Dead-Lands

So how irritated are folks that Starcraft 2 will not include a LAN option? Is this a deal breaker?

I think this is Blizzards response to piracy and how to best combat it. However, it sucks that there will be no offline mode should you and a friend find yourselves without Internet access and wanting to play a game of Starcraft 2. Sheesh, if we lost Internet at NW that would effectively kill any game of SC2 we want to play.

it is way lame, and ya it comes very close to a deal breaker for me. How can you have a game without a LAN option, especially a game like starcraft. Just plain stupid. Course maybe with their delay of the release they will get smart and put one in.

I understand their reasoning is to prevent piracy. However, all I can imagine is that they will end up hurting people like me who are going to buy it and then I can't play with others if my Internet is out. Then someone will figure out how to bypass their "protection" and I'll have a choice to either pirate the game so I can play in those situations or stare at my computer dumbfounded and unable to play because they won't allow it.

Grrr....

since I was about as excited for SC2 as ... well nothing at all, this is a for sure deal breaker, I wouldn't even bother with it. I hate draconic anti-piracy policies.

That and yah... I only like these games at LAN's and it's 50/50 that you'll have internet.

I'm in the beta. I'm not super into the game but I've been playing it on and off.

As to the whole lan argument, there is already a hack for that. There is a battlenet emulator that lets you connect two clients together over a lan without any authentication from blizzard what so ever. I think it was mostly made so that people outside of beta could play play but there it is... I suspect that will be the common means of play in LANs throughout Asia.

Blizzard keeps trying to make money off of chinese and russian gamers but it's pretty futile. They're diehard pirates and there's no real oversight. As it stands they're already charging the Russians less for WoW subscriptions. I'm pretty sure that this attempt to get Asia to pay will flop. I've been involved in a couple deals with Russian clients and it's always a joke. At this point, I recommend we do anything else.

What don't you like about it? Your reaction seems to mirror a lot of what I have heard about the beta. What makes it so "meh"? Is it just a prettier starcraft?

Did they do anything new to SC2? Change any game mechanics? Or is it just the same with the same kind of units and the basic mechanic of farm your brains out, which lead to every map on battle.net just being biggamehunter.

I would hope for a more modern RTS mechanic, something like DoW or CoH or something different. Otherwises it's just SC with pretty pictures.

It's mostly a prettier starcraft. They also changed a lot of units... took a lot out... put some other stuff in.

I don't know. It doesn't feel very inspired.

There are also a LOT of balance problems mostly because their changes have been lopsided. The Zerg are currently too strong and the protoss are too weak. The humans are inconsistent. They're very strong under some circumstances but they have some major problems.
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You'll probably just see it as prettier starcraft which isn't far off. There are some improved game mechanics but it's subtle.

Maybe I'll just pick it up for the single player. There will be single player campaigns, right? I haven't been too excited about RTS multiplayer games for a while. They take too much commitment.

They only take commitment if you like to win.


Anyway, there is a single player though only for the human campaign. They're releasing THREE games. Each game will be the campaign for a given faction. They justify that saying that each campaign will be three times longer then in SC1. So you really will be getting THREE SP campaigns.

They'll get the multiplayer people to buy each version the same way they got them to buy brood war. Each version will also include one or two new units for each race. So the "wings of liberty" the terran campaign comes with all the factions, the terran campaign, and all the basic units. The Zerg release has the Zerg campaign, requires the Terran campaign, and includes a couple new units for each faction. The Protoss release has the Protoss campaign, requires both the Terran and Zerg releases, and has a few new units for each faction.

The idea is to release them one after the other over a couple years.

WoW has warped their brains to jelly. Laaaammmee thats so much more piracy I'll have to be doing to not play this game.