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The article is pretty accurate. What I don't understand is this: In SC:BW, players responded to an inadequate Battle.net by moving competitive Internet play t

The article is pretty accurate. What I don't understand is this: In SC:BW, players responded to an inadequate Battle.net by moving competitive Internet play to private and emulated servers. It wouldn't have taken much effort to keep them on Battle.net -- just a few nice organizational and ranking features. Obviously, Blizzard isn't a fan of this, since it bypasses their copy protection as well as being totally out of their control. That's why they removed LAN, why they go after emulation projects legally, and I naively thought it was part of the reason they were motivated to make Battle.net 2.0 better. I liked their initial statements about why LAN was gone, where they said things like "we want to make Battle.net so compelling that everyone will want to be on it for all their games." Right on! However, it appears that now they've done exactly the opposite. Battle.net 2.0 appears so unusable for any form of community or competition that I guarantee an iCCup or bnetd equivalent will be up a year from now, and the whole "hardcore" scene will be using it, and anyone will be able to pirate SC2 and connect to it. Why would anyone want this? It's not a complicated chain of inference; whoever is in charge, I'm sure they can see this coming equally well. Who benefits?

plinkplonk 16y ago
"It's not a complicated chain of inference; whoever is in charge, I'm sure they can see this coming equally well." Homo BigCorpManagerian might beg to differ. I suspect the reason of all this insanity is very simple - decisions are taken by mid/high level managers who don't really "get" gaming or Starcraft and just live in their Excel Spreadsheets and such. The post even refers to this possibility in the initial paragraphs "Fine, tell me it’s wrong to assume an Activision corporate culture would impact its corporate partner. You know, where the President of Blizzard Entertainment answers directly to Thomas Tippl, an executive who answers to Activision C.E.O. Bobby Kotick. The Bobby Kotick who disowned projects that lacked “the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential”. The Bobby Kotick who stated he wants to “take the fun out of making video games.”
crystalis 16y ago
It might be a legal issue- elsewhere, it's been mentioned that it is much easier to be in the clear operating private servers via existing LAN capabilities. Lawsuits have been sent to bnetd people and Battle.net 2.0 reversers.
- mquander 16y ago
  Yeah, absolutely. They seem quite serious about preventing Battle.net emulation legally, and I'm sure that's a big reason why they eliminated LAN -- but if there's enough motivation, I doubt they can really succeed; nobody ever does. My opinion is that the best prophylaxis against private servers would be a really great built-in server.

plinkplonk 16y ago

"It's not a complicated chain of inference; whoever is in charge, I'm sure they can see this coming equally well." Homo BigCorpManagerian might beg to differ. I suspect the reason of all this insanity is very simple - decisions are taken by mid/high level managers who don't really "get" gaming or Starcraft and just live in their Excel Spreadsheets and such. The post even refers to this possibility in the initial paragraphs "Fine, tell me it’s wrong to assume an Activision corporate culture would impact its corporate partner. You know, where the President of Blizzard Entertainment answers directly to Thomas Tippl, an executive who answers to Activision C.E.O. Bobby Kotick. The Bobby Kotick who disowned projects that lacked “the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential”. The Bobby Kotick who stated he wants to “take the fun out of making video games.”

crystalis 16y ago

It might be a legal issue- elsewhere, it's been mentioned that it is much easier to be in the clear operating private servers via existing LAN capabilities. Lawsuits have been sent to bnetd people and Battle.net 2.0 reversers.

mquander 16y ago
Yeah, absolutely. They seem quite serious about preventing Battle.net emulation legally, and I'm sure that's a big reason why they eliminated LAN -- but if there's enough motivation, I doubt they can really succeed; nobody ever does. My opinion is that the best prophylaxis against private servers would be a really great built-in server.