Piracy caused removal of LAN play in StarCraft 2, Petition begins

Blizz needs the money imo

 

Why did GR eat my comment? Or was it because someone deleted the post I replied to?

 

What did you post? 

If it was to the jflanden troll fest, it probably disappeared.

 

I posted some very compelling arguments(or so I thought at least) why blizzard should stop being dickheads and just let us play D3 and SC2 in LAN. Ah well, not like they're gonna change their minds after my GR post anyway...

Edit: Hah, it happened again when I tried to convince that flanden guy that blizzard was making a mistake(for the second time). I'm just gonna stop trying.

 

Flanden thinks he knows me and my playing habits.  Regardless, you are right, I dont need to play the game currently to realize what an anti-consumer move this is. 

I haven't played SC in a couple years but I played it on LAN many times in college and even when lanning during my CS days.  I pretty much stopped playing MP as I moved on to other games but I realize the importance of LAN play.

 

Slapnuts: "I don't even play SC multiplayer so personally I don't give two ****s."

 

I pretty much stopped playing MP as I moved on to other games but I realize the importance of LAN play.

Wow great, you just repeated what I just said.  Congrats.  Just because I haven't played SC MP in years doesn't mean I can't judge this move.

 

What you said implies you won't be playing SC2 multiplayer since you don't "give two ****s".

First you don't "give two ****s" but now you "realize the importance of LAN play.". You try way too hard for people to like you.

 

It doesn't take very much for me to hate you flanden

 

flanden makes that abundently easy

 

Flanden, you are this close to being banned for complete moron.

I don't play SC MP anymore and I wont be playing SC2 MP because I have little interest in RTS multiplayer anymore.  But that doesn't mean I can't see the significance of LAN having played it in the past and knowing how often it used for various tournaments. 

You are definitely candidate #1 for the next "vote off the GR island", if you even make it that far...

 

Yes, it will affect offline LANs, but it will also prevent a ****LOAD of piracy. Pirating Warcraft 3/Starcraft was too easy and was done because of offline LANs. Blizzard won;t care about this petition, if you want to play, then play on Bnet. Most tournaments worth a **** will have internet access for the computers.

Are you are still mad about me raping you in the Valve vs Blizzard debate and pointing out ignorant misinformation you post like Call of Duty 4 having more subscribers than WoW?

 

You can pretend all you want that the fight against piracy is a legitimate excuse to take out an extremely important aspect of a game, its their job to make money and its ours to fight for the best game we can get and without LAN it is by far not the best game we can get.

Valve will forever be better then Blizzard and no one gives 'two ****s' about your terrible reasons for being a Blizzard Fanboy.

 

i hate jflanden as much as the next guy but i'm pretty sure banning him because you don't like him and you don't agree with what he says is alot worse than just being a complete tool

 

Its a pretty common internet practice to not flame site admins/moderators. Banning is a typical response to doing so. Not sure how that makes him worse than someone who is being a tool.

 

why should flaming the site admins be worse than flaming any other user?

 

Maybe they're changing stuff around, but I've flamed nearly every admin here and not been banned.  Most of the admins here have a lot of patience.

You have to do something pretty over the top to get banned in my experience, especially by Slapnuts.

 

that's because you're super awesome and jflandon is a douche

 

It is borderline at this point.  But jumping on every single post he sees fit and arguing with everyone single poster is getting a bit old, especially to the point where he just keeps posting the same thing over and over. 

 

Can we ban Smokeee too then?

 

Ace.

 

For the same reason that picking a fight with the host of a house you are visiting is worse than picking a fight with someone you run into on the street. The host, and in this case the admin, are providing you with a service.

Its honestly a very, very simple concept that I think almost everyone on the internet understands.

That said, as Vir mentioned you have to be a real douche about it to get threatened with a ban. Criticism is one thing but repeated flaming... well, lets just say thats another thing a site admin and a host have in common. They both have every right to kick your ass off the property.

 

that reason is based on the fact that the host can throw you out it doesn't explain why he should. in addition that analogy is flawed becasue when you allow someone into your house you are demonstrating your trust in them whereas anyone can register for a website without anyone's permission

 

Kyle I think you are missing the point regarding moderation on forums or blogs. The point being made is that everybody should be treated equally and that forums admins or mods shouldn't be rimmed or ass-licked just because they are providing the means or platform on which to debate on. Also there are guidelines; maybe not written but implicit, I think at least in that there should be transparency and equality when moderating.

TLDR, Your analogy is flawed

and in short I agree with:
i hate jflanden as much as the next guy but i'm pretty sure banning him
because you don't like him and you don't agree with what he says is
alot worse than just being a complete tool

 

Missing the point? I think this is actually exactly the point of moderation. Removing users who contribute nothing to a community except for strife and ad hominem attacks. What I don't understand is how we went from being a complete toolbag to at risk of "ass-licking the mods". There is a vast middle ground you skipped over for the sake of arguing your point.

As for the analogy. my intent wasn't to make it perfect. I made the assumption that the concept is a fairly well understood one. Apparently, I shouldn't have.

Instead, consider a business. Anyone can walk in, but picking a fight with a manager is probably going to get you kicked right back out. Arguing with another customer on the other hand, unless things get violent, is far less likely to get you removed. This is because in a real life business and an internet blog/forum there is a sense of propriety surrounding the individual or group of people running the show. Whether you like these people or not, agree with them or not, its usually a good idea to defer to them or, at the least, ignore them.

The real irony of this is that if we exercised the ability to ban users more often then there would probably be no complaints for the removal of such an obvious troll as jflanden. The fact is, we rarely ban (around once a month 1 person gets banned) people and those bans are primarily reserved for people spamming or some other highly disruptive activity.

Also, if we banned people because we didn't like them Slap would have banned Gib 6-8 months ago. The only reason we'd ban someone you might assume we don't like is because they are being unnecessarily hostile and have a tendency to make personal and/or racist attacks.

 

blizzard doesn't want people on private servers

especially after that 2.4.3 wow server fiasco

 

and yet, they ***** it out for arena tournaments.

 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

Warcraft 3/Starcraft is easy as **** to pirate. Most people signing the petition are people that were planning on buying one copy then copy pasting that **** on all their friends' computers.

 

Every person (56) at the last LAN I attended had legit copies of every game we played.

 

56 people brought their own computer to a LAN and didn't just play on computers that had SC1 already installed? I doubt that.

 

It's pretty normal around here that people buy things they enjoy.

 

What?  You mean not everyone pirates every single game out there?  but, but...

 

Oh wait, I'm a PC gamer and I play MMOs. Therefore I'm a fat, lazy, virgin, jobless, living with my mother pirate who hasn't bought a game since 1997.

 

People bring their own computers to a LAN?  What is this craziness! 

Clearly getting out of the basement and going to actual LAN that isn't a LAN center is a new concept.

 

These aren't people visiting Piratebay here and torrenting Sims 3 and ****. Pirating Warcraft 3/Starcraft is hardly even seen as pirating through most people's eyes as its just the normal thing to do at LANs, one guy buys the game then all his buddies get to play at the LAN with him. Blizzard is saying "No, if you want your buddies to play Starcraft 2 with you, make them buy the game."

 

Okay, they may have bought the game before, but did they really all bring their OWN computer to a LAN? They most likely didn't and most likely the SC1 used at the LAN were mostly pirated.

 

It's the rules of the LAN, if you don't bring your own rig, you can't play. It prevents pirating and malicious behavior. 56 computers did show up, we did have to make some network cables tho.

 

Assuming all 56 of you didn't head into your basement to play, how come this place, that has 56 people willing to bring their computers to, not able to provide internet to the computers? To this very day do a **** load of people still bring their computers there? It's probably much easier to provide internet to each computer than trying to find a workaround for offline LANing. What is so hard about providing internet to multiple computers in the year 2009? If Blizzard forced a Bnet connection in 1998, then that would be ****** up.

 

We LAN at a church about 4 miles out of town. They don't even have phones there so they'd have to have lines installed before even thinking about internet. Stop being retarded, places like this still exist. Go back to your comfy city where everything is spoonfed to you.

 

It's real funny, it really is. Every single LAN I have been to has been able to provide internet for every computer(20-30) yet MOST of them pirated Warcraft 3/Starcraft.

So we have people that actually bought the game(Or so they claim that every comp had a "legit" copy.) that couldn't afford to have internet set up at their LAN to support a lot of computers THEN we have people that pirated the game yet they DID have internet set up and was supporting every computer there.

Maybe if you guys pirated more you could afford better LANs. No, I don't care about how hard it is at church, go somewhere else or stop living in the middle of nowhere.

 

flanden, we do this often out in a barn (that we've converted to a conference room, rent it out to various people, and 3 times a year lan in it), we dont have inet on purpose as thats a distraction from lan gaming. ppl tend to read forums, post on gameriot or something useless ^^ see i'm doing  it now, if i couldn't do that, i'd be playing games more. which is the point of our lans

 

Any LAN that I have been to that wasn't hosted at a center has operated exactly the same way.  Everyone brings their own PC or you don't play.  You don't come to give your PC play time to someone else.

The rats nest of CAT5 is always amusing.

 

Playing Starcraft at a LAN off of one disc is not pirating. Blizzard allowed you to install a "spawn" version of the game specifically for this purpose.

"StarCraft is also one of the few games that include a "spawn"
installation, which allows for limited multiplayer. It must be
installed from a disc, and requires a product key
to work just as the full version does. However, one product key can
support up to eight spawned installations with access to Battle.net.
Limitations of a spawned installation include the inability to play
single-player missions, create multiplayer games or use the campaign
editor." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft

 

You just oneshotted jflanden's whole argument. Thanks

 

Not really, spawn installation is a thing of the past, it's main reason was to get friends interested enough in the game to buy it, kind of like a buddy key. Blizzard used this for Warcraft 1 and 2, Diablo 1, and Starcraft. Back then, Blizzard basically needed that to help sell the games since those were new franchises/not well known and Pirating games wasn't a popular thing.

Blizzard ditched spawn installations with Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 because they didn't need it anymore, Blizzard already established themselves as being great developers and their games had great reviews.

A lot of **** has changed in the past 10 years, pirating is a big issue for developers now and Blizzard knows that their past games have been getting pirated like crazy. Blizzard would be stupid as hell if they allowed offline LAN support in Starcraft 2, it's the year 2009, everyone/everywhere should have access to the internet, if you want to LAN, it's going to have to be through logging at Bnet so you cheap bastards don't make Starcraft 2 the "Most Pirated Game of the Year!".

 

It will be cracked and there is nothing they can do about it. Look at ICCup. Same thing will happen for starcraft2, lan is the smallest issue of gamepirating. You're delusional if you think that most pirating takes place on LANevents.

 

You are failing to realize that most people that pirated Starcraft/Warcraft 3 did it extremely casually, these aren't the people downloading torrents all day and going to sites like thepiratebay; pirating Starcraft/Warcraft 3 was TOO easy, with one of Starcraft 2's main attractions being playing with friends, there would be no need for a lot of people to even buy the game if it supported offline LAN.

You know how a CD key doesn't do much against piracy? Well, if PC games didn't have a CD key then believe it or not, MORE games would be pirated. The easier it is, the more people do it.

Crack or not, this will result in more sales for Starcraft 2. No offline support only benefits me since I don't go to **** LANs that aren't even able to provide an internet connection and it will force people to play on Bnet, which is where I will be playing, instead of third party servers like Garena.

 

If people only casually pirated SC/WC3 than the same people won't care about buying the game. Currently as it stands if you add up all the illegal servers such as G-Arena ICCup etc. there are more people playing on these than on the Bnet. You can't argue that they all got it from LAN. Of course less people will pirate, but it's retarded to believe that these guys will buy a copy instead. It's no significant number to even consider implenting a change like this.

No offline support only benefits me since I don't go to **** LANs that
aren't even able to provide an internet connection and it will force
people to play on Bnet, which is where I will be playing, instead of
third party servers like Garena.

Because you don't have friends, for obvious reasons. People attending professionally hosted LANs because:
1.) It's near them and they want to try it out
2.) Tournaments with pricemoney
3.) You get to see good games being played by good players
4.) You meat people you got to know online, and you are disappointed because 90% are social rejects
5.) You drive there with reallifefriends because it's expensive as **** and you could probably do better in your friends basement???

in that order.

You must be incredibly lonely. Attending professionally hosted LANs for everything else than playing at these tournaments or observing the games is retarded anyway. You don't understand that 95% of all lans are not professionally hosted and if you are at a lan and play over the internet (with horrible pisspoor ping, there are ALWAYS massive problems) chances are you are retarded and you could've bootcamped at someone's place with your buddies way easier and way less expensive.

 

No, if they casually pirated the game then they will just end up buying it if they want to play with friends. If they could play with friends without having to buy it, very easily, then why would they even contemplate buying it? Blizzard is eliminating the easy way so players actually end up buying the game. It will be funny if a crack is discovered to then be fixed in a balance/changes patch that Blizzard makes.

First of all, I hardly ever go to a professional LAN center, especially since they keep going out of business, but I can see that a social reject like yourself has a lot of experience. I usually go to a friend's house for the LAN and because they aren't living in **** holes, they can actually provide internet to all the computers. You know that you can still do an offline LAN while being connected to the internet at the same time, moron? I know, it's amazing what you can do in the year 2009. About your LANs having "horrible pisspoor ping", you may want to actually upgrade from Dial Up first.