Slashdot: The LAN-play question has been a major issue. What are you doing to facilitate gameplay between people who are in the same room?
Rob Pardo: There are definitely some things we are investigating. Whether or not they will be in at launch, I don't know. I really think that the vast majority of people wont have an issue. Even if you look at Warcraft 3, which did have LAN play, the vast, vast majority of people played on Battle.net and that was what, seven years ago? So I think that it is a very small percentage of people that will be affected, and only a small percentage of the time. That said, we are looking at some technology that would allow us to detect a peer-to-peer connection if we detect something like a high latency over a certain amount. Unfortunately, this would only be able to work for custom games, since we need to ensure the accuracy of competitive or ladder games via Battle.net.

....seriously retarded

lepape

Canada557 Posts

August 25 2009 04:27 GMT

Slashdot: With World of Warcraft, there are regional server groupings. How is Battle.net going to integrate with different parts of the world?

Rob Pardo: I believe the current plan is to do a similar approach to the way WoW is set up, so there will be large regional breakdowns. Hopefully in the future we will even have the ability for you to move around, but that isn't decided yet.

If I understood this part correctly, this is bad news. Very bad news.

vaderseven

United States2556 Posts

August 25 2009 04:28 GMT

On August 25 2009 13:25 fusionsdf wrote:

Show nested quote +

....seriously retarded

I think that means ranked matches are not lan.

But if you want to do a UMS that is just a normal map with normal rules (like an obs map today) I think you would be set.

lazz

Australia3119 Posts

August 25 2009 04:31 GMT

i really hope they dont fuck up lan

lazz

Australia3119 Posts

August 25 2009 04:32 GMT

On August 25 2009 13:27 lepape wrote:

Show nested quote +

If I understood this part correctly, this is bad news. Very bad news.

wait, so if i want to play SCII with someone outside my area I won't be able to?

Excalibur_Z

United States12241 Posts

August 25 2009 04:36 GMT

On August 25 2009 13:32 lazz wrote:

Show nested quote +

wait, so if i want to play SCII with someone outside my area I won't be able to?

You still can, but it's not easy. You have to modify a text file (realmlist.wtf) to be able to login to server clusters in other regions. They really should stick with the current gateway functionality.

Ftrunkz

Australia2474 Posts

August 25 2009 04:38 GMT

i dont think they'd be THAT stupid lazz, and before everyone has a hissy fit and starts shannanaganing (totally a word) about it, we know next to nothing about it and sc1 had uswest, useast, asai and europe obviously, but after it a while it was kinda 'decided' on the server for the best players etc.

edit: just read the post before mine... really? Source?

Excalibur_Z

United States12241 Posts

August 25 2009 04:40 GMT

#10

Source? You mean C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF folder?

lazz

Australia3119 Posts

August 25 2009 04:42 GMT

#11

On August 25 2009 13:38 Ftrunkz wrote:
i dont think they'd be THAT stupid lazz, and before everyone has a hissy fit and starts shannanaganing (totally a word) about it, we know next to nothing about it and sc1 had uswest, useast, asai and europe obviously, but after it a while it was kinda 'decided' on the server for the best players etc.

edit: just read the post before mine... really? Source?

I dunno, the way it was worded made it seemed like there'd be more than the big 4 (asia, USwest/east and euro). like at least several servers few country. I hope that's not the case..

Excalibur_Z

United States12241 Posts

August 25 2009 04:57 GMT

#12

Here's some more info on how it works. I can understand why they might want to do something similar for Bnet2.0, especially since they've already integrated it:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Realmlist.wtf

Jibba

United States22883 Posts

August 25 2009 04:58 GMT

#13

. Even if you look at Warcraft 3, which did have LAN play, the vast, vast majority of people played on Battle.net and that was what, seven years ago?d

Yes, the vast majority of people played online, but there's also people who played online AND offline. As a college student, of course I'll be online most of the time, but it's not very hard to think of situations where I won't have access or it'll be more convenient to play on LAN. >.>

I'm not sure how many people here follow CS, but when Steam first released, there was no LAN version of CS. Every copy had to authenticate and play through the Steam servers. One of the first tournaments to follow this 1.6 release was CxG, which was a disaster for plenty of reasons besides the LAN deficiency, but the online dependency destroyed the internet at the hotel they were using. Valve actually had a LAN version of CS, but they didn't make it available to CxG so they were screwed (again, even with offline CS, CxG was a rotten tournament.) A Steam update released during the tournament and they simply couldn't play anything because the internet was so choked. They ended up cancelling the tournament and just holding a few exhibition matches.

SpiritoftheTunA

United States20903 Posts

August 25 2009 05:08 GMT

#14

god i hate how rob pardo makes comments on how the "vast majority" of wc3 players used b.net over lan when blizzard never even collected stats on their lan usage

i call steaming smelly bullshit

blue_arrow

1971 Posts

August 25 2009 05:24 GMT

#15

hmm, i think you have to consider the number of people with illegal copies of wc3 as well

and like someone said, we know relatively nothing about the details of this this

you really can't draw any solid conclusions

Excalibur_Z

United States12241 Posts

August 25 2009 05:32 GMT

#16

On August 25 2009 14:08 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:
god i hate how rob pardo makes comments on how the "vast majority" of wc3 players used b.net over lan when blizzard never even collected stats on their lan usage

i call steaming smelly bullshit

You don't know that though. It's easy to make slanted statistics either way, too. For example, if you look at the total number of copies sold versus the total number of CD-Keys that have created accounts on Battle.net, let's say you have a number around 99%. So he could say that would mean 90% of players used Battle.net over LAN, which statistically would be true. However, that wouldn't count the number of people who don't play any kind of multiplayer at all, or the people who play Bnet and LAN, or in what frequency. If they're just looking at those kinds of statistics, then they'd interpret that to mean "well 99% of our players play on Battle.net (or more realistically, have played on Battle.net at one point, or at least created an account) so we're not really harming anyone."