I guess the lan thing is an issue for some folks, but in this day and age, I look at it as a "meh." My roomate, my brother,a nd another friend all play fine together right over bnet with no issues.
Heh, jsut got a firend invite for the beta in an email too. Too bad it didnt come a few weeks ago and I could have sold it.
I used to play tournaments in SC, and while I was never any good at it I had fun. Without a LAN option, this severely hinders any kind of professional level playing of the game (note, I am not qualifying myself as a pro, I'm a n00b like most people), or at the very least forces non-Blizzard tournaments and ladders to have go to through Bnet and deal with lag/ping etc.
This.. is just Blizzard milking money. Did you see the news this past week about how Blizzard is pulling their affiliation with the largest pro gaming company in Korea? Even though the Koreans kept the game alive for 12 years, they are being snubbed, since Korea is where like 80-90% of all pro SC tournaments, ladders and players come from. As a result, Blizzard has chosen to go with other gaming organizations, prompting certain pro players and pro teams to NOT play in those tournaments and organizations since Blizzard decided to jump ship from one company to another. They just want even more money, want a SC2 tournament? it has to go through bnet. Ladder? bnet. Sure you can organize an unofficial of either of those but you still end up playing the game online, dealing with online gaming issues (ping, lag, location) in an environment that was built around lan play.
And yea custom maps costing money is bad, in several ways. One, remember back in the day, the first couple years of SC1, Blizz had a Map of the Week they made, every week, completely for free. Why all of a sudden is an RTS map, something to be considered DLC? DLC is exactly one chief reason why I am
not a console gamer. My generation of gaming, you never paid for extra maps or little tiny additions to the game. Occasionally there might be an expansion pack to a game but those usually have a ton of content or major additions, worthy of the price. However with most PC games you could get free content, stuff that should never have cost money in the first place. Two, what types of maps will they allow players to make and charge for? Regular gameplay maps? Campaigns? Custom Use Map Setting style maps? If they allow you to charge for UMS, then they have just opened the flood gates for not only legal ramifications but spam. Ever play a UMS map in SC1? There's always like several games of the same type running, all running the exact same map except some jerk has slightly modded it to basically just include his / her name. Imagine having to navigate your way through some Bnet Store for custom maps to be purchased and there's 2000 copies of Sunken Defense or OMGNAZIZOMBIE or DragonBallZ RPG AttackX...
Basically, I can't stand to see Bnet destroyed like this. Nickel and diming us, forcing us to use it for a competitive function. This is the same type of shit console gamers deal with for multiplayer games. The most recent being Halo 2 on Xbox 1. You paid for the game, and the ability to play it online, but its up to someone else when you can play it, how long you can play it and when you may not play it again. With no LAN function, Blizzard has basically just put a kill switch in the game, if they no longer want you to play it, they can just remove it from Bnet, and no more multiplayer (unless there is some rudimentary 1v1 via tcp/ip).
Call it a rant if you wish, but I loved SC1. Loved it. It was one of the first few PC games that I got hooked into playing online the week it was released back in 98'. I have so many fond memories of playing SC1, Quake2, etc online around that time period, and it just saddens me to see how they've already ruined SC2
with LAN games it is not verified via Battle.net, now all SCII will be accounted for and play. If you want multiplayer, you better get a legit copy and register to your battle.net account.
