Starcraft 2 LAN support?

Earlier in the year, Blizzard’s vice president of game design managed to seriously annoy Starcraft’s legion of fans by announcing that Starcraft II would have no local area network (LAN) support. For many titles this wouldn’t be a very big problem thanks to the draw of online multiplayer, but in the case of Starcraft, fans were far from happy. Starcraft’s LAN support was an integral part of its success, thanks to its tight LAN coding. Games were always most enjoyable and reliable when played locally rather than online, a crucial factor in the world of professional gaming, a world in which Starcraft is most famous for in the East.

Starcraft continues to be a huge game in South Korea, with gamers playing professionally on TV networks there and earning considerable sums of money for doing so. Its legacy, one built upon its multiplayer, is huge and far-reaching. So the idea of no LAN play and not even the suggestion of an offline mode, such as the one used in Steam, made things look even murkier for the already controversial Starcraft 2. It even managed to provoke an online petition that gained over 120,000 signatures. However, now it looks like Blizzard is working on a way to implement LAN play that also includes Battle.net. Blizzard’s logic behind forcing Battle.net upon wannabe LAN gamers does make sense to a degree, since primarily it’s to ensure that Starcraft 2 players legitimately own the game. The current suggestion is that the pseudo-LAN play will involve a brief connection to Battle.net to confirm that the games used are genuine. Then presumably it will switch back to purely LAN play, ensuring that the speed and reliability of playing via a LAN is preserved.

It is very easy to question just how important LAN play actually is in our broadband world. After all, unlike during the dial up days, the majority of multiplayer gamers have fast connections that naturally have lower pings than would have been around during Starcraft’s launch. However, many die-hard LAN gamers would argue that it just can’t match both the excitement and technological advantages of playing via LAN. A peer-to-peer connection guarantees that a very low ping will always be achieved, something vital in a title as active as Starcraft II. Then there’s the sheer satisfaction and fun that comes from taking your PC to a friend’s house and seeing the annoyance written all over their face when you decimate their army for the second time running. The idea of Blizzard removing LAN play has opened up quite a few debates regarding just what direction multiplayer gaming is taking in this high speed Internet world. LAN gaming certainly seems to be on the decline, and it’s a shame to see, but it does make a lot of sense. After all, systems such as Skype and Ventrillo still ensure that you can hear the disappointment in your friend’s voice when you’ve beaten them for the third time running. So it also makes a lot of sense regards why Blizzard wouldn’t bother with LAN play when online multiplayer is so popular, and indeed when piracy is so rife that it is important for Starcraft 2 to have some form of piracy protection such as Battle.Net. However in this case, I think it looks extremely likely that some form of LAN play will be re-introduced to Starcraft 2. It might not be quite as pure as some fans want due to Blizzard’s wish to avoid piracy, but it should be sufficient for the vast majority of fans and ensure that players are not restricted to multiplayer in its online form.

TGR says: True