About Lan

[Asehujiko]

Theoretical example: Your significant other comes to your house for dinner. Do you refuse to cook anything for him/her because they didn't buy their own stove? And do you yell at your friends for sitting down without buying an additional chair?

I'm going to make a wild guess here and say that most of you will answer "No".

So why does Activision get a free pass when they expect you to do so with their product?

I buy a stove, I decide who I cook dinner for, not GE.
I buy a chair, I decide who gets to sit on it when I have guests, not IKEA.
I buy a game, I decide which of my friends I can play games with, not Activision. If they breach a bunch of consumer laws to prevent that, So be it, I'll exercise my right of being allowed to do whatever I want to my own property to make it happen anyway and get an offline crack.

FAQ:
EBIL PWIRATE!!!1!!
1st, get off your high horse, this is a widely discussed topic with widely varying opinions, yours is not better then the rest. 2nd, different countries, different laws, as said, I'm allowed to do whatever I want with any object I own, I can install it while sitting upside down, I can put a rickroll video in every file directory and I can add an offline.exe file to it. 3rd, downloading a crack will not magically intercept and stop the money I paid for my preorder.

But the TOS...
...Is not a legally binding document in the EU since I can't read it before purchasing the game and I think this also applies to the US.

But I do serve my GF cold food and not allow my friends to sit down.
Congratulations, you are only being a jerk instead of a hypocrite.

 

[Statharas]

And quite a few people hand the game out to all their friends and play on LAN.

*cough*

Sc2 won't use a DVD at all. You install, you login, you play. Simple as that. Just lend your friend your dvd to install the game. And then let him play on his own account.

 

[PurplePoot]

*cough*

Sc2 won't use a DVD at all. You install, you login, you play. Simple as that. Just lend your friend your dvd to install the game. And then let him play on his own account.

This post has no relevance to the post you quoted.

 

[Just_Spectating]

we need LAN for PC centers for people who don't own the game.

otherwise everyone would need their own account before they could play

 

[redmarine]

we need LAN for PC centers for people who don't own the game.

otherwise everyone would need their own account before they could play

Which you will have to do in order to play the game. It says so in the terms of service(Always does).

 

[Statharas]

This post has no relevance to the post you quoted.

Well, before the CD Key patch, Wc3 had to be cracked in order to play LAN. Now, without LAN, and no need for DVDs, i doubt you won't be willing to give your friend your dvd. Just for the installation.

 

[PurplePoot]

we need LAN for PC centers for people who don't own the game.

otherwise everyone would need their own account before they could play

Oh no, you can't steal it as easily now!

What a tragedy!

 

[Asehujiko]

Oh no, you can't steal it as easily now!

What a tragedy!

Read my previous post about how that makes absolutely no sense. When cooking dinner for multiple people, they aren't stealing your stove, yet when you play a game with your friends, they suddenly are?

 

[Statharas]

Oh no, you can't steal it as easily now!

What a tragedy!

This.

Seriously, BUY THE FREAKIN GAME. YOUR INTERNET CAFES WILL HAVE IT INSTALLED, YOU JUST NEED YOUR ACCOUNT TO PLAY.

 

[PurplePoot]

Seriously. Every single person I've seen saying we need LAN recently is saying that we need it so that they can play with their friends who don't own the game. I am getting the impression more and more that there is in fact no good justification for legal use of LAN.

 

[redmarine]

Seriously. Every single person I've seen saying we need LAN recently is saying that we need it so that they can play with their friends who don't own the game. I am getting the impression more and more that there is in fact no good justification for legal use of LAN.

LAN isn't integrated into StarCraft II thus it isn't a feature and no justification. It's most likely to prevent another Garena.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

No LAN = no GGC but bnet in sc2 doesnt have the delay bnet in war3 has or is different and i dont see it the way it was in tft i.e command happens 1s later. War3 needed Garena, much better than bnet but now they r doing it cause ggc allowed to play without buying the game, sure but it was more worthy for war3 than for sc2, sc2 is fine even w/o ggc.

Also war3 where micro was a lot more important not to say the name of the game, unlike sc2, this delay mattered, for sc2 wouldnt be so much of an issue. They r saying even sc1 had more micro into the game than sc2. Not that i dont micro in sc2, ive done Dropship micro vs Warp Prism micro one zotac match, it was fun.

 

[Asehujiko]

This.

Seriously, BUY THE FREAKIN GAME. YOUR INTERNET CAFES WILL HAVE IT INSTALLED, YOU JUST NEED YOUR ACCOUNT TO PLAY.

So will my brothers. We each have our own account already because we play 3v3 online. But sometimes we also want to play by ourselves and because of the retarded online requirement, we can't do that, without having to put up with the ping that comes with living far away from any decent network center.

Seriously. Every single person I've seen saying we need LAN recently is saying that we need it so that they can play with their friends who don't own the game. I am getting the impression more and more that there is in fact no good justification for legal use of LAN.

I'm going out on a limb here and assume you just suck at reading comprehension instead of being willfully ignoring everything that doesn't fit in your little circlejerk here and repost the same argument for the third time for your benefit:

When you cook dinner for a guest, is that person being a criminal for not buying another stove? No, that's stupid.
When you let people sit on the chairs in your house, are those people being criminals for not buying an additional chair each? No, that's equally retarded.
When you play a game with a group of friends/family members, are those people criminals for not buying additional copies? Yes, they're evil scum who have no right to enjoy the game.
When you pick up your kids from school, are they a bunch of juvenile delinquents because they didn't buy additional cars too? No, that makes zero sense altogether.

One of these is not like the others. And that's because it's been originally said by a guy who has also gone on record saying that he hopes the prices of games increase further, that developers shouldn't enjoy making games and that selling unfinished games at full price for future potential and not following up on it is a better business plan then just making games.

 

[Kilkakon]

@mrzwach
Correct. When companies hit a certain size, they can do anything they like as it won't hurt profits at all. Lots of bad ep and internet rage, but not much effect on the bottom line. E.g. Google, Microsoft, EA, etc. Blizzard couldn't care less that it cuts itself out of my circle of influence as it's only about 12 copies of the game that won't be bought.

Often I like to play games with my Dad, who lives with me. While he doesn't like games that are about speed as he's slower than me (so Starcraft 2 wouldn't be a good game for him anyhow) it's always fun to have a game or two. Players like him aren't interested with playing online, just playing the campaign, skrimishes (while I don't think are in Starcraft 2 either) and the occasional LAN.

My one of friends said the other day: "Oh I might get the game as it looks interesting. I'll probably play online for a few weeks, and then get bored with it... and then I'll just play it at LANs... oh wait..."

As for my concept of a LAN only game, it would only be able to play official maps, which would encourage people to get the real one for which would charge 5 dollars (low price means people would get it as it's cheap anyway). The truth is that all of the stuff that Blizzard's aiming to do with Battle.net would work here too -- aiming to have a community that's attractive to entice users.

Note that I am against piracy. I want to end up in the games industry so I'm against pirates as much as anybody. I just want to avoid punishing normal users of the game if possible with silly things like DRM and Steam.

 

[PurplePoot]

So you're against piracy but support having a bunch of people play illegally on LAN off of someone else's copy?

I'm confused.

 

[Kilkakon]

I like having LAN available due to its social side as it's something I can do with my friends instead of everybody staying at home chatting on MSN. Having to dig a 60m trench to sink a pipe with a LAN cable in it to get to the LAN room just so we can satisfy DRM/internet accounts seems not worth the effort, and that's fine. We have plenty of other games that we can play.

Ultimately it comes down to a generousity mentality vs. a fortress mentality. Examples of generousity would be games like C&C and Doom. C&C had their game on two CDs so you could play with a friend. Doom gave away a whole third of their game! A fortress mentality would be trying to have control over things, like EA does with DRM or games on Steam. Both have advantages and disadvantages (I prefer generousity myself).

 

[andreasaspenberg]

emperor battle for dune came on 4 cds. as for warcraft 3: it didnt require any cracking to play played on a lan.(it just required the cd to start the game, then the cd could be given to the next player to start the game.)

 

[Asehujiko]

So you're against piracy but support having a bunch of people play illegally on LAN off of someone else's copy?

I'm confused.

To alleviate that confusion, read one of my THREE posts here why I explain people's feeling on not being allowed to play together and why Activisions stance on it is bullshit.

 

[TKF]

Reason why blizzard didn't implement LAN in SC2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UFA1ieWA8s&feature=related

 

[Statharas]

Last Post- July. Your post. End of august. Necro thread ftw.

 

[M0RT]

I hame exactly the same problem, my friends won't buy the game just to play my maps with me. I don't see a logic behind this step, it won't make people who played LAN on pirated copies buy the game, it can only discourage people, who won't be able to play with their friends, from buying it (only reason could be that big brother blizzard wants to have total control over their players)

It causes another major problem: you can't properly test a map without LAN. How I am supposed to test whether something works, when I can't see what is happening for other players? Also I can't just change something 10 times and test it right away, I need to publish the map, log on battle.net, get some people to play the map and all just to test whether a dialog button works correctly for each player....
Not mentioning a ton of other stuff that works completely differently in "test map" mode and in real game (game variants, you can have only one player....)

In warcraft, you could just copy the game on your other home computer and play with yourself. It was technically illegal, but since there is no other way of testing a map, besides buying multiple copies of the game, what can you do?