Not long ago, Blizzard Entertainment’s Rob Pardo said, flatly, that uber-RTS StarCraft II would not support LAN. His words ignited a firestorm of keystrokes from an oddly vocal -- and Internet-equipped -- group of purists who clacked disapproval of the move in whatever corner of the Internet they were alerted to the grave, grave news. Those folks can relax and put the pitchforks down: Blizzard plans to incorporate some kind of LAN support for the title.
How? Call it ... essentially-LAN. Speaking with Shacknews, Battle.Net developer Greg Canessa echoed leader producer Chris Sigaty's confirmation that Blizzard is working on some kind of feature that can replicate the speed and reliability of LAN while users are still connected to Battle.Net (therefore authenticating their disc). If the concept comes to fruition, an Internet connection will still be required to play -- but there’s no need for a new petition.
Canessa explains, “We are working on solutions with regard to things we can do to maintain connectivity to Battle.net in some way, but also provide a great quality connection between players.”
When asked if this solution would be like a “pseudo-LAN,” Canessa agreed, saying “Something like that,” before continuing. “Maintaining a connection with Battle.net, I don't know if it's once or periodically, but then also having a peer-to-peer connection between players to facilitate a very low-ping, high-bandwidth connection ... those are the things that we're working on.”
It’ll be interesting to see how this works, for sure. If it doesn’t pan out, we’ll be sure to tell you about the new petition.
| BBcode help |
| [b]Bold text[/b] |
Bold text |
| [i]Italic text[/i] |
Italic text |
| [url]http://www.dtoid.com/[/url] |
http://www.dtoid.com |
| [url=http://www.dtoid.com/]Web link[/url] |
Web link |
|
| [img]http://www.example.com/robot.jpg[/img] |
 |
Post a comment! You can also post a photo below:
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
34 comments | showing # 1 to 34
|
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
Comments policy
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
6:30 PM on 08.23.2009
| 
It's either offline or it's not. Considering I've never had any connection issues at all on Bnet, "super high local bandwidth" games are going to be the same thing.
Good thing I don't give a shit about this whole issue! This is almost a slap in the face for boycotters.
LAN is the option you go for because it's the simplest thing to use when you're together. No need to add unnecessary layers of complexity.
Pseudo-LAN, quarter-LAN, LAN-ish, it's still not the original LAN because, hey guess what, the L in LAN meant LOCAL.
Like Steam Offline, once you log back online, all your battle statistics and shit get updated. You're game just has to be up to date for you to go offline, but still have Steam running in the background, recording everything you do so it can upload it when you connect back online.
Unless you people just don't use the internet, you're going to be online one way or the other. BattleNet will run in the background offline, recording statistics, win's/losses, achievement gets if any, and when you EVENTUALLY log back online, and when BattleNet is turned back online, all that information will be updated for the rest of the interent to see, gawk at, and say "Damn, that fool sucks."
Probably under a tab that says, "LAN".
Also, I dont know what the fuck they're talking about when they say 'working on'... just require an internet connection for cd/game authentication, and process the actual game over the LAN. Simple. Its the whole 'still need to be online' thats stupid.
the only problem with steam as an anti piracy measure is that it doesn't work. no LAN on starcraft 2 won't stop piracy either. PC piracy cannot be stopped forcefully.
Blizzard should really stop emphasizing that Battle.net as the reason for the removal of key features from their products, or else I can guarentee their fan base will hate this new system on priciple.
Agreed. The only way to curb piracy is by making good games.
Which Blizzard does: so they shouldn't be so worried.
We have a damned enough time getting a lan party going without something going wrong already(switch breaks, someone forgot to install his/hers, new cat5 needed, someone forgot disk), we don't need an introduced single point of failure simply because some bean counter can sleep better at night.
Here's a solution Actibliz. Heck, Valve got the groundwork set up for it already. If you really really want your games to call mommy, do it -once-. "Starcraft needs to authenticate your copy. Copy authenticated. You can now play it in OFFLINE MODE".
I know you lost most of your best guys during the buyout. I know you're now managed by those who've smelled the WoW money and crave the blood. But at least -try- to show that at least some part of the gamer-loving, fan-respecting lil' studio that damn well could still exists somewhere in there.
I ask because if I had to authenticate Halo 3 when I wanted to play LAN, I might never be able to have a Halo 3 lan party again. It can be very difficult getting all those Xboxes (or in this case, computers) connected to the internet any place other than home.
And they should go with STEAM... but no, they are Blizzard, they have to do it their way because we may not take them seriously if they dont.
I am just trying to imagine a 10 man LAN in one house trying to play SC2 at the same time over Bnet. Good fucking luck.
thats all i was asking for =p
I just noticed you are a new user with only three posts. Not only that, but you show no concern that an online connection is necesary for some unspecified work-around to the LAN problem.
Are you a viral marketer?
Great!I thought most people boycotting the game are people who might not be able to use internet for playing video games like me where i can only use internet for a slow surfing and always waiting about 40 secs for one page of dtoid to load.
...of course I blame Activision for everything.
Besides, there hasn't been a piracy-proof game yet. Someone, within a year of release, is going to set up a cracked Bnet in some third-world country and people are going to play SC2 single and multi without paying for it. It's inevitable, and trying to stop it just pisses your loyal customers off.
And I still don't see the issue, I've never been to a LAN with no internet connection, although I admit the biggest LAN I've been to had like 30 persons, so I don't know about those massive thousand pcs LANs.
I can also see that selling a game with that particular feature (game spawning / unchecked LAN connections) today is pretty much asking less responsible gamers to steal it (ok, borrow it for a weekend...every weekend)left and right.
I'm not sure mandating that the party LAN have a perminent internet connection is the answer, but I certainly understand the question. Those that simply want to whine, "But the orignal game wasn't like that!!!!!", really don't deserve any sympathy at all. Grow up.
I my college days, my friend group inspired tons of people to buy copies of StarCraft because we were able to plan on a LAN first. Everyone like it so much that they had to own their own copy.
Meh, I just can't see myself going through all of that trouble of buying their THREE STARCRAFT II GAMES, and not be able to have a spontaneous LAN party.