Hundreds of thousands of Blizzard fans are disappointed that Blizzard has excluded network play in StarCraft II, but it’s now confirmed there won’t even be a semi-connected LAN mode.
There will be an offline mode for some of the game. “The offline mode would be for the single player component,” Frank Pearce, VP of game design, told us. “If you validate your version of Battle.net you play offline for [the] campaign.”
There has been a lot of talk between fans, who are either in one of three corners. Those who love LAN play and are very disappointed, those who don’t but support that there should be a feature for those who want it, and those who just 100% support Blizzard no matter what.
Among the discussion of fans, a rumour has circulated that Blizzard would implement a system where you could connect to Battle.net and then start a limited LAN, as long as some connection (although perhaps a poor dial-up one shared by several PCs) was available. “That functionality is not there,” Pearce said, “Our goal is to make sure that connectivity to the Battle.net servers is such that [it’s] the experience people want.”
There has also been a (less heated) debate in the Diablo III community about LAN play as well, and it’s previously been confirmed by Jay Wilson that there will be no LAN in the action RPG either.
When asked if there was a DRM connection to this decision, Pearce said “That is not really our primary focus with it. We just want an online destination for a community to be united. So if we do our job well in terms of the future commercial nature and component nature of the Batte.net experience, then we hope people will want to play.”
Considering this attitude, it is perhaps likely that the “wants” of making cross-Atlantic play possible might be a “plan” relatively soon after all?
As well as our full StarCraft II Single Player Preview, we will shortly release the full interview with Frank, so stay tuned!
