Blizzard to nix lan play in Starcraft 2
<a href="http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii" target="_blank">http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii</a>
What do you all think of this? I think they shot themselves in the foot a little bit. Lans have always been the domain of FPS/RTS.
What do you all think of this? I think they shot themselves in the foot a little bit. Lans have always been the domain of FPS/RTS.
Comments
That's the only way I play these games now. I just want to play with friends so it's a lot easier to join a game on a lan than hunt for some obscure bnet lobby and try and coordinate "okay my game is called please come friend5. dammit that's taken, okay please come friend six. crap you couldn't get it remake.blahblahblah"
*shrug*
Completely understand your POV though. No LAN play is rather stupid, will only (as others have said on countless other sites discussing this) encourge more private b.net configs and/or hacks to workaround and support LAN play.
Oh well.. *sits back for ride*
I can see them going down the Xbox Live/Games for Windows Live route where you authenticate with a master server (Battle.net) then you make direct connections from a lobby.
gfg blizz
<a href="http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18031370482&sid=3000&pageNo=3#49" target="_blank">W. T. F.</a>
My urge to buy SC2 suddenly dropped to negligible levels.
the current pirating methods are probably a bit too well founded for them to ignore, they wouldn't do something like this if they didn't think it'd ultimately lead them to making more money. But maybe you'll get lan over bnet like you do with steam :/
I LOVE playing Starcraft on a LAN. Maybe it will be so easy to play a game with your friends through Battle.net that it will effectively be the same thing but I'm skeptical.
I LOVE playing Starcraft on a LAN. Maybe it will be so easy to play a game with your friends through Battle.net that it will effectively be the same thing but I'm skeptical.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Only if they've figured out how to let the same IP join B.Net multiple times.
I'd say the actual communication between players will be direct P2P, it won't go via the b.net server. The only internet traffic would be a few authentication packets.
I'm slightly disgruntled, but most LAN parties these days have an internet connection anyway.
<!--QuoteBegin-locallyunscene+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (locallyunscene)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->That's the only way I play these games now. I just want to play with friends so it's a lot easier to join a game on a lan than hunt for some obscure bnet lobby and try and coordinate "okay my game is called please come friend5. dammit that's taken, okay please come friend six. crap you couldn't get it remake.blahblahblah"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's not really a valid objection. Getting a game started on b.net is NOT difficult, whatsoever.
<!--QuoteBegin-Rob+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Rob)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Only if they've figured out how to let the same IP join B.Net multiple times.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, that was a big beef I had with SC1, not being able to have two people from one internet connection connect to b.net and play with a third person from another connection. Big pain in the caboose and unfixable without a firewall box moving traffic along on two different ports. Grr. I don't know if that got fixed with D2/War3, I'm assuming so.
--Scythe--
Its not getting a game started that's the problem. The problem is when you care who you want to play with. Every once in a while I want to play against random strangers, but most of the time I'm looking specifically to play with one or more of my friends. The LAN settings are great for this; if I can see their game I can join. Bnet leaves much to be desired in this realm.
Mind you, I've never had an issue connecting with friends on b.net hosted games.
If they're on your friends list, you see the game name they create... if you spend 2 seconds thinking about it rather than naming it "awesome team game" and finding it's already started a name of say ... "Daworm and Eddie" (assuming friends name was "eddie") the best thing about it, that room name is not likely to be taken... Make it Private and you have even higher chance of getting in.
I LOVE playing Starcraft on a LAN. Maybe it will be so easy to play a game with your friends through Battle.net that it will effectively be the same thing but I'm skeptical.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not so easy if you're in someone's basement having a LAN party with unreliable internet... or computer labs where you can't muck with the firewall (due to no admin privleges) so you can have a private server that others in the lab that can connect to...
My next question is: how many years will it take before Unknown Worlds fall in the same money trap?
Frankly I find it amazing how the evolution of most gaming companies work. They start out small, they have fresh ideas which result in great and revolutionary games and their customers love them for it. Then after a few sequels you start to notice that the games that are being released are more "mainstream" based, and maybe DRM starts to creep in as well somewhere along the way. Before you know it you hear about features which is all about protecting sales and reaching out to as many people as possible rather than focusing on making a game which is fun and doesn't have any annoying features, like in the good old days.
it is a bit concerning though, and it's not phrased in a reassuring way which makes it seem even more bothersome :P
Seems to me that Blizzard has changed after its release of World of Warcraft. Their approach wasn't to make a good product and sell it. They've changed their strategy to selling a service rather than a product. I am personally against any service-based software product lines for the simple fact that if it becomes acceptable to pay monthly for software, you'd start paying monthly for your windows operating system and for office 2012. If that angers you, good. I hope it does, because that still means such a day is still a ways in the future. I would rather not give those guys any support for a product in which you have to pay every month by principle. Moreover, even if World of warcraft weren't pay as you go, I can't shake the feeling that Blizzard is becoming the Microsoft of the gaming world, which is to say dominating and uncompromising.
Good thing we don't hang out at msn.com
WoW just wins using economies of scale. An MMO with less than a "tipping point" value of players isn't going to make it. Right at that tipping point, they'll break even. Beyond it, they'll make money. Sure, with more players, they'll have to spend more money to run it and the tipping point will increase, but I suspect it increases in exponentially smaller increments.
Don't forget that a fair chunk of those subscribers are from china, where they pay a much lower monthly rate.
--Scythe--
No .. Please ... DON'T .
*sigh*
That's the stupidest thing I see people do "Well, they make X amount a month even after Y expenses!" Really? You know this? So... mister Blizzard Finance person, how's about some free game time?
<ul><li>50,000 USD / 155 Mbps.</li><li>5 KBps required per player (I believe this to be a pretty big overestimate, a twitchy FPS with physics would probably need 5-10KBps)</li><li>13 million players</li><li>Blizzard provides enough bandwidth to keep 65% of that player base online and happy. More than that and lag starts to become a major issue (it's bad business to have enough bandwidth for everyone at all times because that will never realistically happen. Certainly they have come up with some number that is marginally above the average number of players online at peak times and is probably weighted in the direction they expect the player count to move)</li></ul>
So, we need enough bandwidth for 13,000,000 * 0.65 = 8,450,000 players.
At 5KBps per player, that's 42,250,000 KBps or ~41,259.767 MBps / 40.293 GBps (WoW!).
We need that in Mega bits per second, though, so multiply by 8: 330,078.125 Mbps.
Now to see how many sections of 155 Mbps line we need: 330,078.125 Mbps / 155 Mbps = ~ 2,129.536.
Multiply that by 50,000 USD to get how much it costs: 106,476,814.52 USD.
So, with 13,000,000 players, Blizzard grosses 195,000,000 USD / month. Let's say after taxes and so forth, they keep 68% of that: 132,600,000 USD.
Take a wild-*****-guess on other expenses (salaries drawn directly from WoW maintenance, data center expenses, data recovery, etc) to be something like 10 million a month: 122,600,000 USD.
So their profit <b>per month</b> would be 16,123,185.48 USD. That's quite a haul. Also assuming I haven't made any bad estimations or embarrassing arithmetic errors.
Assumptions are the mother of all..... and keep in mind China players (as stated - LARGE chunk of players) pay on a per use plan and that's considerably lower than average.
Negative. Assumptions always have to be made. Always.
edit:
Also, I don't have any clue what bandwidth costs in China (the American numbers above are based on a forum thread from 2001 o_O). I may well be that bandwidth costs less there, and hence the lesser fees. If that's the case, there's no point to be made in that regard.
*sigh*
That's the stupidest thing I see people do "Well, they make X amount a month even after Y expenses!" Really? You know this? So... mister Blizzard Finance person, how's about some free game time?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's funny how I never mentioned what their expenses are (because I don't know). Save your preconceived notions for when people actually say what you complain about. Regardless, it's an open secret (if even that) that WoW RAKES in the money. I don't know if it's the most profitable computer game in history, but I couldn't see what other candidate there is.