Starcraft II, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love WANs.
It was confirmed that Blizzard is dropping built-in LAN support for Starcraft II.
This means all multiplayer games (legit ones) will have to go through Battle.net.
Seriously? Seriously. Regardless of the fact that, obviously, LAN games (that is, a bunch of people playing together on the same network, using the same outgoing IP) are tons faster than games through Bnet, Blizzard stated that it would give the community something much better than LAN (apparently Battle.net, but that's an outright lie right now, so we'll just wait and see).
Some people have speculated that LAN will still be supported, but that the game will require you to identify through Battle.net before later falling back onto LAN mode. Most Blizzard RTS already follow a similar method; they connect through Battle.net and then, after the game starts, the "host" becomes the server, connecting everybody together and syncing the game. That's admittedly faster than having every packet go through the BNet servers, but it's still slower than a straight LAN. On a LAN, packets never go beyond one hop: from the sender to the router/switch to the receiver. Assuming people connect through BNet, then they're connected to each other, but they are on a LAN, then they're outgoing IP will be the same; they will still end packets to that IP, and the router, unaware that that IP is within its subnet, will send it along until someone returns it back. So it still goes out of the local network.
Maybe they'll implement some sort of half-assed LAN mode, where you authenticate through BNet and the software filters packet to efficiently keep them in the same network if it notices that two players share the same IP. I doubt it.
I also don't buy the whole piracy excuse; I highly doubt piracy in direct relation to LAN games. Most pirated copies allow you to play on BNet.
Either way, I'll be throwing my weight behind PvPGN if Blizzard don't revise their position, and hope that a SC2 patch can be made as fast as possible.
This is a ridiculous method to counter piracy, when they full well know they'll make millions on the game.
It was confirmed that Blizzard is dropping built-in LAN support for Starcraft II.
This means all multiplayer games (legit ones) will have to go through Battle.net.
Seriously? Seriously. Regardless of the fact that, obviously, LAN games (that is, a bunch of people playing together on the same network, using the same outgoing IP) are tons faster than games through Bnet, Blizzard stated that it would give the community something much better than LAN (apparently Battle.net, but that's an outright lie right now, so we'll just wait and see).
Some people have speculated that LAN will still be supported, but that the game will require you to identify through Battle.net before later falling back onto LAN mode. Most Blizzard RTS already follow a similar method; they connect through Battle.net and then, after the game starts, the "host" becomes the server, connecting everybody together and syncing the game. That's admittedly faster than having every packet go through the BNet servers, but it's still slower than a straight LAN. On a LAN, packets never go beyond one hop: from the sender to the router/switch to the receiver. Assuming people connect through BNet, then they're connected to each other, but they are on a LAN, then they're outgoing IP will be the same; they will still end packets to that IP, and the router, unaware that that IP is within its subnet, will send it along until someone returns it back. So it still goes out of the local network.
Maybe they'll implement some sort of half-assed LAN mode, where you authenticate through BNet and the software filters packet to efficiently keep them in the same network if it notices that two players share the same IP. I doubt it.
I also don't buy the whole piracy excuse; I highly doubt piracy in direct relation to LAN games. Most pirated copies allow you to play on BNet.
Either way, I'll be throwing my weight behind PvPGN if Blizzard don't revise their position, and hope that a SC2 patch can be made as fast as possible.
This is a ridiculous method to counter piracy, when they full well know they'll make millions on the game.