By Jim Rossignol on June 29th, 2009 at 5:12 pm.
UPDATE: This story on VG247 suggests that they really mean it: no LAN support of any kind. Bananas.
An abundance of Starcraft II stuff has appeared on the grainy info screens of RPS HQ, including project lead Dustin Browder saying that the beta is set to last “four to six months”. Which means they’ll be right up against it if they’re aiming to get the game out before Christmas. In rather more bizarre news, Blizzardian hyperboss Rob Pardo has said that that the game won’t support a LAN option, and that the decision not to include it “is because of the planned technology to be incorporated into Battle.net.” Which presumably means they are going to support play over a local network, but you’ll still need to be online and logged into Battlenet on individual accounts to play. Maybe. I could be quite, quite wrong.
Seven minutes of footage – watch those tiny dudes eviscerate! – courtesy of Joystiq, below.
29/06/2009 at 17:16 Vector says:
Oh, come on, that’s ridiculous. Why would someone need to depend on an Internet connection to play LAN with some friends?
29/06/2009 at 17:22 Zyrxil says:
CD-key authentication.
29/06/2009 at 17:24 Frans Coehoorn says:
Ask Relic. They did the same thing with Company of Heroes when addon Oppossing Fronts was released. It’s horrible, especially when Relic Online turns into Relic Offline. Battle.net on the other hand isn’t offline *that* much, bit still… Blizzard made a wrong choice.
29/06/2009 at 17:24 jon_hill987 says:
So you think it won’t support LAN play in the same way as Left 4 Dead does not support LAN play. That sucks.
Gone are the days when a single Age of Empires disk let two people play…
29/06/2009 at 17:32 Feintlocke says:
Is this Blizzard’s way of tackling the Hamachi crowd?
I can’t decide whether this grates me or not. There’s always an internet connection available whenever I’m lanning these days… but then again not all of my LAN mates are going to buy SC2.
29/06/2009 at 17:32 Colthor says:
Probably just to stop pirate copies being able to play multiplayer over Hamachi.
Sadly that means legit copies can’t play multiplayer over Hamachi when internet gaming has one of the funny fits it’s so prone to.
29/06/2009 at 17:35 cliffski says:
It’s definitely to stop piracy. Devs arent able to come out and say that, because people hurl abuse at them, so they will phrase it differently. But this is almost certainly why they would be doing this.
Starcarft 2 will be pirated to oblivion unless they do this. They have no choice :(
29/06/2009 at 17:39 Nimdok says:
It’s not so much about “piracy” in a grand sense as it is to combat multi-user, single-disc play; A game store or LAN house will have to have one copy per computer now, each with an individual Battle.NET account. Blizzard MIGHT, MIGHT allow corporate accounts, discounted rates or a single copy authorized for LAN only play, but that’s doubtful. They’re basically shanking their fans in the back over a plink in the money ocean.
29/06/2009 at 17:41 Sajmn says:
I can imagine this is being justified as an anti-DRM measure. What’s next? A connection required to play singleplayer too? Even though I plan to buy this game (atleast if the demo will work well) I hope someone will find a way to bypass this silly nonsense.
29/06/2009 at 17:43 Clovus says:
/me hurls abuse at cliffski
I like to complain about DRM a lot, but it really doesn’t make since for Blizzard to include something to make it easy. It will still be possible to sell a used copy of Starcrat II and the buyer can play on-line, right? If so, this seems ok
29/06/2009 at 17:45 cliffski says:
Well what do you honestly expect them do? release the game as free?
Games like this cost a fortune to make. It might seem ‘silkly’ to you for them to try and prevent widespread piracy of it, but the conversation in the board room will be:
“Either we have some DRM to prevent offline play, or we just make an MMO”
If you want to be angry at someone about it, be angry at the pirates. The future is Civony, and games like it. Thats what games companies have been driven to.
yes it sucks.
29/06/2009 at 17:52 Graham says:
In the long run, I think it’ll be a damn shame to not have LAN support for one of the most antcepated RTS sequels ever. I do indeed have fond memories of playing 8 person LAN games of Starcraft with a single copy.
Hellgate London did the same thing, sadly. What a wonder it would be to blow up some baddies through hell with your mate right next to you.
29/06/2009 at 17:53 Forscythe says:
I don’t mind if they don’t “officially” support LAN play, to discourage casual pirates, etc, but I hope it is like Left 4 Dead, which has no official LAN support, but allows LAN play through some trivial console commands (on the server: sv_lan 1 map [mapname], on the clients: openserverbrowser). My friends and I use this to LAN play L4D in offline mode when someone doesn’t own the game, and it hasn’t contributed to any piracy as far as I am aware.
On the other hand, NOT having a lan option is usually enough to convince us not to even try a game, since trying to play a game over the internet when we are all on one IP complicates things just a little too much.
On the OTHER other hand, this is Starcraft 2, so Blizzard can pretty much do whatever they want and still sell 10,000,000 copies.
29/06/2009 at 17:57 Serondal says:
I would doubt it Clovus. They will probably require you to register the cd key with your battle.net account so that you can only play with that CD key under that account name. Isn’t that how Diablo 2 worked ? (‘m not sure it’s been soooo long since I played) I do know battle.net kept two people with the same CD from playing at the same time, but I don’t think you had to register your cd with it. That may change though since they’re getting rid of lan.
Still starcraft is so old now and this game looks like star craft more than anything else, I think it is going to be a failure compared to DOW2 and Company of Heros (after all Starcraft is a direct rip off of WH40K (Zerg-Tyranid. Protoss-Tau or Eldar, can’t decide. The space marines should be obvious enough on their own ;P)
It does look like Blizzard has gone a long way to making their races seem more unique then ever before though so I’ll have to see how it turns out. I’ll probably end up buying it too
29/06/2009 at 18:04 Steve says:
@Frans: You can just insert your DVD into the drive if you’re not online.
Oh well, not that I intend to buy SC2. It’s a rehashed old title that has been completely superceded by modern RTS games. Ones that aren’t based off micro and clicking fast.
29/06/2009 at 18:07 Shoe says:
Did their black hole ability turn into super stasis? Lol.
29/06/2009 at 18:09 Pahalial says:
This is ridiculous, I originally got into Starcraft after playing it at a LAN off a single disk. I eventually bought it and then bought it again fairly recently.
Casual LAN-type piracy probably drives sales more than it prevents them :(
29/06/2009 at 18:10 EyeMessiah says:
Yeah, its stupid – but I’ve seen similar setups in a lot of games nowadays. It will be intolerable when you move house or your internet goes down, but for the rest of the time we will probably be blissfully unaware of it. Pirates too will probably be undeterred and just play on private servers with modified clients.
Maybe they will reintroduce some kind of spawn copy thing? Seems like it would be a simple enough thing to manage, especially if all the clients have to go through only authentication.
RE. SC2′s relevancy. Its Blizzard so I will be surprised if they don’t turn out a great game, but from all the footage I have seen so far it does look quite dated and like they haven’t learned much from all the great RTSs that came out after WC3. The stacking on the flying units makes me squint with horror a bit. Maybe it will be satisfyingly old-school?
29/06/2009 at 18:12 SpoonySeeker says:
@cliffski [CITATION NEEDED]
29/06/2009 at 18:14 Serondal says:
Yah the stack of flying units made me go “erk” as well. I would have liked it if they at least made it so every flying unit in the game isn’t capable of hovering perfectly in mid air.
I think it would be cool if a hovering unit becomes a valid target for ground units that can’t normally attacking flying units (like if a UH-60 is hovering right off the ground it becomes a good target for AK-47 fire since it isn’t moving any more it might be possible to shoot it down with a lucky shot into the tail rotor or at least you might kill someone on board)
As far as lan piracy I think they would do well to remember their roots and how well their previous games sold when you could make a spawn copy on your friends computer so you could play with them even if they didn’t own it.
29/06/2009 at 18:25 Mman says:
I don’t understand why companies keep coming up with these schemes that only hurt the casual player. Somebody interested in letting their friend try a game, or selling a used copy, or installing on multiple computers for a lan party. In an extremely shallow sense, these things to decrease how much money the developers get, but ultimately it does nothing to deter the serious “pirate”. It will only be a matter of time before somebody cracks the game/spoofs battlenet. Instead they should look at people who play a copy they have not bought as a potential customer. It seems that if I go over to a friends to play this game on lan I might just be slightly interested in buying a legitimate copy to play actually over battlenet, right?
29/06/2009 at 18:25 Gwyd says:
yes everyone can throw in some nostalgic comment about LAN’s, but lets face it if they didn’t add something like this the game would be pirated in frank daft numbers.
Hooking everything up to you’re battle net account is by far one of the least harmful forms of DRM, it’ll also have the effect of accelerating Blizzards new and “evil” plans to modernise battle net. After all we already use a similar set up for our Steam games and GFWL for DOW2.
29/06/2009 at 18:37 cyrenic says:
@Gwyd
This game will still be pirated in frank daft numbers.
29/06/2009 at 18:40 alset says:
@cyrenic
And it will still sell like hotcakes
29/06/2009 at 18:44 Tei says:
This video make me feel the uncanny valley. Is real and unreal at the same time. That big monster ( I don’t know the name ) spins 190 degress in like 150 ms. It rotate tooo way fast. Everything feel fake, the the differences betwen races are blurry now. Everything as a… somewhat french nouvelle wave.. style to it. More than Starcraft it feel like “Paris vs Marseille vs Aquitania”.
Even the two elevations is totally artificial and fake.
If the original Starcraft was a movie, this one is theater.. greek theater. Is unbeliable ….fake. The pathfinding is also a joke.
That comment may sound like criticism, but is not. I have develop quake engines for the opensource community for about 6 years, and I know what the e-sport guys want.
This:
http://img91.imageshack.us/i/ezquake004largewo4.jpg/
( No, is not a graphic error, e-sport gamers want a game where all realism is removed, all unfair adventages, and only a scheleton of a game remain. Is like Chess, If you remove the animations and the random encounters. )
29/06/2009 at 18:45 I HAVE TO BUY GAMES TO PLAY THEM? says:
@cyrenic
A little less so, I would venture to claim. Private servers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.
29/06/2009 at 18:48 Psychopomp says:
@cyrenic
And then people will buy it later for multiplayer
29/06/2009 at 18:50 yutt says:
“Well what do you honestly expect them do? release the game as free?”
I’m sure no one will buy Starcraft II unless they *exlude* LAN support. You know, just like Starcraft and Warcraft 3 and Diablo and Diablo 2 didn’t sell any copies.
Those games were such massive failures, and continue to be massive failures every month. Surely Blizzard must make changes to prevent Starcraft 2 from being the financial burden that Starcraft is.
The only think that gives me hope is that we’ll have community patches to the game to allow LAN play. Thank you pirates for creating an incentive to fix the broken game I will no doubt pay for.
So, as always, in the end, it is only the paying customer that gets screwed.
29/06/2009 at 18:55 Serondal says:
@Yutt – There is a fine balance that devs have to walk down now a days. If they don’t protect the game from piracy enough then the customer gets screwed (DemiGod is a good example, pirates more or less fubared that entire thing. They did admit that it was also their fault but it is a good example since they had no DRM the game was pirated all to hell and back) Then the oppiste extreme is the Spore like DRM where you can’t even play a single player game without validating it online every so often and you’ve only got X amount of times to install it so on and so forth.
I think the way Starcraft 2 is going to handle it is some place in between those two extremes. At least battle.net won’t be flooded with pirated copies of the game like Demigod had.
Anyone remember when they made that hack in Diablo 2 where when you open a treasure chest tons of items and gold flew out in such numbers that it crashed battle.net all together? that was good times :P
29/06/2009 at 18:57 Heliocentric says:
They need to look at the bottom line, if destroying traditional lan parties might decrease the damage of piracy, its what they have to do.
29/06/2009 at 18:57 Supraliminal says:
For starters I must admit: I have never played Starcraft.
Now when we’re over it, I can say some things that fanboys(and why not girls) will find heretical and burn me in a flaming bonfire of ‘ell.
The problem when making a sequel to a old classic game with wide fan base is that you have to keep it somewhat faithful for the original. So they((good old companies(Blizarrrd etc.)) only add more similar troops and boost the graphix to the max.
Well after seeing new innovative RTS games ,which aren’t usually sequels of anykind, like Supreme commander. I must say I’m not interested in some remix of (good/bad?) old ideas.
And yeah the reason for writing this came from seeing those red/yellow flying things, at the start of the video, turn cruedly 180 degrees in a second or so (just changing the “sprite” like they used to do in the 90´s). They didn’t even upgrade the movement of the troops.
ForFansMadeProduct I say. (they make millions with it for sure)
I have nothing to say about that LAN Battle,net whatever, too complex stuff for me.
29/06/2009 at 19:04 Ging says:
@Serondal: Protoss are Eldar, the Tau weren’t around when Starcraft was developed!
Without knowing more about how they’re changing battlenet for SC2, it’s tough to tell if there’ll be an easy way of playing locally through it – in which case they’ll just remove the “LAN” tab / option from the menu system and let it all happen through BNet
29/06/2009 at 19:06 Colthor says:
Well after seeing new innovative RTS games ,which aren’t usually sequels of anykind, like Supreme commander. I must say I’m not interested in some remix of (good/bad?) old ideas.
See Total Annihilation by Chris Taylor’s old employer, Cavedog ;)
29/06/2009 at 19:12 Derek K. says:
“My friends and I use this to LAN play L4D in offline mode when someone doesn’t own the game, and it hasn’t contributed to any piracy as far as I am aware.”
Um, just fyi, that is piracy. Playing a game you didn’t buy, other than a demo, is piracy. Someone that doesn’t own it is playing it. That’s the *definition* of piracy.
Don’t get me wrong – I played SC with my family on 3 computers with 1 CD too. But I knew I shouldn’t. And the fact that I can’t this time doesn’t surprise me at all.
29/06/2009 at 19:15 Kelron says:
There’s been a few games taking up this trend recently. Just another example of ways legitmate users are punished for the sake of anti-piracy measures. I’m not interested in this particular game, but if I want to have a private game with some friends, I don’t want to have to make an account and log in and go through some unintuitive lobby system. So what if it stops a few pirates playing multiplayer, that should be considered an acceptable compromise for giving paying customers a pleasant experience.
29/06/2009 at 19:16 lumpi says:
No LAN mode? What a wise, wise decision. The game had such a lack of internet hatred and blog comment rant, it almost fell under the average gamer’s radar. Not anymore.
It’s good to know what to hate about a new 21s century sequel…
29/06/2009 at 19:31 Psychopomp says:
@lumpi
The thing about people who rant on the internet…
Most have no willpower, and will purchase things regardless.
29/06/2009 at 19:32 Carra says:
I’m not surprised. It’s a good measure to limit pirated copies. Can’t just download the game and play over LAN with some friends.
29/06/2009 at 19:35 Chris says:
This seems like an unfortunate side effect of rampant PC piracy if you ask me.
Though, personally if I have to enter my password in order to play SC2 I’m quite happy to, provided it means I can play without a disc in the drive. Hopefully the pirates will be slowed down as well.
29/06/2009 at 19:44 Starky says:
@Derek K.
Which is a damn good reason that the laws about software licensing need to be changed to per household being the lowest number available.
Per computer/user is a stupid and broken idea left over from the days when people only had 1 computer (I have 3 personally, with 3 more in the house).
Its getting close to a con these days when you buy a piece of software and can only use it on one machine – thankfully very few programs enforce this.
It’s one of the things about steam that annoy me, and prevent me from buying many games on it – that only 1 person can be logged in at a time.
If I own 2 games, say for argument Team Fortress 2 and Dawn of War 2, I should be allowed to play one game on one of my computers and allow my friends/family to play a different game on that same account.
The limitations should be 1 person per game at a time.
And 1 IP can be logged in multiple times (so home networks can share a steam account) but not more than 1 IP, Perhaps with a reasonable limit of 5 simultaneous log ins, to prevent cyber cafe abuse.
29/06/2009 at 19:45 bookwormat says:
@cliffski: “It’s definitely to stop piracy.”
I don’t know: According to what Blizzard told PC Gamer, most people who bought Starcraft never played multiplayer.
So Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are mostly single player games, and you don’t stop people from pirating a single player game by preventing them to play on a LAN.
I personally expect Blizzard to try to motivate users to connect to battle.net regularly, even if they only play the campaign. I’m not sure how they will do this, or if we will like it, but a simple forced check will be cracked out in hours, so I hope they find a better way.
“If you want to be angry at someone about it, be angry at the pirates. ”
Just don’t be angry at all. People who take expensive stuff for free when the damage is so abstract are not evil, just human. We never lived in a world were people would not do this.
Almost every single person I know pirates software. Not necessarily games, but at least one of either operating systems, office software, music or tv shows. The good thing is that the same people also seem to spend a good amount of money on software. So I’m positive that there is some mix of distribution strategy and pricing out there that transforms a good portion of currently pirated copies into sales. Even for single player games. I hope.
Back to the topic:
This has probably nothing to do with it, but I remember reading in a Korean newspaper (2007, in English) that broadcasting companies are a bit nervous that Blizzard could license Starcraft 2 in a way so they can demand a share of the income of the many Starcraft related TV broadcasts. Maybe making Blizzard’s server infrastructure the only environment where Starcraft 2 can be played is a step in this direction.
29/06/2009 at 19:45 Neut says:
Oh noes another piracy comments thread!
29/06/2009 at 19:50 rocketman71 says:
No LAN = no sale.
SC2 is going to be pirated MORE due to Blizzard’s stupidity. Congrats, guys.
29/06/2009 at 19:51 Nein says:
@Serondal
Demigod’s technical problems(for MP) were a result of some(in hindsight)questionable technical decisions.
Agreed,it was massively pirated.Yet the game STILL sold like crazy;3rd on NPD’s April sales charts,and that didn’t include digital sales,which according to Stardock make up the majority of the games sales.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/04/demigod-sales-triumph-over-piracy.ars
29/06/2009 at 19:54 perilisk says:
“Um, just fyi, that is piracy. Playing a game you didn’t buy, other than a demo, is piracy. Someone that doesn’t own it is playing it. That’s the *definition* of piracy”
Yeah, it’s like when you have friends over to watch a movie and you didn’t buy a separate copy of the movie for each person. So each person sees the movie without paying and the movie industry, mainly consisting of starving Somalians, is denied precious and deserved wealth. Piracy, in other words.
29/06/2009 at 19:55 teo says:
Isn’t ‘eviscerate’ a transitive verb?
29/06/2009 at 20:01 cliffski says:
who plays a pirated game online anyway? There are enough hackers and cheaters as it is without playing a hex-edited .exe version that you can’t patch.
Games aren’t $500 each, the cost per hour of fun is tiny.
29/06/2009 at 20:07 Clovus says:
cliffski said, “If you want to be angry at someone about it, be angry at the pirates.”
No, I’ll be mad at both. When a system tries to remove the right of first sale it is understandable to be annoyed at the company doing it. Not because they claim it is because of the pirates. When DRM almost cripples a game (like in Spore) it is reasonable to be annoyed at Maxis. You can bothered by pirates too, but that doesn’t give game companies the right to do whatever they want. Also, as someone pointed out, Blizzard will sell a billion copies of the game even if it didn’t have any DRM at all, unless the game sucks.
29/06/2009 at 20:07 SwiftRanger says:
As bookwormat said, having no LAN option doesn’t make sense as LAN is an excellent way of introducing the game to friends and most people barely play RTSs for the multiplayer anyway. The most popular RTS game mode by far is skirmish, period. It would be genius if Blizzard could link up those offline modes to Battle.net 2.0 (through achievements, stat tracking and such) so people would easier make the jump to a game against real players.
I really hope they’re just incorporating LAN somehow so it all goes through Battle.net but that it is still has the same effect while bypassing Hamachi (pirate heaven indeed) at the same time and having a stable experience as well. I am asking for a miracle, I know.
@Nein: that’s just one week of NPD numbers, Demigod quickly dropped out the top 10 charts and didn’t debut that high in most European charts either (also due to the fact the price got upped to 50 euros at retail stores). Stardock is pleased with digital sales yep but they’re not happy about the retail numbers.
29/06/2009 at 20:10 Jordan says:
Another day, another case of premature nerd rage on the internet. I fucking love it!
Thank you, Blizzard, for giving people on the internet yet another thing they don’t fully understand to bitch and moan about for days on end.
29/06/2009 at 20:13 Clovus says:
@cliffski: Pirates either have no money or are (at least morally) idiots. DRM will not fix either of these things. Like gun control (haha, inflammatory!), it only affects the law abiding citizen. Ignore those morons and sell unencumbered games (like the kinds the pirates get to play) to people who buy games.
29/06/2009 at 20:14 drewski says:
I guess I’ll never play it, then.
29/06/2009 at 20:18 Clockwork Harlequin says:
@Perilisk: ‘Piracy’ is sort of a flawed term. Try ‘lost sale’. When you lend someone a book, that’s a copy of the book that *didn’t get sold*, and the same applies to, say, selling your games second hand (publisher doesn’t see a cent). So, if you LAN on a single disc, Blizzard potentially loses sales (people have fun without forking over dough).
Re ‘the definition of piracy’: I think that’s more or less what modern EULAs make it (not sure that you’re licensed to lend/resell most games). Movies etc don’t have the same EULA. . .
29/06/2009 at 20:25 Tei says:
The game will not be playable on LAN.
Fixed version, Warez remix:
The game will NOP NOP NOP NOP NOP be playable on LAN.
29/06/2009 at 20:33 Jahkaivah says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you forgot to mention that Battle Report 3 is out:
http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/3.xml
29/06/2009 at 20:35 Vinraith says:
@Clockwork Harlequin
There’s a flaw in your (and Blizzard’s) logic. Namely, if a person is only interested in LAN MP (as would be implied by a person not interested in buying the game due to the presence of single disc LAN play) why would they buy a game that lacks the only mode of play that interests them?
29/06/2009 at 20:44 bookwormat says:
“who plays a pirated game online anyway? There are enough hackers and cheaters as it is without playing a hex-edited .exe version that you can’t patch.”
I agree completely, but it is crackers, not hackers please. ;)
“Games aren’t $500 each, the cost per hour of fun is tiny.”
Sure, but the price of a product is not related to cost per hour, but to supply and demand. There are tons of games with 20+ hours of high quality content competing against each other, and consumers have a limited time/money budget.
29/06/2009 at 20:46 bookwormat says:
forgot to add @cliffski to the top of my post: ^^^ . (I miss that edit button…)
29/06/2009 at 21:07 Anthony Damiani says:
Ranger: What is this about most people barely playing RTS for the multiplayer?
I mean, I’ve heard statistics to that effect before, but they tended to be older. This is 2009. Multiplayer isn’t an afterthought to the main show anymore– especially with a game that has as much of an e-sports presence as Starcraft.
29/06/2009 at 21:08 Serondal says:
Correct me if I’m wrong here but people keep saying when they played SC over lan it was piracy, but did not the origonal SC have a spawn mode where you could install a multiplayer only copy on someone elses computer and then could play against them. There was a disc limit I believe (like 1 disc for ever 2 or 3 players, I can’t recall) I know WC2 had this.
29/06/2009 at 21:14 Forscythe says:
@Derek K
“Um, just fyi, that is piracy. Playing a game you didn’t buy, other than a demo, is piracy. Someone that doesn’t own it is playing it. That’s the *definition* of piracy. ”
You’re quite right, of course. I assume the ability to use a bit of mild piracy to play a LAN game with one’s friends is the main reason why most people care if LAN mode is supported or not, right? Considering how hard it is to get a group of diverse friends to all get the same game to play, there also isn’t really any good way to have a LAN of any size without it (Starcraft is so huge it may of course be the exception to this rule).
What I should have said was that it didn’t result in any lost sales for the developer, quite the opposite. A little “piracy” for us to play LAN together tends to convince people who haven’t bought the game to buy it themselves so they can play single player and online. My assumption is that that is the reason why Valve tend to leave a loophole allowing us to do this. I don’t think Blizzard will be doing themselves any favors if they disallow it completely.
29/06/2009 at 21:22 Wazzle says:
Hmm… while I don’t fully know the reasons, I think that removing LAN is generally unnecessary and silly. Even if the usual pirates can’t play multi for free, this will probably end up with them just not buying the game at all, so Blizzard is losing x amount of sales either way.
29/06/2009 at 21:23 War says:
BNETD and maphack were both derived from LAN play.
29/06/2009 at 21:28 bookwormat says:
@Derek K
“Playing a game you didn’t buy, other than a demo, is piracy. Someone that doesn’t own it is playing it. That’s the *definition* of piracy.”
No, it’s not. Piracy is another word for Copyright infringement, and that is not defined by “playing a game you do not own”.
As a counter example to L4D, you are free to use a single license of Stardock’s Demigod to play in a LAN with as many People as you wish. Stardock even encourages this.
29/06/2009 at 21:38 Vinraith says:
@Serondal
You’re entirely right, in fact allowing LAN play from a single disc (and in some cases even INTERNET play from a single disc) was fairly common in games of that era. At some point, developers and publishers decided that they could get more sales by removing that capability (which is basically saying “lets give them less value and they’ll buy more product!”). I’m not sure whether it’s worked or not, but sadly it wouldn’t surprise me if it had.
29/06/2009 at 21:39 Nakki says:
As sad as it is, nowadays I have to say I would be filled with joy if the only copy protection of a game would be preventing multiplayer if you don’t buy the game.
Too many copy protection systems are a hinderance to a paying customer, and also about as small hiderance to those who don’t pay. Seems like a good idea would be to avoid that.
But account based multiplayer play in a game that atleast expects to have considerable amount of multiplayer is one thing that makes some people who’d pirate the game buy it. Just think of Team Fortress 2. As far as I know there are pirate copies, you just can’t play on Steam servers with them. That’s a massive hinderance. Sure, some people still pirate and play them, but atleast personally I can see plenty of people who’d otherwise pirate the game buy it.
Sadly, I doubt that’ll be the only copy protection. We might even see something draconian and buggy. Like apparently with Anno 1404 which I’m only gonna buy after a few patches and price drop – thanks to awful drm and overpriced digital download.
29/06/2009 at 21:45 Nalano says:
Piracy debate besides, does anybody else get the nibbling sense that the gameplay looks exactly like Starcraft?
Down to the original “mobs of hard counters being danced around to play with hardcoded unit ranges”?
I know people have been weaned on the teat of Starcraft for a decade or more at this point, but we’re not playing Quake-style deathmatches right now. CoH came out. Where’s the innovation to go with the clearly gargantuan development budget?
29/06/2009 at 21:48 Zyrxil says:
If you read the interview, you’d see they expressly decided not to majorly revamp the multiplayer. They’re spending the budget on a 30+ mission branching campaign for each race and making all maps “great” instead of “ok”.
29/06/2009 at 21:49 cowthief skank says:
It seems that no matter how much developers / publishers do to shaft their paying customers, people fall over themselves to lap it up.
The more we fall for it, the more they will fuck us.
“The thing about people who rant on the internet…
Most have no willpower, and will purchase things regardless.”
This is exactly right. Why should they care if people bitch and moan on some forums. That’s what the internet is for, right? Bitching and moaning. Why should they care if these people don’t like what they do, if they buy their product anyway?
29/06/2009 at 21:52 Vinraith says:
@Nalano
I genuinely think they’re afraid that, if they alter the MP play too much, they’ll lose their best market (specifically, South Korea and the other regions of Asia that regard Starcraft as a competitive sport).
29/06/2009 at 21:54 JonFitt says:
My guess is this is because they’re moving to an entirely online account based system where what you’re buying is a SC2 battle.net account, and the physical media or software install is irrelevant.
I would expect there will probably be a way to play on an Internet connected LAN, but not without everyone signing into Battle.net.
29/06/2009 at 21:55 Nalano says:
@Vinraith
Well, they wouldn’t be gods of marketing if they did anything else, I suppose.
But I’ve heard the “we wanna make everything great rather than merely good” line before. It gives me shivers, and not the good kind.
29/06/2009 at 21:56 cliffski says:
nobody is being ‘fucked’ or ‘assraped’ as i often read. Some people have made a video game. You may decide to buy it, or to not do so. Thats as dramatic as it gets tbh.
29/06/2009 at 21:58 Vinraith says:
@Nalano
Don’t get me wrong, I entirely share your skepticism. If they don’t innovate a bit, or at least incorporate some modern RTS advancements and polish the hell out of them, I’m not going to be interested. From the original announcement, it’s been clear that S. Korea’s the primary market. They’re not making the game with you and I in mind, so I think we’re well served to take a “wait and see” approach to the whole thing.
29/06/2009 at 22:15 Nalano says:
@Vinraith
What a concept; us not being the primary market anymore.
I have seen the future, and the future looks like Maple Story
29/06/2009 at 22:35 ToadSmokingDuckMonkey says:
“I have seen the future, and the future looks like Maple Story” -Nalano
I wonder how much Rob Pardo will make me pay to add bling to my battlecruisers, or schoolgirl outfits for my medics. Just kidding; I haven’t had a desire to play Starcraft in any form since Big Game Hunters ruined the internet multiplayer forever. Combined with my usual distaste for the community Blizzard titles tend to attract (I call them “Blizzkids”), the only time I would have ever played SC2 was at the weekly LAN. If thats not an option… not even a $20 “Battle Chest” of all the SP content would interest me.
29/06/2009 at 22:40 Scundoo says:
Instead of bitching for or against DRM, I’ll just say that this vid leave me uninterested. 90s gameplay (basebuilding) with colourful graphics (a.k.a. WOW gayness colour palette)
29/06/2009 at 22:42 Scundoo says:
Good god, what happened to the edit button?
29/06/2009 at 22:47 yutt says:
I don’t think I am the only person who is evangelically against piracy, and also rabidly against the erosion of consumer rights and freedoms with digital media.
Call it what you like, but we as consumers are clearly losing the ability to do things that used to be simple. When I was 13 and I installed a pirated copy of Wolf 3D on my dad’s PC it didn’t end the world. It was my first step into a lifetime obsession with gaming, which has garnered id and other companies obscene amount of my money now that I am an employed adult.
The “anti-piracy” crusade, at least in the first-world, is effectively a failed attempt to prevent 13 year olds and poor college students from playing games they can’t afford or aren’t allowed to buy anyway.
Piracy is free advertising. I know few in the industry want to admit that, but chances are, if you have media that people are passionate about, and they can afford to, people are they are going to buy it.
29/06/2009 at 22:54 Leelad says:
Can’t be arsed to read everything but isn’t this the same thing steam does? Perfectly acceptable i reckon.
29/06/2009 at 23:00 Wilson says:
@cliffski: Very good point. I guess it just feels like being hard done by when people used to get something for free (e.g. LAN play on one disk) and don’t anymore. If there had never been such free LAN play no one would care so much I imagine.
I always feel sad when new games don’t allow LAN play on one disk/account whatever, but as you say it isn’t like the developers that don’t allow it do it to spite me personally. I can still get the game or not. We got two copies of ARMA 2 because I like Bohemia interactive and don’t mind paying them twice for the game. We might get another copy.
Of course, if they do multiple expansion packs with individual keys and expect multiple payments I might get annoyed. But it’s in their rights!
29/06/2009 at 23:04 bookwormat says:
@Nalano “gameplay looks exactly like Starcraft”
I think that is exactly how it should be:Starcraft, Part 2.
I really like how companies like Relic or Massive Entertainment have interesting new approaches on how RTS games should play. But I see no improvement over the traditional Starcraft-style RTS, just (welcome, interesting) alternatives.
For example, scouting is a huge and interesting part of Starcraft multiplayer games, and it is almost not existent in Relic’s games. You always know how strong your enemy is in CoH or DoW2, just look at the resource distribution on the minimap. And the resource model in Starcraft is the source of countless interesting tactics.
Also, Blizzard is the only company I know who makes RTS games that work as a software platform as much as they work as a game. Editors and modding tools have been first class features of Starcraft and Warcraft. That is why WC3 has been used to create all kinds of awesome games, like Diablo style action games, adventures, tower defense games or successful multiplayer games like DotA. I do not see any other company doing this right now. You can be happy if there is a map editor and some kind of scripting interface.
29/06/2009 at 23:06 NoahApples says:
Isn’t it a fairly obvious given that they will have some kind-of LAN available, even if you have to log-in first? I mean, I assume all of those competitive South Koreans are playing over LAN at tournaments.
Single disc LAN play was a glorious thing, and while I miss its presence in my games, what AAA title these days still has that?
29/06/2009 at 23:15 NoahApples says:
I should add that I’m not just “giving in to the man” here with my comment; I think it’s stupid to take out single disc LAN play because I think in the end that’s *customers* (if not straight sales) lost. Nearly all of the big PC gaming franchises I keep up with (read: buy every new version of + expansions) I was introduced to by playing for free on the three computer LAN network at my gamer friend’s house (who had a gamer Dad to buy and set up a three computer LAN gaming rig in 1995). Plus, all of the households I know with more than one “serious” gamer living there all have a copy per-person of every game anyway, so that they can play on Battlenet (or the proprietary equivalent) at the same time.
29/06/2009 at 23:16 Arturo says:
This game looks worse every time I see it. It’s amazing that more than 10 years later they aren’t trying anything new with SC2. How about some more tactics and squad-based units? How about cover and more deformable terrain? How about not having to worry about optimal speed-builds and managing little drones and economy. Boring. I’ll still be playing DOW2 when this comes out.
29/06/2009 at 23:36 bookwormat says:
So why do you want Blizzard to make a game that is like Dawn of War 2 if there is already Dawn of War 2 ?
29/06/2009 at 23:54 Valentin Galea says:
It’s amazing how only a handful of comments are about the game itself. Gaming today is so meta:)
I think SC2 will flop on the long run. Only the Koreans will eat it up… maybe.
30/06/2009 at 00:05 Butler` says:
Loss of LAN support is a small price to pay for less c***s playing the game when they haven’t paid for it when I have.
30/06/2009 at 00:10 EyeMessiah says:
“How about not having to worry about optimal speed-builds and managing little drones and economy.”
Those things are precisely what starcraft is about. If you take those away you are talking about a different game entirely. I’m not sure I’d like to see Blizz “innovate” quite so dramatically.
30/06/2009 at 00:38 blobulon says:
Cliffiski: Well what do you honestly expect them do? release the game as free?
Games like this cost a fortune to make. It might seem ’silkly’ to you for them to try and prevent widespread piracy of it, but the conversation in the board room will be:
“Either we have some DRM to prevent offline play, or we just make an MMO”
If you want to be angry at someone about it, be angry at the pirates. The future is Civony, and games like it. Thats what games companies have been driven to.
yes it sucks.
You know, I love explanations like this. It’s not like the pirates won’t pirate the game anyway. And its not like people won’t be running faux battle.net servers anyway. Like they don’t run faux wow servers now.
I can see that this might be an experiment, but when you basically take away a key feature in PC gaming that has been in existence since the inception of multiplayer, I MUST PROTEST.
30/06/2009 at 01:39 the affront says:
I really wonder how the Koreans will manage with no LAN option…
Also:
Clockwork Harlequin: “When you lend someone a book, that’s a copy of the book that *didn’t get sold*, and the same applies to, say, selling your games second hand (publisher doesn’t see a cent).”
That’s a shitty example. In my experience most cases don’t involve you lending books to people after they’ve asked you if you have THAT EXACT BOOK and could lend it. What really happens is that you liked the book and think they’d enjoy it too, while they had never heard of neither book nor author and thus wouldn’t have bought it anyway. Later they might then go and buy more books by the same author if they liked yours, or they don’t and didn’t. Just sucks if you’re a lazy author only ever managing to write one book – but can’t have everything, I guess.
Same thing with pirated LAN play, at least as long as there isn’t a good multiplayer demo you could point someone to instead, and the online multiplayer still requires an original to play on official servers.
Used sales on the other hand satisfy a genuine, pre-existing interest to buy your product and are thus much worse (although I still don’t think they’re OMG, THE DEVIL, TO THE PROPAGANDAMOBILE).
30/06/2009 at 01:46 Jordan says:
NERRRRRDDDD RAGGGEEEEEEE
Yeah guys, I’m sure they completely neglected to consider the massive LAN audience, particularly in South Korea that turned Starcraft into a damned national religion.
Nope, no alternative solutions. No nothing. Fuck those guys!
30/06/2009 at 02:33 Nill says:
If this really is for piracy though — and it most likely is — are they not confident in that Battle.net’s offerings will detract enough from that? I remember Valve speaking about how pirates are just really “underserved customers”, and here we have Blizzard with a new version of Battle.net, that if it holds true to their promises really should be so great a service it couldn’t possibly underserve anyone.
30/06/2009 at 03:02 Rufust Firefly says:
LAN play was one of the main reasons I got into StarCraft in the first place–several jobs ago we’d all fire the game up in the office while we waited for traffic to die down.
Given the number of proxies that most companies and university campuses have these days, and how quickly Bnet access will go away (if it’s not gone already), having zero LAN option would mean a decrease in revenue. Must not be enough to offset the amount they think they’ll gain in an effort to stave off piracy.
None of the flying units I’ve seen in SC2 are as good as the packs of Brawlers in Total Annihilation, and that game came out years ago.
30/06/2009 at 03:38 Chryso says:
Ah, the sweet smell of unilateral dickishness. When exactly did Blizzard and EA swap personalities, anyway?
30/06/2009 at 04:06 TCM says:
Activision.
30/06/2009 at 04:24 Zyrusticae says:
Y’know…
I don’t really care.
Well, chalk this up to having no one to play LAN with.
But besides that, I’ve lost all sympathy for the whiny bastards that love go all knee-jerk and DEMAND three miniature campaigns instead of one awesome massive campaign, JUST because it’s what they’re used to and the concept of it being different in a Blizzard game is just SO HORRIBLE that they CANNOT comprehend how it could POSSIBLY not suck and/or drain money out the ass (despite most likely having paid well over $150 on WoW subscriptions alone)….
So, yeah. I guess you could say I’m out of touch with most of the so-called Blizzard “fan base”. Oh, well.
30/06/2009 at 05:10 Jayteh says:
‘Isn’t ‘eviscerate’ a transitive verb?’
keep your grammar off the internet.
30/06/2009 at 05:29 TCM says:
@Zyrusticae:
The Blizzard fandom is one of the worst ever. All change is bad change. Until change happens again, then the old change was better you should go back baaaaaaaaaaw.
30/06/2009 at 07:23 Mr.President says:
From what I’ve read about the South Korean phenomenon, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will even like SC2. They are not in it for the story, or because they are huge Blizzard fans. For all we know, they’ll just say “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” and keep playing the original.
30/06/2009 at 07:28 unclelou says:
nobody is being ‘fucked’ or ‘assraped’ as i often read. Some people have made a video game. You may decide to buy it, or to not do so. Thats as dramatic as it gets tbh.
A remarkable percentage of gamers should print that out and put it next to their monitor.
30/06/2009 at 08:01 Arturo says:
@ bookwormat
“So why do you want Blizzard to make a game that is like Dawn of War 2 if there is already Dawn of War 2 ?”
That’s not quite what I meant. The point is that there have been a lot of interesting innovations in the RTS formula over the last 15 years. Doom 1 didn’t let you look up or down or use the mouse, yet you probably would not play a new FPS that forced you to do those things for the sake of nostalgia. Starcraft was/is a wonderful game, but I don’t think anyone can deny that the UI and micro/unit management is a little dated by this point, along with the limited amount of units you can lasso and control effectively. Combined with the very rigid build-orders, it eventually makes for a stale game (imho). You spend the first third of every-single-match you ever play online doing the exact same things, ad nauseum. I don’t see the fun in having to go through the motions of building the same drones in the same order to build the same buildings for 5 minutes, just to get to the ‘fun’ part of the game when you finally start fighting. They are sprucing up the visuals without dealing with some of the core underlying gameplay issues…. after a while Starcraft ends up being more about twitch-reaction timing with your mouse and less about strategy, since everyone is building pretty much the same exact units/buildings in the same order a few months after release anyway. IMHO that’s just not what I’m interested in in an RTS. If I wanted gameplay that rewarded twitch reaction speed I’d be playing a shooter, not a military strategy game. I think it’s more fun when you beat your opponent through clever tactics and intelligent decisions, rather than having to play the game in full on spastic mode clicking 1000 times a minute in order to be competitive,
@ EyeMessiah
“How about not having to worry about optimal speed-builds and managing little drones and economy.”
Those things are precisely what starcraft is about. If you take those away you are talking about a different game entirely. I’m not sure I’d like to see Blizz “innovate” quite so dramatically.”
That’s a fair point, it’s just that it would be nice for Blizzard to roll the dice just a little bit and stay away from the safe sure-thing. I guess I’m just seeing SC1 with brighter colors. It’s not *bad* it’s just not interesting (to me). 2 million people paying montly fees for WOW means they certainly aren’t hurting for money, they could try for something new…I used DOW2 as an example because I happen to like the direction they took for the sequel. It’s certainly not perfect, but the gameplay is just the right style for my tastes, and I really respect Relic’s willingness to try something outside of the box. I have a lot of the same issues with DOW1 that I do with Starcraft. Anyway…..
30/06/2009 at 08:08 Arturo says:
@ Nalano
Right on.
30/06/2009 at 08:38 SwiftRanger says:
“Ranger: What is this about most people barely playing RTS for the multiplayer?
I mean, I’ve heard statistics to that effect before, but they tended to be older. This is 2009. Multiplayer isn’t an afterthought to the main show anymore– especially with a game that has as much of an e-sports presence as Starcraft.”
StarCraft and to a lesser extent WarCraft III are the only games of this kind which have such a big e-sports presence. And a Blizzard title already sells a huge lot more copies by default just because of the brand so a few more folks go online then. But that still doesn’t mean everyone would want to go on Battle.net (if it works, I can’t play StarCraft over Battle.net against certain friends either, it’s no better or worse than other RTS matchmaking services in that regard). Relic recently said it’s only 10% of their own audience that takes the leap online and they have good reasons to suspect it isn’t much different with other RTS titles. DoW II does appeal more to people who didn’t play RTSs online before because of the more accessible game design but there were certain fans who didn’t like the changes either.
Playing an RTS match is a lot more confronting than jumping in a FPS deatmatch game anyway. It feels a lot more like work too as there’s not only the click-as-much-as-you-can-pls-because-we-couldn’t-come-up-with-a-better-interface-and-we-believe-clicking-a-lot-is-a-sign-of-real-skillz-just-like-playing-an-FPS-with-keyboard-only-controls-is mantra but there is also the fact that pretty much every RTS aside from RoN hides way too much data/information (which you need to learn by hand to be moderately competitive).
Also, for those folks who think certain SCII critics are asking for the game to be more like DoW II, that’s really not it. We already got DoW II idd and that’s a great game which gave me something new and fresh. We don’t need a clone in almost the exact same setting. ;) But SCII just doesn’t want to do any thrilling new stuff on the multiplayer side other than trying to provide the best tools and matchmaking for a game which in many regards is still stuck in a pre-1998 mindset. Replacing/tweaking units, making marginal UI/shortcut improvements and emulating a 2D RTS feel in a very stylish 3D engine is all they’re shooting for. No Xel’Naga race is pissing me off a bit as well after the revelations in Brood War. So yeah, excuse me for not being too excited about SCII multiplayer/skirmish when the RTS genre has proven numerous times it can be so much more than that. Blizzard might win the internet with that SCII singleplayer campaign though, at least that shows they’re aware time has moved on.
30/06/2009 at 09:12 jon_hill987 says:
“At some point, developers and publishers decided that they could get more sales by removing LAN play from a single disc (which is basically saying “lets give them less value and they’ll buy more product!”). I’m not sure whether it’s worked or not, but sadly it wouldn’t surprise me if it had.” – Vinraith
Very true. I would not have bought a second copy of Left 4 Dead if it had a easy way to set up a LAN with one copy.
30/06/2009 at 09:21 WantOn says:
Interesting stuff. I wasn’t convinced about SC2 to start with, having never played the first more than once. Not being able to play it over Garena with my mates though? That’s a guaranteed no-sale for me ; )
30/06/2009 at 10:20 animal says:
Remember when War3 came out and people went wth is up with this hero/creep system? SC was always the best at combining the micro/macromanagement, if it lost that then it wouldn’t matter that you couldn’t play it on a LAN, because no one would be playing it.
To be honest we want SC with prettier colors :)
Sure, if they could innovate even more and make it the game to end all strategy games then I’d be first in line to get it, but considering how small a chance there is of that happening I think I’ll just settle for the awesomeness of SC 1.2
30/06/2009 at 12:03 Butler` says:
So yeah, excuse me for not being too excited about SCII multiplayer/skirmish when the RTS genre has proven numerous times it can be so much more than that.
When?
30/06/2009 at 12:22 jalf says:
After 1998. Dawn of War 1&2, Company of Heroes are obvious examples, but hardly the only ones. Homeworld would be an example too. Perhaps SupCom, if you’re into that. I can’t really get excited about SC2 either. We played this already, a decade ago. If Blizzard wants to ignore a decade of progress in the genre, that’s their choice, but it doesn’t make it easier for me to get hyped up about the game.
As far as I’m concerned, I bought this game a decade ago. They’ll have to add something new if they want my money again.
30/06/2009 at 12:57 Catastrophe says:
@ cliffski
“nobody is being ‘fucked’ or ‘assraped’ as i often read. Some people have made a video game. You may decide to buy it, or to not do so. Thats as dramatic as it gets tbh.”
That is incorrect.
Use following situation for example: Person is looking forward to the second game in a series. They enjoyed SC1 and want SC2. Blizzard advertise SC2 and try and sell the game to you. You get excited for the game and follow the news on the game.
They then announce they are removing private LAN games, something of which you enjoyed playing in SC1 with your brother or friend and the main reason you were anticipating the release of SC2.
Its not a case of “someone made a game, if you like it buy it, otherwise stfu” which appears to be your attitude. Its a case of you may LOVE the idea and basis of a game but feel totally disillusioned to find out some of your favourite features have been stripped from the game for no real reason other than some poor attempt at DRM.
When a company creates a game, they want people to buy the game, enjoy the game, remember the game.
If they choose to take out a feature many people will enjoy/remember the game for they are shooting themselves in the foot for the future.
Imagine SC1 didn’t support LAN and we were expected to rely on their Battle.net to play on (Which died and had a long period of being out of service may I add). The SC1 tournaments which are held around the world where people EARN MONEY for playing all happen on PRIVATE LANS and still happen to this day. This wouldn’t of occured if they had to rely on Battle.net as I stated this was out of service for a period.
30/06/2009 at 13:01 Dreamhacker says:
Would anyone kindly direct me to the nearest boycott site?
30/06/2009 at 13:26 Benjamin Ferrari says:
@Arturo
“The point is that there have been a lot of interesting innovations in the RTS formula over the last 15 years.”
I completely agree with this statement, but not with the implication that every innovation, even when it works, is also an improvement.
You mentioned stuff like the dated UI, eg. the limited unit selection in Starcraft. Here we have indeed seen much improvement, and it should not surprise that these improvements have found their way into Starcraft 2. There are no disadvantages to being able to select 40 units.
What I do not agree with is that Squads, or no base building or random hit calculators are an improvement. Each of this element takes as much from the gameplay as it gives, imho.
“Starcraft ends up being more about twitch-reaction timing with your mouse and less about strategy”
That’s in no way different that in DoW2, or any other RTS I have ever played. Well, maybe “Sins of a Solr Empire” is a exception, since this is very slow paced and more like an 4x game in real time. But I haven’t played that yet.
But all RTS games I played so far are not about making deep strategic decisions. The focus is on making and executing as many easy decisions as fast as possible. I would say there is definitely strategy in an RTS, but it is about as deep as it is in Tennis.
Dawn of War 2 has the same focus on build order, micro and “Actions per minute” like any other RTS game, including Starcraft. The lack on base building and the different resource system makes DoW2 a lot easier to get into and creates a lot of new, interesting strategies. But it also takes a lot of the many cool tactics that you see in Starcraft, like the scouting I mentioned earlier, and replaces them with new stuff.
And that’s why these changes cannot be called an improvement. It is not like the “cannot look down” stuff in Doom. You simply like DoW-RTS tactics more than Starcraft-RTS tactics. Which is fine of course.
“You spend the first third of every-single-match you ever play online doing the exact same things, ad nauseum”
That is not how I experience Starcraft. After the first minute or so, you send out you first spy (instantly in S2, since you start with more probes). After 2 minutes you are harassing your opponent, defend from your opponents harassment, adapt your build order to what you learned from your scout and try to build an expansion.
There are many different ways in which you can harass with only a single drone: block buildings, attack drones, build an Assimilator on your enemies gas resource, or a bunker in front of his base.
After a maximum of 5 minutes you have two larger armies constantly trying to be on the aggressive side, hurting the opponents economy while gathering as much information as you can about his movements. The battlefield usually shifts from one place to another, as both players try to keep their economy running.
I might struggle at doing all this really well in Starcraft, but I find all this stuff extremely entertaining, challenging and fun.
There is definitely also a lot of stuff that you do repetitively. But that was exactly the same thing in Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes.
And I did not experience any more strategy, more action or more tactics in the Dawn of War 2 beta.
30/06/2009 at 13:48 Tei says:
The next question is… do singleplayer also need to ask the auth server?
because the first days, the service will be collapsed, so will be imposible to get online.
30/06/2009 at 14:27 SwiftRanger says:
“When?”
While jalf says after 1998 I’d say pre-1998 as well, before the original StarCraft came out. It’s quite frightening how a lot of people still need to figure out what KKnD, Counter Action, War Wind (II), Z, Dark Reign, Uprising and Total Annihilation introduced to the RTS genre. After StarCraft’s release, well, you have Homeworld, Kohan, Warzone 2100, Rise of Nations, C&C 2: Tiberian Sun, Original War, Rival Realms, Ground Control, Earth 2150, Battle Realms, Perimeter, Impossible Creatures, Dawn of War, Age of Empires III, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, World in Conflict and many more games which brought new things to the RTS table.
Sure, not every innovation makes for a brilliant game and perhaps you can’t apply every existing RTS feature or new idea to a StarCraft sequel. For the multiplayer/skirmish part of StarCraft II though Blizzard seems only interested in a remake, not a leap in gameplay that many other (spiritual) sequels (Blizzard’s other games included) benefit from. The only stand-out things Blizzard has been doing is copying some units and abilities (jetpacks, black holes, motherships, mega-robots, and so on) from other RTSs. Destructible rocks, capturable radar towers, better resource crystals and line-of-sight affecting smoke/plants don’t seem very impactful to me and are just copy-work as well, in fact they’re all RTS concepts dating from before(!) the original StarCraft. Just give me something new and/or some major copied feature that’s perfectly executed and I am in, ok? :)
So yes, I think I am only going to be surprised by the SCII campaign.
30/06/2009 at 14:38 tmp says:
Yutt has made a very decent point up there in the comments — the ability to play over LAN and ‘zomg pirates sharing one disk’, these certainly ain’t preventing the earlier RTS games from Blizzard from selling in numbers that put them on top 10 lists every month even now, years after release.
It’s like the actual market is giving all the flailing self-proclaimed experts on detrimental effect of piracy and how it must be prevented or else… a big finger.
30/06/2009 at 14:47 Joshua says:
Piracy is free advertising.
It depends. A lot of folks here understand the time and effort that goes into a game and see how it is worthwhile to purchase said game. But how many pirates are like that? Very few I’d say. For most people, this stuff is as disposable as mp3s were for many during Napster. The game means nothing, its just discardable pop trash. So why pay for it if you don’t have to?
I stopped pirating stuff after college, when I got a job, but a lot of people I know still do it like crazy, and if they’re still doing it in their late 20′s they certainly aren’t going to stop as their internet connections speed up and their hard drive gets bigger.
30/06/2009 at 14:54 Joshua says:
Yutt has made a very decent point up there in the comments — the ability to play over LAN and ‘zomg pirates sharing one disk’, these certainly ain’t preventing the earlier RTS games from Blizzard from selling in numbers that put them on top 10 lists every month even now, years after release.
It actually doesn’t take very many sales to get on the PC top 10 list nowadays. A few thousand at most (maybe even less in the summer months), so its not like StarCraft is moving tons of product. Especially if you consider virtually every other PC game is moving copy on DD services which is not reported.
30/06/2009 at 15:02 Benjamin Ferrari says:
What is “the PC top 10 list” ?
30/06/2009 at 15:11 Butler` says:
It’s all well and good listing every RTS under the sun SwiftRanger but how many of those games’ “innovations” can you actually apply to SC2 without drastically changing the formula.
You’ve said they’re adding a load of new stuff – however minor and copy cat-ish – so where’s the line for you?
You want SupCom’s area wide zoom camera?
The fact is they’ve got a formula – arguably the best one in terms of multiplayer – with nothing having come even remotely close in terms of balance, depth and success (bar perhaps WC3).
30/06/2009 at 15:15 raigan says:
“What’s next? A connection required to play singleplayer too?”
This is actually already a reality with XBLA games — if your console RRoD’d and was replaced, then you need an active internet connection to play any of the games you already purchased. It really, really sucks.
30/06/2009 at 15:16 JKjoker says:
SC1 would have never been the hit it was without LAN support, in fact SC1 was as big as Counterstrike in gamebars over here (before they died when internet cable costs went down and a few got robbed with casualties), and for what ? so that they can spy on and feed us ads us like Valve ? is this the “new, better and improved” DRM ? forced to stay online during gameplay ? how long until they force us to do this for the single player campaigns ? my little home lan was itching to try SC2 out, sigh, oh well, i just know someone will find a way to emulate/hack their way to LAN play, there is also the chance it would cause such and uproar in Korea that theyll be forced to add it with a patch or in one of the two “expansions” (aka, the other two thirds of the game they cut out)
This is almost as stupid as those battle reports, they dont use strategy, they just rush stupidly and if that doesnt work they are pretty much done for since they refuse to change tactics, the commentary makes it even worse, its like they are trying to make slow-grass-growing sound awesome, its not, its very very boring, and specially the whole “drone/scv/probe” race that always happens in the first 10 minutes makes me want to put my fist though the monitor
30/06/2009 at 15:17 Nalano says:
@ bookwormat
“So why do you want Blizzard to make a game that is like Dawn of War 2 if there is already Dawn of War 2?”
So why do you want Blizzard to make a game that is like Starcraft if there already is Starcraft?
We’ve progressed in these past 10 years. Supreme Commander. Company of Heroes. Dawn of War. Homeworld. Total War.
We’ve since had the implementation of cover, squads, morale, suppressive fire, reduced accuracy at range, height modifiers, rolling terrain, garrisoned buildings, strategic points, area denial, on-the-fly unit design, withdrawal mechanics…
If this is a mere graphical upgrade, then that’s why the debate’s on DRM – who wants to re-purchase the White Album?
30/06/2009 at 15:28 Benjamin Ferrari says:
“So why do you want Blizzard to make a game that is like Starcraft if there already is Starcraft?”
Because of the changes to UI, gameplay, campaign and editor that have already been announced and shown. It’s not as if Starcraft 2 is a remake of Starcraft.
“We’ve since had the implementation of cover, squads, morale, suppressive fire, reduced accuracy at range, height modifiers, rolling terrain, garrisoned buildings, strategic points, area denial, on-the-fly unit design, withdrawal mechanics…”
Responding to that statement would mean repeating what I wrote earlier, so I don’t.
30/06/2009 at 15:36 JKjoker says:
i didnt feel like Supreme Commander progressed anything other than the super zoom feature, i did like the cover system in Company of Heroes but i dont know how that would work with scifi weapons and vehicles in SC
30/06/2009 at 15:51 Collic says:
My initial reaction is that the no lan option is an anti hamachi measure.
30/06/2009 at 16:01 Nalano says:
@Benjamin Ferrari
I watched the video, and see no changes to gameplay. Perhaps you would like to point them out?
30/06/2009 at 16:10 JKjoker says:
watching the battle reports i havent seen any changes other than a few new units and probably useless gimmicks like the “smoke screens” and the zel’naga towers that dont reveal that much to be useful, but is hard to tell since the players suck so much they might have been ignoring new features in favor of zergling rushes
30/06/2009 at 16:31 Benjamin Ferrari says:
@Nalano: you mean the changes to gameplay that I mentioned that make me want to play Starcraft 2, even though I have Starcraft ? Of course:
Different units in multiplayer, non linear campaign and the editor allows for advanced AI scripting and a more flexible hero system.
That’s just a sample of course, you can find most known changes (gameplay, but also UI etc) on sites like this.
30/06/2009 at 16:39 ShardPhoenix says:
I’m glad Blizzard isn’t “innovating” because an improved version of Starcraft 1 is pretty much what I want. Relic may be innovative but none of their games are remotely as good as Starcraft from a serious multiplayer perspective. Sure, they’re more cinematic and immersive at first, but that wears off about halfway through the single player campaign when you start noticing the gameyness of it all again. A Blizzard RTS’s gameplay depth lasts forever (or at least 10 years so far for Starcraft).
30/06/2009 at 16:52 pkt-zer0 says:
If Starcraft 2 sucks for not innovating, then so does Team Fortress 2.
Anyway, no LAN is Starcraft 2 is a bummer. Yet another instance of features being cut from the game in an attempt to curb piracy?
30/06/2009 at 17:01 JKjoker says:
i think there is a little more there than just piracy, there is a lot to gain of forcing everyone to play while logged onto battle.net, check out Valve’s stats, you cant get those without spying on your customers the whole time they play
30/06/2009 at 17:04 Benjamin Ferrari says:
“A Blizzard RTS’s gameplay depth lasts forever (or at least 10 years so far for Starcraft).”
To be fair, I’m pretty sure that you could make many games last 10 years if you follow a certain formula.
Starcraft had no successor during these years, since Warcraft 3 had significantly different multiplayer mechanics (which are, by the way, also very successful) . And there was South Korea, which gave Blizzard a good reason to keep supporting the game.
I have no doubt that Dawn of War 2 could be played massively in ten years. If that happens or not is not a question of gameplay or depth imho, but how much the publisher is willing to invest.
30/06/2009 at 17:10 TCM says:
@pkt-zer0:
“If Starcraft 2 sucks for not innovating, then so does Team Fortress 2.”
This is an astounding leap of logic, and I am afraid I must demand an explanation.
30/06/2009 at 17:19 SwiftRanger says:
@Butler: that’s hardly every RTS under the sun, those are only a few of the strategy games that actually tried to innovate in some way and move the genre forward. StarCraft managed to “contribute” as well through quite varied races (though it took a few cues from War Wind II there), a reasonable multiplayer balance (unique, especially how it still is being patched even now) and the best linear RTS campaign ever made (trumps anything in the genre, no discussion about it), all that despite its incredibly dated interface back then.
I think it’s justified to expect a sequel after 11 years to be more than just a remake in multiplayer. Because… well, StarCraft still is popular and “deep” enough right? Where to draw a line? It’s a sequel, there is no line other than that it should be an RTS. And that’s a goddamn broad genre with many unexplored options, Blizzard shouldn’t necessarily even copy features of other games but come up with their own thing. It’s a shame that with all the money in the world they aren’t keen on going down that road.
@Benjamin Ferrari: I don’t think anyone here is complaining about the SCII campaign (which looks fresh and awesome) or the fact that the editor and the custom map options of WarCraft III are finally being transferred to a StarCraft game.
We’re talking about what is on display in those Battle Reports (skirmish/multiplayer stuff) and that just doesn’t look like a bold new RTS to me. I’ve also yet to hear a single UI change in SCII which wasn’t present in the genre before even the original game came out. That’s the big problem here, fans mostly comparing the changes to the original game and not to what other titles have done in all those years since Dune II came out. The multiplayer/skirmish part of SCII won’t inspire other RTS companies because they can’t rely on just being competent and polishing their work to make their games sell.
30/06/2009 at 17:19 Joshua says:
“To be fair, I’m pretty sure that you could make many games last 10 years if you follow a certain formula. ”
Then how come there aren’t more than a few games in a few select genres? Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Quake 3 Arena come to mind but it’s a struggle to think of others. Warcraft III was and is a wonderful game, but online DOTA has overshadowed it.
It’s true the “scene” comes from a variety of things, but you definitely need an extremely high quality game at its core.
30/06/2009 at 17:22 TCM says:
Starcraft really isn’t that high quality.
It’s got excellent balance, but the micromanagement and unfriendly UI grate on me to no end.
I think the only reason the fanbase hasn’t moved on is because they are trying to justify all the time they’ve spent playing and learning a single game.
30/06/2009 at 17:25 Benjamin Ferrari says:
@Joshua: because supporting a game so it is played for 10 years after release is not immediatly profitable. For example, it requires not to release a successor and constant support. And modding tools are expensive to make.
30/06/2009 at 17:27 Benjamin Ferrari says:
@TCM: Here is my interpretation:
TF2 is good. TF2 did not innovate. If a game needs to innovate to be good, TF2 cannot be good. But since TF2 is good, the logical conclusion is that a game does not have to innovate to be good.
Therefore, the statement that Starcraft 2 needs to innovate to be good is false.
30/06/2009 at 17:32 TCM says:
…So, the fact that TF2 is entirely and completely different in almost every possible way when compared to TF1 means it didn’t innovate…
I understand now!
30/06/2009 at 17:46 Benjamin Ferrari says:
@SwiftRanger
I argumented that many of the changes in modern RTS are not improvements, but just very different approaches.
Therefore, an RTS where these changes have been implemented is a very different game from the “traditional RTS” (let’s call it like that) that you find in Starcraft.
Therefore, someone who is looking for a modern traditional RTS is not going to find that in Relic’s games.
Therefore, you can only compare Starcraft 2′s multiplayer/skirmish mode to other games of the same genre. E.g. the Command & Conquer series.
30/06/2009 at 17:47 Benjamin Ferrari says:
@TCM that’s how i understood the argument. I never played TF1.
30/06/2009 at 17:47 Arturo says:
DOW2 is not perfect. I’ve been using them as an example of innovation and experimenting with new types of gameplay. They certainly get some things wrong, but they get a lot of things right. You can see the -effort- in the attempts to push some boundaries and give you some ‘wow, neat,’ features when playing multiplayer. I don’t want to spend a lot of space defending them, as they aren’t the issue.
The people mentioning the SC2′s very capable map-creator and editing features are missing the point; I don’t want to have to wade into the back-end of a game to program and get the game I want. I’m strictly talking about multiplayer retail here, and the lack of anything new and interesting in SC2.
Weather or not that is what people want is certainly a matter of opinion for each of us, but I don’t think anyone can make a good case for us seeing a -single- innovative new feature in SC2 that we haven’t seen before, 10 years ago. That’s my whole point. I guarantee a lot of people are going to love the ‘classic’ style, but I also guarantee a lot of people are going to take one look and say “is that all? You’ve been in development with a ridiculous production budget for years and years and that’s what we get from one of the top studios in the world?”
30/06/2009 at 17:53 Arturo says:
@ SwiftRanger
Good points, I agree.
30/06/2009 at 17:59 Benjamin Ferrari says:
“I don’t think anyone can make a good case for us seeing a -single- innovative new feature in SC2 that we haven’t seen before. That’s my whole point.”
And I do not disagree with your point. I only disagree with the idea that there should be any innovation.
Blizzard has never been a great innovator, and innovative ideas are certainly not what makes people want to play their games.
30/06/2009 at 18:01 Touche, bitches! says:
This may have already been discussed, but what will this mean for professional play? Is Blizzard not expecting any proleage (read: Sth Korean proleagues) to event attempt to adopt it? I mean, I greatly doubt it’ll replace Starcraft in pro play, but how could a new league properly form and be moderated? I guess it’ll all be over b.net…
30/06/2009 at 18:02 TCM says:
Blizzard are the kings of ripping off ideas others have had, balancing them, and distilling them to a science.
But all of their ideas, all of their ‘lore’, everything is a rip off of some idea or another.
30/06/2009 at 18:04 pkt-zer0 says:
TF2 ignored the “improvements” made in, say, the Battlefield series. No vehicles, no RTS elements. Just plain old class-based point/flag-capturing and blasting each other in the face, as in the original. The improvements are mostly just making the game more accessible and easily understandable.
It’s still a good game, despite having the radical stuff like the Commander class cut from the game. More than that, it’s a good game because of its elegant simplicity (disregarding the unfolding silliness in recent updates). Can’t fault SC2 for taking the same approach.
30/06/2009 at 18:10 Arturo says:
@ Benjamin Ferrari
You are exactly right. What they DO do well, is put out extremely polished, generally bug-free software, that is also very easy on the eyes. Those of us annoyed by the lack of anything new are a small minority I’m sure. Millions of people bought Britney Spears albums, which is what I’m equating this as, the bubble-gum pop of RTS. Much like WOW is the shallow, but extremely popular MMO, it’s gonna sell like hotcakes.
30/06/2009 at 18:11 Joshua says:
“I guarantee a lot of people are going to love the ‘classic’ style, but I also guarantee a lot of people are going to take one look and say “is that all? You’ve been in development with a ridiculous production budget for years and years and that’s what we get from one of the top studios in the world?””
Then they won’t buy it. I dunno what else there is to say other than that. Blizzard is betting on the fact that a lot of people do NOT want whatever fancy pants stuff other developers have been coming up with since StarCraft came out.
After all, it’s not like any of them set the world on fire, except for arguably Warcraft III (which WAS supposed to be radically innovative, but Blizzard pared back most of it between announcement and release).
But in any case I wouldn’t understate the value of nostalgia/same old if I were you. Capcom moved a ton of copies of Street Fighter IV by essentially saying this was the same game as Street Fighter II, and more noob friendly. Of course, it wasn’t (on both counts), but it drew back a lot of old fans.
30/06/2009 at 18:30 EyeMessiah says:
@Arturo
I agree, I too worry that SC2 isn’t going to be “new” enough. I don’t mind if it doesn’t do squads, or cover or any of the other specific things that other RTSs have implemented recently, but I’d like it to have some “wow-neat” things of its own, and I’m not entirely convinced that’s going to be the case.
Actually I think TF2 is a pretty good comparison. Its mechanically very simple compared to other FPSs that came out since TFC, and even compared its TFC & QTF ancestors.
Valve took some of the core mechanics, discarded everything else and then polished the remainder like crazy (things get a bit messier when you add in the unlocks & class packs but still…) and the result was very playable. Maybe Blizz are taking SC2 down a similar route? I’m not entirely sure. Some of those unit abilities look really annoying, and there are far too many aoe nukes imho. Still the rolling “blink” micro on the hunters in battle report 3 looks like the awesomeness.
30/06/2009 at 18:40 Zyrusticae says:
Innovation is overrated. So is, for that matter, originality. I do not understand this mindset at all.
If you want something different, there are other developers out there doing something different. Blizzard should never be your go-to guy for something new and intriguing.
30/06/2009 at 18:41 EyeMessiah says:
@Joshua
I personally know quite a lot of gamers (primarily SP players) who actively dislike the last couple of generations of RTS. DOW2 in particular has proved a hard sell for many of them who adore base building, controlling huge armies and who loathe cover systems, quick games, controlling squads (basically because both mechanics make the little guys do funny things when you tell them to go somewhere i.e. the line themselves up in weird ways and hide behind things instead of going EXACTLY where you clicked). Funnily enough all of them are completely sold on SC2.
30/06/2009 at 19:03 Benjamin Ferrari says:
@Arturo: I agree that popularity does not imply quality, but I disagree that popularity implies bad quality.
And calling Starcraft’s mutliplayer gameplay bubble gum is a very creative argument, considering that it has a very high learning curve and is not very popular with the average online player.
30/06/2009 at 19:03 Arturo says:
@ EyeMessiah
Good stuff.
I guess that’s what I really like about DOW2; I feel much more involved with the units, especially with the animations and ways in which the units interact with the environment/landscape, and especially each other. The melee looks intense, and the units that are fighting look like they are actually interacting/fighting/and dying. It’s also at a speed that I can comprehend and find managable; the fighting is slowed down just enough that people with mortal reflexes can still effect change on the battlefield.
Watching that last SC2 battle report, I know there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to micro a whole squad of teleporters based on who is taking damage and then putting down force fields with that level of speed and accuracy.
I think the battle report was a good example though of these sorts of differences: the zerg player certainly won more of the skirmishes with good tactics, but it was all for naught since the protoss player had built more drones to gather crystals. His resource rate was faster, so it didn’t even matter if he lost a ton of troops, he just out-produced the zerg. The economic game trumped the tactical game, not my cup of tea. The match was decided in the first few minutes and the rest was just window dressing.
That being said, I do have to admit it IS hard to resist the nostalgia beam directed at my brain by watching those units fighting. I just wish they were doing so in a more involved and interesting to watch way.
30/06/2009 at 19:08 Arturo says:
@ Benjamin Ferrari
You are right, SC is -extremely- deep with the meta game at higher levels, don’t get me wrong. I meant more Blizzard’s approach to design, appealing to a certain crowd with their choices in graphics and gameplay style, specifically in reference to WOW being very casual-friendly.
30/06/2009 at 19:34 JKjoker says:
@EyeMessiah: im one of those ppl that love long RTS games, carefully planning your defenses while you slowly taking over the whole map watching your foes scream in agony at the lack of expansion points, patiently eroding their resources and then suddenly strike with a MASSIVE force squishing them like little bugs, so i know what you mean, but every single feature ive heard and footage ive watched screams to me that they are aiming for “quick games”, just like they did with warcraft 3, maybe more so
30/06/2009 at 22:34 EyeMessiah says:
@JKjoker
That said, SC1 was a pretty quick game too if you were playing against ladder players. It was often about breaching the supply cap by timing your first few builds so that you could get the largest possible zergling rush together in the opening couple of minutes of the game. Getting a handful of T2 units, or a single T3 unit out sometimes seemed like a miracle.
That didn’t stop friends and I setting up custom games against each other or coop against the AI and playing long defence-heavy games that lasted for 4 hours (with max pop composed of nothing except full groups of carriers: bliss!). I expect to be able to play SC2 the same way with friends or against the AI, just not in matchmade games.
30/06/2009 at 22:37 EyeMessiah says:
@Arturo
I actually find DOW2 a bit too fast moving – at least I expect SC2 to have a variable speed slider. Sometimes I feel like I’m missing out on all the gloriously rendered action because I’m struggling to zip between different battles while also recapping points all the time. It does make for a damn fine replay though.
30/06/2009 at 22:40 ShardPhoenix says:
To some extent I think people just have an unreasonably high standard of innovation when it comes to Blizzard that they don’t apply to any other company. Basically, whining about Blizzard not being innovative is a meme unto itself, regardless of whether it’s justified.
30/06/2009 at 22:59 Adam T says:
It’s all about control… eventually there will be no pure LAN play in any commercial game…
01/07/2009 at 04:20 Cade Tylis says:
Any loss of functionality in games should be opposed. We’ve already seen much decline in split screen gaming on consoles. Theres a first time for everything but let it not happen with blizzard. Sign the pitition! Oppose this change. Rise up and eat salami!
http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html
Just incase you weren’t aware.
01/07/2009 at 04:25 Hypocee says:
A lot of people are missing an important point here – Korea’s wired to an extent we can barely imagine over here, far beyond ‘broadband’. It’s like FIOS is the lowest connection speed offered or something like that. The nation, or at least the Starcraft-obsessed portion of the nation, is one big LAN. A couple of local server farms, and the problem doesn’t exist.
It’s unpleasant that we Westerners get screwed in the process, but I suppose they can just release it as South Corea 2, 3 and 4 instead.
01/07/2009 at 09:47 bookwormat says:
I just realized that I posted half my posts in this thread under the handle bookwormat, and the other half under my real name (Benjamin Ferrari). Very confusing, sorry.
01/07/2009 at 11:39 T-B0N3 says:
actually i think a game like starcraft is way deaper than RTS that game after it. That the game is always the same is ridicilous, only the 1st 30 seconds might be always the same. After that you got many options.
you have to constantly scout your opponent and adapt, there are many ways you can fool your opponent. things like this are unmatched in any other rts imo.
SC is also the only rts i like to spectate, so much tensions when someone goes for a build that will completely fail if the other one sees it. Or so exciting when a player like Slayer_Boxer decides to ruh with all his units after 1 minute in the game :)
01/07/2009 at 16:00 MacMike says:
ok if they really go with this i will never buy blizzard games again! how many times do you have a lan party with friends where u dont have internet connection. i am here on a college campus and when we meet in a big room where we can play we dont have internet. so this is not cool at all.
they will never see my money.
01/07/2009 at 21:07 DK says:
“Ask Relic. They did the same thing with Company of Heroes when addon Oppossing Fronts was released.”
I really wish people would stop spreading that myth. Company of Heroes requires an internet connection if you want to play without the CD. If you have the CD in the drive, you can play without any internet connection. It’s the perfect balance between a copy protection a publisher will accept and not bothering your customers.
05/07/2009 at 15:45 Guido says:
I’m a big StarCraft fan, but I’ve yet to see anything that convinces me that SC2 will be better than DoW2…
06/08/2009 at 07:49 sigma83 says:
Guido: Two words. Single player.
31/07/2010 at 18:19 Mike says:
So I got a question. I’m at an internet cafe planning to try out SC2. They have the game here, but when I try to play the game, it asked me to log into my battlenet account, which I did, and said I don’t have the game in my account. Does that mean I need to actually buy one to be able to play even if they have the game already here on the compy?
31/07/2010 at 18:31 TimA says:
Yes. Or obtain a guest pass.
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