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Ask Blizzard About Starcraft2, Diablo III, WoW, or Battle.net

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the have-you-fixed-the-controls-for-diablo-yet dept.

Well, Blizzcon 2009 is about to get underway (look for the big news from the keynote in a few hours) and given how fast it sold out I'm sure there are still many rabid fans interested in what Blizzard might have to say that don't want to shell out the $40 for Pay-Per-View access. So, to that end we have interviews scheduled tomorrow with the teams from Starcraft2, Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and Battle.net. If there is anything you wish to know about the progress or juicy details from any of these teams please leave it in the comments below. We'll try to parse through for the best questions and get you answers during our interview slots tomorrow. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply.

5 of 520 comments (clear)

  1. StarCraft II - LAN PLAY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why, why why why is there no LAN play?

    I understand the desire to have a method of preventing piracy. But, if I get a group of 10 buddies in a room, and we want to go nuts with this game, ALL of us using the Internet to access a server is just plain dumb.

    It's great if we want to setup a 'virtual LAN' party. But REAL face to face ones suffer as a result.

    Why not make it require AUTH to open LAN play, then everything else is local? Anything is better than forcing everyone to use battleNet.

    1. Re:StarCraft II - LAN PLAY by FlyingBishop · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, to get more to the point, what answer do they have for our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and who knows where else who would like to play a quiet LAN game when internet access is limited or nonexistent.

      Also, what kind of ports are required, given that a lot of college students are behind restrictive campus firewalls.

      For a final question on this LAN issue, will the game be playable at all if your battle.net account is banned? This is probably a fitting punishment for hacking and the like, but false positives are inevitable, and I don't really want to put down $50 for something if, on a whim, Blizzard can revoke my license.

  2. LAN by Arthur+B. · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's been talk that Starcraft II would not support LAN. The reason I am a fan of Starcraft and want to buy Starcraft II is I spent many many hours playing it in LAN cafes. People will be doing LAN with pirated version anyway, they'll just run their own battle.net server locally and the only thing you'll achieve is piss off other consummers with a crippled product. Why oh why?

    --
    \u262D = \u5350
    1. Re:LAN by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, Blizzard is retarded if they think they can stop it.

      Blizzard is also retarded if they think people want to always be connected to Battle.net . I don't give a shit how good BNet 2.0 is, I shouldn't need to be online or connect to your servers just to play the game I bought (3. Fucking. Times).

  3. Economy of Diablo by Chardish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In Diablo II, gold was a worthless commodity. Because the only way to get quality items was from either monster drops or gambling (which would often costs millions of gold to find something salable), the standard unit of economic trade became a unique ring.

    This was bad for the economy in general: unlike World of Warcraft's Auction House, it was impossible for players who weren't competitive traders to participate in the economy. In addition, the design of the game in general made trading difficult (having to start a game to initiate a trade, muling, etc.)

    What changes are you making to Diablo in order to make the economy of Diablo III more vibrant and accessible?