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First of all, I am a long time lurker here at TL, back to 2003 I think. I enjoyed TL a lot but too lazy to post.
But now I find a very good reason to share my point of view and information that I’ve obtained.
We all know that currently Blizzard have no plan to support LAN in the upcoming SC2, and many wonder why?
I think I may have answers to many of your questions.
The reason lies in pirating and particularly in China.
First of all let me do a quick introduce about the backbone of Chinese SC/WC3 gaming platform in China:
As we already known Chinese SC players are among the best outside of Korea, and I can guarantee you that most of Chinese SC players don’t even play on Bnet. They play on a gaming platform called Haofang(and few others but Haofang is the 1st and the biggest)
A few thing about Haofang: It is biggest gaming site in China, it has millions of users for many games including SC and WC3. It is free and using LAN(TCP/IP protocol) to allow players to play.
How Haofang works: You download a small program for Haofang, run it, tell it where your SC folder is. You join a room(max 255 players because TCP/IP can handle max to 255)then hit RUN, the little program will load your SC up and instead of log on to Bnet you go to LAN, and can find many games their to play since 255 players in the same room is a lot.
Why it is bad: Cos millions of players in China were/are/going to using pirated SC/WC3 to play without any limitation.
Why Blizzard cares: Of course they care, if even SC2 is going to last only half the life of SC the next big market is definitely China(cos Korea is given). If things going on like SC/WC3 Blizzard is going to lose tons of money.
Did Blizzard do anything about it: Yes they did but failed. A few year back Blizzard sued Haofang but lost and Haofang is continue to grow and now become the most recognize site in China(among gamers of course).
Why is Haofang able to sneak pass Blizzard: Haofang told that they only allow players play via LAN(TCP/IP) they do not do anything to mess with Blizzard Battle.net and thus can not be judged. I know it is bullshit since it allows players with pirated copies play multi play which is the life SC, but it holds true in the EULA and Blizzard can do nothing about it.
So to conclude, When I see the news about Blizzard not support LAN, to tell the truth I wasn’t surprised at all. I knew it gonna come it some form or another. I am just deeply sorry for us those dedicated gamers got affected by pirate using scum.
I feel deeply for Blizzard, this is a very difficult decision for them to make but I think it is a necessary one. Long live BLIZZARD.
That’s it for now, discuss whatever you want!
[UPDATE]
For people that think that Blizzard removing LAN support to prevent the game being hacked, it is not true.
SC2 will be hacked and put on torrent sharing site within a week when it comes out.
What Blizzard is trying to do here is prevent company like Haofang which encourage mass piracy.
In China and many others place in the world people only go out to buy the game after they find out that there is no way or ivery troublesome for their pirated copy to play online.
Even if this increase the people that buy the game in developing countries buy 10-20% it is a huge gain for Blizzard.
What I think we need to discuss now is how Blizzard should do it to make it less painful for legimated gamers. Maybe like many people have pointed out a system like Stream should work?
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Where can you get HaoFang? Just kidding....
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Nice ideas.. Karune also said something about LAN parties with SC2 in THIS Blue post.
I have to say, I'm not convinced...
//edit: Tsagacity posted it before ^^
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That's probably the asian counterpart of Garena.
The only thing that pisses me off is that they have nothing to announce yet, and are just teasing with us. "We're taking LAN and giving you something else that's much better, but we won't tell you what it is!"
Very frustrating...
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As mentioned by Rob Pardo in interviews, piracy is a serious problem and often times tie in closely with LAN. At the end of the day, we want the best for the community and fans that support our games, and having chunk of the community pirate the game actually hurts the community.
1) Pirated servers splinter the community instead of consolidating all players who love to play the game. Battle.net will bring players together in skirmishes, ladder play, custom games, and allow everyone the opportunity to share a common experience.
2) More people on Battle.net means more even more resources devoted to evolving this online platform to cater to further community building and new ways to enjoy the game online. World of Warcraft is a great example of a game that has evolved beyond anyone's imagination since their Day 1 and will continue to do so to better the player experience for as long as players support the title. The original StarCraft is an even better example of how 11 years later, players still love and play this title, and we will continue to support and evolve it with patches.
We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.
If I were to buy StarCraft II or any other title, I know the money I spent would be going to supporting that title. Personally, I would be upset that others were freeloading while others are legitimately supporting a title that has great potential and goals of making this title have 'long legs.'
If you like a song a lot, buy it, and that artist will only come out with more awesome songs for you. If you like a game, buy it, and we will promise to constantly work to make the player experience better at every corner we can.
Support the causes you believe in (This is applicable to all things, not just gaming).
Don't be a leech to society, innovation, and further awesome creations.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18031370482&sid=3000&pageNo=3#49
Could add this to the OP maybe.
They have the right idea targeting splintered communities at least. A new battle.net that gives players everything they need and contains 99% of the community would be absolutely amazing. Hopefully we'll have awesome LAN latency, AMM, team support, and constant tournaments. No longer will you have to go on a private server to play against the best teams maybe? 
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I loved LAN parties, but the direction in which Battle.net is headed, I would always choose to play on Battle.net > 99% of the time and even if for whatever reason I did decide to lug my computer to a friend's house in this day of age -Karune
I find this completely ridiculous. It is always, without fail, more fun to play a multiplayer game when your opponent is sitting right across from you. There's way more interaction than anything the internet can currently provide. Oh and also lugging computers around isn't that difficult if you have this thing called a laptop, buddy...
On the other hand, I can see that haofang is a major issue, but I don't think it would be so difficult to implement a CD-key check for LAN play the way there is on Bnet. Then again that could get complicated, but I'm kinda blown away by their decision to completely eliminate LAN. There is definitely a possibility of a compromise that they're throwing away. In my book real life competition beats the shit out of interwebs competition any day.
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I wouldn't say Blizzard is teasing us, per say. Obviously, it sucks that they told us there'd be no LAN without being able to tell us what they've added to Battle.net 2.0 to replace it, but it was revealed by an interview question they answered, right? They probably didn't plan to say, until they had Battle.net 2.0 to show us.
Also: CD-key checks don't work for LAN the same reason why CD-checks don't work (at least, have a very simply bypass): its done locally. It's fairly easy to edit a file or two to either stop it from checking, or tricking it into thinking you're good.
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Sad but interesting information... funny how there's always something to blame China about.
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On July 01 2009 03:20 Boundz(DarKo) wrote:
Sad but interesting information... funny how there's always something to blame China about.
Well, it isn't only China. Just check the amount of WC 3 players on Garena, many of them don't have a legal copy.
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It will just be a matter of time before some one figures out how to make a LAN option or reduce the lag so it is like LAN on Bnet or make it so people can still play with other people using pirated versions. It's almost impossible to prevent some one from playing a pirated version on line with some program.
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Not to encourage pirating, but I heard (from a friend) that the players on HaoFang are generally really really good, like >250apm even in 1v1 noob games. Can anyone verify/refute this?
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On July 01 2009 03:17 aeronexus wrote:Show nested quote +I loved LAN parties, but the direction in which Battle.net is headed, I would always choose to play on Battle.net > 99% of the time and even if for whatever reason I did decide to lug my computer to a friend's house in this day of age -Karune I find this completely ridiculous. It is always, without fail, more fun to play a multiplayer game when your opponent is sitting right across from you. There's way more interaction than anything the internet can currently provide. Oh and also lugging computers around isn't that difficult if you have this thing called a laptop, buddy... On the other hand, I can see that haofang is a major issue, but I don't think it would be so difficult to implement a CD-key check for LAN play the way there is on Bnet. Then again that could get complicated, but I'm kinda blown away by their decision to completely eliminate LAN. There is definitely a possibility of a compromise that they're throwing away. In my book real life competition beats the shit out of interwebs competition any day.
i think you miss-understood karunes' statement.
he is saying that even if he is at his friends' house he would choose the bnet to play with his friend instead of playing over lan. (so he still have the interactions, because he is at his friends' home, but don't net the lan function)
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On July 01 2009 03:17 aeronexus wrote:Show nested quote +I loved LAN parties, but the direction in which Battle.net is headed, I would always choose to play on Battle.net > 99% of the time and even if for whatever reason I did decide to lug my computer to a friend's house in this day of age -Karune I find this completely ridiculous. It is always, without fail, more fun to play a multiplayer game when your opponent is sitting right across from you. There's way more interaction than anything the internet can currently provide. Oh and also lugging computers around isn't that difficult if you have this thing called a laptop, buddy...
Huh? I'm pretty sure he's saying even while LANing with friends you're going to be better off playing with them over battle.net.
you're still playing with your opponent sitting in the same room, you're just logged onto or authenticated through b.net too.
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MURICA15965 Posts
It'll probably work like Steam. You authenticate your version with the main server, and as long as you are connected to that, you're allowed to play on LAN.
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I thought I heard somewhere that people in China can't connect to bnet due to the government or something?(same reason it took so long for them to get WoW) and thats why haofang started? or was i just on a massive trip?
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On July 01 2009 03:25 Dgtl wrote:
It will just be a matter of time before some one figures out how to make a LAN option or reduce the lag so it is like LAN on Bnet or make it so people can still play with other people using pirated versions. It's almost impossible to prevent some one from playing a pirated version on line with some program.
For crying out loud, as mentioned thousands of times before on this very forum there won't be any need for "lag reducers". Reason why old BattleNet have extra latency is by choice to reduce lag spikes particular for dial-up connections. BattleNet 2 won't be made for dial-up connections in mind so it won't have that extra latency either.
For sure someone will release a program that will bypass BattleNet, but this time around without a LAN option in the game, that will be illegal. So Blizzard can sue the people behind Garena, for an example, if they try to bypass BattleNet in SC 2.
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On July 01 2009 03:31 Eury wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2009 03:25 Dgtl wrote:
It will just be a matter of time before some one figures out how to make a LAN option or reduce the lag so it is like LAN on Bnet or make it so people can still play with other people using pirated versions. It's almost impossible to prevent some one from playing a pirated version on line with some program. For crying out loud, as mentioned thousands of times before on this very forum there won't be any need for "lag reducers". Reason why old BattleNet have extra latency is by choice to reduce lag spikes particular for dial-up connections. BattleNet 2 won't be made for dial-up connections in mind so it won't have that extra latency either. For sure someone will release a program that will bypass BattleNet, but this time around without a LAN option in the game, that will be illegal. So Blizzard can sue the people behind Garena, for an example, if they try to bypass BattleNet in SC 2.
This.
I am fine with this, because I think everyone should BUY Starcraft 2, especially if they pirated the original.
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WCS
