Yeah, it seems everyone is rushing in to buy one but once the hype dies down, the sales would also decline. But I could be wrong.

If this game is as good as its predecessor, then it will hold on on its own. Otherwise, it’s really just a case of an overhyped propaganda.

By the way, most starcraft players who play the game up to this day play over bnet. so it’s not surprising that not having lan isn’t really that bad of an idea. It’s just that people who don’t want to buy the stuff, or people who don’t have the dough to cough, don’t get to play at all.

But who knows, hackers and crackers will eventually catch up.

1. LAN parties at locations whee internet connections are ANY of slow, expensive, or require authentication. Case closed.

2. Laptops. Mobile. E.g. on a train, with internet connection dropping frequently. If LAN is disabled, it is impossible to play on the move.

3. As a matter of principle: why do I need an internet connection if I don’t want to play over the internet?

And a further point:

- Removing LAN because of authenticaion is bullshit, because it is possible to do a once-off online authentication to enable LAN from then on. Easy peasy. Blizzard are just being f*cktards.

Dustin Browder’s statement in this post is staggeringly condescending, characterising us as saying: “Please, I would like to break your game now because I want to play offline for some reason.”

WHY THE F*CK SHOULDN’T I PLAY OFFLINE? What gives Blizzard the right to break their own game for anyone who doesn’t want to play online all the time?

This is why no lan = no buy.

I wonder what other fun and silly mini challenges we’ll encounter that sort of ween us into multiplayer techniques. Does anyone remember that secret tower defense level in the wc3 tft campaign? The sillier, the better. Not that the lava thing was silly per se.