Wont see me buying a lan-incapable game

We still will sometimes have a LAN party. They've become more rare but they're still a blast.

Damn you Blizzard!

How about all the custom maps that will come out that you just want to coop with your friends at home? LAN would make that much more enjoyable.

They should be boycotted for this. I hate to say it though, but I'll probably get the games anyways

I've spent many a dreary-eyed weekend in a house with no Net, or at least not strong enough to do any more than barely surf while stealing a neighbors, playing CoD and Warcraft 3 with my friends. This really is a stupid move on their part. =/

Starcraft w/o lan support is simply stupid. I have played more hours of Starcraft over LAN then I have over battlenet.

will battle.net have advertisements? if so, that is the only reason i can see them wanting to funnel all game play to there. starcraft without lan is equal to a computer without the internet. they need one another. i'm keeping my money in my pocket

I suspect the form of piracy Blizzard meant is not stealing the game. As a long ago Diablo II player I still remember the many hacks that plagued the LAN and Open Battle.net game modes - these occasionally even slipped through into the closed Battle.net realms. However, I fail to see how LAN mode is to blame here (perhaps it makes it easier to create the hacks in the first place?) since this was mostly a problem with open Battle.net...

I was planning to be online on launch day for this game but at this point I may pass entirely as I really only play with freinds on LANs. There is officially no real point to me buying this now.

It's a bummer to hear about no LAN, but I have an optimistic speculation... Blizzard may just be doing this to create a fuzz and will eventually incorporate the LAN towards game release date to show to the customers how much they value feekbacks. This may push the sales of the game because customer are likely to think that Blizzard is still a good company to invest money in, and we get what we want, LAN support. It also wouldn't be a bad idea to have an online-activated LAN support; where you have to activate the legit copy on B.net first before getting the LAN support... Just my two cents here.

This is one Opinion based article by Toms that I like.

Now that I think about it, I only played a total of 10 online games of Starcraft, while playing countless LAN games.

Maybe the truck comment isn't that much of an exaggeration.

Starcraft 2 without LAN support just doesn't make any sense at all. That game is perfect for LANs. I spent many many hours playing the original with friends on a LAN. Most fun I ever had, one of the reasons why starcraft is my favorite game of all time. Bring back LAN support for SC2!
The lack of LAN for Diablo 3 doesn't bug me too much though personally, but it should still be there.

Actually folks at Team Liquid have a article on the underground lan play called haofang, sorry to lazy to source the article but its there.

Anyway Haofang in China links lan together using a simple program using lan to show a max of 255 games or so. Millions of players are able to bypass the need of buying starcraft through this because use of lan mean no need to authorize through blizzard.(People can use spawn and just play for free basically.)

Further more when Blizzard went forward to take legal action it was found that nothing was against the EULA since it just a giant Lan network, this results in a loophole which there probably trying to address.

In a bussiness view its better to shaft smaller North American market a little for the huge Asia market profit wise, who knows if this will be hacked or not but i guess blizzard will be able to take legal action this time around.

My theory is that LAN will be enabled in one of the future releases of SC2, Legacy of the Void perhaps? Then, they will say "Look, we finally enabled LAN support in this version! Now buy this one too!"

They purposely cripple the first game to make the subsequent expansions look better. I wouldn't be surprised if every SC2 version they release will have some sort of artificial hinderance forcing to you buy all 3 if you want all features enabled.

I've read the Hoafang source maobao TL has one about Hoafeng too!

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/vi [...] c_id=96603 =] its pretty interesting and i can see why blizzard is attacking lan.

When I emailed blizzard about a Linux version they used LAN problems as an excuse not to develop one, although an OSX version will exist.

This issue might just follow the way of Spore and their DRM fiasco. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 would be pirated to hell and back just to prove their "protection" is less than useless. I wouldn't be surprised either if someone cooks up a hacked server to provide LAN capabilities as well.

Then that makes one wonder why pirates and hackers seem to care more about Blizzard's (potential) customers than Blizzard.

I've only played SC through battle.net a few times. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people yelling down dorm hallways saying a SC game was starting, and people should join. It's gotta be over 9000.

There needs to be a "thumbs up" button for articles.

It's sad that they will do this to SC2 and D3, but I completely understand why. If anyone has been playing WC3 they will notice games under the name LC in custom games. With the LC program, people are able to play on battle.net with just one cd-key if they are under a LAN. By removing the LAN option people will not be able to do this and honestly it's because of such reasons that it is understandable that they do so. I'm not saying I want them to do this, but people should realize where they are coming from as such programs and piracy have hurt their profits. Are they trying to be cash cows? Yeah, but isn't that what a company's goal?

I haven't played a lan game in years,all my old lan buddies are 1-100+ km away now,so we just play over the internet.They should still put lan play in though.

Well I just wont buy the game. I just keep playing star Craft 1 until the good folks from Blizzard or rather Activi$ion change their minds. People will be complaining about lack of lan support and Activision just wont care...for now. Every one, i know it will be hard, just dont buy star craft 2. Seriously if our efforts in not buying SC2 and Diablo 3 hurt Activision's bottom line they will cave in and will finally add lan support. Rememember these companies only respond to money not words.
Fight the good Fight!!

Why target a audience that will only make up at best 15-20% of your end player base? I loved Diablo II and Starcraft on LAN, simply because online play wasn't as easily accessible due to the lack of fast and readily available ISP's. That fact created these so called glory days of going to a friends basement to battle it out with anyone who had a PC.

Now that a web based PC connection is everywhere, there is no need to not be blunt about saying LAN is dead. Its not that hard to accept that a now outdated way of PC interaction will become irrelevant to game designers (FPS developers aside).

I'll be buying these games, Blizzard has yet to release a title that wasn't complete mind blowing-life-sucking-carpel-tunnel-inducing-muscle-atrophy-fun. I'm sure the gameplay and reinvented Battle.net will make up for not having LAN.

I bought every blizzard game I played... won´t by one that doesn´t have LAN support. period.

Finally! An internet site that is actually calling out Blizzard for their huge mistake.