wont use this but this hopefully will be more reason for blizzard to release LAN support.
On August 15 2011 02:31 Topdoller wrote: I hope Blizzard bans this thing as anything that fragments the player base is bad imho. What Blizz should be working on is features like a proper DND and viewing replay with friends
All this LAN Hack does is encourages piracy with is the death of most PC games. Playing Online is where it is at and as you can see games like WOW and console games such as COD with massive player bases. The Internet is the future not LAN.
i cant believe you are serious. what fragments the player base is the region!
Notice how Deebo's first line mentions that Blizzard deleted a previous thread discussing the hack? So it's more than likely they are going to delete that thread.
The existence of this hack basically amounts to coercion, as the creators said they will stop their project if Blizzard includes LAN themselves. I don't think that's a good precedent, and it's not the right way to go about advocating official LAN. Personally, if not including LAN does in fact cut down on piracy, I am absolutely fine with not having it.
Because Blizzard has removed LAN, and people have developed a LAN hack, it means that those who are less willing to pay with their money will have a greater product than the customer... That is so retarded.
I would love it, if they could setup a server with LAn latency, that you can connect to, like iccup. Maybe with tournament maps, so that you can play with people in asia. Certainly would love to see somethig like that. I don't really think that blizz themselves will ever implement LAN. the chances for google+ support are a lot higher i would guess.
On August 15 2011 02:40 Micket wrote: Because Blizzard has removed LAN, and people have developed a LAN hack, it means that those who are less willing to pay with their money will have a greater product than the customer... That is so retarded.
that there is capitalism at work :D
that said, i think i might get this when they come out with an english version and pretty much say fu to blizzard due to b.net 2.0 being so ridiculously bad
Hopefully blizzard shuts this down and sues the people before any real damage is done, there are reasons why blizzard has not released Lan and its a valid reason
Its not blizzards fault people like to steal, if people didn't steal you think we wouldn't have Lan? blame the thieves not blizzard
On August 15 2011 01:49 ImsorryKarelyn wrote: Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
Of course, lol. As sad as it may be, in 2011 the best form of DRM is no lan/always online. A lot of companys don't release games with LAN anymore.
On August 15 2011 02:31 Topdoller wrote: I hope Blizzard bans this thing as anything that fragments the player base is bad imho. What Blizz should be working on is features like a proper DND and viewing replay with friends
All this LAN Hack does is encourages piracy with is the death of most PC games. Playing Online is where it is at and as you can see games like WOW and console games such as COD with massive player bases. The Internet is the future not LAN.
i cant believe you are serious. what fragments the player base is the region!
Yeah the player base is already severely split up. LAN (using applications like Tunngle) would allow everyone around the world to play with low latency.
On August 15 2011 02:52 Rickilicious wrote: Well they didn't give us lan, but they gave us chat channels!
uhh, we worked so hard to get those chat channels lol...without our rediculous combined outcry against blizz we wouldnt have chat channels it took way too much to get them, also the chat channels we got are just plain bad...the anti-spam "feature" encourages spamming since it will block you in an actual conversation rather than just when spamming because they forgot to add a line of code that checks each line of text against the next to compare them
You forget, SC1 died a death in western culture no one played it as it was hacked to death, only the Koreans kept it alive. Bnet might not be perfect but it does bring the people together. The region zoning is there to stop high latency.
Have you actually stopped to think why every man and there dog has an XBOX 360. Its the bringing of all the players together that counts. Sonys online version sucks balls
I know a lot of people who dumped their Wii's and PlayStation's too play live with a 360 with their friends online. They get a few beers and have small events and enjoy team play from their own home.
I paid £36 for SC2 and its been well worth the value. The only people who moan about LAN are pirates. I dont see pros moaning about it,
This has been discussed to death and Blizzard is adamant about not putting LAN into their game. I also don't understand why someone would need LAN, unless you are in a tournament environment. I haven't used LAN in Warcraft3 and I would definitely NEVER use it for SC2. I don't see myself going somewhere to play with someone in a LAN environment, considering I can save all the hassle of moving my PC and just enjoy it over the net. LAN was necessary years ago when the internet was terribad, but these days the difference is very small. Plus setting up LAN, looking for cables, etc, I won't miss these days for sure. The internet speeds and the bnet latency will improve even more in the future. I don't care about LAN any more and tournaments are better than ever. Cry me a river.
Anaheim had horrendous lag on Day 1. Why? Because it was a major urban area and a Friday afternoon. No surprise that things got better for Saturday and Sunday, but that "Friday effect" could be completely eliminated with LAN.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Inex wrote: This has been discussed to death and Blizzard is adamant about not putting LAN into their game. I also don't understand why someone would need LAN, unless you are in a tournament environment.
I think you answered your own question.
Also, some people are discussing that xbox and such do so well because they are online but... doesn't Halo (one of the most, if not the most popular online xbox game) support LAN?
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: You forget, SC1 died a death in western culture no one played it as it was hacked to death, only the Koreans kept it alive. Bnet might not be perfect but it does bring the people together. The region zoning is there to stop high latency.
Have you actually stopped to think why every man and there dog has an XBOX 360. Its the bringing of all the players together that counts. Sonys online version sucks balls
I know a lot of people who dumped their Wii's and PlayStation's too play live with a 360 with their friends online. They get a few beers and have small events and enjoy team play from their own home.
I paid £36 for SC2 and its been well worth the value. The only people who moan about LAN are pirates. I dont see pros moaning about it,
You are completely incorrect. Sc1 died because Blizzard didn't support it. Hacks is what kept it alive. Players such as Idra, Incontrol, Day 9, Artosis and Tasteless (aka as the most famous members of our community) would be nothing without things such as iccup (which was illegal). Had it not been for iccup, BW may have died in the west, sc2 would have had far less hype and people like Day 9 wouldn't exist. If it weren't for hacks such as iccup, Idra would have become a physicist, day 9 a mathematician and Artosis would have kept to a job instead of practicing for Starcraft.
Every single pro gamer has complained about no lan. Don't speak on things you know nothing about.
On August 15 2011 01:49 ImsorryKarelyn wrote: Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
Its because Piracy, not other reasonable explanation. And well, Blizzard is a business they run on profit not on wishful thinking and fan catering.
Basically, and I mentioned this in the blizz forum, the pirates are getting LAN support, while paying customers are not.
I feel like the business side of ActivisionBlizzard is ruining the player experience. I attended Anaheim myself, and there were periods where lag was noticeable.
I am torn. I can be a paying customer and play legitimately, and then have a hacked copy so I can actually LAN with my brother/friends at parties, and play games on trips/vacations where internet is not an option.
I have hosted several LAN parties, and the cost of finding a venue to hold and support everyone (power, seating, tables, internet, etc) is overwhelming to someone who does this for fun. If I could eliminate the need for internet at the venue, the price would drop dramatically. As a bonus, all the WoW players would be forced to actually participate in the LAN festivities (lol, jk).
On August 15 2011 03:02 Inex wrote: This has been discussed to death and Blizzard is adamant about not putting LAN into their game. I also don't understand why someone would need LAN, unless you are in a tournament environment.
I think you answered your own question.
Also, some people are discussing that xbox and such do so well because they are online but... doesn't Halo (one of the most, if not the most popular online xbox game) support LAN?
Yes, unless you are a pro player and your income depends on it, you shouldn't complain about the lack of LAN and I don't see a lot of pros complaining about it any more. Blizz also said that they were looking into improving the tournament environment by introducing dedicated servers, I believe. I could be wrong, but this LAN hack won't prove anything. It proves that some people still believe that we live in a time where it takes ages to load a news site and all pictures in forums have to be in spoiler tags, not to kill the dial-up dudes. Or maybe they just want private servers. I don't see any of you crying about LAN ever using it, so what's the point really?
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
Pretty sure you could ask anyone...? They just don't whine about it since they know blizzard won't put it in.
Still no names.
Ok, stop trolling please. If you really want a name, search Idra interview MLG Dallas, and find the interview by Mister Bitter. Just because someone doesn't give you names doesn't mean your statement is correct.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: You forget, SC1 died a death in western culture no one played it as it was hacked to death, only the Koreans kept it alive. Bnet might not be perfect but it does bring the people together. The region zoning is there to stop high latency.
Have you actually stopped to think why every man and there dog has an XBOX 360. Its the bringing of all the players together that counts. Sonys online version sucks balls
I know a lot of people who dumped their Wii's and PlayStation's too play live with a 360 with their friends online. They get a few beers and have small events and enjoy team play from their own home.
I paid £36 for SC2 and its been well worth the value. The only people who moan about LAN are pirates. I dont see pros moaning about it,
You are completely incorrect. Sc1 died because Blizzard didn't support it. Hacks is what kept it alive. Players such as Idra, Incontrol, Day 9, Artosis and Tasteless (aka as the most famous members of our community) would be nothing without things such as iccup (which was illegal). Had it not been for iccup, BW may have died in the west, sc2 would have had far less hype and people like Day 9 wouldn't exist. If it weren't for hacks such as iccup, Idra would have become a physicist, day 9 a mathematician and Artosis would have kept to a job instead of practicing for Starcraft.
Every single pro gamer has complained about no lan. Don't speak on things you know nothing about.
Do you know what a LAN is? ICCup is Internet based isnt it where you connect to a central server so all it did was replace BNET, the principle is the same, a central point where people can connect and play together
As i said BNET might not be perfect and i suspect it will improve after HOTS. Don't forget over the coming years Internet latency will improve as technology improves,so think long term.
The world is coming together with the internet, its amazing, Look at WOW with its 40 man raids bring people from all over the region having fun
On August 15 2011 01:50 FiWiFaKi wrote: It's very tedious to use, and not very recommended for tournament use IMO. There have been less lag spikes and DC... And when using this LAN you have to accept your username will be "Slayer" and also it's important to understand they don't have an English version yet.
I was actually able to change my name very easily in StarFriend.
Also - its not that hard to setup, and they are releasing a stripped installer that is made for JUST lan play, no cinematics, campaign, etc. I think that THIS will be used in tournies.
On August 15 2011 01:49 GurZtly wrote: For me personaly lan is nothing i miss. I mean me and my 3 friends who play SC2 do not often play against each other cause it got kind of boring after some weeks, and so I want to play ladder... I see the need for Lan for the tournaments, but for the normal player... not.
+1, I don't share your love for ladder though... come to think of it, I don't play that much at all, so it doesn't bother me that LAN is missing but I watch a lot of tournaments, and so, if LAN will help eSports, I'm all for it!
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
On August 15 2011 01:50 FiWiFaKi wrote: It's very tedious to use, and not very recommended for tournament use IMO. There have been less lag spikes and DC... And when using this LAN you have to accept your username will be "Slayer" and also it's important to understand they don't have an English version yet.
I was actually able to change my name very easily in StarFriend.
Also - its not that hard to setup, and they are releasing a stripped installer that is made for JUST lan play, no cinematics, campaign, etc. I think that THIS will be used in tournies.
Any tourney that uses it will immediately have its license removed by Blizzard, any pro who participates in said tourney will have their bnet account banned and the tourney organisers will probably get sued as well.... so no. No one is going to use this
At least now Blizzard has no excuse for not having LAN. Not that their excuse was valid in the first place.
You're right. Preventing people all over the world from paying nothing for using your product you worked on for 5+ years is not a valid reason at all. I don't get why they don't just let people directly download games for free off of the developers website, it's not like those people need money, right?
Because Blizzard has removed LAN, and people have developed a LAN hack, it means that those who are less willing to pay with their money will have a greater product than the customer... That is so retarded.
Not really, they won't have good dedicated matchmaking or access to most maps, they'll just have LAN hosted on small, laggy servers or LAN with a couple of friends at LAN parties, anything big (as big as iCCup) will be immediately taken down by blizzard.
The only thing I can really see this changing is the Chinese/Korean scene, which might lock itself away from the world yet again by hosting their tournaments through LAN (as blizzard really has no power there). I can really only see this being bad for e-sports.
No, but I don't support the reasoning of "We don't want to spend time finding a proper way to get LAN for tournaments so guess we'll just remove it."
They're afraid of it leaking. Not too lazy to make it. Should be pretty obvious.
I really don't see how this puts any pressure on Blizzard to put in a lan mode. Blizzard is involved with all of the major tournaments I just don't see them using a "hack" in their face.
Funny, I was just watching the blizz match between select and sheth, and it's lagging during a bunker rush xD To be fair, it doesn't happen often, but it's a problem that shouldn't exist at all, if they had added LAN support at least for tourneys. I'm sure they can figure out a way to make it worth their time.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I must say I have a very hard time understanding what point you're trying to make, maybe I'm stupid. So because they have a chance of winning 50k (which happens at a live event with no need for online play at all) there is no reason to have LAN, or what?
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I couldn't care less about lan. I wish they had 10 machines they could give out to tournament organizers with bnet on it though. The lag is in pretty much any mlg.
Blizzard no longer has an excuse! They've been hiding behind the "well we don't have the man-force for that right now" forever. Their only real excuse now is the piracy thing, and the fact that it's been hacked already kind of invalidates that.
On August 15 2011 01:49 ImsorryKarelyn wrote: Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
According to their statements (about DIII for example) they have said that their goal is to sort of create a centralized platform where people can play together...so it's sort of like the new shit with Facebook/Twitter etc. Everyone should be online while playing etc..
IMO I think that the LAN support isn't necessary because most people are going to play online. Those individual who are crying the most to use LAN are probably folks who wants to play with their friends without buying the game.
In tournaments environment however, I think that LAN would be best. What blizzard should do imo is just set up a private Bnet server for tournament that they sponsor like MLG, Blizzcon, GSL. If the server is in the same network as the player it will be basically like LAN.
Iam not sure why people think its ok to force them to do something. First of all is it ok for a group of people to blackmail a company(blizzard) for something they want(Lan). Iam sure they will release it and on the same note iam sure there will be cross regions for the world(a world ladder). Give them a chance, they have just spent a lot of money, time and passion to make a game that so many people looked forward to see. Stop trying to force an issue and let them do there job. As for Lan id like to see it but iam prepared to wait a while. Trust in blizzard and youll get something better than u expected. Starcraft to broodwar is proof no?
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I must say I have a very hard time understanding what point you're trying to make, maybe I'm stupid. So because they have a chance of winning 50k (which happens at a live event with no need for online play at all) there is no reason to have LAN, or what?
I understand your argument for Pro Tourneys to have LAN. The problem is if Blizzard developed a separate version it would be stolen and released within days, movies are hacked and released weeks before their official release.
Improving the DND in BNET will help with lag spikes where the player is spammed. Most tourneys now use dedicated accounts to get around this problem anyways.
Long term it is better that all the games and community stay with BNET. Its the focal point for ladder play, its reasonably hack free.
Don't forget Blizzard need to make money to support this game (£100 million to develop and create it?) and maintain the servers patching etc.
PC gaming is dying a death due to pirating . Steam and BNET etc are the only way game companies will stay with the PC format. Do you really want to see SC2 on XBOX only . Square Enix tried that with Supreme Commander and it was a disaster.
I hope this explains how i feel. Its not some random rant
If you've watched any SotG (especially from last year), any time they rehash a tournament where there were problems (GOM World Championships, Blizzcon 2010, MLG Dallas, and several more) every host and guest has agreed that Blizzard should add LAN.
incontrol, Day9 (yes, even Day9), JP (not a pro, just an influential voice), IdrA, Artosis, Tyler, Jinro, TLO, and so on. SEVERAL people have you given you names, and even links to interviews where those named people SAY it.
You're just refusing to admit you're wrong.
EDIT: I'm responding primarily to your insistence that pros don't think there should be LAN. That's just absolutely false.
Your argument about whether there should be a LAN version, whether pros want it or otherwise, is a separate issue that maybe you're not necessarily wrong about. But the current situation, for eSPORTS, is not the solution.
well most locations where touraments are held have a terrible good evil internet, and i have seen more cable got pulled issues then internet issues, sooo i would say ... who cares ? I guess blizzard already working on a way to track it so the people that are not paranoid will soon have a banned account xD . (probably not but it would be funny).
Only problem was often when they did it for the first time, which is a bit meh for starting events, but who needs lan there, stream is dead as well when the internet goes poof .
The only good point of lan is that there is less delay, the problem is if you can't train in lan enviroment, it won't do anything good if the tournament uses lan delay instead of bnet delay :3. So if they would sweep in lan for everyone, the houses could train in lan. Would fail at online tournaments but roflstomp at offline tournaments. At the end using one delay gives us more fun games :3. (well can't do anything about the regions). I don't mind lan delay really, it makes some micro moves possible, that are impossible without, so it looks cooler sometimes. But sc2 don't really need it. Getting used to one continual same lag is easier then switching lags all the time ^.^
On August 15 2011 04:02 zarepath wrote: If you've watched any SotG (especially from last year), any time they rehash a tournament where there were problems (GOM World Championships, Blizzcon 2010, MLG Dallas, and several more) every host and guest has agreed that Blizzard should add LAN.
incontrol, Day9 (yes, even Day9), JP (not a pro, just an influential voice), IdrA, Artosis, Tyler, Jinro, TLO, and so on. SEVERAL people have you given you names, and even links to interviews where those named people SAY it.
You're just refusing to admit you're wrong.
EDIT: I'm responding primarily to your insistence that pros don't think there should be LAN. That's just absolutely false.
Your argument about whether there should be a LAN version, whether pros want it or otherwise, is a separate issue that maybe you're not necessarily wrong about. But the current situation, for eSPORTS, is not the solution.
Exactly. People have just given up on mentioning it because it seems like it is a dead end.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
guys stop arguing with this troll lol! People gave him names and he's still asking for them rofl. Troll on brother!
The arguments in this thread against having LAN support are very silly. Yes, most of the time people are going to play online and not use LAN, but people would like to have LAN support to play without lag against friends, either in small groups, in medium-sized LANs, large LANs, or at tournaments. Its pretty stupid that I can't take my laptop to a friends place and play him without the data literally going halfway around the world when I'm a couple of meters away from him. Likewise, those who host LANs with friends (I used to go to them every other weekend a few years ago) don't have the option of LAN gaming.
Added to this fact is that medium-sized LANs are often at venues which don't have easily accessible internet, so that essentially means you can't play at all. And then you have the giant tournaments like MLG which clearly suffer from latency issues through no fault of their own.
There is simply no convincing argument for a lack of LAN support outside of piracy. None whatsoever. LAN support adds options for gamers, and is the absolutely best way to run a tournament. That's not even debatable, even if the servers were in a building a block away. I can respect Blizzard's choice to not support LAN for piracy reasons, but lets not pretend its for any other reason at all. "Delivering the best multiplayer experience" includes LAN support without a doubt.
Are there seriously ppl who think that Blizzard didnt add LAN support cuz they didnt know how to do it or cuz it would have been too much work?^^
Blizzard made the decision - hopefully after having thought about it for a long long time - to not add it and I guess they wont change their mind... (if they do, it would be almost as stupid as making the decision in the first place, cuz it means that they didnt really think about that they wanted to achieve with their decision)
And still, every eSports fan should ofc wanna want the addition of LAN support, cuz not having it is obv total bullshit for the sport.
At least now Blizzard has no excuse for not having LAN. Not that their excuse was valid in the first place.
You're right. Preventing people all over the world from paying nothing for using your product you worked on for 5+ years is not a valid reason at all. I don't get why they don't just let people directly download games for free off of the developers website, it's not like those people need money, right?
Because Blizzard has removed LAN, and people have developed a LAN hack, it means that those who are less willing to pay with their money will have a greater product than the customer... That is so retarded.
Not really, they won't have good dedicated matchmaking or access to most maps, they'll just have LAN hosted on small, laggy servers or LAN with a couple of friends at LAN parties, anything big (as big as iCCup) will be immediately taken down by blizzard.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I must say I have a very hard time understanding what point you're trying to make, maybe I'm stupid. So because they have a chance of winning 50k (which happens at a live event with no need for online play at all) there is no reason to have LAN, or what?
I understand your argument for Pro Tourneys to have LAN. The problem is if Blizzard developed a separate version it would be stolen and released within days, movies are hacked and released weeks before their official release.
Improving the DND in BNET will help with lag spikes where the player is spammed. Most tourneys now use dedicated accounts to get around this problem anyways.
Long term it is better that all the games and community stay with BNET. Its the focal point for ladder play, its reasonably hack free.
Don't forget Blizzard need to make money to support this game (£100 million to develop and create it?) and maintain the servers patching etc.
PC gaming is dying a death due to pirating . Steam and BNET etc are the only way game companies will stay with the PC format. Do you really want to see SC2 on XBOX only . Square Enix tried that with Supreme Commander and it was a disaster.
I hope this explains how i feel. Its not some random rant
Go look at a game like Galactic Civilizations II, which was produced by a small studio and sold very well despite the fact that it had almost no anti-piracy measures (by design of the developers; had no disc protection, didn't need the disc to play, and you only needed the CD-key to get updates). Sure, piracy doesn't help game developers, but what hurts game developers more is the number of truly terrible games that are produced and sold at exorbitant prices. iTunes and Netflix, as well as games like LoL and recently-made-F2P LOTR Online have shown that people are willing to pay for content they like if its reasonably priced, and that the artists/developers can still do very well out of it.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I must say I have a very hard time understanding what point you're trying to make, maybe I'm stupid. So because they have a chance of winning 50k (which happens at a live event with no need for online play at all) there is no reason to have LAN, or what?
I understand your argument for Pro Tourneys to have LAN. The problem is if Blizzard developed a separate version it would be stolen and released within days, movies are hacked and released weeks before their official release.
Improving the DND in BNET will help with lag spikes where the player is spammed. Most tourneys now use dedicated accounts to get around this problem anyways.
Long term it is better that all the games and community stay with BNET. Its the focal point for ladder play, its reasonably hack free.
Don't forget Blizzard need to make money to support this game (£100 million to develop and create it?) and maintain the servers patching etc.
PC gaming is dying a death due to pirating . Steam and BNET etc are the only way game companies will stay with the PC format. Do you really want to see SC2 on XBOX only . Square Enix tried that with Supreme Commander and it was a disaster.
I hope this explains how i feel. Its not some random rant
pc gaming is certainly not dying due to pirating. lol you can pirate console games too, you can pirate sc2 too (just with no online support).
i had a hacked xbox for a long time, it didn't change the fact that i bought games (that had online support and worth buying). most of the other games i just tried them out to see if i liked it and that's about it.
friend owns a hacked 360 too, so he can't activate xbox live with it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't buy games -- in fact he has another nonhacked 360 that he uses to play the games that he wants to play online/netflix/etc...
big deal. those people can't play online, if they want to just play the game with a few friends, i don't see the problem actually.
Really? Did you miss out on Starcraft 1, where Starcraft was huge in Korea, except about 5% of the players actually bought legitimate copies? Not a big deal.
Piracy is huge in Asia. They didn't refuse to add LAN because a couple of kids in the west would pirate it while 95% of the people would still just buy the game.
There was already a thread about this. No tournament will use it for fear that Blizzard would intervene. There has been a working Chinese Lan Hack for 6-7 months now, and no one uses it. That's not going to change and we have to wait until 2 expansions are out, and sales drop.
big deal. those people can't play online, if they want to just play the game with a few friends, i don't see the problem actually.
Really? Did you miss out on Starcraft 1, where Starcraft was huge in Korea, except about 5% of the players actually bought legitimate copies? Not a big deal.
Piracy is huge in Asia. They didn't refuse to add LAN because a couple of kids in the west would pirate it while 95% of the people would still just buy the game.
ya and without all those kids playing the game across LAN, the sc2 scene wouldn't even exist.
i would venture to say the starcraft would only enjoy a fraction of its current popularity because of that.
big deal. those people can't play online, if they want to just play the game with a few friends, i don't see the problem actually.
Really? Did you miss out on Starcraft 1, where Starcraft was huge in Korea, except about 5% of the players actually bought legitimate copies? Not a big deal.
Piracy is huge in Asia. They didn't refuse to add LAN because a couple of kids in the west would pirate it while 95% of the people would still just buy the game.
Eh, I think most SC players in Korea played via PC Cafes, where I would imagine piracy is less of an issue.
Also, SC1 sold the most copies in Korea........ The 5% sounds way more like China than Korea.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I must say I have a very hard time understanding what point you're trying to make, maybe I'm stupid. So because they have a chance of winning 50k (which happens at a live event with no need for online play at all) there is no reason to have LAN, or what?
I understand your argument for Pro Tourneys to have LAN. The problem is if Blizzard developed a separate version it would be stolen and released within days, movies are hacked and released weeks before their official release.
Improving the DND in BNET will help with lag spikes where the player is spammed. Most tourneys now use dedicated accounts to get around this problem anyways.
Long term it is better that all the games and community stay with BNET. Its the focal point for ladder play, its reasonably hack free.
Don't forget Blizzard need to make money to support this game (£100 million to develop and create it?) and maintain the servers patching etc.
PC gaming is dying a death due to pirating . Steam and BNET etc are the only way game companies will stay with the PC format. Do you really want to see SC2 on XBOX only . Square Enix tried that with Supreme Commander and it was a disaster.
I hope this explains how i feel. Its not some random rant
pc gaming is certainly not dying due to pirating. lol you can pirate console games too, you can pirate sc2 too (just with no online support).
i had a hacked xbox for a long time, it didn't change the fact that i bought games (that had online support and worth buying). most of the other games i just tried them out to see if i liked it and that's about it.
friend owns a hacked 360 too, so he can't activate xbox live with it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't buy games -- in fact he has another nonhacked 360 that he uses to play the games that he wants to play online/netflix/etc...
There's a huge barrier of entry for console pirating in that you need to mod your console (often costing nearly 100$+), on the PC anyone can pirate a game easily without anything extra.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I must say I have a very hard time understanding what point you're trying to make, maybe I'm stupid. So because they have a chance of winning 50k (which happens at a live event with no need for online play at all) there is no reason to have LAN, or what?
I understand your argument for Pro Tourneys to have LAN. The problem is if Blizzard developed a separate version it would be stolen and released within days, movies are hacked and released weeks before their official release.
Improving the DND in BNET will help with lag spikes where the player is spammed. Most tourneys now use dedicated accounts to get around this problem anyways.
Long term it is better that all the games and community stay with BNET. Its the focal point for ladder play, its reasonably hack free.
Don't forget Blizzard need to make money to support this game (£100 million to develop and create it?) and maintain the servers patching etc.
PC gaming is dying a death due to pirating . Steam and BNET etc are the only way game companies will stay with the PC format. Do you really want to see SC2 on XBOX only . Square Enix tried that with Supreme Commander and it was a disaster.
I hope this explains how i feel. Its not some random rant
pc gaming is certainly not dying due to pirating. lol you can pirate console games too, you can pirate sc2 too (just with no online support).
i had a hacked xbox for a long time, it didn't change the fact that i bought games (that had online support and worth buying). most of the other games i just tried them out to see if i liked it and that's about it.
friend owns a hacked 360 too, so he can't activate xbox live with it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't buy games -- in fact he has another nonhacked 360 that he uses to play the games that he wants to play online/netflix/etc...
There's a huge barrier of entry for console pirating in that you need to mod your console (often costing nearly 100$+), on the PC anyone can pirate a game easily without anything extra.
more like 30 dollars and the ability to follow simple instructions online. in fact pirating your console opens up way more options than pirate a PC game, since you can effectively turn your console into a mini computer/entertainment center.
On August 15 2011 02:45 UniversalMind wrote: Hopefully blizzard shuts this down and sues the people before any real damage is done, there are reasons why blizzard has not released Lan and its a valid reason
Its not blizzards fault people like to steal, if people didn't steal you think we wouldn't have Lan? blame the thieves not blizzard
There's no stealing if you already have the game...? You merely don't connect to the blizzard server, but directly to someone else.
Random ppl can't really message you either...or it does make it much harder...
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
What kind of a 11 year old post is this? Go to any of the LR threads for "LAN" tournaments, you think any professional wants to play in a lagged out environment and have to even re-game because of DCs? - Tyler/PainUser, Jinro/TT1, Dimaga/MVP, Huk/Idra.
You mean the same pros who were earning 50 bucks in a LAN tourney before SC2 came along, who now have the chance to win upto 50K .No one still haven't had anyone support their argument by naming the players.
I must say I have a very hard time understanding what point you're trying to make, maybe I'm stupid. So because they have a chance of winning 50k (which happens at a live event with no need for online play at all) there is no reason to have LAN, or what?
I understand your argument for Pro Tourneys to have LAN. The problem is if Blizzard developed a separate version it would be stolen and released within days, movies are hacked and released weeks before their official release.
Improving the DND in BNET will help with lag spikes where the player is spammed. Most tourneys now use dedicated accounts to get around this problem anyways.
Long term it is better that all the games and community stay with BNET. Its the focal point for ladder play, its reasonably hack free.
Don't forget Blizzard need to make money to support this game (£100 million to develop and create it?) and maintain the servers patching etc.
PC gaming is dying a death due to pirating . Steam and BNET etc are the only way game companies will stay with the PC format. Do you really want to see SC2 on XBOX only . Square Enix tried that with Supreme Commander and it was a disaster.
I hope this explains how i feel. Its not some random rant
pc gaming is certainly not dying due to pirating. lol you can pirate console games too, you can pirate sc2 too (just with no online support).
i had a hacked xbox for a long time, it didn't change the fact that i bought games (that had online support and worth buying). most of the other games i just tried them out to see if i liked it and that's about it.
friend owns a hacked 360 too, so he can't activate xbox live with it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't buy games -- in fact he has another nonhacked 360 that he uses to play the games that he wants to play online/netflix/etc...
There's a huge barrier of entry for console pirating in that you need to mod your console (often costing nearly 100$+), on the PC anyone can pirate a game easily without anything extra.
more like 30 dollars and the ability to follow simple instructions online
Definitely depends, Wii is pretty easy, but for Xbox and PS3 it gets complicated fast, I saw 15 page Tutorials for an Xbox Crack with schematics and shit, but maybe that's outdated now
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.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Name them. prove you point !! or you are just talking crap
Forgive me for I have not read the entire thread but I just couldn't stand it anymore. There no need to name them as it's probably close to 90% of the pros that are missing the lan function. Have you even meet one of them? Don't think so. Otherwise you'd not say such a stupid and very ignorant statement. On topic, while I understand why they don't want to support the LAN function due to piracy I just fail to see why they don't want to allow it on live tournaments. Really is that too much to ask?
The thing is that people buy games that lack LAN support. Thus it isn't a feature the developer needs to care about. If people didn't buy them, then they would care. Does anybody have actual figures of people not buying SC2 due to it not having LAN? I would assume the figure isn't very high, thus it is a feature that from a short term view has no benefit. Long term they want to create a cross game experience. So they have that covered as well, they just need for that experience to be good enough to offset the long term ill will ignoring a subset of your customers generates.
I honestly don't care about any of the Blizzard products that are slated for release in the near future, so I can't affect their sales.
I think eventually, blizz will have to make a lan service
the main argument against it is piracy
simply use bnet auth system, normally every lan have internet access, everyone can login in bnet and host a game over local network... this is not rocket science
Lan game is definitively a good method to "democratizes" the game... who didnt played a multiplayer demo of a game (could be sc starter...) in a school computer lab? who didnt bring their PC @ friends house for a lan weekend? war2 and spawn cd make me bough the game back then
the only issue I can think of is blizz would loss their so precious total control over the game... wich is seem to be already the case anyway
Reminds me a bit of the interview coL.CatZ had with Dustin Browder. Basically the impression I got was that Blizzard isn't making this game for the competitive scene but still catering to the general public re: ladder maps. The same can be said for LAN. LAN in general is a huge demand for the competitive scene in order to have latency-free play, but in the end Blizzard isn't going to bend for those who play competitively; it's more concerned with the general public who would exploit LAN.
As for myself, I believe that if Blizzard wants this game to have the longevity and devotion that was fostered for Brood War, they should move towards catering to the competitive scene. Nobody plays pee wee American football without being inspired by the NFL. The general public needs to have the professional scene to inspire them to continue to play the game.
hack sounds so bad, crack sounds better but even if he keeps going and blizzard doesnt release it couldnt they just wtfpwn their whole project with a lawsuit?
It really boils down to control. Blizzard adds LAN and they'll lose control over the game. Not necessarily just to pirates but to potential KESPAs etc.
It sucks but from a business point of view I think Blizzard is willing to accept the hate it gets/lost business/whatever to mitigate the risk of losing control over the game. Now whether them losing control over the game will result in real loss in revenue or not is really a different discussion. They believe it will and so either you have to convince them otherwise if you want them to release LAN.
It sucks for the community but they're not a charitable organization and they haven't gotten this far as a company being complete morons. Community feedback is important but gaming communities need to accept they will not change a business' mind on certain things by simply saying we want it this way.
There needs to be real analysis/studies presented to make a case for LAN. Simply saying "it lagged at so and so tournament" will not convince them. There needs to be a real case presented where it shows quantifiable value even if it is based on good faith. e.g. 1. Add LAN 2. Results in more stability during tournaments ... n. Leads to higher profit
Moment that kind of case is made and each step can be demonstrated in a business setting to be true either through historical precedent or whatever, they'll probably add LAN. No company wants to be the guinea pig with this kind of money on the line. At the moment they're willing to accept revenue losses from the lack of LAN than risking adding it.
I personally don't fully buy piracy is the sole reason but it doesn't matter. As a community we need to present reasons that benefit them to add LAN, not "I want to be able to play at my cottage where there is no internet" or "It lagged at so and so tournament". Because internally they'll say people playing in non internet situations this day and age is a small % of potential customers and they'll accept a 1 in 500 (random number I pulled out of my ass) case of where LAN would have prevented a bad situation in a tournament.
edit: Also for those that will say longevity of the game. I agree but how do you prove it. There are games some with LAN and some without that last a long time. In their minds (don't know for sure, could be wrong) LAN has nothing to do with the potential success/longevity of the game.
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?
Why do people keep saying silly things like if they had LAN they would instantly have zero sales and it would be like giving away the game for free? Just about every game ever made can be pirated so why do companies keep making them with very large budgets? It's because games still sell a lot even if they can be pirated. Blizzard "made broodwar free" with Lan from the start and somehow sold 11 million copies and half of those are from Korea for real money how is that possible? There are games that sold even more then that and they could all be pirated.
The single player of starcraft 2 (and every game ever) can and has been pirated a lot why is blizzard wasting resources making a new campaign for HotS when they are just giving it away from free? How could they possibly make back the money spent on such a thing?
400.000 players with this LAN "Hack" sounds like a house number that should give blizzard an idea how important LAN actual is.
If they think peops will not "pirate" the game ; than the game should actual have LAN, rather than forcing someone to "crack" the game, just to get LAN (as the game itself does not support it).
Ironically the idea of less piracy by removing LAN totally failed and even gets in the opposite direction ; peops pirate the game just to get something they otherwise do not get.
No matter how great the game is , in a bunch of points, Blizzard totally failed ...
On August 15 2011 04:01 Topdoller wrote: PC gaming is dying a death due to pirating . Steam and BNET etc are the only way game companies will stay with the PC format. Do you really want to see SC2 on XBOX only . Square Enix tried that with Supreme Commander and it was a disaster.
I hope this explains how i feel. Its not some random rant
I've been hearing this wrong argument for now 20 years, it was BS back then and it is BS now. PC gaming has not and will not die to consoles because of piracy, and I'd advise you to inform yourself or bring proof instead of just repeating this type of industry propaganda.
It may be hard to understand but NOT having LAN support have few benefits as well.
All games are played via Battle.net (DOH!) This means blizzard has access to every game played on this planet. Yes even custom games. At any moment they have all replays for their statistics.
It is harder/riskier to create hacks. If you want to test/create one, you have to test it online.
****
What blizzard should introduce is some sort of peer-to-peer games in custom mode. You would have to connect to battle.net to create game, but once it would be created all traffic would be only between players (p2p) = no internet connection needed to play if you would play on LAN.
I've never understood why Blizzard doesn't have special LAN versions of SC2 that they make themselves in small batches to use in big tournaments. They would be looked after and the problem of piracy isnt a big problem when the only people with access to it are in the booth in front of you.
On August 15 2011 06:11 BigFan wrote: Interesting hack, but, I won't be using it. I don't have much use for LAN since I mostly ladder but I can see its use in a tourney
Its not just for tourneys though, Lan programs can make your battle.net experience much faster since there is a delay with battle.net but not with lan. So having ladder would benefit custom games to practice also. It is a whole different experience playing with the bnet delay and without it. Most people are desensitized to bnet delay but there is a huge difference when playing on lan mode
Should of been implemented from the start along with a ton of other cool battle net features. Instead of some long winded rant I'll just say I'm not going to be downloaded a hacked version, but I hope that Blizzard implements LAN sooner than later.
You guys are still missing the point. When you want to convince someone to change. You have to convince them its in their benefit to change as well not just yours.
Ok, so they got a lan hack out. Some people will use it, no big deal from Blizzard's POV. BUT NO TOURNAMENT will use it... Now, will internet café dare use the lan hack? This is a crucial question that can determine the viability of the hack, and how much impact it will have. If Blizzard has the laws of the country with them and can sue café, then it will most likely not happen.
So, in the end, the hackers failed, and Blizzard still wins.
We can discuss all we want. In the end Blizzard makes the decision. Its not like we are refusing to buy SC2 because of lack of Lan, in fact SC2 sold some solid number. Blizzard isn't a democracy or anything and is not accountable to its clients. They'll release HOTS with no lan support, and we'll buy it. We can yell as much as we like, it won't change anything.
Now, I don't really care if there's a lan or not. But from Blizz POV, they determined that lan could translate into less sales. I'm no expert so I don't know if that conclusion is logical. But their new BNET, as much as we can hate it, allows them to control every users and basically prevent cd key generator. So from their POV, this is a big success and a lan could threaten it.
I think we whine too much about lag. Sure, it ruins the 'perfect match'. But we should threat lag as weather in some sport. Ever seen a match of Tennis interrupted by rain? Ever seen a football game with extreme weather conditions? Ever seen a soccer game with a bad terrain? A hockey game on a bad ice? It happens in real sports. Why can't gamers take the lag/dc (as long as both side lag ; not talking about cross region tournament where one side lags while the other doesn't)? ; its part of the game. Let me insist that as long as both side suffer, it shouldn't be a problem of equity in the competition.
Not sure about this, but you'd think that in the scenario of a large enough competitive gaming scene, Blizzard/Activision would generate more income through licensing and cuts from ad revenue then through actual game sales.
I suppose having a more locked down client allows tighter control over tournaments and what not because blizz can disconnect clients of non-compliant organizers in certain cases rather than going through courts.
Anyways though I don't see a cracked version as being good for us at this stage of the game. Regardless of anything else, it just encourages non-compliance and a more antagonistic relationship between certain portions of the community and Blizzard. Of course the argument could be made that this should have been anticipated from the start...
Guess I don't have a single perspective on the issue, but it makes me feel uneasy.
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: I dont see pros moaning about it,
A lot of them actually wish there was LAN at big events. Especially since there were disconnects in the GSL and in Blizzcon
Latency aswell, Koreas tournaments are probably very close to lag free because they take place in Seoul and the servers are likely also there, atleast with WoW koreans played with ~1-2ms and found it impossible to compeat at foreign events even with moderate (50) ping.
This would make for much crisper gameplay, play a round of campaign if you need to remind yourself how sc2 is w/o lag.
On August 15 2011 02:29 RoyAlex wrote: Even if people figure out how to make a proper bug free LAN version of SC2, nobody would use it.
Progamers would not practice on it because they would get used to no delay and any legitimate leagues would of course not use a hacked SC2 version unsupported by blizzard to run their league.
I love when kids that apparently have never heard of brood war come on teamliquid and spew nonsense
On August 15 2011 02:29 RoyAlex wrote: Even if people figure out how to make a proper bug free LAN version of SC2, nobody would use it.
Progamers would not practice on it because they would get used to no delay and any legitimate leagues would of course not use a hacked SC2 version unsupported by blizzard to run their league.
I love when kids that apparently have never heard of brood war come on teamliquid and spew nonsense
Blizzard never interfered with Brood War (until SC2 came out). I don't see how his post was wrong. Any league which runs pirated LAN is going to get sued.
Think of the entire design and development period of sc2 as running a marathon. The adding of LAN functionality into the game is so simple that it wouldn't even represent a single step taken running the marathon.
My point? If blizzard is going to leave out something so simple, so easy to implement and also so integral to the game, there are plenty of people who are more than happy to release versions of or cracks for the game with said feature implemented. Since releasing these versions is probably illegal, it's going to get associated with the piracy scene and people are going to pirate the game much more readily.
Lack of LAN capability is the sole reason I never paid for sc2. I've been an absolutely diehard Blizzard fan since I was in first grade and my memorable experiences of Blizzard games have been 95% in a LAN environment.
On August 15 2011 07:07 paradox_ wrote: You guys are still missing the point. When you want to convince someone to change. You have to convince them its in their benefit to change as well not just yours.
The real problem is that bnet is kinda bad and it's the only game in town. If blizzard won't make the online experience (and the tournament latency), I can only hope it eventually gets "fixed" by someone else.
Honestly, I am getting frustrated of how bm people get while using the internet. Nobody has got the right to hack sc2 and add a lan modus. Blizzard made it very clear that they didnt want to add this into the game so people should just deal with it.
On August 15 2011 09:29 tibi wrote: Honestly, I am getting frustrated of how bm people get while using the internet. Nobody has got the right to hack sc2 and add a lan modus. Blizzard made it very clear that they didnt want to add this into the game so people should just deal with it.
It's the height of arrogance to think that someone disagreeing with you amounts to them being badly mannered.
I guess that's just a language quirk of the starcraft community.
On August 15 2011 09:29 tibi wrote: Honestly, I am getting frustrated of how bm people get while using the internet. Nobody has got the right to hack sc2 and add a lan modus. Blizzard made it very clear that they didnt want to add this into the game so people should just deal with it.
Haha, yes very, ''bm''. We only want the most basic form of multiplayer functionality, but hey, I guess we are bad mannered for wanting that.
Since people were smart enough to put this on the bnet forums a couple times, I'm sure Blizzard will have an easy time banning any account which has this hack activated. I don't think you can get any closer to a ToS violation than this. At least they could have called it "LAN Custom game" or anything to at least make it sound legit.
As for the actual hack itself, Blizzard decided on not going for LAN, so that's it. Everyone now plays under the same conditions. If you are at a major event, you will have the same amount of lag as your opponent, so there is no bias to a certain player. And it prevents players from installing maphacks and whatnot on their own PC without getting caught by bnet eventually.
Any previous game by Blizzard in the bnet 1.0 / LAN era was hacked to pieces. With all games being hosted on Bnet, they have been able to keep stuff amazingly clean. So I don't think piracy is the only reason it is Bnet only.
On August 15 2011 09:29 tibi wrote: Honestly, I am getting frustrated of how bm people get while using the internet. Nobody has got the right to hack sc2 and add a lan modus. Blizzard made it very clear that they didnt want to add this into the game so people should just deal with it.
It's the height of arrogance to think that someone disagreeing with you amounts to them being badly mannered.
Oh, it has nothing to do with disagreeing with me. I would enjoy a lan mode as well, but still i dont think its right to force it by hacking the game.
Haha, yes very, ''bm''. We only want the most basic form of multiplayer functionality, but hey, I guess we are bad mannered for wanting that.
Well, you shouldnt get it unless blizzard adds it to the game. I want many things, like a new phone f.e. but I dont go out and rob a market to get it...
The hack is.. well not worth it unless you lose your internet or have a spare computer. Why? Because installing the hack doesn't allow you to play your legal copy online. Thanks but no thanks, there is NO reason why we should start using LAN if we can't even use our legal copies to play online. Your full copy of the game exists but you have to back up all your b.net settings in your documents and you can't play both games.
Also this doesn't seem viable for tournament play because it's illegal and is a huge hassle to deal with.
But... the main questions remains, do you REALLY want LAN?
On a more serious note, it's only a question of time before someone releases a stable LAN hack for SC2. why? because it's retarded from a consumer point of view not to HAVE ONE!
Haha, yes very, ''bm''. We only want the most basic form of multiplayer functionality, but hey, I guess we are bad mannered for wanting that.
Well, you shouldnt get it unless blizzard adds it to the game. I want many things, like a new phone f.e. but I dont go out and rob a market to get it...
Bad comparison, because you already paid for the phone.
A better comparison would be if your phone lack basic functionality like Root access. So you hack it to add the root access and allow more options.
On August 15 2011 09:43 emc wrote: The hack is.. well not worth it unless you lose your internet or have a spare computer. Why? Because installing the hack doesn't allow you to play your legal copy online. Thanks but no thanks, there is NO reason why we should start using LAN if we can't even use our legal copies to play online. Your full copy of the game exists but you have to back up all your b.net settings in your documents and you can't play both games.
Also this doesn't seem viable for tournament play because it's illegal and is a huge hassle to deal with.
you can easily have 2 copies of sc2 installed. one for lan and one for online play. and yea. it's not suitable for tournament play because blizzard will sue any tournament that uses it. which will be depressing. because it means we will never see the highest level of play starcraft 2 has to offer for aslong as we are restricted to playing online. (and my SC2BW mod will be forever crippled by the latency)
Haha, yes very, ''bm''. We only want the most basic form of multiplayer functionality, but hey, I guess we are bad mannered for wanting that.
Well, you shouldnt get it unless blizzard adds it to the game. I want many things, like a new phone f.e. but I dont go out and rob a market to get it...
May I ask what I'm stealing for LAN functionality? What you just told me is a ridiculous comparison.
On August 15 2011 09:43 emc wrote: The hack is.. well not worth it unless you lose your internet or have a spare computer. Why? Because installing the hack doesn't allow you to play your legal copy online. Thanks but no thanks, there is NO reason why we should start using LAN if we can't even use our legal copies to play online. Your full copy of the game exists but you have to back up all your b.net settings in your documents and you can't play both games.
Also this doesn't seem viable for tournament play because it's illegal and is a huge hassle to deal with.
you can easily have 2 copies of sc2 installed. one for lan and one for online play. and yea. it's not suitable for tournament play because blizzard will sue any tournament that uses it. which will be depressing. because it means we will never see the highest level of play starcraft 2 has to offer for aslong as we are restricted to playing online. (and my SC2BW mod will be forever crippled by the latency)
From what I read, and I was reading a lot into the LAN hack, you can't play both games at the same time unless you actively backup your legal files in the documents area and replace the legal files with the hacked files every time you wish to play on lan. I downloaded all of the files and copied the instructions to a txt document so if I ever lose internet then I can play LAN but, is it really worth it? Perhaps for people who live in a team house and can practice with each other but it's not worth it for people like me who can only play SC2 online. When I build a 2nd backup computer then I will probably install the LAN hack but for now, doesn't seem worth it.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
On August 15 2011 09:43 emc wrote: The hack is.. well not worth it unless you lose your internet or have a spare computer. Why? Because installing the hack doesn't allow you to play your legal copy online. Thanks but no thanks, there is NO reason why we should start using LAN if we can't even use our legal copies to play online. Your full copy of the game exists but you have to back up all your b.net settings in your documents and you can't play both games.
Also this doesn't seem viable for tournament play because it's illegal and is a huge hassle to deal with.
you can easily have 2 copies of sc2 installed. one for lan and one for online play. and yea. it's not suitable for tournament play because blizzard will sue any tournament that uses it. which will be depressing. because it means we will never see the highest level of play starcraft 2 has to offer for aslong as we are restricted to playing online. (and my SC2BW mod will be forever crippled by the latency)
From what I read, and I was reading a lot into the LAN hack, you can't play both games at the same time unless you actively backup your legal files in the documents area and replace the legal files with the hacked files every time you wish to play on lan. I downloaded all of the files and copied the instructions to a txt document so if I ever lose internet then I can play LAN but, is it really worth it? Perhaps for people who live in a team house and can practice with each other but it's not worth it for people like me who can only play SC2 online. When I build a 2nd backup computer then I will probably install the LAN hack but for now, doesn't seem worth it.
it's not worth it currently. it's a very basic rudimentary and extremely limited lan functionality. it's more of a proof of concept project right now. it simply means it's possible. maybe one day we'll get iccup2? we can hope.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
if lan enabled tournaments start pulling out more entertaining games than mlg or iem you can bet blizzard will see massive pressure from these organisations to change.
On August 15 2011 09:29 tibi wrote: Honestly, I am getting frustrated of how bm people get while using the internet. Nobody has got the right to hack sc2 and add a lan modus. Blizzard made it very clear that they didnt want to add this into the game so people should just deal with it.
How is that in any way bad manner?
it's horribly inconsiderate of the people who play online, dude.
On August 15 2011 09:29 tibi wrote: Honestly, I am getting frustrated of how bm people get while using the internet. Nobody has got the right to hack sc2 and add a lan modus. Blizzard made it very clear that they didnt want to add this into the game so people should just deal with it.
How is that in any way bad manner?
it's horribly inconsiderate of the people who play online, dude.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
if lan enabled tournaments start pulling out more entertaining games than mlg or iem you can bet blizzard will see massive pressure from these organisations to change.
We can hope right? But they're already under pressure whenever we see lag during MLG and even GSL. This has been an ongoing complaint from practically %100 of the community since day 1 but blizzard still hasn't added LAN. What makes you think MLG will start using LAN? What makes you think MLG will want to risk losing their blizzard license? SC2 is too much of a gold mine to simply let it go because they wanted a bit more reliability with their main game.
Frankly? I never see this hack going anywhere because it can never be legal and it won't ever be backed by big LAN events. The only way LAN will be possible at major LANs is if blizzard does it or releases a special LAN mode for tournaments only.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
if lan enabled tournaments start pulling out more entertaining games than mlg or iem you can bet blizzard will see massive pressure from these organisations to change.
We can hope right? But they're already under pressure whenever we see lag during MLG and even GSL. This has been an ongoing complaint from practically %100 of the community since day 1 but blizzard still hasn't added LAN. What makes you think MLG will start using LAN? What makes you think MLG will want to risk losing their blizzard license? SC2 is too much of a gold mine to simply let it go because they wanted a bit more reliability with their main game.
Frankly? I never see this hack going anywhere because it can never be legal and it won't ever be backed by big LAN events. The only way LAN will be possible at major LANs is if blizzard does it or releases a special LAN mode for tournaments only.
doesn't really matter. it's impossible to speculate. we'll see what happens.
On August 15 2011 10:13 Buzerio wrote: why do people think the fact its illegal will have much of a reason it cant get popular, ICCUP was illegal and people still used that.
ICCUP allowed people to play their LEGAL version of the game ONLINE. If ICCUP was LAN only it would've never gotten as big because let's face it, there is a better chance of seeing more people play online than at LAN.
Also blizzard wasn't as anal about BW as they are with SC2. It's the reason why they didn't add LAN because they wanted to control everything SC2. I could be wrong on this one.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
if lan enabled tournaments start pulling out more entertaining games than mlg or iem you can bet blizzard will see massive pressure from these organisations to change.
We can hope right? But they're already under pressure whenever we see lag during MLG and even GSL. This has been an ongoing complaint from practically %100 of the community since day 1 but blizzard still hasn't added LAN. What makes you think MLG will start using LAN? What makes you think MLG will want to risk losing their blizzard license? SC2 is too much of a gold mine to simply let it go because they wanted a bit more reliability with their main game.
Frankly? I never see this hack going anywhere because it can never be legal and it won't ever be backed by big LAN events. The only way LAN will be possible at major LANs is if blizzard does it or releases a special LAN mode for tournaments only.
doesn't really matter. it's impossible to speculate. we'll see what happens.
absolutely correct, I can't say %100 of what I say is true but that's just my opinion of reality. I'm hopeful but I'm not ignorant.
I think this hack shows great potential but I think there'd be even more acceptance if this hack allowed people to play over the internet without the use of b.net. It would allow online tournaments to use the hack and gain more popularity. As a LAN only mode it's much more limited and it's risky to throw big tournaments with big name players and risk having blizzard notified. If I owned a LAN center I wouldn't even take the risk of getting sued so I have respect for any LAN centers that actually wish to use the hack.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
if lan enabled tournaments start pulling out more entertaining games than mlg or iem you can bet blizzard will see massive pressure from these organisations to change.
doesn't really matter. it's impossible to speculate. we'll see what happens.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
if lan enabled tournaments start pulling out more entertaining games than mlg or iem you can bet blizzard will see massive pressure from these organisations to change.
doesn't really matter. it's impossible to speculate. we'll see what happens.
it's fun being a smartass i guess
*EDIT*
"it's fun having to eat your own words isn't it"
editing in my retarded response coz i dont feel like derailing this topic maybe i came to that conclusion myself? had i made my posts in opposite order than yes. you could make fun of me eating my words. but i came to that conclusion of it being impossible to speculate after discussing it for a few posts. i have no patience for this bullshit
On August 15 2011 10:13 Buzerio wrote: why do people think the fact its illegal will have much of a reason it cant get popular, ICCUP was illegal and people still used that.
ICCUP allowed people to play their LEGAL version of the game ONLINE. If ICCUP was LAN only it would've never gotten as big because let's face it, there is a better chance of seeing more people play online than at LAN.
.
ICCUP was
1. Avalable on Illegal Clients for free (one of which is avalable and has always been to download from ICCUPs webside)
2.Against the EULA
along with that its also Illegal to play and run the server for the same reasons its illegal to play and run a WoW private server (even if you own the game)
On August 15 2011 10:30 bgx wrote: im happy, someone has balls to fight with blizzard Activision
dont put the blame on Activision, Blizzard have said before that they work independant from activision, the idea of the thing is that everyone puts down the DRM and obvious money grabbing things to activision so Blizzard still get away with it, the games sell and both Activision and Blizzard get the money,
On August 15 2011 09:29 tibi wrote: Honestly, I am getting frustrated of how bm people get while using the internet. Nobody has got the right to hack sc2 and add a lan modus. Blizzard made it very clear that they didnt want to add this into the game so people should just deal with it.
How is that in any way bad manner?
it's horribly inconsiderate of the people who play online, dude.
One reason for LAN = piracy is because lan cafes will buy dozens of fakes and people will enjoy for years with Blizzard seeing no profit, only the cafe, for a copy 5% or less of the normal price.
LAN rules. You don't understand how much fun it is being boisterous and playing sc2 with your buddies next to you, and trashtalking them when fighting them right then and there, and how easy it is to give warnings and orders when you don't have to type
Agreed current DRM practices are generally stupid and do more harm than good but I wonder how many here would be willing to put their own work and intellectual property that's worth millions at risk (small or big) to provide a small % of your user base an option that they will only use for a small % of game play time.
On August 15 2011 10:54 maryelizbethwinstead wrote: One reason for LAN = piracy is because lan cafes will buy dozens of fakes and people will enjoy for years with Blizzard seeing no profit, only the cafe, for a copy 5% or less of the normal price.
LAN rules. You don't understand how much fun it is being boisterous and playing sc2 with your buddies next to you, and trashtalking them when fighting them right then and there, and how easy it is to give warnings and orders when you don't have to type
You can still have LAN parties...you just create games through B.net? I don't ever remember having a LAN party where there wasn't an internet connection available and this was when I was in high school like 7-8 years ago.
I can't imagine any one hosting a LAN party where an internet connection isn't available. Unless you're talking about those larger scale ones in warehouses etc, but those generally charge money so the point is moot.
On August 15 2011 10:03 Phyrful wrote: does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
EULA doesn't matter if you are in a basement and playing with friends. It matters for tournaments so we'll never see it used at an MLG or IEM but perhaps we'd see it in a free tournament at a small lan center that doesn't attract attention.
if lan enabled tournaments start pulling out more entertaining games than mlg or iem you can bet blizzard will see massive pressure from these organisations to change.
doesn't really matter. it's impossible to speculate. we'll see what happens.
Everytime a patch comes out, theres a whole bunch of whiners stamping their feet and saying they'll never play the game again, then everyone gets used to the changes and moves on.
These LAN crusaders are part of the entitled generation who just refuse to move on.
LAN = pirated copies = hurts profits
Its not 1997 any more.
I watch pro tourneys all the time, hundreds upon hundreds of games and I can count on my hand the amount of times I've seen a game "lag" out.
If I wanna play the guy next to me, I just use the net, it works.
if the difference between LAN and no LAN in SC2 is even 1/2 the difference it was in SCBW, then every game that's been played up til now has been a game with "massive lag" for all of you who are talking about how it only matters for the pros.
The no LAN is about piracy and control. Blizzard wants to have control over everyone playing their game at all times. This is so
A) they can ensure they can get a cut of every tournament if they are so inclined. B) Implement their map market system without people finding loopholes to bypass it (e.g. 3rd party sites and servers) C) Spend a minimal amount and provide a poor bnet service but people are forced to use it because there is no alternative.
so finaly it happened what was supposed to happen ...
the pirates the illegals have LAN and the "good" people havent, while tournaments etc have the problem with lan, the illegal playing people can play it with no problem ...
after having NO reason anymore for not having lan (since they already have it) blizzard should give lan at least for MLG NASLfinal GSL etc
On August 15 2011 11:41 Sawofhackness wrote: Everytime a patch comes out, theres a whole bunch of whiners stamping their feet and saying they'll never play the game again, then everyone gets used to the changes and moves on.
These LAN crusaders are part of the entitled generation who just refuse to move on.
LAN = pirated copies = hurts profits
Its not 1997 any more.
I watch pro tourneys all the time, hundreds upon hundreds of games and I can count on my hand the amount of times I've seen a game "lag" out.
If I wanna play the guy next to me, I just use the net, it works.
Move on.
you not watching mlg do you ? seeing ddos attack on players while playing in MLG, permspam to the players making them lag or disc, seeing games in GSL disc because of bnet problems ... thats not an excuse thats not a "its not 1997 anymore" thing its a REAL problem !
does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
Why would one care about the EULA? It's is just some blob of text blizzard likes to present to you before you can play their game. It's not legally binding (over here at least), so I can break the EULA all day and there's nothing Blizzard can do -- except for terminating my battle.net account if they find out, but I doubt them spying on my pc to detect if I used this hack or not would be legal.
On August 15 2011 12:05 Giwoon wrote: idk why blizz gives a fuck about pirates
they make enough money as is with WoW ffs greedy assholes...
If you are running a giant corporation you can never have that mentality. Even if you are making billions of dollars, losing millions of dollars to pirates is still MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. I work at a large corporation and while a lawsuit worth $10,000 for a guest who is injured shopping at the store isn't much to a multi billion dollar corporation, there can never be the mentality of "oh don't worry about cleaning the spill cause it's just a drop in the bucket". You always have to worry about pirating and theft, because if you don't it will run rampant and it will make a difference.
On August 15 2011 11:59 Disquiet wrote: The no LAN is about piracy and control. Blizzard wants to have control over everyone playing their game at all times. This is so
A) they can ensure they can get a cut of every tournament if they are so inclined. B) Implement their map market system without people finding loopholes to bypass it (e.g. 3rd party sites and servers) C) Spend a minimal amount and provide a poor bnet service but people are forced to use it because there is no alternative.
Also, I'd like to add...
D) Be able to collect data about every game played, aiding Blizzard in balancing the game.
Not all aspects of LAN are bad. If no LAN expedites the balancing process, I know I can live with the minor lag/dropping issues.
It's finally happening, a year that seemed long but i'm pretty sure that in several years we will have a LAN client fully working wether bliizard wants it or not
does no one read the EULA? A LAN mod is clearly against the EULA
Why would one care about the EULA? It's is just some blob of text blizzard likes to present to you before you can play their game. It's not legally binding (over here at least), so I can break the EULA all day and there's nothing Blizzard can do -- except for terminating my battle.net account if they find out, but I doubt them spying on my pc to detect if I used this hack or not would be legal.
You're implying that there isnt anything that scans your ram while you're playing WoW to check if theres illegal programs running in the background. they do it for WoW, why wouldnt they do it for sc2.
Also, I dont see why people are AGAINST lan support. you guys are fucking morons. No, it doesnt make the game free. no it does not support piracy. a "tournament" version of starcraft is an ok idea, but then again, what is the requirements for this tournament version? i say this cause I'm in the process of making a huge lan event in my local area. but SC2 is unable to be played because we dont have enough bandwidth for ~70 people. it fucking sucks ass too.
good thing other titles like CS:S and TF2 have lan support. and oh look at that neither of them support piracy or is free. (well.. obviously, TF2 is *now* free).
i dont see why they dont just make it so you have to log into the battle net servers like normal, but have a little LAN button in the corner.
*ACTIVISION*-Blizzard are about making money, not good games, deal with it. you may aswel pirate to get better shit anyway.
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.
In bigger LAN events, they have bigger internet bandwidth so the latency can be 'normal' or at best 'acceptable', but as I have witnessed in a local tourney here in Montreal (LanETS), not only was lag horrible (the facilities didn't offer the biggest internet connection for the hundreds of PCs playing online games in the same building), the internet ran out and the SC2 tourney (featuring Kiwi, Fayth, Slush for instance) was aborted and the prize money simply awarded to the players with the better win ratios up until the internet failed.
Even so - any mention of piracy aside - MLG and GSL could also definitaly benefit from a lag-less tourney environment.
Yes a company exists to make a profit. Piracy may hurt profits, to a certain theoretical extent, . But profits come primarily from happy customers who are willing to spend money for a quality product.
All in all, it all boils down to a fundamental concept : Happy customers = Profit
If the appearance of a LAN version, or simply a LAN option in major tournaments, means happier customers, then Blizzard to a certain capacity should cater to such a need.
On August 15 2011 12:23 acie wrote: blizzard can hardly be big brother if you aren't online connected to them at all times when you are playing their games
Which would be a good thing and a more direct connection than what they currently have. Great for big offline tournaments. And you won't be harassed while playing either.
It won't change anything pertaining to online tournaments at all.
My bet is that Blizzard will add in LAN in the future essentially (Hopefully with HOTS, maybe with LOTV, probably never tho lol :| ...) as a publicity stunt to rake in the cash.
Not that there is any cash to rake in. All the Starcraft fans (Bar maybe 5 of them, offset by multiple accounts due to server locks, tourneys and smurfs 10k times over twice X 14) have got the goddamn game already and are going to get both expansions even if HOTS is an imbalanced flaming piece of garbage.
It's not hard to see why Blizzard doesn't want LAN, and they've stated this hundreds of times.
They want everyone to play through Battle.net so that there is always one big and connected community.
Adding in LAN, the way it was done in SC1 and WC3 would mean people can play SC2 through services like Hamachi and ICCup. Sure, Battle.net 2.0 is a piece of crap, but I'm still glad Blizzard isn't rewarding these pirate servers, and I agree that SC2 should only be played through Battle.net for the above reason.
However, Blizzard's argument doesn't exclude LAN through Battle.net, i.e. if everyone in a Battle.net game is also on the same LAN, then all game data is sent through LAN.
There's really no excuse not to add this type of LAN, especially since LAN has now been hacked.
On August 15 2011 04:13 havox_ wrote: Are there seriously ppl who think that Blizzard didnt add LAN support cuz they didnt know how to do it or cuz it would have been too much work?^^
Let's review the evidence: it took them half a year to add some really bad chat rooms, and over a year and counting to add a dnd mode. It will have taken them 1.5 year to make 15 badly designed custom missions and 3-4 more units which they will release as an expansion. They release a few new maps every 3 months or so, and they are all abysmally bad.
There is literally no way there's more than 1 unpaid high school half-time intern working on starcraft 2. And he doesn't know how to add LAN support.
On August 15 2011 12:05 Giwoon wrote: idk why blizz gives a fuck about pirates
they make enough money as is with WoW ffs greedy assholes...
If you are running a giant corporation you can never have that mentality. Even if you are making billions of dollars, losing millions of dollars to pirates is still MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. I work at a large corporation and while a lawsuit worth $10,000 for a guest who is injured shopping at the store isn't much to a multi billion dollar corporation, there can never be the mentality of "oh don't worry about cleaning the spill cause it's just a drop in the bucket". You always have to worry about pirating and theft, because if you don't it will run rampant and it will make a difference.
i don't really like the whole piracy = lost sales argument. Most of the people who would pirate sc2 wouldn't buy the game either way.
On August 15 2011 04:13 havox_ wrote: Are there seriously ppl who think that Blizzard didnt add LAN support cuz they didnt know how to do it or cuz it would have been too much work?^^
Let's review the evidence: it took them half a year to add some really bad chat rooms, and over a year and counting to add a dnd mode. It will have taken them 1.5 year to make 15 badly designed custom missions and 3-4 more units which they will release as an expansion. They release a few new maps every 3 months or so, and they are all abysmally bad.
There is literally no way there's more than 1 unpaid high school half-time intern working on starcraft 2. And he doesn't know how to add LAN support.
this was the most entertaining post i've read in months so thank you
On August 15 2011 12:05 Giwoon wrote: idk why blizz gives a fuck about pirates
they make enough money as is with WoW ffs greedy assholes...
If you are running a giant corporation you can never have that mentality. Even if you are making billions of dollars, losing millions of dollars to pirates is still MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. I work at a large corporation and while a lawsuit worth $10,000 for a guest who is injured shopping at the store isn't much to a multi billion dollar corporation, there can never be the mentality of "oh don't worry about cleaning the spill cause it's just a drop in the bucket". You always have to worry about pirating and theft, because if you don't it will run rampant and it will make a difference.
i don't really like the whole piracy = lost sales argument. Most of the people who would pirate sc2 wouldn't buy the game either way.
If you look at the efforts video game companies have made in their efforts to prevent piracy, it seems that they disagree with you. And, no offense, but given that these companies undoubtedly have more information and data on the subject (on top of spending resources on the analysis of said information), I trust their conclusions more than yours. People privy to more information about the matter have tried to make the most reasonable, educated decisions concerning these matters.
I don't really like questioning business decisions made by companies with theories that lack any solid proof behind them. If you could prove piracy doesn't lead to less sales, companies would love to pay you for that analysis - you'd be saving them a ton of money
Not sure if it's been said yet as I haven't read every post. But having LAN for tournaments only would be stupid. Players spend hours practicing at home over Bnet that they adept and are use to the lag, going from that to perfect connections with no hint of lag over LAN would be a disaster.
And to everyone else complaining about no LAN. how does it matter? Are you honestly saying that you have too much trouble over Bnet? Personally I've been playing SC2 since release and never experienced any problem, apart from my own internet being dodgy. Seems like the majority of people who complain about a lack of LAN do it because they think they should be.
On August 15 2011 13:27 paralleluniverse wrote: It's not hard to see why Blizzard doesn't want LAN, and they've stated this hundreds of times.
They want everyone to play through Battle.net so that there is always one big and connected community.
Adding in LAN, the way it was done in SC1 and WC3 would mean people can play SC2 through services like Hamachi and ICCup. Sure, Battle.net 2.0 is a piece of crap, but I'm still glad Blizzard isn't rewarding these pirate servers, and I agree that SC2 should only be played through Battle.net for the above reason.
However, Blizzard's argument doesn't exclude LAN through Battle.net, i.e. if everyone in a Battle.net game is also on the same LAN, then all game data is sent through LAN.
There's really no excuse not to add this type of LAN, especially since LAN has now been hacked.
I agree. It's not all good news if LAN is added to the game. It WOULD hurt the size of the online community. I'm still in two minds about it....
Many people here forget that first and main Blizzard's goal is to make money, not to please community or make good, but unprofitable gestures. They don't care about your complaints. I'm almost sure they won't add LAN in the nearest future (~ 5 years).
But if you are not a Blizzard employee, advocating idea to not have LAN is ridiculous. If something makes game better, why it's bad? Is it bad to play tournaments without lag and disconnects, caused by battle.net/internet issues? Is it bad to play LAN with friends when there is no good internet? Having LAN is only benefit for everyone, (if you don't need it - you just don't use it, easy).
LAN itself won't cause any, even little noticeable, lose of profit for Blizzard. Those who want to buy SC2, will do it anyway. Those who don't have intention/possibility to buy it, won't buy it even if there would be no pirated version.
Valve has LAN in all its games and apparently has no financial problems caused by it.
Blizzard makes good games, but greediness prevent them make products better (like improve battle.net or add LAN support).
On August 15 2011 14:38 Unnamed wrote: Many people here forget that first and main Blizzard's goal is to make money, not to please community or make good, but unprofitable gestures. They don't care about your complaints. I'm almost sure they won't add LAN in the nearest future (~ 5 years).
But if you are not a Blizzard employee, advocating idea to not have LAN is ridiculous. If something makes game better, why it's bad? Is it bad to play tournaments without lag and disconnects, caused by battle.net/internet issues? Is it bad to play LAN with friends when there is no good internet? Having LAN is only benefit for everyone, (if you don't need it - you just don't use it, easy).
LAN itself won't cause any, even little noticeable, lose of profit for Blizzard. Those who want to buy SC2, will do it anyway. Those who don't have intention/possibility to buy it, won't buy it even if there would be no pirated version. [citation needed]
Valve has LAN in all its games and apparently has no financial problems caused by it.[citation needed]
Blizzard makes good games, but greediness prevent them make products better (like improve battle.net or add LAN support).[citation needed]
You, like most people in this thread, make a lot of vague baseless claims as if they were absolute fact.
On August 15 2011 14:38 Unnamed wrote: Many people here forget that first and main Blizzard's goal is to make money, not to please community or make good, but unprofitable gestures. They don't care about your complaints. I'm almost sure they won't add LAN in the nearest future (~ 5 years).
But if you are not a Blizzard employee, advocating idea to not have LAN is ridiculous. If something makes game better, why it's bad? Is it bad to play tournaments without lag and disconnects, caused by battle.net/internet issues? Is it bad to play LAN with friends when there is no good internet? Having LAN is only benefit for everyone, (if you don't need it - you just don't use it, easy).
LAN itself won't cause any, even little noticeable, lose of profit for Blizzard. Those who want to buy SC2, will do it anyway. Those who don't have intention/possibility to buy it, won't buy it even if there would be no pirated version.
Valve has LAN in all its games and apparently has no financial problems caused by it.
Blizzard makes good games, but greediness prevent them make products better (like improve battle.net or add LAN support).
From what I learned in interviews, Activision handles Battle.net 2.0; they let Blizzard handle the gameplay. So it's not Blizzard's fault, although when they talk about Bnet it sounds like they assume the responsibility. (If you were Activision you wouldn't want to have part of your company revealing negative things about the bigger half of Activision-Blizzard?)
On August 15 2011 14:38 Unnamed wrote: {...} Valve has LAN in all its games and apparently has no financial problems caused by it. {...}.
Thank god someone said this. i agree 100%. LAN and having LAN parties is what makes games enjoyable.
i went to a lan just the other day and some people bought some copies of CS:S so we could all play it. we had to wait till everyone was in bed before 4 of us could play a game together.
ALOT of places dont have the bandwidth to support 8+ people on the internet, ESPECIALLY in Australia.
Also, alot of people in this thread is making me angry. stop being morons. "i bet the ones that want lan wont even use it." "ive never been to a lan that didnt have an internet connection" are some of the most retardedest comments ive ever seen.
They just made LAN more desirable. After the merge I have serious lag issues. Would it really break their bank to get sufficient servers for the load? And a second server so they don't have to take our crack dealer out of business like every two weeks for x hours. While they patch 1900 century style.
q> How come billionares are so fukin cheap???? a> That's how they become billionares...
Ps. My first starcraft experience was lan, that's how get got me hooked. Install SPAWN mmmh
On August 15 2011 01:45 NuKedUFirst wrote: Hope someone D/C's during Blizzcon Tourny/GSL game at Blizzcon.. Would really stick it to the man.
I remember during the casts of some BNet invitationals that the caster mentioned some zerg winning despite the heavy lag spikes running against him (wasn't that even Sheth?).
And yes, as above poster, there are many places that still doesn't have a reliable internet connection, like what we had here in my country. Yes we have a really huge improvement in the last decade, but still there are many places that doesn't have a good connection, thus limiting the offline tournament numbers. I remembered that about almost 1 year ago, one of the event organizer here tried to held a big LAN tourney with about 200 (or event 500?) computers, which unfortunately failed due to the connection issue. If that event was successful, I believe it will attract more and more competitions. I was there in that event, and I came with a huge expectations, that turns out to be a huge turn off for me.
The dilemma for LAN and piracy, I must honestly say, is there and remain to be the point of arguments. IMO since the biggest selling point for SC2 is online play, then I believe people will buy the original, unless for those people without internet connection, which in that case buying original SC2 is useless since you have to connect to be able to play. So taking this point of view, it may be possible that "always connect" feature refrain some people to actually buy the original one.
I'm mindboggled at the amount of people who want Blizzard to shut down this LAN hack lmao. You, along with Activision Blizzard's greed, are crippling the competitive scene of this game that you love so much. The decision to remove LAN is one of the worst decisions that Blizzard has made regarding this game. LAN does not contribute to piracy or hurt sales. For most users Battle.net is the core function of the game. LAN is an add-on that comes secondary to most users but is absolutely critical for proper competitive play and the decision to exclude it is an example of Activision's wanton greed.
For the Chinese hackers that made this possible, I have nothing but the deepest respect for stepping up where Activision Blizzard and corporate greed have failed consumers and esports.
I don't get why they couldn't make a 'legit' LAN solution with the use of some basic public/private key encryption.
What we want is to be able to have local servers for tournaments, yes?
If they released a 'LAN Server' that required all users first to be authenticated by Battle.Net, but then subsequently be handled by the server, it would be OK.
I.E, in simple terms: 1.) Server is registered and authenticated at Battle.Net. 2.) When a new user connects to server, credentials is passed to Battle.Net for authentication. 3.) Once the user is authenticated, the local server handles all in-game communication.
This way Blizzard would have full control over end users and licenses (pirating would require being able to falsify credentials to Battle.Net, much as today), but servers could be set up to minimize lag for everyone. Maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see why this could not work.
Now that a post exists since lot of day and nobody of Blizzard stops the subject (here : http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2973007615?page=1 ), I think that we can discuss here about the apparition of this hack without a violation of the TOS... I don't see why we can speak about the hack on the official forum moderated by Blizzard salaried employee and can't here...
This hack was developed since a lots of time and support 1.3.6 clients (enGB,enUS, ... ) by a team named StarFriend. I see that you can use the legal Starcraft 2 and this hack on the same Starcraft 2 without any problem... Personnally, I think that LAN is the heart and soul of StarCraft. It wasn't Battle.net that made SC1 popular, it was LAN.
Hell , It's about time.... Still , Theres no real clan support over a year into SC2s release (User modifyable clan tags , clan chat etc) so i doubt Blizzard will bring in LAN.
On August 15 2011 17:21 writer22816 wrote: I'm mindboggled at the amount of people who want Blizzard to shut down this LAN hack lmao. You, along with Activision Blizzard's greed, are crippling the competitive scene of this game that you love so much. The decision to remove LAN is one of the worst decisions that Blizzard has made regarding this game. LAN does not contribute to piracy or hurt sales. For most users Battle.net is the core function of the game. LAN is an add-on that comes secondary to most users but is absolutely critical for proper competitive play and the decision to exclude it is an example of Activision's wanton greed.
For the Chinese hackers that made this possible, I have nothing but the deepest respect for stepping up where Activision Blizzard and corporate greed have failed consumers and esports.
I'm mindboggled at the amount of people who want Blizzard to add LAN because a hacking group is trying to coerce them lmao.
Ya, lets encourage and "respect" the theft/piracy (semantics, lets not argue this shit) of IP because you want LAN. The day when you create something worthwhile and some random group halfway around the world screws you out of something you worked for, I wonder how much you'd respect them then. If you are a believer of open source that's fine but don't hate on those who would like to make money off their product. In the market if you want to show a company what they're doing is wrong, you have to vote with your wallet, nothing else. Their responsibility is to their primary stakeholders, the professional gaming community is pretty low on that list if at all.
Now if you believe LAN isn't hurting revenues, is anyone capable of showing Blizzard that it wont? The day you do a cost benefit analysis showing that lack of LAN hurts revenues more than the potential risk of having it and convince them the analysis isn't out of your ass, they'll add LAN. QQing about lag isn't enough.
On August 15 2011 18:00 Zergnub wrote: I don't get why they couldn't make a 'legit' LAN solution with the use of some basic public/private key encryption.
What we want is to be able to have local servers for tournaments, yes?
If they released a 'LAN Server' that required all users first to be authenticated by Battle.Net, but then subsequently be handled by the server, it would be OK.
I.E, in simple terms: 1.) Server is registered and authenticated at Battle.Net. 2.) When a new user connects to server, credentials is passed to Battle.Net for authentication. 3.) Once the user is authenticated, the local server handles all in-game communication.
This way Blizzard would have full control over end users and licenses (pirating would require being able to falsify credentials to Battle.Net, much as today), but servers could be set up to minimize lag for everyone. Maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see why this could not work.
Assassin's creed 2 required "authentication" of sorts. A server emulator can easily bypass all that.
On August 15 2011 18:00 Zergnub wrote: I don't get why they couldn't make a 'legit' LAN solution with the use of some basic public/private key encryption.
What we want is to be able to have local servers for tournaments, yes?
If they released a 'LAN Server' that required all users first to be authenticated by Battle.Net, but then subsequently be handled by the server, it would be OK.
I.E, in simple terms: 1.) Server is registered and authenticated at Battle.Net. 2.) When a new user connects to server, credentials is passed to Battle.Net for authentication. 3.) Once the user is authenticated, the local server handles all in-game communication.
This way Blizzard would have full control over end users and licenses (pirating would require being able to falsify credentials to Battle.Net, much as today), but servers could be set up to minimize lag for everyone. Maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see why this could not work.
What I've said before -_-" It really wouldn't be that hard for blizzard to do something like that or something like this.
Or, they could release a "Tournament" Version of the Software to MLG, Dreamhack etc... The tournament software in the options menu has a spot for the IP address of the Blizzard licensed server and can only be put in by somebody with knowledge of a secret key/password, an authenticator or a code that comes with the license of the server. Then, All user credentials will be passed to their authentication servers and passed back to the server. All of the games would be hosted on the server.
All major tournaments are required to have a minimum of 2 servers for redundancy.
Under this new server there should be a new automatic feature like: All players/Casters are set to unmessage-able once a game has begun (except in game chat). To top it off: All languages would be available in the game to support international tournaments.
I agree that LAN is something that blizzard should implement, but I also recognize that it has its problems. I personally think that LAN is a huge thing, for its usefulness and all that, and while I also think that it should be put into the game, I don't believe that there should be any drama or harm caused/used in order to get it. If blizzard has decided that the costs outweigh the benefits, then let it be.
On August 15 2011 18:00 Zergnub wrote: I don't get why they couldn't make a 'legit' LAN solution with the use of some basic public/private key encryption.
What we want is to be able to have local servers for tournaments, yes?
If they released a 'LAN Server' that required all users first to be authenticated by Battle.Net, but then subsequently be handled by the server, it would be OK.
I.E, in simple terms: 1.) Server is registered and authenticated at Battle.Net. 2.) When a new user connects to server, credentials is passed to Battle.Net for authentication. 3.) Once the user is authenticated, the local server handles all in-game communication.
This way Blizzard would have full control over end users and licenses (pirating would require being able to falsify credentials to Battle.Net, much as today), but servers could be set up to minimize lag for everyone. Maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see why this could not work.
Assassin's creed 2 required "authentication" of sorts. A server emulator can easily bypass all that.
Sure, that's a risk.
Given that groups have already managed to make LAN solutions though, I don't really see what the drawback is. It would give Blizz control over the servers and users, and since LAN effectively would exist, the incentive to 'hack' the serverside would be much lessened.
If someone is skilled enough to reverse engineer the server (LAN Server) AND emulate the authentication mechanism, you can't protect yourself from that anyhow. Most such solutions for most games that have them, also suffer flaws (bugs, downtime etc) which make them really unattractive compared to buying the game, especially considered that this game has no monthly cost anyhow...
I imagine most organisations and people would rather use the legit (and more bugfree) solution.
People who can stand downtime + having to wait months for hacker groups to reverse engineer the latest server changes etc, to play the game are not really customers you can expect would pay for the game in the first place anyhow. So, no income loss there for Blizz...
On August 15 2011 13:27 paralleluniverse wrote: It's not hard to see why Blizzard doesn't want LAN, and they've stated this hundreds of times.
They want everyone to play through Battle.net so that there is always one big and connected community.
Adding in LAN, the way it was done in SC1 and WC3 would mean people can play SC2 through services like Hamachi and ICCup. Sure, Battle.net 2.0 is a piece of crap, but I'm still glad Blizzard isn't rewarding these pirate servers, and I agree that SC2 should only be played through Battle.net for the above reason.
However, Blizzard's argument doesn't exclude LAN through Battle.net, i.e. if everyone in a Battle.net game is also on the same LAN, then all game data is sent through LAN.
There's really no excuse not to add this type of LAN, especially since LAN has now been hacked.
Are you for real? Yeah, they want one big community that's connected, and they separated the game into like a dozen disconnected server without the ability to even play cross-server. Makes sense...
People are asking for the reason why they removed it, and they don't think about it.
The reason is because they want all people to play in the same place. If there was something such as LAN, there would immediately start coming up new "Hamachi networks"," Garena Networks" that started their own ladders. So you would have this large SC2 community divided into so many small ladders, there would be one ladder for every single nation in the end cause it would be the demand.
With thousands of ladders they wouldn't even be able to watch games to balance it for the greater good.
Now it's all probably going to go down that way in the end anyway. However, Im just trying to say that there isn't just "greed" behind all of this. If everyone plays B.net it's far better than having to start multiple accounts over different laddersites to play good SC2.
On August 15 2011 18:00 Zergnub wrote: I don't get why they couldn't make a 'legit' LAN solution with the use of some basic public/private key encryption.
What we want is to be able to have local servers for tournaments, yes?
If they released a 'LAN Server' that required all users first to be authenticated by Battle.Net, but then subsequently be handled by the server, it would be OK.
I.E, in simple terms: 1.) Server is registered and authenticated at Battle.Net. 2.) When a new user connects to server, credentials is passed to Battle.Net for authentication. 3.) Once the user is authenticated, the local server handles all in-game communication.
This way Blizzard would have full control over end users and licenses (pirating would require being able to falsify credentials to Battle.Net, much as today), but servers could be set up to minimize lag for everyone. Maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see why this could not work.
Releasing this 'LAN Server' basically gives people the executable code that can run a multiplayer SC2 game, and that's huge. Now hackers just have to reverse engineer and modify the 'LAN Server' to bypass battle.net and we have a LAN server that lets people play for free!
You say can't be done? I say Blizz won't take it's chances.
Forget LAN in SC2. It's not crucial. How come SC2 has had dozens of successful tournaments? How GOM manages to make so many tournaments with no problems without lan?
And most of you wouldn't even use it. For what? Playing with friends? bnet ping too much to play with your friend? What?+++
And I don't support guys who say that LAN is dead... If you don't use LAN, cool bro but you are stupid. An extra LAN button is going to confuse you when you log in to play?
My thoughts exactly... Even though we have the internet, there is nothing more awesome, to get together with some friends and have a LAN party... Or to go to a major LAN event.
And it would fix alot of problems, that names major LAN events have. Cause most of them don't have the internet speed needed for SC II, although granted, it doesn't need alot.
This would fix alot of problems and would make SC II even more popular on LAN events... Hope they will implement it after this happenede in HotS...
I simply dont get why they dont release LAN with connection, to LAN, no reason to have a game stop for loss of Battle ner, just auto update the the data of the game that was played, once the connection is back. Just keep it so that you have to be connected to start a game. no lags but still constant BNET connection
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 !
On August 15 2011 13:27 paralleluniverse wrote: It's not hard to see why Blizzard doesn't want LAN, and they've stated this hundreds of times.
They want everyone to play through Battle.net so that there is always one big and connected community.
Adding in LAN, the way it was done in SC1 and WC3 would mean people can play SC2 through services like Hamachi and ICCup. Sure, Battle.net 2.0 is a piece of crap, but I'm still glad Blizzard isn't rewarding these pirate servers, and I agree that SC2 should only be played through Battle.net for the above reason.
However, Blizzard's argument doesn't exclude LAN through Battle.net, i.e. if everyone in a Battle.net game is also on the same LAN, then all game data is sent through LAN.
There's really no excuse not to add this type of LAN, especially since LAN has now been hacked.
Are you for real? Yeah, they want one big community that's connected, and they separated the game into like a dozen disconnected server without the ability to even play cross-server. Makes sense...
Region locking is most likely a misguided attempt to offer the best possible localized support for each region.
I've stated in the past how much I hate region locking, and it's quite shameful that it's never going to go away.
However, the fact remains Blizzard wants only one community through Battle.net (separated only by regions). It's on the website:
Connect. Play. Unite. At this moment, gamers around the world are meeting up on Battle.net to prove their skill in epic multiplayer matches or simply to socialize with their friends. Blizzard Entertainment’s vision for the new Battle.net is to unite all Blizzard gamers under the banner of a single, powerful, and advanced online gaming service. For the first time since its inception in 1996, we have completely overhauled Battle.net to offer a more user-friendly, more consistent, and more fun online experience for Blizzard gamers. Read on to discover what the next-generation Battle.net service has to offer.
Just to be clear, my view is: - SC2 should only be playable through Battle.net - Battle.net 2.0 is a piece of crap, and needs many improvements - Region locking is bad - There should not be LAN as implemented in SC1 and WC3. - Games played in Battle.net where all players are also on the same LAN, should have data go through LAN, i.e. implement a Battle.net-authenticated LAN.
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.
On August 15 2011 21:00 paralleluniverse wrote: - Games played in Battle.net where all players are also on the same LAN, should have data go through LAN, i.e. implement a Battle.net-authenticated LAN.
People keep making this argument, but it's technically not feasible to do that. Once you have code in SC2 to allow Battle-net-authenticated LAN, it's just a matter of time before someone figures out how to spoof the authentification, and then you've just got regular LAN mode.
Removing regions so that people don't have to buy 4 copies to play with everyone in the world? Adding LAN so people don't have to connect through our service? Making a menu that's not bloated with shiny features that kids love?
Haha, what a foolish notion. Our resources could be spent so much wiser. Like adding a facebook-based matchmaking.
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.
IMHO, they don't care so much about hamachi and others LAN programs full of people that piracy the game.
That's because Blizzard knows that if you don't wanna pay for the game, you are not gonna pay for it, no mater what, but they also knows that people that pay for the game, would be able to keep paying for Dlc, expansions, features, etc.
So here the target to milk are the people that already got the game, they re preparing the Marketplace, which is the only real good thing that can milk over, and over the players, and that's why LAN cant be implemented, because that implies to store the maps on your own Pc, which means that you can easily share maps, and that is exactly what Bli$$ard doesn't want.
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.
Starcraft 2 was the most pirated game of last year.
Blizzard is so out of touch with the community. Bravo Blizzard you almost didn't include chat channels THE most important feature in WC3 D2 and SC1.
Now they are against the LAN feature even though it doesn't have anything to do with piracy, they just want to make SC2 have pay elements and having LAN and ignoring all the paid crap like changing your username is not going to milk them more money from the consumer.
And we the community are not at fault they developed SC2 for 6 years, if you want more profit blizzard develop 2 years.
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.
On August 15 2011 21:49 Aborash wrote: IMHO, they don't care so much about hamachi and others LAN programs full of people that piracy the game.
That's because Blizzard knows that if you don't wanna pay for the game, you are not gonna pay for it, no mater what, but they also knows that people that pay for the game, would be able to keep paying for Dlc, expansions, features, etc.
So here the target to milk are the people that already got the game, they re preparing the Marketplace, which is the only real good thing that can milk over, and over the players, and that's why LAN cant be implemented, because that implies to store the maps on your own Pc, which means that you can easily share maps, and that is exactly what Bli$$ard doesn't want.
Sure, I also think map makers should continue working for free and with no possibility of profit with their hard work.
On August 15 2011 21:49 Aborash wrote: IMHO, they don't care so much about hamachi and others LAN programs full of people that piracy the game.
That's because Blizzard knows that if you don't wanna pay for the game, you are not gonna pay for it, no mater what, but they also knows that people that pay for the game, would be able to keep paying for Dlc, expansions, features, etc.
So here the target to milk are the people that already got the game, they re preparing the Marketplace, which is the only real good thing that can milk over, and over the players, and that's why LAN cant be implemented, because that implies to store the maps on your own Pc, which means that you can easily share maps, and that is exactly what Bli$$ard doesn't want.
Pretty sure the idea of the Marketplace came from seeing how successful DOTA was - and how the game makers never made any real money off the game. By having a marketplace, it allows mapmakers to monetize their creations, instead of waiting for clones like HoN to take away profits that is rightfully theirs.
Edit: And why are people saying that LAN won't lead to piracy? Video game companies have undoubtedly collected data and done analysis and they came to the conclusion that LAN DOES lead to piracy. Unless you have data that they don't have that you can use to support your argument, then kindly share. Until then, I'll trust the reasoned, educated judgement of the companies rather than baseless opinions of internet posters.
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.
I don't really care about LAN anymore just give us the option to rehost custom games after some one disconnected. Rehostable Save Games for tournaments would be good enough.
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.
You're making stuff up b/c it fits the way you imagine things. You have no idea of the actual data and figures.
Blizzard's business decisions are better than yours. You might not like them - but Blizzard wouldn't be doing it if it didn't make sense.
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.
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.
.....
I'm speechless. Do you even know what LAN is?
iccup, garena etc exist because of lan. they are preferrable to bnet because of better ping and better international online tournament support (neutral host for EU vs KR etc).
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.
.....
I'm speechless. Do you even know what LAN is?
iccup, garena etc exist because of lan. they are preferrable to bnet because of better ping and better international online tournament support (neutral host for EU vs KR etc).
and becose you can easily run them with pirate copies ( I know a lot of people who play DOTA on Garena and im the only one I know who actually bought WC3)
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.
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.
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.
.....
I'm speechless. Do you even know what LAN is?
iccup, garena etc exist because of lan. they are preferrable to bnet because of better ping and better international online tournament support (neutral host for EU vs KR etc).
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.
I think your definition of "everyone" is somewhat different to the actual definition.
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.
.....
I'm speechless. Do you even know what LAN is?
Do YOU even know what happened to SC1's and WC3's battle.net when vpn services such as Hamachi and Garena started to exist?
Blizzards reason for no LAN (at least officially) was "battle.net 2.0 will be so good you wont want LAN" however there is latency on b.net 2.0 which means micro cant be fully utilized the way it was in BW, there is Disconnects that although arent B.net's fault happen because you are connecting to the internet, for someone to play at a LAN tourneyment, you have to buy a copy of the local version of SC2 because you cant use your account from another region.
Kinda related to this post but not to lan, B.net 2.0 also has no appear offline option and no option to have a 2nd account (or atleast 2 usernames to switch to) for when your really not feeling sociable or you cant be bothered to upset a friend because you dont want to 2v2/3v3/4v4 with him
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.
Trying to play 4v4s with 8 people in the same room does not work because everyone has to connect to Battle.net, then back to the computer that is IN THE SAME ROOM AS THEM. That is a problem.
On August 15 2011 02:31 Topdoller wrote: I hope Blizzard bans this thing as anything that fragments the player base is bad imho. What Blizz should be working on is features like a proper DND and viewing replay with friends
All this LAN Hack does is encourages piracy with is the death of most PC games. Playing Online is where it is at and as you can see games like WOW and console games such as COD with massive player bases. The Internet is the future not LAN.
This is the same reason that when you are in a house with someone, you call them instead of going to talk with them (or use an intercom system). Phones are the future, man!
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.
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.
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.
guess you never watched any tournament with internet problems?
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 ...
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.
People seam to think that everyone has a broadband/internet connection, all the time, everywhere in the world, but statisticly this is very very false. As of march 2011 there are ~30% internet users in the world, which means that 70% of the population can't play Starcraft 2, because it requires a internet connection, and not just any internet connection, you need a good broadband connection, so I should lower the user access for SC2 to ~15-20% of world population. This might not even sound bad, and it probably isnt very bad stats, but for people that don't have a broadband connection, it seams like a pretty stupid decision from blizzard, not to implement LAN, and are happy about this kind of news.
As for my self, I have a broadband internet connection at home, and I play alot of SC2 while I am at home, but my job is on a ship, so I am onboard a ship, with sattelite connection only, for 6 months total every year. We sometimes play some games against each other, like bw and many other games, but its a pain that we can't play SC2 for 6 months a year, just because there isnt a LAN function built into the game. So I very much support this kind of thing that these people are doing. Untill blizzard implements LAN, I will use this, while Im out to sea.
"Now that a post exists since lot of day and nobody of Blizzard stops the subject" i cant take a post seriously when it makes no sense.. and isn't anything involving hacking blizz against tl rules??
On August 15 2011 21:00 paralleluniverse wrote: - Games played in Battle.net where all players are also on the same LAN, should have data go through LAN, i.e. implement a Battle.net-authenticated LAN.
People keep making this argument, but it's technically not feasible to do that. Once you have code in SC2 to allow Battle-net-authenticated LAN, it's just a matter of time before someone figures out how to spoof the authentification, and then you've just got regular LAN mode.
But that's already happened according to this thread. At least it would be LAN for paying customers.
I still maintain that it should be impossible to (legally) use multiplayer SC2 without using Battle.net. And this is Blizzard's stance, they want all players on Battle.net so there is one community and one ladder (apart from the whole region lock thing, which is very bad).
Blizzard can try to delay the inevitable as much as they want, but sooner or later, there will be LAN support for their game, either supported by them, against their ToS.
Seeing as it's inevitable that it is going to exist, allowing people who want to pirate to play the game anyway, wouldn't they rather have the LAN under their terms?
Think about it: If Blizzard supported LAN exists, all the legit players will still be logged in through battle net, so it's not really jeopardizing any 'online community' that they are (poorly) attempting to foster. If non-Blizzard supported LAN exists, all the legit players will have to log out of BNet to play LAN. Under both circumstances, pirates still get to play the game.
What Blizzard should actually be offering is support for a decent laddering system. As long as they continue to offer this, people will still buy the game (should they not own it). If I didn't own SC2, but instead played on pirated LAN, how am I meant to get better? I can't practice on the ladder, I'd have to find someone who feels like playing SC2 as much as I want, and whenever I want.
Also, the longer blizzard leaves it, the more likely someone else will come up with a fully functional BNet replica (with a DND feature!). Once that exists, they've lost their last reason for people to purchase SC2 - the ladder.
So in conclusion: 1) It is inevitable that there will be LAN support of some kind, either supported by blizzard or not. 2) Blizzard would be better off including the LAN support themselves, since it would be on their terms. 3) Blizzards real product should be their laddering system, not their game.
It was unreasonable for Blizzard to think they could stop people from implementing their own versions of a much wanted feature.
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.
This is where we disagree, you say the process matters if something is silly or not, and I say its the overall result that should be looked at.
And I am still convinced that just because something is a culturally accepted business decision, it will not automatically yield overall acceptable results, otherwise environment wasnt as fucked up as it is, and lot of people in the third world also wouldnt get fucked over like they are. Wasting resources is not as much a delicate moral matter, but it results from the same type of ignorance.
Just because somthing has grown to be a standard practice doesnt prevent it from being pretty plain irresponsible. I understand that its more comfortable to think otherwise though.
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.
TBH I dont even care personally about the LAN functionality, I would not use it. Last time I did LAN with a friend we were playing the then brand new duke nukem 3D. My motivation is really just that it is not acceptable how people have to send data around, beacuse it is such an idiocy and a waste.
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.
I'm not angry towards Blizzard, I love them for the great games they've been making for about 20 years now. I dont expect responsibility from a business that has no incentive to be.
Its the job of the people (oh shit, there are responsibilities coming with our freedom, damn...) to use their heads and look at the results (and not the decision making process which is pretty obvious). And they should have an incentive to straight up point to the ressource wasting. Let businesses make their money, but lets not have them act that silly, please.
I am only angry towards ignorant people who bring up lazy arguments with big convincing words like "research", "rational" or "standard" and even prevent others from thinking for themselves, abusing that those who have never done actual research work in natural sciences seem to be so easily impressed by these words.
im not sure if people are aware of the $10,000 "LAN" tournament that was held by cybergaming in vancouver recently that blizzard actually IP banned because of some rule stating that all tourneys over 10,000 need to give blizzard a cut
this kind of shit is unacceptable. the game cannot grow in korea without lan and its not like lan is gonna hurt sales, anyone nerdy enough to link two computers together to play is gonna be down to ladder when their friends arent at their house.
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.
This is where we disagree, you say the process matters if something is silly or not, and I say its the overall result that should be looked at.
And I am still convinced that just because something is a culturally accepted business decision, it will not automatically yield overall acceptable results, otherwise environment wasnt as fucked up as it is, and lot of people in the third world also wouldnt get fucked over like they are. Wasting resources is not as much a delicate moral matter, but it results from the same type of ignorance.
Just because somthing has grown to be a standard practice doesnt prevent it from being pretty plain irresponsible. I understand that its more comfortable to think otherwise though.
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.
TBH I dont even care personally about the LAN functionality, I would not use it. Last time I did LAN with a friend we were playing the then brand new duke nukem 3D. My motivation is really just that it is not acceptable how people have to send data around, beacuse it is such an idiocy and a waste.
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.
I'm not angry towards Blizzard, I love them for the great games they've been making for about 20 years now. I dont expect responsibility from a business that has no incentive to be.
Its the job of the people (oh shit, there are responsibilities coming with our freedom, damn...) to use their heads and look at the results (and not the decision making process which is pretty obvious). And they should have an incentive to straight up point to the ressource wasting. Let businesses make their money, but lets not have them act that silly, please.
I am only angry towards ignorant people who bring up lazy arguments with big convincing words like "research", "rational" or "standard" and even prevent others from thinking for themselves, abusing that those who have never done actual research work in natural sciences seem to be so easily impressed by these words.
I'm pretty sure nobody but you is worried about this issue because of the impact of no LAN on the environment - because the material "waste" of doing such is minimal, and clearly not deserving of such intense statements such as "This type of absurd decadence could be coming straight from a Douglas Adams novel."
Free market fails in the face of negative externalities (externalities are costs/benefits that a company causes but does not take into consideration). Then it falls to the government to implement regulation that forces companies to internalize the effect of these externalities in their business decisions. A negative externality would be pollution, and pollution caps and fines makes the company responsible for the costs of this pollution. If you don't make companies internalize the costs of their actions, then they won't ever care about the consequences.
If you really feel that no LAN is wasteful, then the correct course of action would be to put in motion an effort to make not-having LAN fine-able by the government. That's the only way you can ensure that companies won't waste those precious internet pipe resources.
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.
This is where we disagree, you say the process matters if something is silly or not, and I say its the overall result that should be looked at.
And I am still convinced that just because something is a culturally accepted business decision, it will not automatically yield overall acceptable results, otherwise environment wasnt as fucked up as it is, and lot of people in the third world also wouldnt get fucked over like they are. Wasting resources is not as much a delicate moral matter, but it results from the same type of ignorance.
Just because somthing has grown to be a standard practice doesnt prevent it from being pretty plain irresponsible. I understand that its more comfortable to think otherwise though.
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.
TBH I dont even care personally about the LAN functionality, I would not use it. Last time I did LAN with a friend we were playing the then brand new duke nukem 3D. My motivation is really just that it is not acceptable how people have to send data around, beacuse it is such an idiocy and a waste.
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.
I'm not angry towards Blizzard, I love them for the great games they've been making for about 20 years now. I dont expect responsibility from a business that has no incentive to be.
Its the job of the people (oh shit, there are responsibilities coming with our freedom, damn...) to use their heads and look at the results (and not the decision making process which is pretty obvious). And they should have an incentive to straight up point to the ressource wasting. Let businesses make their money, but lets not have them act that silly, please.
I am only angry towards ignorant people who bring up lazy arguments with big convincing words like "research", "rational" or "standard" and even prevent others from thinking for themselves, abusing that those who have never done actual research work in natural sciences seem to be so easily impressed by these words.
I'm pretty sure nobody but you is worried about this issue because of the impact of no LAN on the environment - because the material "waste" of doing such is minimal, and clearly not deserving of such intense statements such as "This type of absurd decadence could be coming straight from a Douglas Adams novel."
I am not worried on the impact on the environment, I was rather talking about a similar mindset that leads to a waste of ressources that could be used in a better way.
If you fail to acknowledge the absurdity in people sitting next to each other having to send information across the globe to communicate then you're pretty much a hopeless case.
Free market fails in the face of negative externalities (externalities are costs/benefits that a company causes but does not take into consideration). Then it falls to the government to implement regulation that forces companies to internalize the effect of these externalities in their business decisions. A negative externality would be pollution, and pollution caps and fines makes the company responsible for the costs of this pollution. If you don't make companies internalize the costs of their actions, then they won't ever care about the consequences.
Please stop arguing that its not absurd because some random quotes from your economy textbook might look that way. While they might be brilliant they were created to understand economy, not as an excuse to justify stupidity.
Economic theories, in the same way as scientific or philosophical theories can be great and/or correct, but always only within very special conditions. Its a good tradition of most the great minds and their following to overextend their very own brilliant theory to try and explain the whole world with it and fail miserably. Its usually not such a big deal and doesn't take away from the original thought, but with economists in blind faith using their market theories as ultima ratio to everything it gets fucking annoying.
Yeah sure, after crunching a lot of numbers and careful application of some market wisdom, somebody comes to the conclusion that having every LAN on the planet required to send all data to some server in a different country and back is perfectly reasonable and cost-effective.
If that doesnt sound like Douglas Adams, what else does?
If you really feel that no LAN is wasteful, then the correct course of action would be to put in motion an effort to make not-having LAN fine-able by the government. That's the only way you can ensure that companies won't waste those precious internet pipe resources.
I'm not expecting people to start a petition, after all there are far bigger problems to worry about. But I also wasn't aware that people are already brainwashed enough to not even start applying any common sense anymore as soon as someone brings up an explanation from a business standpoint and adds in some words like "researched" or "rational".
Reply to perestain: (since quoting will lead to a big block of text)
I'm not saying it makes sense from the consumers perspective, I'm saying it makes perfect sense from Blizzard's perspective - and that the people who question Blizzard's business decision making and pose their own reasons as to why it makes sense for Blizzard *to* include LAN should relax.
Claims such as "Having LAN won't increase piracy", or "they'll gain more sales through having LAN" are being stated as facts. People latch on to those ideas, and think that Blizzard is not having LAN just to spite us - rather than understanding that Blizzard has collected and analyzed information that has clearly told them those "facts" are simply not true.
My main stance is that people should trust instead of question Blizzard's business decisions - they know better than you. Does it lead to the best result for consumers (or society)? Not always. But the decision that led to that point was based in what is rationally best for Blizzard (because it maximizes their profits) - hence why I call it reasonable.
I'd like to reply to other points you made - but I don't wanna stray too far off-topic. Lemme know if you're okay with continuing that part of the convo via PM.
On August 17 2011 08:17 Thetan wrote: Reply to perestain: (since quoting will lead to a big block of text)
I'm not saying it makes sense from the consumers perspective, I'm saying it makes perfect sense from Blizzard's perspective - and that the people who question Blizzard's business decision making and pose their own reasons as to why it makes sense for Blizzard *to* include LAN should relax.
Claims such as "Having LAN won't increase piracy", or "they'll gain more sales through having LAN" are being stated as facts. People latch on to those ideas, and think that Blizzard is not having LAN just to spite us - rather than understanding that Blizzard has collected and analyzed information that has clearly told them those "facts" are simply not true.
My main stance is that people should trust instead of question Blizzard's business decisions - they know better than you. Does it lead to the best result for consumers (or society)? Not always. But the decision that led to that point was based in what is rationally best for Blizzard (because it maximizes their profits) - hence why I call it reasonable.
I'd like to reply to other points you made - but I don't wanna stray too far off-topic. Lemme know if you're okay with continuing that part of the convo via PM.
What you are saying is to appeal to authority for everything, basically. If some entity suddenly made claim of something as such as two and two makes five instead of four, you'd believe them because they said so and that they supposedly know better. You would not question them at all?
uh... thetan short for operating thetan...? L ron hubbard?
At this point, I honestly don't care that I have to log in to play anymore. However, the absence of locally hosted games, even while logged in, is ridiculous.
On August 16 2011 23:11 KenZo- wrote: As of march 2011 there are ~30% internet users in the world, which means that 70% of the population can't play Starcraft 2.
I think if you wanted a more meaningful ratio you would use % with internet vs. total computer users. There are a lot of people in the world who can't even afford a computer.
On August 15 2011 02:29 Antoine wrote: forgive my lack of technical understanding, but isn't this not lan but merely a private server?
Well, if they have private WoW servers, I can forsee in the future private SC2 servers that emulate Battlenet and have its own game and matchmaking system where blizzard cant really do anything about them but shut them down slower than they crop up, and thus people can even play pirated copies that they didnt pay for online.
hell, I have a copy of WoW for a private server on my computer right now, cause some gearhead jock guy installed it for me to play with him. a double exp server too. Played the Legal WoW version, and quit after the bullshit that is the outlands greens making all puyrples of 60 or less worthless in comparison, in what is the most bull money grab ever. Get to outland to massively buff your gold income to be able to buy these uber weapons or live in obscurity being outdone by everyone. Money grab. So i have no will to play even this hacked version.
My point is, no matter what DRM you try to put on your product, people WILL pirate it. you only hurt your legal consumers.
I know the whole theory of "locks are only there to keep honest people honest", but lets be brutally honest. people won't pay for the game if they intended to pirate it in the first place. People who do pirate it may actually be testing the game to see if they like it. And anyone who doesn't like the game wont be tricked into paying for it anyway, or will even sell it off (in contrast to the ToS agreement).
So blizzard truly has no money to make from denying legitimate customers what they want. How the F%*# can a company that denies legitimate customers the product they want stay in business? Too many fanboys blindly sucking the tit?
On August 17 2011 08:17 Thetan wrote: Reply to perestain: (since quoting will lead to a big block of text)
I'm not saying it makes sense from the consumers perspective, I'm saying it makes perfect sense from Blizzard's perspective - and that the people who question Blizzard's business decision making and pose their own reasons as to why it makes sense for Blizzard *to* include LAN should relax.
Yes and No. Blizzard cares about their interests pretty well themselves, they wont need us looking at the whole thing from their perspective. You can't on the other hand blame people for worrying about their own interests, because that is something that Blizzard will obviously not do for them. And it is not exactly common interest that suddenly masses of bandwidth have to be used just for some new control and anti-piracy shenanigans of a computer game.
Claims such as "Having LAN won't increase piracy", or "they'll gain more sales through having LAN" are being stated as facts. People latch on to those ideas, and think that Blizzard is not having LAN just to spite us
While those examples may be bad arguments, you can't deny that these people obviously have something they want to express. The problem is that they formulate their arguments in terms of Blizzards interests and not their own.
- rather than understanding that Blizzard has collected and analyzed information that has clearly told them those "facts" are simply not true.
This is a pretty bold assumption. I doubt that conclusive data on the matter even exists, but that is another story. The bottom line is there is no way to know the exact reasons or procedures behind the decision. If they remove standard computer network features from their product, they better have some explanationn if they expect people to understand. "What, you really want LAN?" or "We designed Bnet 2.0 so nobody will miss LAN" didn't cut it.
My main stance is that people should trust instead of question Blizzard's business decisions - they know better than you. Does it lead to the best result for consumers (or society)? Not always. But the decision that led to that point was based in what is rationally best for Blizzard (because it maximizes their profits) - hence why I call it reasonable.
I wouldnt call letting a business just maximize their profits no matter what happens "reasonable" at all, but that is the main point of our disagreement I guess.
What do you base your trust on? What incentive could a business possibly have to also care for common interests, especially if society is more or less looked down upon (in a non-emotional way) as a mass of "consumers"? Trusting in that sort of goodwill feels a bit suicidal to me.
Or do you just mean you trust that Blizzard will do fine for themselves with their business decision? I don't think anyone is really worrying about that, even if some peoples words were not completely clear in that respect..
I'd like to reply to other points you made - but I don't wanna stray too far off-topic. Lemme know if you're okay with continuing that part of the convo via PM.
You can shoot me a pm of course. I don't think it is necessary too much off-topic though. After all we are discussing what the right stance should be towards "No LAN" and its consequences, which is in direct connection to the hacking if I understood the OP correctly.
Also it might be fun for others to watch two opinions clash and produce a lot of funky debris around it.
On August 17 2011 09:30 nalgene wrote: What you are saying is to appeal to authority for everything, basically. If some entity suddenly made claim of something as such as two and two makes five instead of four, you'd believe them because they said so and that they supposedly know better. You would not question them at all?
If the most respected bunch of mathematicians came out, and published in a respected, peer-reviewed math journal a rigorous proof that 2+2=5, then yes - I'd "believe them because they said so and that they supposedly know better". I might be wary of it - but I would believe it until someone proved it otherwise.
On August 17 2011 10:15 Truedot wrote: My point is, no matter what DRM you try to put on your product, people WILL pirate it. you only hurt your legal consumers.
Your first point is true. The second sentence is a factual claim without any evidence. DRM may not stop pirating - but if it makes pirating more difficult/complex, it can reduce the number of pirates. Yes DRM hurts legal consumers. But you need to show that DRM doesn't help software companies for your second sentence to be true - and I don't think you can do that
On August 17 2011 10:15 Truedot wrote: People won't pay for the game if they intended to pirate it in the first place. People who do pirate it may actually be testing the game to see if they like it.
I counter that with the idea that people also pirate because it's cheaper getting it for free than paying for it. Why would I pay $60 for something if I can get the same thing for free? Yes, some people won't buy the game no matter what - but how many people tell themselves "I will never buy anything - even if the item is worth the money". Legal demo versions exist for most games for those who want to test the game out - piracy is not needed.
I'm not gonna lie. If there was no DRM, if I could pirate every game and have the same functionality and perks as people who brought the game.... I'd probably pirate everything. With piracy being both socially acceptable and with essentially no legal consequence it wouldn't make much sense to do otherwise.
On August 17 2011 10:15 Truedot wrote: How the F%*# can a company that denies legitimate customers the product they want stay in business?
By giving legitimate customers a product they DO want... Starcraft 2 w/o LAN capabilities.
On August 17 2011 12:52 perestain wrote: You can't on the other hand blame people for worrying about their own interests, because that is something that Blizzard will obviously not do for them....The problem is that they formulate their arguments in terms of Blizzards interests and not their own.
I agree with that. When people think that "...blizzard truly has no money to make from denying legitimate customers what they want" they're making claims of blizzards interest - inciting a "FUCK BLIZZARD" mentality that is misinformed and undeserved. I would be nice to have LAN - but I don't think anyone should blame Blizzard for not having it.
On August 17 2011 12:52 perestain wrote: This is a pretty bold assumption. I doubt that conclusive data on the matter even exists, but that is another story. The bottom line is there is no way to know the exact reasons or procedures behind the decision. If they remove standard computer network features from their product, they better have some explanationn if they expect people to understand. "What, you really want LAN?" or "We designed Bnet 2.0 so nobody will miss LAN" didn't cut it.
I'll give you that it's an assumption - but I wouldn't call it bold. I do not doubt that video game companies have all done research on the matter - far more than the average poster on the internet. And that anti-piracy measures have only increased tells me that video game companies at the very least has evidence that suggests that piracy *is* a problem that effects their profits and sales.
And though I'm sure Blizz would love to make bnet good enough so that it acts like LAN, I'm sure the actual business message is closer to "We designed bnet 2.0 to have functionality close enough to LAN so that not-having LAN leads to more profit (less-piracy, one ladder, more control, etc...) than costs (people not buying the game b/c of no LAN functionality, etc.)."
On August 17 2011 12:52 perestain wrote: I wouldnt call letting a business just maximize their profits no matter what happens "reasonable" at all, but that is the main point of our disagreement I guess.
What do you base your trust on? What incentive could a business possibly have to also care for common interests, especially if society is more or less looked down upon (in a non-emotional way) as a mass of "consumers"? Trusting in that sort of goodwill feels a bit suicidal to me.
Or do you just mean you trust that Blizzard will do fine for themselves with their business decision? I don't think anyone is really worrying about that, even if some peoples words were not completely clear in that respect..
I agree that business outcomes are not necessarily optimal for society (pollution, etc) - and the main reason is explained by the existence of negative externalities (businesses don't take into consideration the social cost of their actions.) All you have to do (through regulation or whatever) is to force businesses to consider these social costs. As long as company incentives perfectly align with social cost/benefits, then I have a whole lot of trust for capitalism. Aligning those incentives (Blizzard makes the most money by doing everything that consumers want) can be the tricky part.
So yea. I don't trust corporations to always do what is best for us. I trust them to do what's best for them. But I think it's unreasonable to think that they should think of us before themselves - which is the stance many people are actually taking. People are disappointed b/c they don't have LAN - that's understandable. Turning that disappointment into anger at Blizzard is unwarranted. Anger at pirates for helping to misalign incentives is much more reasonable...but instead pirates are rigorously defended.
I just don't understand how you can be angry at Blizzard for not having LAN.
On August 17 2011 12:52 perestain wrote: I don't think it is necessary too much off-topic though. After all we are discussing what the right stance should be towards "No LAN" and its consequences, which is in direct connection to the hacking if I understood the OP correctly.
Also it might be fun for others to watch two opinions clash and produce a lot of funky debris around it.
As long as we keep everything in the Blizzard/LAN frame it's fine. I was more worried about possibly this devolving into a discussion on the general correct usage of economic theory and whatnot
And I dunno dude. Funky debris seems unnecessarily wasteful... trusting in the goodwill of debris seems suicidal to me. Just look at what happened to the dinosaurs. Stuff can be dangerous. :D
On August 15 2011 03:02 Topdoller wrote: You forget, SC1 died a death in western culture no one played it as it was hacked to death, only the Koreans kept it alive. Bnet might not be perfect but it does bring the people together. The region zoning is there to stop high latency.
Have you actually stopped to think why every man and there dog has an XBOX 360. Its the bringing of all the players together that counts. Sonys online version sucks balls
I know a lot of people who dumped their Wii's and PlayStation's too play live with a 360 with their friends online. They get a few beers and have small events and enjoy team play from their own home.
I paid £36 for SC2 and its been well worth the value. The only people who moan about LAN are pirates. I dont see pros moaning about it,
You are completely incorrect. Sc1 died because Blizzard didn't support it. Hacks is what kept it alive. Players such as Idra, Incontrol, Day 9, Artosis and Tasteless (aka as the most famous members of our community) would be nothing without things such as iccup (which was illegal). Had it not been for iccup, BW may have died in the west, sc2 would have had far less hype and people like Day 9 wouldn't exist. If it weren't for hacks such as iccup, Idra would have become a physicist, day 9 a mathematician and Artosis would have kept to a job instead of practicing for Starcraft.
Every single pro gamer has complained about no lan. Don't speak on things you know nothing about.
Do you know what a LAN is? ICCup is Internet based isnt it where you connect to a central server so all it did was replace BNET, the principle is the same, a central point where people can connect and play together
As i said BNET might not be perfect and i suspect it will improve after HOTS. Don't forget over the coming years Internet latency will improve as technology improves,so think long term.
The world is coming together with the internet, its amazing, Look at WOW with its 40 man raids bring people from all over the region having fun
We wouldnt have HD Starcraft if it wasnt for hacks. They have their good sides you know
I would like to note that as a tournament organizer, the lack of LAN support makes my life MUCH MUCH harder. It is hard enough to find a good venue for an event, but add in requiring a good internet connection it becomes much more difficult and much more expensive.
Not having LAN hurts smaller organizations and start-ups. and impedes the grassroots growth of Starcraft and eSports locally.
Now that a post exists since lot of day and nobody of Blizzard stops the subject (here : http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2973007615?page=1 ), I think that we can discuss here about the apparition of this hack without a violation of the TOS... I don't see why we can speak about the hack on the official forum moderated by Blizzard salaried employee and can't here...
This hack was developed since a lots of time and support 1.3.6 clients (enGB,enUS, ... ) by a team named StarFriend. I see that you can use the legal Starcraft 2 and this hack on the same Starcraft 2 without any problem... Personnally, I think that LAN is the heart and soul of StarCraft. It wasn't Battle.net that made SC1 popular, it was LAN.
More of that, the team of developers of SF(StarFriend) states that if Blizzard release an official LAN, the team will stop their project.
And I don't support guys who say that LAN is dead... If you don't use LAN, cool bro but you are stupid. An extra LAN button is going to confuse you when you log in to play?
Serutan Some point of view from DeeBo & ROFL
I just stumbled upon this thread today, and as I was reading the opening post, I got to some words that were very familiar. It turns out you were using part of my post that I made in the other thread. Plus you gave me credit, Thanks! lol
Anyway, I really hope they add LAN. Like I posted on the Bnet forums, LAN was my favorite part of SC1. We used to play at my friend's cabin in the woods without internet. It was awesome! Sadly, we can't do that with SC2, which is suppose to be superior. My friend's and I can't even have a "LAN" party over Battle.net because our internet can't support it. Now I do still love SC2, it just pains me to see it without LAN. That's my two cents.
On August 15 2011 01:49 ImsorryKarelyn wrote: Anyone care to enlighten me on blizzard's stance on no LAN for sc2 beside piracy? I haven't been keeping up with all the news looked into deeply with blizzard's history but hasn't recently Diablo 3 will support cash auction system where they stated in the video interview that "it gonna happen anyway might as well us do it" (not direct quote but somewhere along that line). I'm all at loss with blizzard's philosophy approach right now. Was it all just bs just to maximize profits?
Their reasons are piracy and making battle.net 2.0 the best multiplayer platform, which is funny considering how fucking terrible it is. It's speculated that maximising profits is one of the main reasons too. Sadsadsad I still can't believe this game doesn't have LAN.
Are you serious? Have you played Warcraft 3? The lag on Battle.net was almost one second for even the best connections in Europe. So yes they have greatly improved the latency for bnet 2.0, and it's nowhere near as horrible as you make it to sound. And yes they don't want LAN because they don't want piracy ofc. Saw that comming since WoW came out to be honest.
There was built in latency in WC3, so that people would be on a more even footing. Having latency change a lot within a game is also worse than having a constant (but higher) latency.
Only big tournaments sanctioned by Blizzard (such as GSL, MLG, NASL, IEM, Dreamhack, etc) should have lan. Unfortunately figuring out a way so that only these tournaments can use lan is difficult.
Consumer interests and business interests are never going to mesh. They want to do less and earn more, we want more and to pay less. Fact is, standard game features available in their own other games (and every other multiplayer game on the market) are not available in this one, and we still need to pay for 2 more games to get the full story.
*Clan Support *Chat Channels that don't suck *Share Replays *Name Changes (paid ..honestly wtf.. just put a 1-2 month cooldown that'd stop people constantly changing) *Lan or at least cross region play in customs, I shouldn't have to buy 2 copies of a game to play with friends. That is not exactly Multiplayer.. (league is perfectly fine by region for lag purposes.)
At least if they allowed name changes, or a clan tag be added that'd at least show a bit of something to the clan/ team community. Not adding these very basic features can only be harming their company image in the eyes of consumers. Even if you do agree about their no Lan for piracy message. Things like paid name change.. no clan support.. have no justification other than pure greed on their part. They're customers are asking for something to help their experience.. existing, and future consumers of other blizzard games.. and blizzard are flat out being stupid by not giving these features, minimal cost.. lots of goodwill from consumers.
They want BNET 2.0 to be the central hub for their games.. then they need to add in the features to make it so, currently it's just purely window dressing to look at while i click find match.
It amuses me to see so many people arguing that blizz shouldn't implement lan. Which is good, since before starfriend came out, it just ticked me off... What kind of a lifeless moron spends his time arguing against something other people desperately want, but he doesn't care about?? Do you get your jollies that way? Do you also like to take candy (that you don't like) from children, or explain to elementary school students why their recess has been canceled? Dude, if you don't want it, GO PLAY STARCRAFT instead of wasting time spewing negative crap about something that doesn't impact you!!
Anyway, it's irrelevant now. Starcraft II has lan. Done. And it can't be undone, unless Blizz suddenly figures out how to retroactively undo widespread internet distribution (good luck!). Now the question is, do they continue obstinately refusing to provide their most loyal customers this feature (while the rest get it anyway)?
On August 15 2011 01:37 Serutan wrote: And I don't support guys who say that LAN is dead... If you don't use LAN, cool bro but you are stupid. An extra LAN button is going to confuse you when you log in to play?
I'm stupid if I don't use LAN? Are you retarded? Why would I use LAN when I have no one to play with on my network. Should I play singleplayer or AI LAN? What the fuck are you getting at? You sound like a jackass.
On August 15 2011 01:37 Serutan wrote: And I don't support guys who say that LAN is dead... If you don't use LAN, cool bro but you are stupid. An extra LAN button is going to confuse you when you log in to play?
I'm stupid if I don't use LAN? Are you retarded? Why would I use LAN when I have no one to play with on my network. Should I play singleplayer or AI LAN? What the fuck are you getting at? You sound like a jackass.
Time to find some friends.
Ontopic: Seriously, blizzard is cutting stuff that can be easily coded in few days ( like lan support ), stuff which has been present in his older games and everyone enjoyed it, thats a bad decision.
On August 15 2011 01:37 Serutan wrote: And I don't support guys who say that LAN is dead... If you don't use LAN, cool bro but you are stupid. An extra LAN button is going to confuse you when you log in to play?
I'm stupid if I don't use LAN? Are you retarded? Why would I use LAN when I have no one to play with on my network. Should I play singleplayer or AI LAN? What the fuck are you getting at? You sound like a jackass.
On August 15 2011 01:37 Serutan wrote: And I don't support guys who say that LAN is dead... If you don't use LAN, cool bro but you are stupid. An extra LAN button is going to confuse you when you log in to play?
I'm stupid if I don't use LAN? Are you retarded? Why would I use LAN when I have no one to play with on my network. Should I play singleplayer or AI LAN? What the fuck are you getting at? You sound like a jackass.
He's saying you're stupid if you don't support having LAN in-game. The wording was a bit ambiguous, but it's not too difficult to grasp the concept >.>
- @ the general noob artillery squad: LAN = Local Area Network. It's not a magical acronym that stands for whatever you like. It is not a service as many of you seem to think. It can, however, be used to support an external service as was the case with Starcraft.
- @uzyszkodnik: The LAN support was not excluded from SC2 because "it took more time to code". It was excluded because they don't want to make it easy for people to hack SC2 multiplayer and because they wanted one centralized place for all players to play on (if they accomplished this is another topic).
- @Zeke50100: The original poster's wording was NOT ambiguous. It was just wrong. They did, however, succeed in insulting 95% of the player base.
- @uzyszkodnik: Having friends is not the same as having friends with their own pcs hooked up to your network. Unless they were my roommates or we were having a lan party, this would be a very retarded idea.
- @crms: I think you need to learn how to read. Maybe you should read again so you can change what you "think".
He was being ambiguous, and you clearly misinterpreted what he said, regardless of shady wording. He was obviously insulting those who said "LAN is dead". Perhaps you should get off your high horse and understand that the author's intent is not always how you interpret it?
On August 24 2011 07:04 Zeke50100 wrote: He was being ambiguous, and you clearly misinterpreted what he said, regardless of shady wording. He was obviously insulting those who said "LAN is dead". Perhaps you should get off your high horse and understand that the author's intent is not always how you interpret it?
am·big·u·ous /æmˈbɪgyuəs/ Show Spelled[am-big-yoo-uhs] 1. open to or having several possible meanings or interpretations; equivocal: an ambiguous answer.
The OP's original post is not ambigous. It can only be interpreted one way the way they wrote it. Just because you "know" what he "meant" doesn't mean shit. Maybe people should try to make their grammar correct and re-read what they wrote when writing about the things they care about instead of being snide with "cool story bro" hate bullshit lines and riddling their post with broken english.
I think that LAN would be a nice feature, but the problem is that it would probably increase the piracy because you would be able to play multiplayer. Currently on a pirated version you can only play campaign and against bots. Making multiplayer available through LAN would open up for such programs as hamachi to be used.
If Blizzard is going to add it in themselves it's most likely way after the release of Legacy of the Void, just like they removed the 'CD-Rom in drive'-requirement from WarCraft III a long time after its release.
Btw at least one advantage of the current way is players experience roughly the same delay when practicing online at home and in tournaments (perhaps slight differences in ping based on connection / location of both locations). Not sure if it outweighs the cons though.
On August 24 2011 07:04 Zeke50100 wrote: He was being ambiguous, and you clearly misinterpreted what he said, regardless of shady wording. He was obviously insulting those who said "LAN is dead". Perhaps you should get off your high horse and understand that the author's intent is not always how you interpret it?
am·big·u·ous /æmˈbɪgyuəs/ Show Spelled[am-big-yoo-uhs] 1. open to or having several possible meanings or interpretations; equivocal: an ambiguous answer.
The OP's original post is not ambigous. It can only be interpreted one way the way they wrote it. Just because you "know" what he "meant" doesn't mean shit. Maybe people should try to make their grammar correct and re-read what they wrote when writing about the things they care about instead of being snide with "cool story bro" hate bullshit lines and riddling their post with broken english.
So you are on this crusade of of being offended and acting out because somebody's grammar wasn't good enough? Get over it.
Starfriend is the best, have lan support and also dedicated servers, is always up to date with the patches (1.4.3 right now) We use Starfriend for tournaments, big lans and when battle.net is offline XD Lets gogogo StarFriend!!
If Blizzard doesn't want to support LAN, then they need to come up with a way to save and carry on multiplayer games. Having a disconnect in a tournament is really frustrating for players and audiences alike.
Okay, so I just learned about StarFriend this week, im pretty excited to let my friends know and test it. While downloading now, what the heck, I decided to google "Teamliquid StarFriend" and saw this. Did not know there was a thread here already since last year.
Me and my LAN buddies from high school are having an out of town reunion next week and we decided to revive our old 4v4 parties ---10 year old 8-port wired router still works FTW! Asked my friends to install SC1, Battle Realms, UT2004, CS and WC3 on their laptops in advance. Glad we will be able to play SC2 as well. :-)
See, Blizzard just don't get what Beer+LAN on a Philippine Beach means.
Good thing Taeja just dropped from an advantageous position on Entombed Valley during MLG Summer Arena due to Blizzards group of imbeciles running the show. Professionalism... How can we be a sport when players can just drop from games?
Proleague was on the other night, Sayle was casting and a player began to drop in Kespa... KESPA (due to the hybrid system) what a fucking joke. Frustration level 100%.
On July 22 2012 10:04 NeMeSiS3 wrote: Good thing Taeja just dropped from an advantageous position on Entombed Valley during MLG Summer Arena due to Blizzards group of imbeciles running the show. Professionalism... How can we be a sport when players can just drop from games?
Proleague was on the other night, Sayle was casting and a player began to drop in Kespa... KESPA (due to the hybrid system) what a fucking joke. Frustration level 100%.
Taejas PC crashed, the last drop due to lack of lan support I know of was IPL3, it really isn't that big of a problem.
On July 22 2012 10:04 NeMeSiS3 wrote: Good thing Taeja just dropped from an advantageous position on Entombed Valley during MLG Summer Arena due to Blizzards group of imbeciles running the show. Professionalism... How can we be a sport when players can just drop from games?
Proleague was on the other night, Sayle was casting and a player began to drop in Kespa... KESPA (due to the hybrid system) what a fucking joke. Frustration level 100%.
Taejas PC crashed, the last drop due to lack of lan support I know of was IPL3, it really isn't that big of a problem.
Startale vs Prime GSTL finals! It was a huge deal.
With HotS coming soon™, LAN won't be necessary anymore. So why bother when Blizzard will most probably not get back on their words now that they have a way to get around it and to be totally fair i agree with them. Implementing LAN now would be a total PR fail.
On July 22 2012 13:51 Enearde wrote: With HotS coming soon™, LAN won't be necessary anymore. So why bother when Blizzard will most probably not get back on their words now that they have a way to get around it and to be totally fair i agree with them. Implementing LAN now would be a total PR fail.
not unnecessary. Resume from replay solves more issues than LAN, and LAN offers some very different and better functionality than just reducing chances disconnect; it namely: allows play without internet connection, and allows for much lower latency play (which also allows for some fancier custom map code possibilities)
if anyone is curious what lan does, go to single player, hit play vs AI, remove the AI and play by yourself (continue game) and feel the game, there is ZERO delay, it is mind blowing.
On July 22 2012 15:02 NeMeSiS3 wrote: if anyone is curious what lan does, go to single player, hit play vs AI, remove the AI and play by yourself (continue game) and feel the game, there is ZERO delay, it is mind blowing.
Just a few thoughts.I'm not really upset I just want to make a few points.
1. Blizzard is not bending and they have stated many times over and again there is going to be no LAN. So making an online petition that some 16 years olds put together does nothing. In fact, online petitions do nothing except let the whiners feel like they have done something. But that's an arguement for another time.
2. Honestly, I didn't get a lot out of the OP's post. It was so poorly constructed and the wording. Seriously. Was any time and thought put into the post or was it thrown together so fast to be the first one up?
2.a.. And now the first couple of replies are about absolutely nothing. Nit-picking? Is TL starting to become B.net forums? I sure hope not. Lack of thought in the OP's post. And the useless comments about double spacing...
3. And honestly, B.net did make a huge impact in the ways games were played. I know people are all for LAN, but they also forget the mess that it was to set that up. So please stop saying LAN is the best thing ever, because really, it wasn't and that is what made B.net a forerunner for what you see today; easy access play. And just think, LAN isn't going to get you wanna-be pro kids playing on the Kor, CN, EU servers. And let me touch base again by saying it was Korea that really made SC live for 10+ years. Not custom games, like the millions of TD out there.
4. This one is an angry response. Taeja's computer crashed. Battle.net had nothing to do with it. For those who don't know, if a computer crashes the timeout still happens. NeMeSiS3 needs to think before he types. (warn me, ban me, I'm sorry but his response needs to be nipped in the butt) Blizzard runs MLG events? How DARE computers have issues in the glorious name of Esports. Yeah guys, frustration level 100%!
I completely agree with Snacky, Close this thread.
OK so most people have internet everywhere today. However lag makes the playing/viewing experience alot worse than people think. A friend has issues with his cellnet sometimes. I play so much worse and slower it's incredible. Pros have like 2-4 times higher apm so they probably have the same issues at lower latencies. Missing units because they're not where you think they will be. Stuff not building because a keypress didn't count and stuff like that.
Worst part is having to buy 5 sc2 copies just to be able to play different servers. In broodwar you just selected what server you wanted with one click of a button.
On July 22 2012 16:10 MrHoon wrote: I don't really care for lan anymore, but blizzard seriously needs a reconnect option like dota 2
Don't give me that "well in ladder ppl wont pause anyways so it's useless" excuse you know damn well how many issues this will solve in tournies
Force pause, give them 90 seconds to reconnect and don't give an unpause option. If the guy reconnects, give a 10 second countdown and resume. If they don't, they lose the game. Blamo.
On July 22 2012 10:04 NeMeSiS3 wrote: Good thing Taeja just dropped from an advantageous position on Entombed Valley during MLG Summer Arena due to Blizzards group of imbeciles running the show. Professionalism... How can we be a sport when players can just drop from games?
Proleague was on the other night, Sayle was casting and a player began to drop in Kespa... KESPA (due to the hybrid system) what a fucking joke. Frustration level 100%.
Taejas PC crashed, the last drop due to lack of lan support I know of was IPL3, it really isn't that big of a problem.
Startale vs Prime GSTL finals! It was a huge deal.
That was IPL4. And I'm pretty sure someone from IPL4 said it was their network card problem and even LAN wouldn't have fixed it.
Force pause, give them 90 seconds to reconnect and don't give an unpause option. If the guy reconnects, give a 10 second countdown and resume. If they don't, they lose the game. Blamo.
90 seconds is a bit short if you dont have a ssd, apart from that i really like that solution. I dont think it has to be implemented for ladder games, but maybe for custom games only
On July 22 2012 16:10 MrHoon wrote: I don't really care for lan anymore, but blizzard seriously needs a reconnect option like dota 2
Don't give me that "well in ladder ppl wont pause anyways so it's useless" excuse you know damn well how many issues this will solve in tournies
Force pause, give them 90 seconds to reconnect and don't give an unpause option. If the guy reconnects, give a 10 second countdown and resume. If they don't, they lose the game. Blamo.
Have you not been following the times? There will be a "resume from replay" feature, which gives better functionality than that — at least for tournaments and custom games (not necessarily ladder).
You cannot use "no LAN to prevent piracy" as there are tons of Starcraft II cracked versions out, you can find it on any torrent website, and many games achieved glory simply because they could be hacked, and went into a pro-scene (Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike to mention some).
But long gone are the days when you needed to get every player you can and now they can just focus on making money (isn't that the sole reason they are doing this?), so it stands from that point. However, I don't see a problem with having LAN in Starcraft II, playing single player against AI and multiplayer almost feels like two different games with the response time and everything.
Blizzard has transformed from a small game studio to a huge corporation. As such they now feel that they are in a position to provide their customers with an inferior product. Remember, they used to permit free instances of Starcraft to be installed on multiple computers for LAN play. They have grown arrogant and this will start eating into their loyal fanbase sooner or later. Given time, it will undermine their foundations as a successfull company. It's a textbook way of how a company life cycle works.
On July 22 2012 17:48 DeCoder wrote: Blizzard has transformed from a small game studio to a huge corporation. As such they now feel that they are in a position to provide their customers with an inferior product. Remember, they used to permit free instances of Starcraft to be installed on multiple computers for LAN play. They have grown arrogant and this will start eating into their loyal fanbase sooner or later. Given time, it will undermine their foundations as a successfull company. It's a textbook way of how a company life cycle works.
Well they are obviously still mainly relying on World of Warcraft. Starcraft is a big game with a lot of fans, but compared with the money they make from World of Warcraft it isn't more then a sideproject. Just imagine a gamestudio that ONLY has Starcraft to worry about and develop.
lol @ those guys think Starfriend good and LAN-alike thing With ' Resume from replay ' feature coming up with HotS as Blizzard planned, LAN won't have a chance
On July 22 2012 17:48 DeCoder wrote: Blizzard has transformed from a small game studio to a huge corporation. As such they now feel that they are in a position to provide their customers with an inferior product. Remember, they used to permit free instances of Starcraft to be installed on multiple computers for LAN play. They have grown arrogant and this will start eating into their loyal fanbase sooner or later. Given time, it will undermine their foundations as a successfull company. It's a textbook way of how a company life cycle works.
Yes that was also before piracy was sooooooo easy to do. Piracy has always been around to an extent but it is almost crazy how bad it is now so somehting had to be done and I see this as probably the next step gaming will take. You will probaly eventually be unable to play games offline and the only thing really stopping it now is that good internet connections arent as prevelent as they will be in say 5-10 years.
On July 22 2012 17:48 DeCoder wrote: Blizzard has transformed from a small game studio to a huge corporation. As such they now feel that they are in a position to provide their customers with an inferior product. Remember, they used to permit free instances of Starcraft to be installed on multiple computers for LAN play. They have grown arrogant and this will start eating into their loyal fanbase sooner or later. Given time, it will undermine their foundations as a successfull company. It's a textbook way of how a company life cycle works.
Yes that was also before piracy was sooooooo easy to do. Piracy has always been around to an extent but it is almost crazy how bad it is now so somehting had to be done and I see this as probably the next step gaming will take. You will probaly eventually be unable to play games offline and the only thing really stopping it now is that good internet connections arent as prevelent as they will be in say 5-10 years.
thats not true when scbw was released piracy was much easier, alot of my friends had pirated wc2 and scbw games but after we played it a lot and loved it all bought it hardly a game had copy protection and if it had copy protection it was as easy as today to copy it blizzard changed to activision blizzard thats why they got greedy
On July 22 2012 17:48 DeCoder wrote: Blizzard has transformed from a small game studio to a huge corporation. As such they now feel that they are in a position to provide their customers with an inferior product. Remember, they used to permit free instances of Starcraft to be installed on multiple computers for LAN play. They have grown arrogant and this will start eating into their loyal fanbase sooner or later. Given time, it will undermine their foundations as a successfull company. It's a textbook way of how a company life cycle works.
Yes that was also before piracy was sooooooo easy to do. Piracy has always been around to an extent but it is almost crazy how bad it is now so somehting had to be done and I see this as probably the next step gaming will take. You will probaly eventually be unable to play games offline and the only thing really stopping it now is that good internet connections arent as prevelent as they will be in say 5-10 years.
thats not true when scbw was released piracy was much easier, alot of my friends had pirated wc2 and scbw games but after we played it a lot and loved it all bought it hardly a game had copy protection and if it had copy protection it was as easy as today to copy it blizzard changed to activision blizzard thats why they got greedy
Not wanting people to steal your game doesnt make you greedy. If anything it means they can afford to put more into games like sc2 because the lack of piracy helps sales. There are a few hiccups with having a fully online game but I am not surprised that a new style is having a few issues which overall have been mostly resolved or will be completely resolevd by HotS. I just dont see this "greedy" Blizzard that everyone else sees.
Does this even work correctly? I mean did they manage to 1:1 recreate the multiplayer gameplay/mechanics/calculations from a BNet Starcraft 2 game? Because some of those things are calculated on the servers and it should be hard to get access to it, right?
Or is this just a "we'll code it the way we think it's working"?
Either way, this fortunately won't do much harm this late.
On July 22 2012 17:36 ysnake wrote: You cannot use "no LAN to prevent piracy" as there are tons of Starcraft II cracked versions out, you can find it on any torrent website, and many games achieved glory simply because they could be hacked, and went into a pro-scene (Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike to mention some).
But long gone are the days when you needed to get every player you can and now they can just focus on making money (isn't that the sole reason they are doing this?), so it stands from that point. However, I don't see a problem with having LAN in Starcraft II, playing single player against AI and multiplayer almost feels like two different games with the response time and everything.
Never forget the Warcraft 3 response time...
Actually you can use that reasoning to justify it because the always-on connection does prevent piracy. Sure you can pirate the single player campaign and you can pirate playing vs the AI, but the heart and soul of StarCraft is the multiplayer. Shifty people have been working on trying to get that working without bnet since beta and there is still no reliable way to get it done, and the community for it is extremely small anyway. Always On Bnet / No LAN does prevent piracy of the most important part of the game. If there was a LAN mode it would be very easy for people to set up a third-party bnet substitute and release tools to allow others to do the same. In that case Blizzard suing wouldn't accomplish anything because the tools would be out there and widely distributed.
This is the route that gaming is going because piracy is rampant. Blizzard has their always-on DRM, UbiSoft has their always-on DRM (which is actually worse), other companies are working on similar DRM schemes. Even the console companies are rumored to be working on DRM so that each game comes with a unique key that has to be activated online before most of the game's features can be used and so that if you buy a game used you have to pay a small fee to get access to all of that game's features. Interesting times for gamers.
I'd highly suggest those who wonder why we do not have LAN, to look into the KeSPA/Blizzard problems in the first 1,5 year of SC2. The issue lies in the fact that now they can control their product's usage by major tournaments, and being able to keep their intellectual property just that. In BW times, due to LAN, it was much harder to set up a profitable system for the company.
Say what you want, but Blizzard is here to make money.
The only thing that has the power to bring us lan is League of legends. Dont misunderstand me i dont play or like this game, but only if blizzard starts to loose market they start to rethink.
I personal think that blizzard is to slow to rethink and when the day comes they notice their mistake its to late for them. Most big companys thought they can get away with everything and when they realised they cant no costumer was left to buy the new product.
I don't know. At this point with sc2 being out for 2 years and how many "seasons" already. Having LAN doesn't even seem to matter much to the majority. It is either you play it or you don't at this point.
For me, I don't get to play it anymore but I really love watching the game by sc2 pros. And the tournaments can function without the LAN other than the hiccups here and there when bundled with a live stream broadcast though. But I think most major tournaments have already gone past that.
Do I see myself playing sc2 again? Yeah. Would LAN make me want to play more? I don't really think it would matter for me at this stage already. Would I get HoTS? It remains to be seen at this point. I don't get the draw really. Maybe once they release a bundle package with the LoTV so I can save a few bucks on HoTS, then I'll consider just to complete the game and story.
Multiplayer really is what keeps starcraft 2 going and the system actually works to better that. Those that didn't use to play on Bnet actually end up playing on it now (although by force). And they are introduced into a wider multiplayer arena that just LAN.
This is just for me though and others may disagree and I will respect that. Cheers!
On July 25 2012 16:39 17Sphynx17 wrote: I don't know. At this point with sc2 being out for 2 years and how many "seasons" already. Having LAN doesn't even seem to matter much to the majority. It is either you play it or you don't at this point.
Apart from GSL, I never watched one lagfree tournament, and even the GSL has had some lag the couple of days.
On July 22 2012 21:02 MVega wrote: Shifty people have been working on trying to get that working without bnet since beta and there is still no reliable way to get it done, and the community for it is extremely small anyway. Always On Bnet / No LAN does prevent piracy of the most important part of the game. If there was a LAN mode it would be very easy for people to set up a third-party bnet substitute and release tools to allow others to do the same. In that case Blizzard suing wouldn't accomplish anything because the tools would be out there and widely distributed.
So much wrong here.
1. It's very reliable, and very easy at this point as well. You don't seem to know what you're talking about 2. Always requiring internet connection doesn't not prevent piracy, just makes it a bit harder. What makes piracy extremely hard or impossible is when the game depends on the server for many core things — SC2 is not such a game (although Diablo 3 is).
On August 22 2011 07:07 LetoAtreides82 wrote: Only big tournaments sanctioned by Blizzard (such as GSL, MLG, NASL, IEM, Dreamhack, etc) should have lan. Unfortunately figuring out a way so that only these tournaments can use lan is difficult.
No.
LAN should be available for all of us who want it. I did BW LANs for years and I want to be able to do the same for SC2.
Look at what happened to all the games which support LAN...Garena. All pirates using cd key generators. Being purely internet based is fine, the ISP's need to pick up their game.
if pro players cant use LAN to train there is no point to use it in tournaments. without ~200 ms delay they wont play much better, because they wont be used to it. so using LAN only in major tournaments is not an option. blizzard does not want people blatantly use cracked games to play online in garena so i dont think we will see LAN
On July 22 2012 21:02 MVega wrote: Shifty people have been working on trying to get that working without bnet since beta and there is still no reliable way to get it done, and the community for it is extremely small anyway. Always On Bnet / No LAN does prevent piracy of the most important part of the game. If there was a LAN mode it would be very easy for people to set up a third-party bnet substitute and release tools to allow others to do the same. In that case Blizzard suing wouldn't accomplish anything because the tools would be out there and widely distributed.
So much wrong here.
1. It's very reliable, and very easy at this point as well. You don't seem to know what you're talking about 2. Always requiring internet connection doesn't not prevent piracy, just makes it a bit harder. What makes piracy extremely hard or impossible is when the game depends on the server for many core things — SC2 is not such a game (although Diablo 3 is).
1. No it's not. It's very hit or miss. People like to overstate it. 2. The heart of StarCraft 2 is the mulitplayer. It doesn't make a difference if someone pirates the single player campaign. Blizzard knew that would happen, pretty much everyone knew that would happen. The important part is keeping them from pirating the multiplayer. Without the always-on DRM it would be much easier to set-up a private battle.net substitute, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to avoid.
I'm all for Blizzard's DRM, and the rest of the industry is heading that way too so this is just what we have to live with.
On July 21 2012 01:50 Don.681 wrote: Okay, so I just learned about StarFriend this week, im pretty excited to let my friends know and test it. While downloading now, what the heck, I decided to google "Teamliquid StarFriend" and saw this. Did not know there was a thread here already since last year.
Me and my LAN buddies from high school are having an out of town reunion next week and we decided to revive our old 4v4 parties ---10 year old 8-port wired router still works FTW! Asked my friends to install SC1, Battle Realms, UT2004, CS and WC3 on their laptops in advance. Glad we will be able to play SC2 as well. :-)
See, Blizzard just don't get what Beer+LAN on a Philippine Beach means.
You have an awesome selection of LAN games my friend! I bring most of those when I LAN too haha.
On July 25 2012 21:43 MVega wrote: 1. No it's not. It's very hit or miss. People like to overstate it. 2. The heart of StarCraft 2 is the mulitplayer. It doesn't make a difference if someone pirates the single player campaign. Blizzard knew that would happen, pretty much everyone knew that would happen. The important part is keeping them from pirating the multiplayer. Without the always-on DRM it would be much easier to set-up a private battle.net substitute, which is exactly what Blizzard wants to avoid.
I'm not sure if you understand what I meant when I was talking about #2 — I was referring to the multiplayer, not the single player. There's very little that the server does in SC2; it mostly just routes the game packets from client to client; There's no server-side information or server-side code per-se (outside of battle.net system such as chat/lobby/etc.). It does add difficulty, but still makes it VERY doable, as you can see first-hand. A game like Diablo 3 on the other hand will very likely never be fully operational while pirated, or at least will take a very long time to be in that scenario. That's due to the fact that it has substantial server-side code.
About #1 — Care to elaborate or prove what you're talking about? When you have competent people using it it's quite reliable. If you have someone that doesn't know how to follow basic instructions or is incompetent in some other way, maybe it could be unreliable, but that's the same way with PCs, space shuttles, cars, or guns (or many other things).
Warning: The last post in this thread is over two months old. If you bump this, you better have a good reason.
I'd say this is quite an important reason. The developers have (finally) released the HotS version of it and it works like charm. All you have to do is download the files + map cache (~442mb) and start the game. There are already test servers, but you can also start your own server from the program itself.
Hope this doesn't get trashed because it's a bump for such an old thread. I just thought the news it's pretty huge and people deserved to know the project isn't dead.
LAN isn't as important for SC2 as it was for BW, since people have generally better internet now. Still a nice feature to have, my thanks to the Starfriend team. People can now install the game and play with eachother even without internet access and when Battle.net is having problems. Too bad major tournaments can't use it, Blizzard might sue :D
EPT
it took way too much to get them, also the chat channels we got are just plain bad...the anti-spam "feature" encourages spamming since it will block you in an actual conversation rather than just when spamming because they forgot to add a line of code that checks each line of text against the next to compare them
