Local area not-going to happen
Blizzard game-designer Rob Pardo put an end to some speculation this week when talking to website IncGamers. According to Parod, there will be no LAN mode for Starcraft II.
LAN gaming was a cornerstone to the popularity (and continued popularity) of the world-famous RTS game. However, it isn't the '90s anymore, and Blizzard feels that BattleNet 2.0 should be sufficient for all of their fans' multiplayer needs.
The original Starcraft had a "spawning" feature, which allowed many players to play a LAN game, with "spawned" installations of only one copy of the game, with one serial code. This helped launch the popularity of the game's competitive RTS matches. It'll be interesting to see if this will limit the game's exposure to North American audiences at all -- of course, in South Korea, Starcraft II is going to be a guaranteed blockbuster, but PC classic-style RTS games, like Starcraft and Command & Conquer and their ilk, have arguably been waning in popularity on these shores in recent years.
forums
Empire: Total War could technically be considered an RTS, but it's not really a standard RTS RTS. The battles are RTS, but the metagame is a different breed of strategy.
Demigod is based on DoTA, and is a RTS, but ya I would consider it different genre of RTS than the classic 'build a base , build units' etc that Starcraft is. It's now more of a specific sub-genre than a classic RTS.
Dawn of War II sold well but I don't think the multiplayer combat is going very strong. I think the general response to the changes made in the game have been more negative than positive. They made it more ARPG than RTS by removing base building and focusing on squad combat.
I'd say the only last classic style RTS that was really popular was Company of Heroes.
And what if you planned a big match with your buddies some place some day, and battlenet was down at the time? It'd be a bummer.
I can understand smaller game companies not supporting LAN play anymore, but LAN gaming was an integral part of SC, WC, and Diablo.
And a LAN party isn't a LAN party if it's played through a local area network
As for the LAN party...yes it is a LAN party. How many 5 person LAN parties take place in apartments everyday? Now all that traffic can be tracked and subject to the great power of ad placement!
http://classic.battle.net/advertising/
But yeah, seriously, they make $1 billion a year from WoW alone -- what the *bleep* do they need to monetize it for? Blizzard make "old EA" look like a charity.
In my opinion, Blizzard is just shooting themselves in the foot on this one. I can hardly see the benefit of routing all gaming traffic from locally connected and engaged players to and from a distant server--unless, as previously mentioned, they're monetizing Battle.net to its fullest extent. This was to be expected by the Activision merger. They're trying to compete with EA, which practically corals its users into draconian, centralized databases for patches, updates, and the like.
The Blizzard of today is not the same Blizzard of yesteryear. This is not the same Blizzard that produced the original StarCraft. While I'm hopeful that SC2 will be as fun, and repeatedly playable as the original, I remain worried that Blizzard has been turned into a cash-cow and the quality of their products will start suffering significantly (as this article seems to indicate).
By the by, in the source interview they talk about microtransactions and advertising as possibly necessary to sustain Battle.net.
But there are probably like thousands of Internet cafes / PC gaming centers, particularly in Asia, that offer Starcraft LAN games from illegitimate copies . So maybe they are just trying to shut this down by taking out the LAN.
Not saying it is the best method to do so; but I imagine Blizzard does have reasons to do this beyond merely making more cash.
This no LAN decision is just for ripping legitimate users, period. They want to suck it all, they need to buy bigger houses, more luxury cars, boats and jets. How sad.