If those people are too thick to get on a LAN game which takes just one step, what makes you think it will be easier for them to go through Battle.net, which takes four or more steps? (It gets worse if they can't remember their password; I don't think you can have the same CD key attached to multiple Battle.net accounts.)
I have no problem with requiring authentication via the internet before allowing play. I have a problem with forcing people to use Battle.net to set up the game. That, and I'm not convinced these pseudo-LAN games will even be possible - it seems that even now, people behind the same router can't both play games on Battle.net at the same time.
My point wasn't that everyone could play multiplayer for free. My point was that someone who owned the game could spawn multiplayer installs so that all his friends could play for free.
The person who had the CD would have to host, of course, but the idea is that one or more of the free players would go out and buy the game themselves.
I agree with your assessment of why they're making this decision.
As my sibling post points out, I am not unique; virtually every StarCraft tournament I've ever heard of uses LAN games for the tournament games. It would be stupid to do that all over Battle.net when there's no need to.
Latency itself will ruin LAN parties, to say nothing of battle.net downtime. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the whole point of LAN parties.
Blizzard really should have just updated the graphics and released a SC1.5 for $20. Everyone would have bought that the day it hit the shelf.
With all the patches Blizzard has put out for Starcraft 1, I've never understood why they never added in support for resolutions higher than 640x480. They added 800x600 support to the Diablo II expansion, but that's as far as they went. (I didn't ever play Warcraft 3, so I don't know if they supported higher resolutions there.)
The trouble is that, as others have pointed out, the code would have to use the user's external IP address to connect to other players. That instantly breaks if all eight players are behind the same IP address.
To get LAN parties to work the way you're describing, you'd have to work some pretty funky black magic...
If it *does* use the external IP, then all eight players are going to be bouncing out to (at least) the ISP's local switch before connecting back to the router - but how does the router know which connections to point where? All eight computers are just going to try to connect to the same ports, and only one will get through.
They'd have to make it ridiculously smart to handle that case magically.
No - now instead of everyone just clicking "Local Area Network game" and joining the one game that shows up, people have to:
1) log in to battle.net 1A) remember the password, or 1B) create a new account 2) Set up a private game 3) On everyone's computer, find the game in the list (do you have to join the right channel first? I forget, it's been a while. If so, that's another step.) 4) Get everyone joined, after communicating and properly entering the password
Why, exactly, did you think things would be easier using Battle.net?
Beats implementing LAN code which almost no one is going to use.
Almost... no one...? What are you smoking?
Of all the times I've played Starcraft or Diablo in the last several years, the only reason I've connected to Battle.net is to get the patches easily. I do all my multiplayer via LAN play. I'm hardly unique.
We'll see if you're still saying that when 8 people are trying to play over a 256k DSL connection because they live in the middle of nowhere and they would rather just play a LAN game...... or worse, dialup. Yes, places like that still exist.
Actually we can just use the original StarCraft itself as an example, or Diablo I and II. We used to be able to spawn a multiplayer-only install of the game for situations like this. It wasn't just easy to do - it was officially sanctioned!
What happened to you, Blizzard? You used to be cool.
This might be enough to get me to not buy the game - despite the fact that I primarily play single-player games.
Unfortunately, Battle.net wasn't forward-thinking enough to use multiple ports! As only a single port is used for communication between the server and the client, only one client may communicate with the server through the firewall or router.
Um... No. The router takes care of that for you, unless your router is badly misconfigured...
Say I have client A that connects to battle.net on port X. The router picks one of its own outgoing ports for the connection, and any data returned on that port goes back to client A on the standard port.
Now I connect client B to battle.net on port X. The router picks a different outgoing port for the new connection, and any data returned on that new port goes back to client B on B's standard port.
Neither client has to care that it's behind a router. (And in case you're about to say "you haven't said you've done it", well, I have done it with Battle.net, and it works just fine.)
You know, they say they delete accounts after 90 days of inactivity, but I regularly go six months between logins and my account is still there. Yes, my Diablo II characters are gone, but the account itself hasn't been deleted.
It must be a minority of universities that block Battle.net and/or WoW, because I don't know anyone at a university that blocks them. (Yes, anecdotal, YMMV, etc, but it might be interesting to have a poll on this...)
But you provided the key to that problem yourself. I'll quote you so it's clear:
so that user can always install signed packages.
(Emphasis added.) Presumably your average porn site won't be trying to get people to install a signed package, and presumably your repository admins aren't going to be signing packages containing viruses.
You're essentially complaining that "being root lets you do stupid things". This is a given, and this is why we don't run as root all the time. I can't think of any distributions that don't make you log in as root (or use sudo) by default in order to install things via apt/yum/whatever.
Anyone who uses it that way is wrong. (For the lazy, every single definition of the verb "to borrow" involves receiving, not giving.)
So your parent post should have said "Borrow should only be used to refer to the act of receiving something", but his (her?) statement is still essentially correct, if you go by the actual definition of the word rather than colloquial usage from one particular area.
If I start using a word's opposite as if it were the word, and six hundred other people near me start doing it too, that makes it colloquial (in our area), but that doesn't make it right.
Seriously, what do you do where people are looking over your shoulder while you are typing your password?
Anyone in software development could easily run into this situation fairly often. Consider the following common scenario:
Steve: "Hey, Jim, come take a look at this bug." Jim comes and stands over Steve's shoulder. $ sudo./foobar x y z Enter password: Jim has now stood over Steve's shoulder while Steve entered his password.
You might argue that Steve should have typed the password first, then pressed enter when Jim came over. That's not really a valid solution if working things out with Jim involves running the command several times over several minutes (i.e. longer than a sudo ticket is valid).
Why not use a Dvorak layout but leave the labels in QWERTY? That'll confuse 'em. (Unless they capture a large quantity of natural language keystrokes and can extrapolate what layout you're using based on analysis of those keystrokes... but that's a bit extravagant.)
(Why does the comment box enable Post Anonymously at random?)
That's to reduce the chances you have a typo. Some even explain that.
If a user fills out the form, and typos the single e-mail address entry, they'll never get their account activation e-mail. That might not be so bad for your average Pokemon forum, but when it's your newegg account they're concerned you'll decide to go elsewhere for your purchases when you never get the activation e-mail.
Slashdot Mirror
If those people are too thick to get on a LAN game which takes just one step, what makes you think it will be easier for them to go through Battle.net, which takes four or more steps? (It gets worse if they can't remember their password; I don't think you can have the same CD key attached to multiple Battle.net accounts.)
I have no problem with requiring authentication via the internet before allowing play. I have a problem with forcing people to use Battle.net to set up the game. That, and I'm not convinced these pseudo-LAN games will even be possible - it seems that even now, people behind the same router can't both play games on Battle.net at the same time.
My point wasn't that everyone could play multiplayer for free. My point was that someone who owned the game could spawn multiplayer installs so that all his friends could play for free.
The person who had the CD would have to host, of course, but the idea is that one or more of the free players would go out and buy the game themselves.
I agree with your assessment of why they're making this decision.
As my sibling post points out, I am not unique; virtually every StarCraft tournament I've ever heard of uses LAN games for the tournament games. It would be stupid to do that all over Battle.net when there's no need to.
Hmm. I might have my memory confused... perhaps we simply connected to Battle.net, but didn't start a game.
I'll have to see if any of my friends remember this.
Latency itself will ruin LAN parties, to say nothing of battle.net downtime. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the whole point of LAN parties.
Blizzard really should have just updated the graphics and released a SC1.5 for $20. Everyone would have bought that the day it hit the shelf.
With all the patches Blizzard has put out for Starcraft 1, I've never understood why they never added in support for resolutions higher than 640x480. They added 800x600 support to the Diablo II expansion, but that's as far as they went. (I didn't ever play Warcraft 3, so I don't know if they supported higher resolutions there.)
If memory serves, the spawn installs were multiplayer-only. Back then, Blizzard wanted people to play multiplayer for free.
The trouble is that, as others have pointed out, the code would have to use the user's external IP address to connect to other players. That instantly breaks if all eight players are behind the same IP address.
To get LAN parties to work the way you're describing, you'd have to work some pretty funky black magic...
That's exactly the question I was going to ask.
If it *does* use the external IP, then all eight players are going to be bouncing out to (at least) the ISP's local switch before connecting back to the router - but how does the router know which connections to point where? All eight computers are just going to try to connect to the same ports, and only one will get through.
They'd have to make it ridiculously smart to handle that case magically.
No - now instead of everyone just clicking "Local Area Network game" and joining the one game that shows up, people have to:
1) log in to battle.net
1A) remember the password, or
1B) create a new account
2) Set up a private game
3) On everyone's computer, find the game in the list (do you have to join the right channel first? I forget, it's been a while. If so, that's another step.)
4) Get everyone joined, after communicating and properly entering the password
Why, exactly, did you think things would be easier using Battle.net?
Not to mention that it doesn't follow Blizzard's historic stance.
Remember multiplayer spawn installs? You didn't need to own eight copies to play the game with eight friends, you only needed one (or was it two?).
That wasn't just a workaround - it was an officially sanctioned and supported option.
Beats implementing LAN code which almost no one is going to use.
Almost... no one...? What are you smoking?
Of all the times I've played Starcraft or Diablo in the last several years, the only reason I've connected to Battle.net is to get the patches easily. I do all my multiplayer via LAN play. I'm hardly unique.
We'll see if you're still saying that when 8 people are trying to play over a 256k DSL connection because they live in the middle of nowhere and they would rather just play a LAN game... ... or worse, dialup. Yes, places like that still exist.
Actually we can just use the original StarCraft itself as an example, or Diablo I and II. We used to be able to spawn a multiplayer-only install of the game for situations like this. It wasn't just easy to do - it was officially sanctioned!
What happened to you, Blizzard? You used to be cool.
This might be enough to get me to not buy the game - despite the fact that I primarily play single-player games.
Unfortunately, Battle.net wasn't forward-thinking enough to use multiple ports! As only a single port is used for communication between the server and the client, only one client may communicate with the server through the firewall or router.
Um... No. The router takes care of that for you, unless your router is badly misconfigured...
Say I have client A that connects to battle.net on port X. The router picks one of its own outgoing ports for the connection, and any data returned on that port goes back to client A on the standard port.
Now I connect client B to battle.net on port X. The router picks a different outgoing port for the new connection, and any data returned on that new port goes back to client B on B's standard port.
Neither client has to care that it's behind a router. (And in case you're about to say "you haven't said you've done it", well, I have done it with Battle.net, and it works just fine.)
You know, they say they delete accounts after 90 days of inactivity, but I regularly go six months between logins and my account is still there. Yes, my Diablo II characters are gone, but the account itself hasn't been deleted.
Anyone know what's going on there?
It must be a minority of universities that block Battle.net and/or WoW, because I don't know anyone at a university that blocks them. (Yes, anecdotal, YMMV, etc, but it might be interesting to have a poll on this...)
But you provided the key to that problem yourself. I'll quote you so it's clear:
so that user can always install signed packages.
(Emphasis added.) Presumably your average porn site won't be trying to get people to install a signed package, and presumably your repository admins aren't going to be signing packages containing viruses.
You're essentially complaining that "being root lets you do stupid things". This is a given, and this is why we don't run as root all the time. I can't think of any distributions that don't make you log in as root (or use sudo) by default in order to install things via apt/yum/whatever.
Anyone who uses it that way is wrong. (For the lazy, every single definition of the verb "to borrow" involves receiving, not giving.)
So your parent post should have said "Borrow should only be used to refer to the act of receiving something", but his (her?) statement is still essentially correct, if you go by the actual definition of the word rather than colloquial usage from one particular area.
If I start using a word's opposite as if it were the word, and six hundred other people near me start doing it too, that makes it colloquial (in our area), but that doesn't make it right.
Yeah, about six seconds after I posted earlier I realized that gum had been banned at my school too. Ah well.
Seriously, what do you do where people are looking over your shoulder while you are typing your password?
Anyone in software development could easily run into this situation fairly often. Consider the following common scenario:
Steve: "Hey, Jim, come take a look at this bug." ./foobar x y z
Jim comes and stands over Steve's shoulder.
$ sudo
Enter password:
Jim has now stood over Steve's shoulder while Steve entered his password.
You might argue that Steve should have typed the password first, then pressed enter when Jim came over. That's not really a valid solution if working things out with Jim involves running the command several times over several minutes (i.e. longer than a sudo ticket is valid).
Why not use a Dvorak layout but leave the labels in QWERTY? That'll confuse 'em. (Unless they capture a large quantity of natural language keystrokes and can extrapolate what layout you're using based on analysis of those keystrokes... but that's a bit extravagant.)
(Why does the comment box enable Post Anonymously at random?)
That's to reduce the chances you have a typo. Some even explain that.
If a user fills out the form, and typos the single e-mail address entry, they'll never get their account activation e-mail. That might not be so bad for your average Pokemon forum, but when it's your newegg account they're concerned you'll decide to go elsewhere for your purchases when you never get the activation e-mail.
We should ban gum. You never know what stuff they're mixing in before they bring it on campus! ~