No LAN Support or Consoles for StarCraft II

WTF blizzard. I seldom play starcraft but its a huge staple at the monthly LANs I host with my friends. I was genuinely excited for this release until I heard that it was going to be a 3 part series, this only makes me dislike Blizzard more. Could they be less subtle in pointing out that all they want is money? I shouldnt have to use your servers just so i can see ads from your sponsors. If the same thing happens with Diablo 3, I assure you i will never buy another thing from Blizzard.

Respectably != respectively. Please read your news articles before posting - my faith in this site is slowly diminishing. Albeit at a much greater rate when I encounter increasingly the poorly considered and presented articles produced by this site. Please have your writers go to anandtech.com to learn how both to write, and how to really delve into their research and think about their results before posting them. And editors - don't let your writers get away with this poor quality. It is depressing.

It's a good thing the SC series never was and probably never will be something I like from Blizzard... especially with this small revamp and triple campaign release, damn money grab.

It most DEFINITELY has me worried about D3 though... I've never like BNet, even with an ultra low ping, it always skips a beat and lags compared to LAN. I think I only played a few days total on BNet with D2/D2X before going nuts over the lag (60ms ping to server, yet stuff dies quite a bit after getting hit and monsters jumping in your face?? screw that).

They'll feel the backlash of this one for sure once it gets around.

Was looking foreword to playing this in LAN, now i dont really want to buy it - thats f'd in the head.

What the hell, they've ruined the whole point of the game without LAN support. I play mostly with Dorm buddies and at LAN parties so if this is true then I won't waste my time or money on it. I'll just wait for Final Fantasy.

Well I have to admit StarCraft 64 was dumb. I have never bought the game because it was like $60... I tried it at my friend's house, I could see his whole base and everything he was doing. LOL What a failure.

I hope Battle.Net 2.0 offers extremely low latency options like LAN does for people playing in a LAN.

i can see consoles. rts' on a console is like a race horse with 3 legs. no lan is dumb though.

stupid and pointless, slowly losing support for the game as time goes on and you wait longer to release this damn game already and now tell that there will be no LAN support....... ROFL, stupid, half the people that play enjoy lanning up at peoples houses and playing as well online. stupid stupid stupid, losing support as time goes on.......

why not? i'm sorry blizzard? are you worried about piracy? i imagine you would be, for a company in your fragile financial position..... you have had all the time and money IN THE WORLD! if there is anything wrong with the game (like, i don't know, missing a major networking component in one of the most played multilayer games of all time) there is something seriously wrong with you.

Blizzard also labeled ICCUP a "pirate server", though to many of us competitive starcraft players it is the "only alternative to Blizzards slow and archaic battle.net" server.

No LAN support? Sounds like a job for PvPGN.

If there is no LAN on release then there will be BLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!

What about places like Korea who are all about those huge Starcraft LAN matches? Everyone should e-mail or post on Blizzard forums. This is seriously disappointing news.

How can you, blizzard not add Lan? Look at Korea, they play lan party almost everyday. Seriously, It will kill your sales greatly. How can you be that stupid, blizzard. You made millions of dollars from WoW and you want more? Fucking greedy.

On other hand, the mission is going be 30+ mission per class. Starcraft has 30 missions total. So that very reasonable.

I'm not familiar with battle.net at all. Can I ask someone to conjecture on the game performance difference of running a large-scale LAN party (say over a 24 port 100 megabit switch) versus having the same number of users have to go through a single shared home user broadband account?

Bnet is so crappy... why is it that when my brother and I want to play each other 1on1 we have to join someone elses game and only then we have to quickly create a game and have the other join... I sure hope SC-II is not the same way... like dechy said the lag is terrible at times even though FPS seem to have little or no lag... cutting out the LAN aspect of the game is pointless and will only encourage hacked BNet servers... just add it, there is no point. At least TRY to not look like your doing it to milk another $ from your LOYAL fans. This is stupid!

I'm sure this "no LAN" thing is a mistake and will be rectified, with the offending mouth sacked post-haste.
Right?


...right?

Gee, can't they afford to spend a little more time and money into something to make it that much more awesome!?

epic fail.

Agh its blizzards evil marketing trick, now when my bro and i wanna lan we both need a copy XD.

I wonder if it'll actually be Q4 2009...(how long has it been delayed now? O_o)

Why do developers/publishers always shoot themselves in the foot with sequels?

SC was the first game I ever MP'd on a LAN... sad to think of what they're doing to it.
I agree with the others that said Blizzard is just trying to milk this cash cow for all its worth. In the process they're absolutely killing it. Think I might wait for the 10th anniversary edition that'll come with the complete kit, all 3 episodes plus MP LAN edition plus I'm sure at least one other release. It'll cost me $5 to buy it used so that Blizzard won't see a dime. Maybe I'll even leave it running 24/7 on their servers to use up their server resources that I haven't paid for.
If they hose us gamers like this then I'm sure gonna do all I can to screw them in return.
Power to gamer... people... us... yea! And take that!

Starcraft II is slowly going from a "must buy" to a "might buy." LAN support is a big deal. A bigger deal than Blizzard's unwarranted cash grab by releasing three separate games.

I've never been a starcraft player, but SC2 looked interesting to try out. However, seeing as LAN is the only way I play multiplayer, SC2 has fallen from a 50% chance of being purchased to a 0% chance. Sorry Blizzard.

What the hell. BLIZZARD, of all companies, should know that they need to provide a solid multiplayer experience. Solid multiplayer experiences are experienced only through a LAN connection.

First valve, then blizzard.

Who's next? Maybe Infinity Ward?

LAN stands for "Log-onto Almighty Network" why would you throw a calling to the creator??? You feel suicidal or something??? I hope not, cause you guys still have a few talents for a few good games. LoL, gg, gl, AND WTF???

It all depends on how the game utilizes resources I guess. I have a theoretical 24/1 Mbps dsl line, practically 17/1 Mbps, and I have been playing Warcraft III TFT using DoTA custom map for a number of years and I can assure you that when you have more than 3 players on this line, lag begins (even in Garena), delay, spikes, jitter even disconnections are frequent. BNET unlike lan emulators (Garena and hamachi), sure tackle spikes and jitter but have more lag and delay to compensate (it is more fault-tolerant). Also take into account that it is not bandwidth that is important for this kind of games but ping, a ping greater than 150ms sure frustrates skilled RTS players. In net cafes (where they use dedicated low ping lines) things can get worse due to the massive number of players, for 3 players I prefer playing from home.

Free Bnet -> good
Spawn not available -> bad but understandable
No lan -> inexcusable. Lan parties, custom gaming communities with ladders for custom games. The lan feature was what made me test War III before I realized that it is a great game that we could play regularly with extra value (DoTA and other community created custom maps), then with my friends we bought 5 boxes of War III plus expansion. Warcraft III was #1 in sales for a long time, why ruin a successful business plan?

You guys can mod me down all you want, but

StarCraft II: The most overhyped game of the decade.

1. The LAN thing is a legitimate complaint. For a game that was really made famous for it's popularity at LAN events, it seems that Blizzard is forgetting their roots so to speak.

2. The thing I hate hearing about though, is how blizzard is the greedy super-devil for releasing the game in three parts. It's BIG GAME. All told it will be ~90 single player missions. It deserves to be released seperately, as no one would pay the full price upfront. What are you people really complaining about anyway? The first installment of the game gives you full multiplayer capabilities. I mean playing through the SP campaigns once is fun, but who really spends MOST of their time playing SP? Anyone???? Get it over it children, in the real world people earn money for their work.