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StarCraft II Delayed Until 2010

Posted by Soulskill on from the nobody-likes-a-rush dept.

Blizzard has just announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty won't be released this year. From their announcement: "Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service. ... As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we'll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series' legacy in the first half of 2010."

17 of 453 comments (clear)

  1. LAN play by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So not only are they removing the ability to play LAN games, it's actually delayed the release of the game.

    1. Re:LAN play by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Little known fact: In the late 1980s, Will Wright secretly wrote a program called SimGameDesignGuru which accurately simulated a visionary computer games designer. Will Wright created a character named Sid Meyer, named in honor of visionary Civilization designer Sid Meier, and the artificial intelligence "Sid Meyer" went on to create a number of popular and critically acclaimed game franchises, for all of which Will Wright has taken credit.

    2. Re:LAN play by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

      Little known fact: In the late 1980s, Will Wright secretly wrote a program called SimGameDesignGuru which accurately simulated a visionary computer games designer.

      It's too bad he forgot to turn off disasters while Spore was under development. Zing!

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  2. More minerals? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps if they had tasked more drones with mining minerals in the first place, this whole fiasco could have been avoided.

    1. Re:More minerals? by oenone.ablaze · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's no use, they require more vespene gas.

  3. In other words... by Kokuyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    External factors delay the release of the game, not the game's state itself. Furthermore, they will continue to develop the game until those external requirements are met.

    Dare we hope for the first truly polished, and moderately bug-free game release in a decade?

  4. Why not "polish and refine"... by chrylis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    by unremoving LAN play?

  5. This does not bode well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    South Korea just exploded with rage. This just might push them over the edge and they will finally take out North Korea.

  6. Re:The 1990s Called... by SomeJoel · · Score: 5, Funny

    This would be devastating news if it was still the 1990s...

    That's true, a release date of 2010 would be over 10 years away!

    --
    <Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
  7. GIVE US LAN BACK by jpedlow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    LAN PLAY is one of the things that helped make SC1 awesome, either 12 carriers coming down on an in-room opponent's settlement with "...what the...WHAT THE HELL...OH GOD" to early game 'ling rush with "..YOU CHEEP BASTARD THATS NOT FUNNY"....LAN play was amazing. Now if I'm going to have an 8 man LAN in my garage, it's all gotta go through battlenet, sucking up my bandwidth? Screw you blizzard. You've got another 2 quarters now, give us LAN play.

    1. Re:GIVE US LAN BACK by Temujin_12 · · Score: 5, Funny

      One of the best Starcraft LAN-play memories I have:

      Myself and a small group of friends started doing LAN parties back before they became popular. I can remember spending half the time setting up the network with Windows 95 PCs, making sure everyone had the right TCP stack on their computers, and double checking coaxial terminators for the token ring network we were setting up. All this just to network Doom.

      Fast forward a few years and we were playing Starcraft into the wee hours of the night/morning. One time we were doing a "big game hunters" round which went particularly long. I fell asleep and woke to see half of my base destroyed with enemy units just sitting there. I looked up and noticed that the player who attacked me had fallen asleep before finishing the attack. I retaliated but fell asleep before I was able to finish off all of his bases.

      Put LAN-play back in Blizzard.

      --
      Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
    2. Re:GIVE US LAN BACK by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are a lot of people who seem to think that posting on Slashdot, and modding the posts, is the way to get Blizzard to make changes. The venue you're looking for is here:

      http://forums.battle.net/board.html?forumId=12009&sid=3000

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    3. Re:GIVE US LAN BACK by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Last time in this discussion -

      Here's how it works for pretty much every console and PC game out there:

      Each client sends up their external and internal IP address. the internal IP can be used for routing if the external IP matches. i.e. if you and your buddy hook up halo and play each other behind the same NAT, you do your matchmaking on XBL but your game packets never leave the network. You can sniff packets on your home network yourself to verify this. So unless Starcraft has suddenly become a client server game then your bandwidth is unaffected.

  8. Re:Worth the wait. by xouumalperxe · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm afraid you'll need to complete "+3 Nightmare yes" first

  9. LAN by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everyone complaining about LAN play seems to be slightly misunderstanding the situation. Yes, by what they've said you will need a connection to play the official way but once you're in game you are only using the LAN connection. They essentially are forcing you to use battlenet as a matchmaking service, even for local games. If everyone is playing from the same room then the connection doesn't go over the internet at all.

    And I'm sure some inventive hacker will create a battlenet emulator that will provide true LAN play without an internet connection.

    --
    If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
  10. Re:Not really by Cowmonaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, its not a valid point. LAN Parties were not and are not just so people without good 'Net connections can play an unlaggy game. The entire point to a LAN party is the *social* experience it entails. Talking to people over Ventrilo is one thing. Getting drunk while Evil Dead is playing on a projector and you and your friends do something ridiculous in-game makes it all more entertaining.

    Shit, I don't even remember most of what happened in the GAMES during a LAN party. I remember more interesting stuff, such as a pair of friends arguing over whether or not pants are facist or hooking up with the girl all of your friends wanted to date but always got shut down because of that ridiculous friend zone that you mysteriously were immune to. Or the commentary we decided to add MST3K style to some B movies while we wind down for the night.

    I don't know, maybe I'm weird and had parties that happened to have video games in them rather than "LAN parties" but to my friends and I, they were LAN parties and they were awesome and if it wasn't StarCraft or Command & Conquerer it was a cheap FPS everyone had. Blizzard flat out has made a *stupid* call that serves *no* purpose. It costs them *nothing* to implement LAN play and in fact this very well could *increase* the chances their game gets pirated, because the pirated game will eventually have LAN play. Blizzard issued a challenge and the crackers of the world are going to take it up.

  11. Re:Worth the wait. by pHus10n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You're putting this into your little world without considering what it means for others. How about this for an example: I'm in the military, and when I deploy I ----cannot connect to Battle.net ---. It's simply not possible for me to do without running running into legal or security issues out in the field. Instead of playing a 4/6/8 player LAN game when winding down for the night, I can't bring this game with me.

    So freaking out about no LAN play is a perfectly valid thing for me to do. SC1 and D2 are still hugely popular for downrange geeks.