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StarCraft II Closed Beta Begins
Blizzard announced today that the multiplayer beta test for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is now underway. The client downloader is available through Battle.net for people who have received invites, and the system requirements have been posted as well. A list of known issues is up on the official forums. StarCraft II and the revamped Battle.net are planned for release "in the first half of 2010."
Blizzard obviously has no interest in catering to the small percentage of the population that wants to play multiplayer with no internet connection.
They've obviously also not done any market research on how big that percentage of the population might be, and I doubt you have either.
Out of me and the dozen friends that play Starcraft, exactly zero of us play on Battle.net if we don't have to. During high school, all of us regularly played without access to an internet connection - one still regularly gets a group together in a local church gymnasium to play Starcraft LAN games, and there's definitely no internet access there. I guess they'll stick with the original even after the sequel comes out, because they won't be able to play the sequel together.
The "small percentage" is a lot larger than you think it is. Starcraft II will not be nearly as popular if it prevents playing multiplayer without internet access.
*sigh* I never claimed my friends and I are representative of the universe as a whole.
I merely claimed that my friends and I are representative of more of the universe than Blizzard apparently believes -- and that is clearly true, since Blizzard thinks (according to their public statements) only pirates really want LAN play, yet I can point at a dozen people who are not pirates but really want LAN play... and if I can point at a dozen, then surely there more people of like mind beyond my little corner of the world.
"Always-on" internet is not always on. Furthermore, there will inevitably be maintenance downtime on battle.net. Suppose I want to play Starcraft 2 with my wife, but b.net is taken offline for maintenance, or my neighbor got a little crazy with his backhoe, or a crazed teenager blew up the ISP's local junction box. Suddenly, we can't play together, even though we're sitting in the same room!
Steam solves this by allowing you to run Steam in "offline mode". Even if you can't reach Steam's servers, you can still pull up Steam and play your games.
But Starcraft 2's multiplayer won't be like that. If you can't authenticate, you can't play, even if the person you want to play with is sitting in the same room as you.
At any rate, those are just the problems that I see with the situation. You're right as far as your comments go; Blizzard doesn't care that "always on" doesn't really mean "always on". It doesn't hurt their bottom line if gamers have to wait until tomorrow to play with their roommate because their ISP went kaput.
What this really means is that Blizzard no longer cares about creating the best gaming experience like they used to; they care about earning money. While I understand that from a business perspective, it's disappointing from a fan-of-Blizzard perspective, because they used to care, and now they don't.
Actually I'll be missing it because they've opted to exclude LAN play, which is a feature I deem essential for RTS games (since that's the primary use to which I put my RTS games). That's hardly a "false anti-Blizzard rant"; it's neither false nor a rant, and it's technically not even anti-Blizzard.
Sure, Blizzard has indicated that they'll price the second and third installments for what they're worth. But what Blizzard thinks they're worth and what *I* think they're worth may not be the same thing, so I'm going to vote with my wallet.
It still boggles me how many people think I'm stupid for voting with my wallet.
It was an understandable misconception about LAN play that caused you to want to boycott it, and now that blizzard basically crushed every one of your arguments -- you should go buy the game.
And which arguments were those? My complaint that I would need to have an internet connection to play with a bunch of people in the same room as me?
Oh wait, no, that's still an issue.
My complaint that I they're calling anyone who wants LAN play a pirate?
Oh wait, no, that's still an issue.
My complaint that I feel like they're unnecessarily money-grubbing with their split into three games?
Oh wait, no, that's still an issue.
Any anger about lack of isolated from the internet play is rooted in fallacy and misconception
Fallacy and misconception, eh? I guess I'll tell my cousin, who regularly gathers a large group of people at an internet-less local church gymnasium to play Starcraft on an ad-hoc LAN, that you say they'll be able to play Starcraft 2 perfectly fine at their gatherings - clearly that's what you're saying, because according to you, any opinions to the contrary are based on fallacy and misconception.
So, according to you, it's fallacy and misconception to think you might have a hard time authenticating on Battle.net when you don't have an internet connection.
Get back to me when you figure out how a large group of people can authenticate on Battle.net without an internet connection, and I'll buy the game.