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You're right APK MUST PUT TO DEATH by Jay Liittle http://www.petitiononline.com/... note the pathway has jlittle1 in it!

Well, given the diversity of Slashdot audience and their nonexistent ability to organize, a boycott is unlikely to effect any real change.

On the other hand, Alice Hill - President at Slashdot Media or some of her bosses from Dice Holdings, like Michael P. Durney - President and CEO or Klavs Miller - Senior Vice President, Technology can be quite effective in stopping this madness and idiotic destruction of value, if they care to understand the problem at hand.

I don't think all of this would happen if they realized that Slashdot's value doesn't stem from it as a news site (of which there are thousands), but as a news discussion site.

Messing with the comment, moderation and social functionalities and their design over here is playing with fire.

I don't think these folks understand that people don't come to Slashdot to read carefully selected news (which are not, BTW) in a pretty-glossy presentation, but to participate in or consume/read the discussion. And the new Beta demolishes that.

If someone else better skilled in writing would make a petition on http://www.petitiononline.com/ and direct it at those guys, that would be so much more effective than ranting here in comments, which these people probably had never looked at, or trying to organize boycotts among a disorganized crowd.

Well, a receptionist is really unlikely to effect any real change.

On the other hand, Alice Hill - President at Slashdot Media or some of her bosses from Dice Holdings, like Michael P. Durney - President and CEO or Klavs Miller - Senior Vice President, Technology can be quite effective in stopping this madness and idiotic destruction of value, if they care to undersand the problem at hand.

I don't think all of this would happen if they realized that Slashdot's value doesn't stem from it as a news site (of which there are thousands), but as a news discussion site.

Messing with the comment, moderation and social functionalities and their design over here is playing with fire.

I don't think these folks understand that people don't come to Slashdot to read carefully selected news (which are not, BTW) in a pretty-glossy presentation, but to participate in or consume/read the discussion. And the new Beta demolishes that.

If someone else better skilled in writing would make a petition on http://www.petitiononline.com/ and direct it at those guys, that would be so much more effective than ranting here in comments, which these people probably had never looked at, or harassing random rank-and-file Dice employees.

Although, Her Twitter seems a more promising contact channel. Still active.

After reading through other linked profles from her Google Plus profile, especially the CrunchBase one, I'm getting pretty confident that I've nailed it.

Who else would have the power to force through such a profound destruction of value, stretched through such a long time period without any checks?

If you really want this madness stopped, petition the boss of Dice Holdings, Michael P. Durney - President and CEO or possibly Klavs Miller - Senior Vice President, Technology.

If someone else better skilled in writing would make a petition on http://www.petitiononline.com/ and direct it at those guys, that would be so much more effective than ranting here in comments, which these people probably had never looked at.

For a long time, I have decided to boycott Nvidia (which I have nicknamed as “Hang-vidia” due to the fact their drivers frequently caused my machine to hang) due to their positive hostility for Linux, and open source, and what not (lack of support for open source efforts, no specifications released, legal threats against open source efforts, dropping support for old cards, etc.), and the low quality of their binary-only offerings (frequent hangs and crashes), and their general incompetence. I will never buy Nvidia until they release SPECs and make their driver open source. See my old petition about that.

After using an old GeForce 4 card where neither the "nv" driver nor the "nvidia" driver worked properly, I switched to an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro card, and it served me extremely well, and was rock solid. Now I have the built-in Intel graphics on this Core i3 machine, which causes some problems, so I may opt to buy a new (and probably better) ATI/AMD card. But I'd rather be hanged than buy hang-vidia.

If you think OxyContin is bad, try Effexor. That stuff doesn't even make you feel good, just wrecks your brain chemistry so that you can't function without it anymore. http://www.petitiononline.com/effexor/petition.html

We need the companies involved to band together and make something like this an option. http://www.petitiononline.com/system76/petition.html Screw proprietary BIOS

Please STOP IT!.

There currently are petitions to name the next unnamed planned Ford-class carrier (CVN-80) Enterprise. I personally hope CVN-80 will be named Enterprise.

See: http://ussenterp.epetitions.net/signatures.php?petition_id=1870 and http://www.petitiononline.com/CVN80ENT/petition.html

Which is why some politicians, unions, researchers and even some companies are promoting the 6 hours a day workday.
http://www.6hourday.org/ http://www.informationweek.com/news/6502155 http://www.petitiononline.com/6hourday/petition.html http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2001/0901mutari.html

Be well rested, happy and then work more effectively for shorter time produces better end result than less effective work over longer time. Apparently. Maybe more applicable for office / knowledge workers, not so much for tollbooth attendants, truck drivers, shop keepers. But you could say a happy rested waiter gets more tips than a tired snappy one...

Although the 6h day has also been discredited by other researchers. http://www.thelocal.se/2238/20051007/

Personally I think 6 hours is not the solution. It takes a while before I find my flow, my coding happy zone, http://memeagora.blogspot.com/2008/10/code-forrest-code.html and 6 hours would mean most of day is wasted on meetings, lunch, and other interruptions. 40 hours seems a good balance.

Having just had 21 fully paid weeks off last year due to 14 weeks paternity leave and the rest as holiday I shouldn't complain about Norwegian vacation laws. :)

As I said when this came up and fell through a few years back, Cliff Richards' actions are those of petty greed and unbefitting his royal title. As such, he should publicly and without delay renounce his knighthood. http://www.petitiononline.com/cliffren/petition.html Unfortunately, only one person in the whole world felt strongly enough to show solidarity, but they did give a hearty "Hear hear!"

Oh, and in the case of Mandriva, a petition to remove PulseAudio by default since more than 90% of users are disabling it and replacing it with ALSA. Yeah, that's not for no reason.

I'm right now starting a petition so that everybody who doesn't have a clue just shut up. Seriously, +5, Informative? WTF?!

Regarding the summary, PulseAudio adds nothing to the *BSDs...OSS has always been able to have multiple programs access the sound card at the same time. Avahi runs fine at least on OpenBSD, and systemd....well there are only about two Linux distributions even using it at this point.

PulseAudio is a useless piece of shit. It's like ALSA with a bunch of stupid complications. How it got to be the standard sound system for so many mainstream distros is a real mystery.

It lends credibility to the idea that Open Source developers don't really want to achieve a mature, working codebase and stick with that unless there are serious problems that really do require moving to something else. There is a perception that it has to be hackish and in perpetual beta to be considered sexy and cool for an Open Source OS. PulseAudio is a big example of why this perception exists.

Just answer me one thing. ALSA has had Dmix for nearly ten years. It has enabled Dmix by default (as in it just automagically works) for about seven years. What glaring need is there for adding a second software layer to a sound system that already does what you need it to do? No, playing sound over the network isn't a good reason. That's what application-level streaming software is for. What does PulseAudio contribute other than needless complexity and several FAQs dedicated to replacing it with ALSA for various distributions that ship with it?

Oh, and in the case of Mandriva, a petition to remove PulseAudio by default since more than 90% of users are disabling it and replacing it with ALSA. Yeah, that's not for no reason.

Well, we can all pool together and petition to get it postponed. It seems to have worked in the past, since all other predicted dates have come and gone:

            http://www.petitiononline.com/dotr2011/

            -dZ.

Only with Wine. All Wine bugs which affect Blizzard games are very fast fixed, hopefully that will also be the case with D3. Concerning native Linux client, Blizzard doesn't want to publish it. There's a petition http://www.petitiononline.com/ibpfl/petition.html but Blizzard doesn't care. It's cheaper that geeks do the job for them.

http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/ --> If enough people ask nicely, we might see a Linux client.

I saw an online petition signed by over 50,000 linux users who said they would get a netflix account if they chose to support linux. want the link?

Yes please. I looked for it and found one with 9,553 signers (as I write) here. But nowhere near 50,000.

Waiting...

(Seriously, why not just include it in the original post? Or are you just making stuff up?)

Stop Uwe Boll Now. Don't wait until you or a loved one accidentally sees one of his movies.

{sigh} too late. Is there an antidote?

Sure there is. The Church of Scientology has one very efficient method. I do not recall the exact number, but it has to do with the calibre of the firearm perused.

Stop Uwe Boll Now. Don't wait until you or a loved one accidentally sees one of his movies.

{sigh} too late. Is there an antidote?

Stop Uwe Boll Now. Don't wait until you or a loved one accidentally sees one of his movies.

For those who are fed up with these Body Scanners, please sign my petition to have them stopped. I will be sending this petition to our representatives in Congress. Please spread the link around. The more signatures we get, the more effective the petition is. Post it on your facebook, website, email your firends.

http://www.petitiononline.com/BodyScan/petition.html

I am circulating a petition which I plan to mail to our various representatives in congress regarding this issue. If you feel the government should stop the use of these infernal contraptions, please sign my petition. Please help spread the link around to whoever you can. Post it on your facebook; website, email your friends.

http://www.petitiononline.com/BodyScan/petition.html

Only a handful? There are 252,781 last I checked who signed the petition. Me and my friends vowed to never purchase a game unless we can play LAN.

I played SC2 beta with a friend in my network, behind the same firewall the performance was dismal!! And that was just two, I can't imagine 8 people! My network is gig, My firewall is a Linux based one with 4ghz, 1GB ram, Dual Gig,

Another thing that pisses me off is these gaming tycoons saying LAN is obsolete. A gig LAN(or even 100mb) is far superior to anything I can get from Comcast. Not to mention having friends in the same room (what do you think made halo on xbox so popular)

Taking away LAN does remove functionality. LAN is the ultimate multi-player gaming experience.

Don't forget the courageous efforts by The Man Show to end women's sufferage. You can still sign the petition.

Read the following threads and petition about their stance on upgrading early SSD customers to TRIM:
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19310219.aspx
(one of the most active threads on their forums - and totally ignored by DELL)

http://www.petitiononline.com/dellssd/
(170 signers to date - that's a lot of unhappy users)

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19332633.aspx
(a truly jaw dropping example of DELL's arrogance and ignorance where they try and justify not providing TRIM support to SSD users)

It's hard to fathom that a supposed IT company can blindly ignore the importance of a major feature like SSD Trim to people who ordered early. By definition, SSD buyers are the top end of their customers, so it's not smart to ignore their needs.
I know of several companies (ours included) who took DELL off the supplier list because of this. If you check the petition you'll see Boeing on there too. I doubt any company can afford to lose them as a customer. I'll personally never buy or recommend DELL again after this either. -- Rob

And there are 365472 others who feel the same way.

http://www.petitiononline.com/towelday/

There's an online petition about that issue:
http://www.petitiononline.com/freeblms/petition.html

The incredible number of typos make that petition nearly unreadable. I hope they fix the text before sending it to Motorola.

Filing a petition could possibly give more relevance to the case for malamanteau to exist in wikipedia...

>Or, ya'know, you could just get Netflix TODAY

Yeah, 'cause Netflix works oh so well under my Linux machines.

http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/petition.html

Hopefully they will release a Linux version at some point. In the meantime, please take a minute and fill out this petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/petition.html (right now it is at 4429, we can do much better)

However, I must say that I do not like having words put in my mouth. You made a statement about what could reduce the piracy rate. I pointed to an article that explored those very things, ran figures for them, and noted that those things had no effect on the piracy rate at all. I was speaking entirely of the ratio of pirated copies to legitimate copies, and you kept trying poke holes in the argument that a download is equal to a lost sale. I never made that claim, the article never made that claim, and frankly the claim was irrelevant to the ratio. That makes it a straw man.

And I pointed out that we really have no way to know at all whether or not those "things" really had an effect on the piracy rate, regardless of what graphs your article has. And that, as a result, your claim of those "things" being an "utter failure" at affecting piracy is such an extreme statement that it's only valid if we were otherwise assuming every pirated download as a lost sale. Not a straw man at all, nor was it putting words in your mouth.

I will point out, though, that if the sales figures for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are representative of a successful game - over 6 million copies sold for console vs. approximately 350,000 sold for PC - then the reason that the big game makers are going for the console market has a lot more to do with the size of the market than it does with the financial cost of DRM. Console games are less complex to develop (the PC game platform is really something like a hundred similar platforms, all with their own quirks, whereas a game that works on one X-Box 360 will work on all X-Box 360s), have fewer piracy issues, and a far larger market.

Well first, you got your facts wrong. http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=5826 I dunno, maybe you have a bad source but according to my math, 12% of 7 million comes to 840,000, not 350,000. I also find it quite amusing that you would choose MW2 as your example of poor sales on the PC. You are aware that several hundred thousand gamers boycotted the game, precisely because it didn't offer the value that it should have? http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?dedis4mw The main reason though that some developers are finding it hard to get PC game sales to match console sales is because PC gamers are too busy playing games on their PCs that simply can be done properly on console. Namely, MMOs. Or to be specific, WoW. And yet, despite all the boycotts, despite all the piracy, despite the millions of gamers who previously would have been their target audience that are now plaing MMOs, they still managed to sell enough copies of MW2 for PC to make it the most successful PC version of Call of Duty ever. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/modernwarfare2/news.html?sid=6241052 Yep, I guess they should just pack in their PC gaming devision because it's clearly not profitable enough.

Or, put bluntly, why would any developer put the effort into selling around half a million copies for PC if they're REALLY lucky when they can put less effort into selling a few million for consoles first?

Maybe because the game they want to create just won't work well on consoles? Or maybe because there's already so many games for consoles available, and with the big publishing houses focusing more on consoles it's a lot easier to make a profit on PCs? How about because the installed base for PCs dwarfs that of all modern consoles put together? Not all games have to be cutting-edge 3D you know. The PC game market includes far more than the retail boxed products, and way more than consoles could ever hope to offer.

And that is my last word in this discussion. I will not reply further.

Good for you.

I say F the iphone app! I wanna be able to use my linux box to watch netflix. I had to setup a dual boot machine for the sole purpose of netflix. PLEASE netflix users join in the fight to get netflix to support linux. http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/

I wish they would focus on *ALL* the desktops FIRST, then worry about phones. What about a Linux compatible Netflix player? I know quite a few people who have waited a very long time and are irritated that absolutely nothing has been done.

Meanwhile, sign this petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/

Sure, it might not amount to anything, but you have no right to complain if you haven't at least tried (and this only takes 60 seconds or something).

Currently, the iTunes Music Store is only accessible from Windows/MacOS-based Systems. As Apple seems to be open-source-friendly, we would really like to see a native Linux port of the iTunes application. I really think there are people who use Linux and who would like to buy songs or listen to DAAP-streams via iTunes, but right now there are no (or only insufficient) solutions for that. So, please port iTunes to Linux! Sincerely,

The Undersigned

...

I still disagree; Blizzard has repeatedly made statements which effectively convey their feeling that the only people who want LAN play are pirates.

Neither I nor any of my friends (the aforementioned group of LAN players) have pirated Starcraft; many of us, including myself, have purchased multiple copies of Starcraft.

For Blizzard to claim that the only people who want LAN play are pirates betrays a complete lack of market research on the subject, and their disdain for the very group of gamers which made their first game so popular.

Perhaps I'm wrong - perhaps LAN play really wasn't very important to Starcraft 1's success (though I think you'll find that the majority of Starcraft fans will agree that LAN was integral to SC1's success). But for them to call me a pirate for wanting LAN play - a feature that, for me, has logged by far the most hours of use in the first Starcraft - is insulting at best! Why should I buy their product when they insult potential customers like that?

There is another possibility here that you may not be considering. It is easy to release a blanket statement, especially for a press release. However, it would not serve their interests to say, "While a lot of people used LAN play to get around copy protection, especially in the latter part of the games life, there is a segment of the market that used it for perfectly reasonable LAN parties." I figured that this sort of detail would be inherent. I don't think Blizzard wanted to call you or your friends pirates. It just would not serve their interests to release a detailed analysis on gaming trends.

...

"Few"? If only one tenth of these people decide not to buy the game based on the lack of LAN play, that's at least half a million in revenue (assuming Blizzard earns $25 for every $50 sale, the number goes much higher if they get more, like with digital sales) - and that's certainly not the only list of angry Starcraft fans out there. Let's say it takes two programmers one year to implement - an estimate I think is extremely conservative, given that very little of the work would be outside of the game creation/game joining mechanics that happen before the game ever starts. If we assume salaries of $100k/yr per programmer, Blizzard's net gain is at least $300k.

The cost to implement is fixed. The only variable is the number of people who pass on the game because it doesn't support their favorite (perhaps only desired) game mode. Given the number of people who really want LAN play, it really makes sense to implement LAN play even on the chance that it'll earn them $300k.

This really gets pretty deep into personal and engineering analysis. How many of those signatures are real individuals. Of those how many are willing to pass up the game because of lack of LAN play. Would any reconsider once enough of their friends start playing? How many have concerns rooted in the (rather common) belief that you will need to maintain a connection to battle.net throughout the entire game? How many people would use LAN play for piracy? Is this number bigger than the number that would skip over the game because it is lacking LAN play? On the engineering side, how many attack vectors would be introduced into a game with the addition of a LAN play component, especially if it was hacked in by a low level engineer. Is their core engine infrastructure compatible with the type of code you would need for LAN play, or is it tied into battle.net (Not an unreasonable assumption given how much they've been hyping it)? Would implementing this push the release date of the program? Would there be significantly more QA to verify this feature? And those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure a Blizzard employee could come up with a list ten times as long.

But let's say you're righ

Of course they would spend at least a bit of time looking into this matter, especially since it keeps cropping up on popular tech sites such as this one.

I still disagree; Blizzard has repeatedly made statements which effectively convey their feeling that the only people who want LAN play are pirates.

Neither I nor any of my friends (the aforementioned group of LAN players) have pirated Starcraft; many of us, including myself, have purchased multiple copies of Starcraft.

For Blizzard to claim that the only people who want LAN play are pirates betrays a complete lack of market research on the subject, and their disdain for the very group of gamers which made their first game so popular.

Perhaps I'm wrong - perhaps LAN play really wasn't very important to Starcraft 1's success (though I think you'll find that the majority of Starcraft fans will agree that LAN was integral to SC1's success). But for them to call me a pirate for wanting LAN play - a feature that, for me, has logged by far the most hours of use in the first Starcraft - is insulting at best! Why should I buy their product when they insult potential customers like that?

Of the few that really consider LAN play an issue many will get the game anyway, because their friends will have it

"Few"? If only one tenth of these people decide not to buy the game based on the lack of LAN play, that's at least half a million in revenue (assuming Blizzard earns $25 for every $50 sale, the number goes much higher if they get more, like with digital sales) - and that's certainly not the only list of angry Starcraft fans out there. Let's say it takes two programmers one year to implement - an estimate I think is extremely conservative, given that very little of the work would be outside of the game creation/game joining mechanics that happen before the game ever starts. If we assume salaries of $100k/yr per programmer, Blizzard's net gain is at least $300k.

The cost to implement is fixed. The only variable is the number of people who pass on the game because it doesn't support their favorite (perhaps only desired) game mode. Given the number of people who really want LAN play, it really makes sense to implement LAN play even on the chance that it'll earn them $300k.

But let's say you're right - let's say all the people complaining are just going to go buy it anyway. Doesn't Blizzard claim to love its gamers? Doesn't Blizzard love fostering good will among its fans?

I would wager that Blizzard could hammer out solid LAN support for Starcraft II by throwing a five-man programming team at it for a month, maybe two. Are they really so desperate to pinch pennies that they can't spare the effort? If they actually cared about their fans, and about providing the best gaming experience, they would do it, even if it earned them no more money, because so many of their fans want it.

No, TikiTDO, the real reason they don't want to do it has nothing to do with the actual cost to implement it. It's because their corporate overlords have convinced them that only pirates want LAN play, and that pirates have to be attacked at any and all costs. This is a trend we're seeing in the gaming industry as a whole, not just in any particular company. See also, Invasive DRM.

You would have to try a lot harder than above to convince me the remainder would net Blizzard more income than opening up LAN play, and inviting people to play without paying for the game.

I've given a rough guess above. Obviously I don't have market research with which to "prove" anything. All I can really do is vote with my wallet, and that's what I'm going to do.

In any case, my boycott is only partially based on their refusal to include LAN play. My objections extend to include their attitude toward those of us who really want the feature. If they want to treat me like a pirate, well, they're going to get the same income they'd get if I were a pirate - which is sad, because I'm not.

To have a link here for the petition to Netflix requesting Linux support: http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/petition.html [petitiononline.com]

That's unlikely to sway them, but there is hope. Netflix can walk away from the Linux desktop/netbook market right now without any concern. They are very concerned, however, about the iPhone market. Since the iPhone is unlikely to support Silverlight or Flash anytime soon, that means Netflix is really interested in finding an alternative. The real stumbling block is their content providers are demanding DRM. So possible winning solutions for Linux include:

• H.264 without DRM because they manage to push back at content providers enough.
• H.264 with an open standard DRM (Dream or the like) that can be easily implemented on Linux desktop clients.
• H.264 with Apple's DRM and Apple opens up their DRM because of antitrust concerns or as part of their move to Web services.

To have a link here for the petition to Netflix requesting Linux support: http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/petition.html

There's a petition now to change the name to "Issue 9": http://www.petitiononline.com/gglgoi9/petition.html

and this is different from running rampant in grand theft auto killing innocent citizens .... how ... ?

I agree! How is this different!? I donno, maybe it's just me, but I want to kill innocent ppl sometimes!!! Humans are really lousy life forms IMHO. Besides will this not create awareness about how fucking stupid these religimon terries really are? BTW: Don't forget to sign the petition for dedicated servers >> http://www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/petition.html

I would like to know the last time one of those online petitions actually worked.

Hmm... it appears never.

On a more upbeat note, slacktivism is our word of the day!

Never worked... I swore i signed onto this petition and was able to buy a copy of Bioshock Collectors Edition: http://www.petitiononline.com/bioshock/petition.html http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_1644/Bioshock_Collectors_Edition

I mean this is the only reason I prefer playing PC FPSs. I love being able to go to the same server over and over again and knowing the regulars there. I am also part of a clan atm. There is something to said about dedicated servers and even though they cost a lot of money and activision running servers for us makes people have to spend more money but all in all the reason people are willing to fork over so much for a server is because it adds a new dimension of community.

It's hard to play matchmaking all day because there is no sense of community and its just one random game after another. There is nothing like going back to a dedicated server that you always go to and playing with a bunch of people you played before.

Eventually I ended up running a CS server off of the servers I used to sell shoutcast hosting (business got kinda slow meh) and damn was it fun. I had the zombie mod installed and I was running my own little clan.

How can activision stick such a massive middle finger to their customers. This is ridiculous.

Whats even more ridiculous is how the OP put up this slashdot post and even mentioned the petition without linking it.

http://www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/petition-sign.html

cmon guys sign that petition and vote with your wallets, if we allow them to do this then other games will see this as the go ahead to do the same.

There you go

Here's the petition.

The community can take care of WINE, what we really want is a native gnu.linux client. The game is getting a MAC port so why is gnu.linux so difficult? I would buy it if it were released for gnu.linux otherwise I don't see myself forking out the license fee for an OS that can barely run itself. To top it off there has been a petition online for a while now with over 17000 signatures and still rising. http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?strcrft2. If they are still not doing it well then I would say we should accept that and added Blizzard to the linux games black list of some sort. + for Blizzard if they make the effort otherwise - as usual for them being lazy and they could join the rest of the lot down there.

As a company with a history of working hard to please its customers (the return of Raynor's original voice actor being a great example), are you paying attention to the petition to bring back LAN support at http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html? I ask because the petition brings forth a number of valid points, chief among them the fact that pirate battle.net servers will be created no matter what precautions you take. This is a point that has been proven time and time again by other companies seeking to use DRM. Take Spore for example: Spore arguably had the most powerful and restrictive DRM available and was intended to be "un-pirateable", yet it went down as the most largely pirated game in history and the pirated version was even available before the game had officially been released.

Now just in case Blizzard actually listens to it's customers, there is a petition started yesterday.

http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html

But only 25k people have signed so far.

FYI, the number is now over 22 Thousand.

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?LANSC2

I'm a big fan of Blizzard titles (but then, who isn't?). My friends and I still get together on at least a monthly basis to play Starcraft or War3 on a LAN. Given that, it should be no surprise that I think this is a very bad move by Blizzard. There's no way my friend's place is going to get an internet connection that is capable of handling all of us simultaneously, with latency comparable to a LAN.

If they keep on this path, Starcraft2 will be largely irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. I doubt it will have the staying power of Starcraft 1 simply because you can't play a pick-up game with friends. Yes, I'll probably still get it eventually for the single-player and occasion B.net game, but you can bet that the pirated version cracked to include a B.net clone for LAN is looking mighty good in comparison.

While we don't yet know what "super" features B.net 2.0 is going to have that are supposed to make up for LAN play, it has been confirmed that B.net play will be free for Starcraft 2 purchasers. However, rumors are starting to fly that B.net will not be free for Diablo3. The statement that SC2 play will be free was carefully worded, and Blizzard responses on D3 have evasive, but with not re-assuring implications.

Given that Diablo3 also has been confirmed to lack LAN play, the only way to play multiplayer is via B.net. If the rumors are true, then the only way to get D3 multiplayer is to pay for it. This is a total reverse from the old days of "spawned" copies of Blizzard games where you could have several players all using the same copy of the game.

I think the removal of LAN play signals the decline of Blizzard as a long-term game maker. Which is too bad as they have wonderful legacy support. SC2 and D3 will still sell like crazy I'm sure, but 10 years from now we'll probably still be playing Starcraft 1 at LAN parties. That or some enterprising pirate will save the day.

Anyway, there's a petition to include LAN play, not that it will do much good. Doesn't hurt to try.