I bagged WarCraft III in my http://www.gamers-underground.com/forum/games-general/25835-where-has-art-games-gone.html thread. And to a smaller extent, I was also disappointed with the StarCraft II graphics engine... up until now.
Quote: The StarCraft art team have been making massive updates to the Zerg faction, adding various new animations and improving even further on the textures of Zerg units and buildings.
Check out these before-and-after shots, showcasing recent transformations put in place by the art team...
There's already a petition running to have Blizzard implement it.
I, personally, don't see a problem with it. We're all so connected now, when doesn't any private or public gaming location have net access? I've got 4 avenues to connect to the net at my house, and the few public LANs that I've been to in recent times have all had fat connections, too.
It means all accounts are monitored for exploits, all games are registered, all match results are logged and that border-crossing social element of multiplayer is retained - all while in a 'LAN' environment.
I do agree with blizzard on why they don't want to have LAN play but the way it is been described about how they are going about it is not the best way to deal with piracy.
Take for instance most of Valves games 90% of the time if for some reason the internet is down at home or Seattle?s power at steam head office is down they all can still play because of offline mode.
I do know of instances where several people are going offline mode on a few computers and are playing the likes of L4D on the same account, but the thing is that if they want to play with the rest of the people at the lan they keep getting disconnected. And in the end after frustration those kids now all own copies of L4D.
I can remember many instances in the last year alone when I have been out on a voyage on my fokes Yacht playing Warcraft 2/3 and starcraft with my little brother on a ADHOC wireless lan where any form of internet is not available.
here's what i posted on the Node forums about this:
Quote: bah. annoyed at the lack of spawn copies - but that was only ever a lucky bonus I can deal with that. The continued disappearance of LAN capacity in games is shitting me right off though (Games For Windows Live I'm lookin at you, you brick fscked motherbitch).
I live in an area of several suburbs that are built on reclaimed land. All our cabling is underground and due to the joys of the weather here it buckets with rain 3 months straight each year prettymuch. Now the awesome thing about living on an old swamp is it wants to BE a swamp again - but it cant because the area has drainage. Where does all that water drain to? the goddamned telstra cable pits as near as i can tell and getting those pumped out is a frustrating round of 'check your modem please, did you try turning it off and then on again?, etc' (thank god 'node manages that for us now). Because of this we can be without a net connection at home for days at a time during the wet.
for those people saying "but it's Blizzard's game, they don't HAVE to put features in that they don't want to, just because they were there before..." okay - true. Just keep that in mind when Ubisoft decides they can save money with the next Call of Duty by forcing PC players to use an xbox controller to play it. if people don't whinge about the stuff disappearing from games more of the things you took for granted will disappear.
Quote from rec;366979: There's already a petition running to have Blizzard implement it.
I, personally, don't see a problem with it. We're all so connected now, when doesn't any private or public gaming location have net access? I've got 4 avenues to connect to the net at my house, and the few public LANs that I've been to in recent times have all had fat connections, too.
It means all accounts are monitored for exploits, all games are registered, all match results are logged and that border-crossing social element of multiplayer is retained - all while in a 'LAN' environment.
Thumbs up from me.
Starcraft has a very large competitive player base. Whilst the internet saturation is a lot more than it used to be I'm pretty sure that latency over LAN is a lot more stable than that of the internet. LAN not only caters for the casual gamers but it also caters for the competitive.
Besides, this whole issue of piracy hasn't phased Blizzard in the past. If you want to play on Battle.net servers you need authentic keys. With the abundance of internet sources and all this focus on Battle.net content, it would mean that this creates more incentive not to be pigeon-holed to LAN. Besides, if this game is going to live up to the expectations people will buy the game. Making such a bold move removing LAN play only deters people...
My opinion is this: Id rather have something and not use it than not have it and need it, and it's hardly like the netcode needs to have a ground up rebuild for LAN functions.
Yeah I mean as far as I know... Coding in LAN functionality is not something that requires a total overhaul of existing stuff. With that mindset its a terrible to leave that stone unturned. I blame Activision for making this sort of move... When Blizzard flew solo I'll bet they would never have gone for such a ridiculous move...
LAN is becoming a thing of the past hey. I know they still happen. but internet is so good no there is little reason to LAN anymore. and if you want the social interaction and/or drinking/drugs, then go out and party, and play games when your coming down :P
But honestly, when you all see what they'll do with Battle.net it wont matter :D everyone should buy the game anyway. blizzard ftw :P
Honestly, I've never played a RTS on the net, even a turn based one. I've always lanned C&C series, WC2/3 and CivIV. Not having a lan option for me = no buy... anyhow C&C:gens:Zero hour is the ****ing bomb for RTS's in my opinion.
i've already mentioned the state of net access here - one good rain and *glub* - and others have mentioned locations where they can't get net access but can run a quick LAN up no troubles. Also, it was only 2 LANs ago that DGA had no net access.
i still cannot ****ing understand why you guys would argue AGAINST it. there IS no argument against having LAN support. so YOU don't need it - yay! rainbows sunshine and unicorns for you. Other people do want it.
I hate to say it, but Darwin is an exception. The Casuarina latency issues (noteably the regularity of the repeating issue), the slowing of speeds during tropical storms/monsoonal rain, the black spots for high speed access smack-bang in the middle of metro/suburban areas, LAN events with no net access...
I haven't experienced those sorts of circumstances anywhere else I've lived (Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, London). I guess you could say that Blizzard have forgotten about the NT, and places like the NT. :P
As I've said numerous times, I support their decision, but that doesn't mean I'm against proper LAN support. If they did decide to do it, cool, whatever.
Quote from Aegis;367080: i've already mentioned the state of net access here - one good rain and *glub* - and others have mentioned locations where they can't get net access but can run a quick LAN up no troubles. Also, it was only 2 LANs ago that DGA had no net access.
i still cannot ****ing understand why you guys would argue AGAINST it. there IS no argument against having LAN support. so YOU don't need it - yay! rainbows sunshine and unicorns for you. Other people do want it.
its got nothing to do with me :P i'm not arguing either way, all i'm pointing out is their thinking behind it :P
i mean the way to world works, within 2 days someone will figure out a way to lan it without internet. or enough will whinge it'll be included in the game.
either way, no reason to cry, it'll still be the best RTS ever! (hopefully) :P
Heretic is right; It'll be less than a week after the game comes out that someone will find a way to host a spoof Battle.net server on a local network, and have your game clients connect to that instead.
So people will have to resort to underhanded, unsupported ways to play a game they paid for offline? Disregarding those that pirated the game because they've already done the underhanded thing, but that just sounds ridiculous... As a business move its a great move by Activision Blizzard, ensures people use their Battle.net product and allows them to further grow in that department... However, purely ideologically, Blizzard has always been about the games and substance over style. This time around they are backed by ridiculous amounts of money thanks to the WoW franchise and they can't budget in the code to allow for offline LAN? Smells like bullshit to me...
The game is going to be good, but Blizzard should be embracing the gamers that still flock to play their games rather than giving them any reason to turn on them...
I'm still stuck on the whole "offline" thing. Who's offline? And yes I hear your arguments, I just don't agree with some of them, or care about others.
Everyone will be "offline" the first time the battlenet servers go down. I have no problem with online authenication done right(steam) I I have dislike of it being done wrong(GFWL). Why of why would blizard go with the GFWL method.
Quote from rec;367091: I'm still stuck on the whole "offline" thing. Who's offline? And yes I hear your arguments, I just don't agree with some of them, or care about others.
So let's look at a couple legitimate offline scenarios... The diggers who have their laptops with them to R&R whilst they are posted to some god forsaken place... They've picked up their copies of SC2 because they loved the first one and they have very little access to internet resources. So because they are a vast minority and Blizzard insists that LAN support encourages piracy they can't hook up a basic LAN and play with their mates?
Or your internet is capped in this country with horrible internet infrastructure and you decide to host a friendly LAN amongst friends to ease the boredom and pain of not having full speed net. So you have to just sit there and suffer in your jocks when you could be enjoying hours of fun LAN play with your friends?
In the latter you are still connected but capped internet is barely worth counting as online and furthermore you are unable to play online with those sorts of speeds.
At the end of the day, I will still buy this game. It will be more than likely awesome. It doesn't mean that I have to like this callous, unnecessary exclusion of LAN support nor do I support it. The fact that you do is completely questionable...
pretty sure LAN bits will only be an issue if you have zero connectivity, so any connection at all should allow full speed, low ping LAN play - of course, if they force updates like steam does then all bets are off
You can still authenticate with an older versions of the game with battlenet. It is backwards compatible so if you want to play on version 1.0 of the game you still can as long as you mates are running the same.