StarCraft 2: No Lan Confirmed, New Gameplay Footage
June 29, 2009 by srfto
Blizzard just recently confirmed that there will be no LAN (local area networking) game mode in StarCraft 2. This was confirmed in a interview with Rob Pardo, senior VP of game design at Blizzard Entertainment. Rob Pardo stated:
“we don’t have any plans to support LAN,” he said and clarified “we will not support it.” The only multiplayer available will be on Battle.net.
Later on, IncGamers also got a clarification from Blizzard, saying the choice of excluding a LAN feature:
“is because of the planned technology to be incorporated into Battle.net.”
This is a big gamble for Blizzard since there are a lot of gamers out there that still use LAN to play with their friends. Also, note that Blizzard will not be porting the game to consoles. Still, no confirmation on the release date for StarCraft 2.
Check out the new gameplay video below.
Read More Posts About Starcraft 2
Update: New Starcraft 2 Screenshots, Tech Tree and Model Renders
Related posts:
Does this mean we can watch in on tournaments? I’m pretty sure WCG and the like were all run as a LAN.
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The world is evolving by including more options in the constant pursuit of having fun while playing games. Taking away the most basic of functions constitutes de-evolution. Taking away the function from which Starcraft garnered its fame is absolutely ludicrous. Not everybody can have a reliable internet connection all of the time, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of people who buy this game will want to play with their friends, internet or not. Blizzard’s decision to not include LAN support is one of the poorest decisions I’ve ever heard a game company make in my 20 years on this earth.
I won’t buy 7 copies of this game to play with friends, I’ll just buy 1 copy of a different game, so will most other people, and it makes tournaments more difficult to setup, this decision will almost certainly sell less copies, not more, very few people will be willing to shell out $400 for this so they can log in online with all their copies and play a single game with their friends at home, and it will severely hurt their reviews on the initial release regardless if a patch comes out later, and that’s why 5 star games only get 4, same as UT3 (4/5 stars) because they removed dodge jumping, which was available in it’s predecessor UT2K4 (5/5 stars), my guess is they’re gonna try to milk sales upon release and then patch the game with LAN later effectively screwing everyone who bought a bunch of copies, but by then the damage will already be done, the reviews won’t be top notch and blizzard will lose consumer confidence, this is a multiplayer game, and it needs multiplayer support across the board, reviewers will heavily strip points away from this game for this no LAN crap i assure you, this is outrageous, ADD LAN OR DIE!!
This is a huge disapointment…….I won’t be purchasing this game.
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This kinda makes me rage.
As an Australian with rather shit internet I’ve always relied on LANing with mates when I’ve wanted a good multiplayer game.
I’m sure my connection will be able to handle one game but if theres 4 of us wanting to play at once theres no way it’ll go.
Guess no more sitting around playing Starcraft over drinks then.
I’m another ausie with a shit internet connection. Yay for living in a country that has a population density such as ours. It means I can live in a f(*^ing capitol city and I’m lucky to have a sustained conncection for the entire evening.
the last place i lived was 600 meters from the exchange, i had rock solid 18Mbit adsl2+. i’m now a tad over 5 km from the new exchange and getting a flaky 1500 kb adsl1.
i believe that this approach from blizzard will actually have the reverse of the desired effect. more effort is going to be put into the cracking of this game and the addition of LAN support. More people are going to look to a cracked copy if LAN support is available. This wont be the first time a game has been cracked to add support for LAN play and it sure as shit wont be the last.
Was looking forward to SC2 but no LAN. I’ll also pass on buying it
I Hate online play as it is
Not sure I am going to be able to buy this either, only have so much budget…will most likely by another RTS that supports LAN (hopefully AOE4 or something)
Blizzard is becoming evil…my humble opinion
Agreed.
No lan support? Just one of many changes that make you say “WTF BLIZZARD?!”
I have a feeling the majority of the Korean pro gamers will stick with SC1
I have been waiting years for this – and hearing this nugget has just made me decide to not buy this game.
It’s most likely to block those who don’t buy the game to play on it via third party programs ie Hamachi.
Dude stop mentioning that. sure people use it but the more people talk and complain about it is making Blizzard more and more decided on keeping LAN out of the mix. People also use the Iccup as a way to get out of paying for SC1 so what?! you think that blizzard will shut them down too! by removing BATTLENET ALL TOGETHER?!!?
ARE YOU FUCKING ME?!!?!?!!?!?!?!!??!?!?
Ah, Activision. Is there any company you can’t destroy?
No LAN = three copies of this game that will not be purchased at my home. Just as I’m about to cancel WoW as well.
Loosers
Hey guys, fight back! sign this petition to bring LAN back to SC2!
http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html
Are you serious? No LAN support?
And here I was thinking this was gonna be a good game. So I’m not gonna be able to play this game with my friends unless we connect through the internet?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve LAN’d SC1 with my friends when internet went out or we didn’t have enough ports on a router and such. I was hoping to do the same with SC2.
Grats blizz. You failed. I’m not even sure I wanna buy this game anymore.
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6 port router, 6 computers. no port for an uplink. idiot
Can you count? Count.
I guess that’s the peril of shooting your mouth off huh?
but you probably wont learn.
If you can’t say something nice or add to the debate constructively, then perhaps don’t say anything at all, otherwise you end up looking like a tool.
Actually, you’re retarded. The modem happens to need a network port to connect to the local network you fuckwit retard. Six computers plus one modem would need seven ports, and he only has six.
Learn to count. Can you count? Count.
I guess that’s the peril of being a retarded fuckwit.
Meh. Somebody will make a LAN hack within days anyways.
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Yep. Won’t be buying the game. Thanks Blizz
And again, Blizzard’s true colors are revealed… Green.
Bad form from a company that has long lost its way.
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Oh? I was at a 4v4 starcraft lan LAST NIGHT. And it was badass. Point is, there’s no reason to omit lan access besides to make more moneys
Most blokes still DO LAN, as it’s fun to get together with your friends rather than sit around on your onesies and chat with ‘em on Skype.
Us? Noobs? Buy a clue you fucking twat.
noob? mate I owned a computer before you were born.
a LAN is when people (guys and yes, girls!)you know and want to be around come to your place for a pizza, drinks and good fun.
and btw there is nothing funnier than ‘planned technology’.
Mate, if you owned a computer before some of us 30 year olds were born, then you can tell us how you intend to connect six computers and a modem into a six port switch. Do you see why LAN support is needed?
Fuck you are a moron.
I was replying to Count, I did get that 6 ports = 6 ports.
Love the passion Fabioti – but bag Count Brass he’s the one without a clue. (I just replied to the wrong post
I’ve been waiting for this game for a long time and now I won’t be buying it unless they reverse this decision – being able to play huge LAN matches at work without having to fiddle with the firewall was my main interest in SC2 and now that’s gone..
WTF is Blizzard thinking?
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depends on the workplace, who are you to judge?
some management use the lunch hour to make sure people relax.
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Most of us will pay for it if it has LAN, it takes tons of time and money to make a good game (or to make a crippled one without LAN).
We are resenting the fact that we are going to have to download 3rd party patches to play the game or even download a cracked image to get around having to reinstall the program two years from when the activation server is turned off and the help line is gone.
Seriously though – who the fuck would use Battle.net if they had any other option? This is just a thinly veiled attempt at reducing piracy by requiring all online players to have legal CD keys – bet a lot of you battle.net fans are going to be crying for LAN support when someone halfway across the world starts using your CD key and you can’t get back in..
true and that might just involve a call to America (if you live in Australia like I do).
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No LAN? Your are kidding right? I planned to buy 5 copies of SC2 for my buddies. Why this? Very disappointed.
Not sure if this “marketing” gag will pay for Blizzard..
I taught a class on starcraft in college, and the LAN portion of the game was critical to our lesson plans and instructional materials.
Later in life, I opened a LAN room where we licensed Blizzard’s single player games and had regular Starcraft and Diablo II LAN tournaments and casual nights.
So blizzard is basically giving all this the finger so that they can “control” the experience through BNet? If there truly is no local network play options, that’s going to make SC a much less multiplayer friendly title for applications like the above-stated.
Well I guess SC2 won’t make my LAN party catalog. It is a shame because SC1 still gets played at most of the LAN party’s that I goto.
This blows. The one thing the PC has always been good at and you take that away. Games who rely on the internet solely for multiplayer experience are a fail on the PC.
*Checks current date on PC*
Not 1st April?!?
*Goes to adjust current date on PC to 1st April*
Bahahaha….love it…ya damn rite it just has to be a Farkin Joke!!!
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Travis, I think your comment is a little short sighted.
Usually when people want to have a lan party, they invite 10-15 friends around and do an all nighter.
If each connection needs to use , lets be OPTIMISTIC and say 10-15kb/s , by the amount of people (lets say 10, at a smaller party) thats 150kb/s of bandwidth required upstream.
Not all internet connections are SDSL/Cable, and a lot of the home plans in other countries do not have this kind of upstream bandwidth.
The other problem is that even if it doesnt require a constant 15kb/s quite often it can peak above this. In a heavy battle, with more users on the connection (and lets be honest, this is going to be a common scenario with over 9000 seige tanks and whatnot), the upstream bandwidth will be maxed out and players WILL experience lag. In addition, add that extra lag and international connection problems (yes, people play games outside of the US), and you’ll have a horrible, horrible gameplay.
I’m sure there is a fair share of “cheap cunts” , but I hope that you have learned why this may be a problem to other users. I’m fully expecting a witty retort or a misspelled “lol fuck you pussy” response.
Wade,
Historically these type of games use battle.net (or insert other internet authentication thing here) to organise and start games, but once the game is running the connection is peer-to-peer. i.e. traffic flows between the game participants, not from participant to battle.net to participant.
Blizzard would be stupid to do it any other way. It is unnecessary for an RTS and would only impose massive bandwidth requirements on their infrastructure.
It doesn’t matter, even if all of your LAN-party buddies were behind your internet router, linking up to Battle.net and then peering, those same peer-to-peer connections would actually send packets to the router who would (in most routers, especially older ones) send the packets upstream where they would be bounced back for being on the same IP…meaning, you would still be using that internet connection that Wade so kindly pointed out was not going to be able to handle it.
Yes, there are some firmwares that competently route the traffic internally when it realizes that the packets are headed for it’s own WAN port, but that’s actually still a luxury for most home routers (not flashed with open-source firmware).
Not everyone can afford expensive equipment for a casual gathering of friends for a LAN party…and that’s why it will alienate many.
Good news if it’s true…even if only to help making the “patches” that are bound to come that much easier to create that will allow the bnet authentication to be skipped entirely. Would have preferred blizz devs to have given us the option…but hey – looks like they want to milk us even more (and how could they possibly milk people with microtransactions even we’re not all forced to use bnet?).
Yup – I call a “middle finger” move by Blizz. Thanks for nothing.
So what happens when BNET is shutdown? What if I don’t want my kids on BNET? Guess we’ll still be playing SC1 and C&C: Tiberian Sun.
EXACTLY what happens when BNET shuts down? say 10 years from now? I know i’ll still be playing Tiberian Sun with my crossover cable in 10 years but clearly not SC2. and to quote someone else from way earlier…
Blizzard’s true colors are revealed… Green.
Bad form from a company that has long lost its way.
I am not buying this game. I will probably pirate it, along with a LAN patch.
No zerg rush pls
I currently own 4 SC battlechests for my family to play. We play LAN play at least a couple of times a week and HATE BNET…. I’ve just hosted another LAN party this past weekend and the game we most played was SC – LAN play. Yes we all own legit copies… I’ve been looking forward to SC II for so long… and now they’re gonna ruin it by making us use their stupid online service where I can be constantly annoyed by whining kids, server issues, etc. instead of just letting me play a quick game with my fam. I don’t want a HACK for LAN play just build it in….
STUPID DECISION on this one Blizzard…
Boooo… not all of us want to play with the obnoxious little douchebags on the internet =\
INTERNET LAG IS FUN!!!
WHO NEEDS LAN GAMING!?
I’M BILLY MAYS!
ORDER STARCRAFT 2 — TODAY!
I’M THE SHAMWOW GUY, AND I AGREE W/BILLY!
INTERNET LAG IS WHAT YOU NEED!
ORDER STARCRAFT 2 — TODAY!
YAY SCREW THOSE PESKY LAN TOURNAMENTS. I HATE NO LAG
I have bought sc easly 5 times for my self. ussually due to losing my cd’s/keys or leaving it at friends. or lending it to a friend when im not playing and then forgetting about it. but i do love a good lan party and sc is one of my favs. ill play on bnet unless they start charging. but i wont buy it if i can only play it online or single.
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This is ridiculous.
the clearest most true thing I’ve heard yet.
Hmm.
Activision needs to get its head out its asset and leave blizzard be. they are turing a once GREAT gaming company into a ****ing money hording POS. I would hate to see blizzard stoop down to the gaming level of Mad doc or Stardock. But getting rid of LAN? WTF? Why dont you just split the game in three and rape my wallet why your at it. oh you did that already? and its not just starcraft. they are doing in diablo 3 pretty good 2. Why would i want to play a bloody gore game that looks like a ****ing cartoon.
I am VERY disappointed in blizzard. I have played blizzard games since windows 95 and this is the first time i want to throw up(besides seeing a sc game on console). I cannot count how many times i have had lan partys with blizzard games and others. I mean come on whats next $9.99 to play on Battle.net?
For me this has become a lost archive of dreams. Im not going to purchase this game and i will encourage all my lan buddies and their buddies not to
Gives me all the more reason to pirate the ass out of this when it comes out. It ain’t worth buying anymore.
I thought Starcraft 2 was a sequel not a prequel…if you know what i mean.
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It’s IMPOSSIBLE to stop piracy… EA tried to “stop” piracy with their limited install times, the games soon became the most pirated games.
They’re not stopping piracy, they’re are screwing over people who actually buy the game.
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Everyone has internet connection??? Mate calm down. You and your friends may have realiable connections, but still there is many of users who has connection that is good for www only, so shall I upgrade only to play Starcraft and all my frends shall upgrade too if we want to play together? Anyway have you ever tryied working on mobile usb interntet, with limited capacity, when you write posts like that are you considering not all people have the same options as you…
I am going to boycott SC2 as SC2 team boycoots game roots.
It is like slap into face for fans. Slap for money.
You’re an idiot. I was GOING to buy the game as I have a full time good paying job and $50 is shit to me. But the fact they have insulted us by taking out LAN, one of the best features, forces me to boycott this game.
So your logic is flawed in saying “now we have to buy the game”. No, now we have to boycott the game so other games don’t adopt this strategy of taking away one of the best features – LAN.
And they may change their minds, as they have done so repeatedly in the past. Your assumptions are your downfall.
Actually that’s a pretty good point – we now live in an age where (rightly or wrongly) we don’t have to buy the game if we don’t want to (it’s not for me, I buy ‘em) and over 67,000 gamers are saying no…
I wish Blizzard would reward good behaviour instead of punishing bad. In China to combat video piracy they included in special packs things that couldn’t be downloaded; Posters, Keyrings, Patches or Badges?
Give me a retro figurine! I will pay an extra 10 bucks a game, give me something for being a loyal, honest gamer rather than telling me how my friends will play the game and why I am a thief cause some bloke in god-knows-ware decides to download a ripped copy.
And this is largely what disturbs me the most. Blizzard used to be nice to their hardcore fans. They didn’t make decisions based only on what the mainstream masses would go along with, like other game companies. In my opinion, this was a big part of why they got to where they are now. I hate to see them going the way of all the other big game companies. WHY, BLIZZARD!?!?
Maybe they forgot that…THE ONLY REASON PEOPLE STILL PLAY STARCRAFT IS BECAUSE OF LAN!!!!!!
LMAO, StarCraft is gonna FAIL!
Well well, not content with slicing it up into three “affordable” segments Blizzard now go and realy piss down our backs with this nugget. Whats betting that Diablo 3 is a Major balls up as well? Looks fucking gay as it is. come back Blizzard North and put some spirit back into the company, greedy twats.
We’ve given the game industry to much power, look at how greedy they are becoming. If i’m not mistaken isn’t it common courtesy to not treat people like they are thieves until you catch them in the act? Who are they to judge honest people because of something that MIGHT happen!!! That is completely ridiculous and if we were smart we would start a huge no one buy sc2 uprising and show them where the money comes from! Remeber sc1 people when you could install a spawn on all your LAN pcs! Thats before we gave all these greedy fools our hard earned pay, it’s so predictable, you needed us and now you don’t so your trying to flip the script. i know it’s unrealistic that people would actually come together for once and have some BALLS to stand up and all consecutively not buy sc2 because no one has that strong of faith but i know we could do it if the word was spread and people cared but they don’t, just keep rolling with the punches you weenies!!! let them shape and make what used to be a great generous industry!!! we aint gotta keep getting punked seriously!!! nothing better to do anyways lets show em who’s boss! start making youtube videos start sending emails lets do this shit! make t-shirts that say dont buy starcraft2, quit calling me a thief before i even stole something!!!!! do somethin! i have a friend that used to always go out of his way for people when he was kinda broke and needed someone to lean on, but now that hes rich he wont lift a finger for nobody!!!! GREED straight up its a disease and a delusional unhealthy empire we have let this industry become. Games are hardly about gameplay anymore it’s about the way it looks, who cares i want something that works not something thats pretty and hyped up, liars and fakes game industry, thats what your becoming. PLEASE SPREAD THE “DO NOT BUY STARCRAFT 2″ WORD! TAKE THE POWER BACK PEOPLE! MAKE THEM GIVE US THE LOVE THEY STARTED US OFF WITH! THEY MADE US FIENDS AND TOOK US OFF THEIR CRACK! THATS F’ED UP!!! FOLLOW ON TWITTER @donotbuysc2 TO KEEP THIS MOVEMENT ALIVE!!!
Didn’t buy this crappy game , greedy blizzard everyone boycott this crap game and this company.
greedy fuckers
What happens if 2 players(Say me and a friend) are behind nat and thus share the same external ip?
With Starcraft 1, this would make it impossible for us to play together on battle.net because the server would force my computer to try to connect to his external ip address, which for obvious reasons is impossible when I am on a the same nat that he is on.
Your NAT-ing router will sort it all out. Don’t worry about it.
It is simple. If it supports LAN me and all my mates will buy it as we are only interested in playing it LAN together. Best social game EVER.
If it has no LAN support I will get the cracked version and play it LAN on a cracked Bnet server. I wont buy it.
I feel the same. I’ve spent hours now explaining exactly how I feel but in the end I know that I still want to play it (and Diablo 3) but that this move on Blizzards part will force me to rather use a cracked version (so why pay for it then). If they can create virtual servers for the more complicated wow content stuff then I’m sure their new cripple.net will be a walk in the park!
Agreed. I’ll buy it if it has lan. If it doesn’t, thats more reason for me to pirate it. Its sad too, I wanted to try and go pro with it but I’m not looking to always deal with snobby little battle.net bitches and it isn’t fair to those people who don’t have good connections.
Are you kidding me right now?? no lan support?? a lot of students in dorms are going to be pissed when they can’t lan through the building and have to play on crappy campus internet.
Please boycott.. the more that blizzard fails with this, the better blizzard will become.
I was actually GOING to buy this game (first game I bought since Starcraft I) but now that they have insulted us by taking out LAN I will definitely NOT buy this game!
This will encourage MORE the crackers, good luck blizzard, this is an AMAZinGLY STUPID turn .
They’re gonna regret it.
Pull out your Notepad++ boys, we got some crackin to do.
cyku
As soon as they announced they where breaking it up into 3 games, you knew Blizzard was seriously trying to gouge you. Don’t know if Activision is behind the change of behavior, or the success of WoW, but Blizzard seems to be trying to drain every dime possible out of its games, and its bad for public relations. The omission of LAN play is a slap in the face to anyone who wants to feel like they OWN the games they buy- another limit to force users into online “validation.” People will just use Hamachi, and other programs to run their own “Battle.net” servers on their own LAN. You can’t stop piracy, or even slow it down. GTA IV was cracked, FULLY, online activation and everything, on the first day of its release. The same will happen to SC2. So dont hurt your customers, Blizzard. Taking away LAN actually offends people, and only drives people to pirate and crack your games.
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Then support them alone – the rest of who have bought and played the product for the last ten years (you would have been three years old when it first came out right?) – made the game what it is.
We bought and played it and if they don’t put in LAN then we will boycott it (that means we won’t buy it) why support a company who won’t build a game you want to play – we will buy a game from a company who remembers that the players make the games!! (if not find SC2 in the discount bin for $5).
Because you don’t understand that the reason Starcraft 1 was so good was because blizzard listened to the gamers. You should go look at some pictures of what starcraft would have looked like if blizzard didn’t listen. With that being said, it’s disappointing that blizzard feels that they know better than the gaming community which made them a success in the first place.
That’s so stupid. It is Blizzards choice to lose tons of business over a minor technical problem. The world is growing up and internet speeds are growing as a whole, but some newly married couples in school can’t exactly afford the high speed stuff. With out that function they can plan on loosing my friends and me, plus the thousands out there in the same boat as us.
That’s so stupid. It is Blizzards choice to lose tons of business over a minor technical problem. The world is growing up and internet speeds are growing as a whole, but some newly married couples in school can’t exactly afford the high speed stuff. With out that function they can plan on loosing my friends and me, plus the thousands out there in the same boat as us. If you add this and the three game release together they are just asking for a game that is pirated like mad. If you try and gouge people this bad for money, your not going to make any.