Widescreen Gaming Forum

Seems the whole "no LAN" announcement suddenly turned into "anti-piracy measures" without them even mentioning it. I'm sure it's at least part of the plan, but I just think they firmly believe Bnet is good enough. Not that I agree.

inb4 Koreans rage enough for them to put it back in

[quote]SCII is a big money-maker. Dropping LAN support prevents mass piracy.

If they included LAN, then people could just use Hamachi, GameRanger, or set up some other VPN and play the game online without having to buy it.

People will still pirate the game, of course, but they'll be limited to playing SP only.

This, it goes both ways. They did say they will have a battle.net feature to replace LAN function so I'm presuming just P2P based servers like LAN would be for <1ms pings which is the only REAL good use for lan play now days.

Like as long as they have an easy system to get that sub 1ms ping for tournaments in battle.net I dont see how you can complain.

Sure it requires an internet connection but if you have a PC thats good enough to run SC2 you should have an internet connection even if its just dial up to log into battle.net.


<1ms ping isn't the only REAL use for lan play

lan play allows to take anti-cheating measures totally unavailable online
As it is, nowadays, I don't play online much at all because of all the cheating that goes around in 100% of games. (and I insist, 100% of games have cheaters, but of course not 100% of all games sessions)

two examples :
-playing with real life friends in LAN (not quite 100% nocheat secure but if you can see their screen from time to time...)
-playing in a secured paid third party room (no USB, no floppy, no CD, no DVD, preinstalled software, play with what you got ...)


also, <1ms ping is impossible online for some people like me
my internet connection has around 50~60ms ping at its lowest
also considering that I'm not alone on this connection, it easily gets to 150~200ms (who said unplayable ?)

Finally if there's an "online" P2P solution available I guess it will be cracked sooner or later... after all even WoW got its private servers ...

Seems the whole "no LAN" announcement suddenly turned into "anti-piracy measures" without them even mentioning it.

Actually Blizzard was completely forthcoming on this point, as noted in the Joystiq article:

here's the official word from Bob Colayco at Blizzard PR:

"We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy."

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

<1ms ping isn't the only REAL use for lan play

lan play allows to take anti-cheating measures totally unavailable online
As it is, nowadays, I don't play online much at all because of all the cheating that goes around in 100% of games. (and I insist, 100% of games have cheaters, but of course not 100% of all games sessions)

two examples :
-playing with real life friends in LAN (not quite 100% nocheat secure but if you can see their screen from time to time...)
-playing in a secured paid third party room (no USB, no floppy, no CD, no DVD, preinstalled software, play with what you got ...)


also, <1ms ping is impossible online for some people like me
my internet connection has around 50~60ms ping at its lowest
also considering that I'm not alone on this connection, it easily gets to 150~200ms (who said unplayable ?)

Finally if there's an "online" P2P solution available I guess it will be cracked sooner or later... after all even WoW got its private servers ...

But that doesnt have anything to do with the protocol though, that's just lanning you can play at a lan and online and you instantly get double the protection from Battle.net's anti cheat 'Warden' along side your noted traditional methods of anti cheat.

Of course it will be cracked, World of Warcraft and the Warcraft 3 battle.net both had cracked servers when they were still in beta. That doesn't help you at all though because the number of people that play on them is relatively small and your definitely going to ping worse on them since they have to be illegally hosted its usually on some kids computer in the closet. And you will still need to have an internet connection to use it which ultimately means the only reason to use a cracked server is for piracy.

But that doesnt have anything to do with the protocol though, that's just lanning you can play at a lan and online and you instantly get double the protection from Battle.net's anti cheat 'Warden' along side your noted traditional methods of anti cheat.

sorry but the so called protection from battle.net servers will get defeated
at the bare minimum you can sniff incoming packets, decrypt the data (which takes some skill tough) and then rebuild a map of what's happening on the whole map in real time, which gives you intel which is the heart of any war ...

why I am talking about this ? because it's impossible to hunt & stop a sniffer type program

Of course it will be cracked, World of Warcraft and the Warcraft 3 battle.net both had cracked servers when they were still in beta. That doesn't help you at all though because the number of people that play on them is relatively small and your definitely going to ping worse on them since they have to be illegally hosted its usually on some kids computer in the closet. And you will still need to have an internet connection to use it which ultimately means the only reason to use a cracked server is for piracy.

you missed something ;) I talked about some kind of "online P2P" (Peer to Peer) which would be deployed to get decent pings in LAN while still being bound to battle.net servers. so cracked or not pings to servers aren't going to matter. nor is the number of people an issue in such a quasi-LAN play ...


that is : forbidding LAN to prevent piracy is stupid because it won't prevent piracy ...

Endline, I wonder if I'll buy this one... but I guess they don't the fucking care.

[quote]
But that doesnt have anything to do with the protocol though, that's just lanning you can play at a lan and online and you instantly get double the protection from Battle.net's anti cheat 'Warden' along side your noted traditional methods of anti cheat.

sorry but the so called protection from battle.net servers will get defeated
at the bare minimum you can sniff incoming packets, decrypt the data (which takes some skill tough) and then rebuild a map of what's happening on the whole map in real time, which gives you intel which is the heart of any war ...

why I am talking about this ? because it's impossible to hunt & stop a sniffer type program

Of course it wont stop anything but at the same time if your playing on LAN why not have additional anticheat. Theres no reason not to have it.

[quote]
Of course it will be cracked, World of Warcraft and the Warcraft 3 battle.net both had cracked servers when they were still in beta. That doesn't help you at all though because the number of people that play on them is relatively small and your definitely going to ping worse on them since they have to be illegally hosted its usually on some kids computer in the closet. And you will still need to have an internet connection to use it which ultimately means the only reason to use a cracked server is for piracy.

you missed something ;) I talked about some kind of "online P2P" (Peer to Peer) which would be deployed to get decent pings in LAN while still being bound to battle.net servers. so cracked or not pings to servers aren't going to matter. nor is the number of people an issue in such a quasi-LAN play ...

Exactly so why would someone use a cracked server to play LAN other than piracy?

Of course it wont stop anything but at the same time if your playing on LAN why not have additional anticheat. Theres no reason not to have it.

well let's just say that I am happy counterstrike (the original half-life mod) had easy LAN play and no internet requirement back at the time. Made the life simpler years ago when setting up a dozen computers coming with every guest for a day of frenetic fragging ...

Exactly so why would someone use a cracked server to play LAN other than piracy?

hu ... I think we both have gone different routes at some point in our thinking
never implied anything on this particular point

Yet I can foresee how a legitimate user would play on a cracked server... if some of his friends don't have the legitimate copy of the game ...


Anyway, I still wonder why this discussion went that route...
all I'm saying is that, this serves no purpose at all since the so called additional security will be nullified soon enough to not matter at all. It will just be a bother to need internet for LAN play for legit users. And it won't protect the game against the ho so evil pirates

[quote]
Exactly so why would someone use a cracked server to play LAN other than piracy?

hu ... I think we both have gone different routes at some point in our thinking
never implied anything on this particular point

Yet I can foresee how a legitimate user would play on a cracked server... if some of his friends don't have the legitimate copy of the game ..

So basically piracy?

yeah what else could it be ?
you can't really force your friends and people in general to buy a game...

yeah what else could it be ?

could be a LAN without any internet connection