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On July 02 2009 02:22 Yenzilla wrote:
@pellejavel:
Just because they already make a lot of money, they shouldn't try to make money efficiently with future products? That's some A+ long-term planning. Criticizing Blizzard for trying to be a smart business is kind of outrageous.
It is simple really, they are introducing limitation that will hurt customers to make more money. Why should you respect that? A+ long term thinking about they bank accounts at the cost of the product. Why people respect greed so much?
It is nice that they will rotate the maps, and have diferent ladders, but what is with the believe that they will take care about bn 2.0 when the game will get older, and no longer will be selling. They can decide that it is against they A+ long term planning.
On July 02 2009 02:26 Zzoram wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2009 02:19 pellejavel wrote:
Awwwwwww, poor blizzard. That company has a hard time with money already dont they... now maybe they can make a river made of money and crash lamborginis in them just like they always wanted. Just lost all my respect for blizzard You lost respect for people who work hard at their jobs, create great products, and support them for much longer than most other companies? Just because they expect payment for their work?
Nice straw man. There is an obvious difference between expecting to get paid, and maximizing profits by the cost of the customers. every Blizzard game that had LAN sold great, spawn installations would also not limit it, or not much.
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On July 02 2009 02:38 Polis wrote:
Nice straw man. There is an obvious difference between expecting to get paid, and maximizing profits by the cost of the customers. every Blizzard game that had LAN sold great, spawn installations would also not limit it, or not much.
Spawn copies would horrible. Only 1 person in a group could buy the game, and they could all play spawn copies, instead of buying it. There is no way that feature is EVER coming back to a game that costs money to buy.
You also have to consider the year. It is 2009, not 1998. The number of gamers that have Internet is almost 100%, and piracy is easier than ever.
Look at recent situations with piracy, similar to what Blizzard will face in the near future with Diablo III.
Titan Quest was made by Iron Lore, it's a Diablo-style game that was quite good and fun. It sold enough to make slightly more money than it cost to make, but that still forced their company to close, because they needed to make enough money to fund working on another game for 2 years as well, not just to cover their initial costs and debt. Why did they go bankrupt? Titan Quest has was massively pirated. Even worse, it was pirated before it came out, and the crack was a sloppy job so it caused a lot of random crashes. These pirates posted all over the Internet how the game was a buggy mess, and hurt REAL sales of the game, even though the retail copy did not have these bugs. Why would people pirate a Diablo-style game that is clearly multiplayer focused? It had LAN play, so they could still play multiplayer. If the only way to play with friends was to buy the game, maybe they would've sold a few thousand more copies, and that could've been the difference between Titan Quest 2, and Iron Lore going bankrupt. I'm sure not EVERYONE who pirated played LAN, but you can bet a hell of a lot of them did, because just like Diablo, much of the appeal of this type of game is to play with your friends.
The research indicated that Titan Quest players were 80% pirates in North America, 90% pirates in Europe, and basically all pirates in Asia. If even 5 or 10% of those pirates payed for the game, they would've made twice as much money. If removing LAN from Diablo III convinces 10% of pirates to buy Diablo III, that's a fuck ton more money.
Look at games like Bioshock and Call of Duty 4. These games are made by hardcore PC developers, and are clearly best played on PC. They sold over 5 times better on Xbox 360 than on PC (10x better in the case of CoD4). Why the hell would companies want to make PC games anymore, if everyone just pirates their work, when they can make console games instead? More and more, everyone is moving to console because piracy has gotten so bad.
If no LAN means I can keep playing quality Blizzard games on PC, then I am all for it. I would rather they make a lot of money on PC and stay on PC, than to make their games for console and PC, which most of the time leads to dumbing down the game.
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With this information I guess we have no choice but to competely agree with Starcraft and Blizzard, because of the loss of their community becuase of piracy :-/
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On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:Spawn copies would horrible. Only 1 person in a group could buy the game, and they could all play spawn copies, instead of buying it. There is no way that feature is EVER coming back to a game that costs money to buy.
That is not true only the full installation can create games, and those that have spawn version can only join that one game. One copy per house/room, and still it would be with limitation.
On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:You also have to consider the year. It is 2009, not 1998. The number of gamers that have Internet is almost 100%, and piracy is easier than ever.
Warcraft 3 had LAN, and that was in 2003.
Look at recent situations with piracy, similar to what Blizzard will face in the near future with Diablo III.
On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:Titan Quest was made by Iron Lore, it's a Diablo-style game that was quite good and fun. It sold enough to make slightly more money than it cost to make, but that still forced their company to close, because they needed to make enough money to fund working on another game for 2 years as well, not just to cover their initial costs and debt. Why did they go bankrupt? Titan Quest has was massively pirated. Even worse, it was pirated before it came out, and the crack was a sloppy job so it caused a lot of random crashes. These pirates posted all over the Internet how the game was a buggy mess, and hurt REAL sales of the game, even though the retail copy did not have these bugs.
Good example of how DRM had lead to lesser number of copies sold. Company bankrupt becouse they did not sell enough copies not becouse it was pirated to much, it is not the same thing, most popular games get pirated the most it don't stop them from being successful.
On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:Why would people pirate a Diablo-style game that is clearly multiplayer focused? It had LAN play, so they could still play multiplayer.
Not true they servers was crup that was the reason, it was also not protected.
On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:If the only way to play with friends was to buy the game, maybe they would've sold a few thousand more copies, and that could've been the difference between Titan Quest 2, and Iron Lore going bankrupt. I'm sure not EVERYONE who pirated played LAN, but you can bet a hell of a lot of them did, because just like Diablo, much of the appeal of this type of game is to play with your friends.
The facts are that War3 sold great, and bigger piracy in 2003 didn't stop it, neither did it stop Diablo 2 from selling great.
if they would not have stupid DRM, and good servers that would require CD-key to play on, they game would most likely sell good. LAN feature would matter very little as blizzard games prove, and other successful games with LAN future, or that are SP only.
On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:The research indicated that Titan Quest players were 80% pirates in North America, 90% pirates in Europe, and basically all pirates in Asia. If even 5 or 10% of those pirates payed for the game, they would've made twice as much money.
What research?
On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:If even 5 or 10% of those pirates payed for the game, they would've made twice as much money.
Those are rather big assumptions when we are talking about difference between product for 0$ and 50$.
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The funny things is that there are still games that sold great despite piracy, plenty of bankrupting mmorpg despite that they block piracy the best, yet piracy is supposed to force Blizzard into something that they didn't have to do in 2003.
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On July 02 2009 03:27 Polis wrote:
The funny things is that there are still games that sold great despite piracy, plenty of bankrupting mmorpg despite that they block piracy the best, yet piracy is supposed to force Blizzard into something that they didn't have to do in 2003.
Agreed. Warcraft 3 sold well despite being amidst the wave of piracy. Spore sold well despite everyone actively trying to pirate it. Starcraft still makes a top seller despite being 10 years old and being even easier to pirate than any other example I can possibly give.
Good games sell well. Bad games don't. Stop blaming piracy for bad sales. Give us our LAN back.
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On July 02 2009 03:31 Spawkuring wrote:
Good games sell well. Bad games don't. Stop blaming piracy for bad sales. Give us our LAN back.
Thats retarded. If everyone has to run with lead boots on some people will still win the race and others will lose. But really the lead boots are dragging the runners down.
Piracy is one of the lead boots on PC sales. Consoles (except for the PSP- and guess what happens) are MUCH harder to pirate, very few people I know go to the big trouble of modding their console then having to burn stuff on discs. People just buy games, the same people torrent stuff on PCs because its absurdly easy. They're perfectly willing to buy stuff if its too much hassle- they're just cheap motherfuckers. People are cheap motherfuckers, its a fact, not little angels.
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On July 01 2009 03:17 aeronexus wrote:
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...
You can still play face to face buddy, just over bnet rather than lan, probably with the same latency from the way blizz is talking about it.
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Operation transforms (i.e. Google Wave) should be able to result in virtually lagless gameplay. I hiighhly higggghhhhly doubt that B.Net 2.0 will incorporate this technology, however. Last time I checked, it is still state-based information that's sent over the tubes for multiplayer games (leading to loss of sync and lag).
I don't do much dev tho, so correct me if I'm wrong. 
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On July 02 2009 03:24 Polis wrote:
Good example of how DRM had lead to lesser number of copies sold. Company bankrupt becouse they did not sell enough copies not becouse it was pirated to much, it is not the same thing, most popular games get pirated the most it don't stop them from being successful.
It still hurts those games, you'd be incredibly naive to think otherwise, popular games are still hurt by piracy, they just still manage to make some money. Not many PC games make money on the PC anymore, I'm grateful Blizzard is still developing for the PC only and not selling out to consoles. Practically no one else is left, not Valve, not id, not any of the great PC houses are left PC-only except Blizzard. And everyone but Valve develops console first and then does quick dirty ports to PC that end up sucking, why? Its not worth the effort when everyone is going to torrent your game.
Blaming DRM is the easy way out, people don't really give a fuck and will pirate anything, DRM or no, its not some moral crusade. Easy proof? Demigod, published by Stardock which was hailed by pirates as the most forward-thinking company in the business, little to no DRM, consumers bill of rights, etc. Their reward? Demigod gets pirated out the ass and the overload which they didn't expect crashes the login servers for everyone for the first few days, hurting word of mouth immensely, and they didn't end up selling all that much out the gates.
Maybe if the pirate "community" (lol) supported Stardock instead of torrenting their game we wouldn't have this problem, or maybe the pirate "community" doesn't really exist and is mostly just a bunch of cheap lazy people who always have some excuse ready for why not buying it was justified.
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On July 02 2009 02:38 Polis wrote:
It is simple really, they are introducing limitation that will hurt customers to make more money. Why should you respect that? A+ long term thinking about they bank accounts at the cost of the product. Why people respect greed so much?
It is nice that they will rotate the maps, and have diferent ladders, but what is with the believe that they will take care about bn 2.0 when the game will get older, and no longer will be selling. They can decide that it is against they A+ long term planning.
Respecting and understanding the role of business is different from respecting greed. I'm not sure why there's such a large following here that businesses should function like charities. Making money effectively is neither good or evil, it is simply their role in society. Having a focus on making sure your customers are satisfied is nice, especially if it means they buy your product, but the ultimate goal is to make money, that is their raison d'etre. To expect anything else is naive, at best.
And is Blizzard going to continue supporting Battle.net 2.0 after sales start dwindling? Starcraft's Battle.net is still running (admittedly, with fewer servers), is it not ? I'm not entirely sure the original is still selling like hot cakes. Seriously though, applying one measure to minimize lost sales does not mean Blizzard will look for every available opportunity to save money. There's no real slippery slope in effect here.
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On July 02 2009 04:01 FieryBalrog wrote:It still hurts those games, you'd be incredibly naive to think otherwise, popular games are still hurt by piracy, they just still manage to make some money.
I am sorry but Blizzard games made more then some money, and the number of copies sold are impressive even if you compare it to console games (except some nintendo titles), they also make games that don't sell/work to good on consoles hack&slash, and RTS games. There is any console rts or hack&slash that did sell better then any of the Blizzard games (since SC)?
On July 02 2009 04:01 FieryBalrog wrote:Not many PC games make money on the PC anymore, I'm grateful Blizzard is still developing for the PC only and not selling out to consoles. Practically no one else is left, not Valve, not id, not any of the great PC houses are left PC-only except Blizzard.
There are still good PC exclusives. I would say that the number of good games goes down in general. There is not that many exclusives per console either. Actually the PC exclusives line up don't look bad even if you would exclude Blizzard games, well at least if you like strategy games.
On July 02 2009 04:01 FieryBalrog wrote:Blaming DRM is the easy way out, people don't really give a fuck and will pirate anything, DRM or no, its not some moral crusade.
I did not said that I am on moral crusade. If I would be on crusade about anything in that matter it would be crusade to get the same options in my games that I had in past.
On July 02 2009 04:01 FieryBalrog wrote:Easy proof? Demigod, published by Stardock which was hailed by pirates as the most forward-thinking company in the business, little to no DRM, consumers bill of rights, etc. Their reward? Demigod gets pirated out the ass and the overload which they didn't expect crashes the login servers for everyone for the first few days, hurting word of mouth immensely, and they didn't end up selling all that much out the gates.
Yes that is pretty bad, still they didn't cry about it but fixed they mistakes with how they server works, and still made profit on demigod. Demigod didn't cost nearly as much as console blockbuster, and it did not have to sell as much to make a profit.
I am not saying that piracy on PC or consoles (on PC it is bigger) don't decreases number of copies sold. What I am saying is that Blizzard games, and many other games that are PC games still are selling good despite that, and there is no good reason to think that LAN future would change that. In 2003 piracy was about the same as today.
On July 02 2009 04:05 Yenzilla wrote:Respecting and understanding the role of business is different from respecting greed. I'm not sure why there's such a large following here that businesses should function like charities. Making money effectively is neither good or evil, it is simply their role in society.
Straw man again, where did I said that they should work as a charities? You either maximize profit or you work as a charity? There is big middle to that. Role of developers in society is developing goods for the public, things like piracy, and ow much exactly each make are sub effects of how the system works. Before next straw man, no just becouse I don't think that capitalism is perfect it does not mean that I am a communist.
On July 02 2009 04:05 Yenzilla wrote:And is Blizzard going to continue supporting Battle.net 2.0 after sales start dwindling? Starcraft's Battle.net is still running (admittedly, with fewer servers), is it not ?
Yes but the support is pretty bad, it is basically just server with no ladder or anti hack. It is well know that they support for the servers drops with time as the game gets older, and now they want to remove ability for community to solve those problems on they own (as a side effect). That is a real problem to worry about.
On July 02 2009 04:05 Yenzilla wrote:I'm not entirely sure the original is still selling like hot cakes. Seriously though, applying one measure to minimize lost sales does not mean Blizzard will look for every available opportunity to save money. There's no real slippery slope in effect here.
I am sorry you are asking to act them like charity now, or do you admit that your previous argument was a straw man?
Yes there is a real slippery slope it is sensible to assume that they will try to maximize they profits in diferent ways, if they already did it by removing LAN. First they had removed spawn installations, now they will remove LAN seems like a slippery slope effect so far.
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Dunno if anyone mentioned this but Current WCG Champion NonY emphasized the importance of Battle.net to the development of the community. “I think that battle.net needs to be a training ground where anybody can play it [StarCraft II], and they can play with the best players if they’re good enough,” said NonY, “What they really need to avoid is the best players all just playing with each other on LAN or on something else off battle.net.”
from - http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/portals.php?show=page&name=starcraft-2-battlenet-innovation-analysis
Thanks Nony!
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On July 01 2009 04:20 ReS wrote:
Karune seems like one of those guys that goes to a LAN party and fires up WoW to play online instead of with the people sitting around him.
Blizzard needs to just come out and say what it is they are planning to do with this. You can't just say "no LAN" and leave it at that and cause all sorts of commotion. Karune has been fucking with the war3 community for a long time with stuff like this, I really hope he does not continue the trend for SC2.
I don't think it is really a pirating issue. These private servers/programs only came about well after the game was already out. Blizzard did not want to upgrade their online play so other people did. Most of the people who play there bought the game anyway. I do not see the issue with that.
100% agreed
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People saying that this will hurt paying customers are ridiculous. Most buyers would not be affected by this at all, since the vast majority of the demographic the game is targetted towards already have internet access. Secondly, the decision will result in more sales for Blizzard which means more money that that can be used to fund patches, sponsor E-sports, etc. This decision is win-win for everyone but the tiny minority who whine because they don't have internet access.
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well i just wanted to vs my bro via lan... but friggin no lan lamer is being gay... no matter how fukin orgasmic the stupid game is im not gonna pay up double just to play with my bro couple of times for fun!
plus since now they link ur ID to the cdkey that means that if my bro wants to play as well as I then we HAVE to get 2 cdkeys... or he'll just have to use my ID...
friggin gay...
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On July 02 2009 04:46 Polis wrote:
Yes but the support is pretty bad, it is basically just server with no ladder or anti hack. It is well know that they support for the servers drops with time as the game gets older, and now they want to remove ability for community to solve those problems on they own (as a side effect). That is a real problem to worry about.
These features don't exist because they were not features that weren't expected to be necessary upon release. Blizzard didn't decide that anti-hack and comprehensive ladder support was no longer necessary, and cut them. This is like complaining about model T's for not having air conditioning. While yes, its entirely possible that further down the line, but given Blizzard's declarations of support for esport, it's entirely possible that they'd provide further support (esport, after all, is a potential source of profit).
And yeah, I'm hyperbolizing just as you are. How is 'why do you respect greed' not exaggerating the point that 'businesses making money is normal and okay'? And, really, is how 'why are you calling me a communist' not another straw man?
Also, developers do not work for society, they work for their business. Your tax money does not go towards paying Blizzard's programmers, after all. They're producing these products for their business, and the business is selling these products for a profit.
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On July 02 2009 05:02 R3condite wrote:
well i just wanted to vs my bro via lan... but friggin no lan lamer is being gay... no matter how fukin orgasmic the stupid game is im not gonna pay up double just to play with my bro couple of times for fun!
plus since now they link ur ID to the cdkey that means that if my bro wants to play as well as I then we HAVE to get 2 cdkeys... or he'll just have to use my ID...
friggin gay...
So you think you should be able to purchase 1 copy of the game and install and play it on 2 computers? That's dumb.
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On July 02 2009 03:03 Zzoram wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2009 02:38 Polis wrote:
Nice straw man. There is an obvious difference between expecting to get paid, and maximizing profits by the cost of the customers. every Blizzard game that had LAN sold great, spawn installations would also not limit it, or not much. Spawn copies would horrible. Only 1 person in a group could buy the game, and they could all play spawn copies, instead of buying it. There is no way that feature is EVER coming back to a game that costs money to buy. You also have to consider the year. It is 2009, not 1998. The number of gamers that have Internet is almost 100%, and piracy is easier than ever. Look at recent situations with piracy, similar to what Blizzard will face in the near future with Diablo III. Titan Quest was made by Iron Lore, it's a Diablo-style game that was quite good and fun. It sold enough to make slightly more money than it cost to make, but that still forced their company to close, because they needed to make enough money to fund working on another game for 2 years as well, not just to cover their initial costs and debt. Why did they go bankrupt? Titan Quest has was massively pirated. Even worse, it was pirated before it came out, and the crack was a sloppy job so it caused a lot of random crashes. These pirates posted all over the Internet how the game was a buggy mess, and hurt REAL sales of the game, even though the retail copy did not have these bugs. Why would people pirate a Diablo-style game that is clearly multiplayer focused? It had LAN play, so they could still play multiplayer. If the only way to play with friends was to buy the game, maybe they would've sold a few thousand more copies, and that could've been the difference between Titan Quest 2, and Iron Lore going bankrupt. I'm sure not EVERYONE who pirated played LAN, but you can bet a hell of a lot of them did, because just like Diablo, much of the appeal of this type of game is to play with your friends. The research indicated that Titan Quest players were 80% pirates in North America, 90% pirates in Europe, and basically all pirates in Asia. If even 5 or 10% of those pirates payed for the game, they would've made twice as much money. If removing LAN from Diablo III convinces 10% of pirates to buy Diablo III, that's a fuck ton more money. Look at games like Bioshock and Call of Duty 4. These games are made by hardcore PC developers, and are clearly best played on PC. They sold over 5 times better on Xbox 360 than on PC (10x better in the case of CoD4). Why the hell would companies want to make PC games anymore, if everyone just pirates their work, when they can make console games instead? More and more, everyone is moving to console because piracy has gotten so bad. If no LAN means I can keep playing quality Blizzard games on PC, then I am all for it. I would rather they make a lot of money on PC and stay on PC, than to make their games for console and PC, which most of the time leads to dumbing down the game.
I could't care less about piracy. All I want is a good game and i don't care if my friend or anyone pirated the game in order to play me. You are e fukin troll for not reading other people's posts when at least 10 diferent people stated that removing LAN takes away from the game. Nobody here is FOR piracy so I don't see what you are trying to prove apart from trolling everyone who has more experience in LAN gaming than you do.
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On July 02 2009 05:05 Yenzilla wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2009 04:46 Polis wrote:
Yes but the support is pretty bad, it is basically just server with no ladder or anti hack. It is well know that they support for the servers drops with time as the game gets older, and now they want to remove ability for community to solve those problems on they own (as a side effect). That is a real problem to worry about. These features don't exist because they were not features that weren't expected to be necessary upon release. Blizzard didn't decide that anti-hack and comprehensive ladder support was no longer necessary, and cut them. This is like complaining about model T's for not having air conditioning.
I was compering costs. Fighting with cheats, improving ladder requires much more resources then keeping servers alive.
On July 02 2009 05:05 Yenzilla wrote:While yes, its entirely possible that further down the line, but given Blizzard's declarations of support for esport, it's entirely possible that they'd provide further support (esport, after all, is a potential source of profit).
That is possible, LAN would make it almost certain.
On July 02 2009 05:05 Yenzilla wrote:And yeah, I'm hyperbolizing just as you are. How is 'why do you respect greed' not exaggerating the point that 'businesses making money is normal and okay'?
But they were making money with LAN option so your description of the situation is incorrect.
On July 02 2009 05:05 Yenzilla wrote:And, really, is how 'why are you calling me a communist' not another straw man?
No, but I would not be surprised if somebody would say so, that has nothing to do with the LAN trough, it was not completely serious comment.
On July 02 2009 05:05 Yenzilla wrote:Also, developers do not work for society, they work for their business.
Yes, but you had commented about they role in society, not what they personal interest may be. Those things are not the same, they can overlap in some places.
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EPT
