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 Digg.com Facebook Google Bookmarks N4G Gamerblips del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot.org StumbleUpon It's a good idea to stop piracy - and it'll work too. Doubt there's many dodgy copies of BF2 or BF2142 around for the same reason. Ha ha... it wont do much, but at least it'll pi$$ 'em off a bit. I still find the fact that they call it "piracy" funny. As if it's something glamorous and heroic and not some sweaty, pale, middle-class fat kid in his parent's basement devouring cheesy snacks and crying over his supposed right to steal things. It won't stop it being pirated, but it will stop people being able to get the full experience. That's how it works, and is the basis for online authentication the world over. And since RTS games really shine when played online, it'll definitely annoy a lot of people into buying it :) They should rename piracy to knobbing. I definitely wouldn't knob a copy of Starcraft then. Doesn't Matter. Sooner or Later some brilliant programmer will come up with an online emulator or will create a service like Hamachi and then, every one will be able to play it on lan. Will be hacked :roll: This would have been THE game to play in my boarding house. We have a LAN network with 60 teenagers plugged in, and as Starcraft runs on Mac and PC every single person would have it installed.
Unfortunately the ******* school techies have a proxy server that blocks access to Steam, Battle.net etc and with no LAN play we're screwed...
Back to Frozen Throne then... :cry: The Koreans will have a field day with this news as all thier Starcraft tournys are played on a LAN! Personally I favoured the single-player story cammpaign of "Starcraft I", same with "Diablo II" although Battle.net matches for that game were fun the few times I played over the net. It probably will significantly inhibit pirated copy users from getting the full gaming experience which is fine, although for people willing to get the pirated copy and whom share my tastes it won't matter much. Yeah I think the main question to be asked here is that with this in mind and Diablo 3 no doubt using the battlenet feature too for it's co-op will Blizzard keep the service free? After all it wouldn't take much to make you pay a subscription for the service would it? If they want to prevent piracy then they should do so without hampering the honest gamers experience.
Such methods have ruined my experiences on PC over the years.
- I couldn't play Half Life 2 on launch since the Steam servers went down due to the pressure, since you had to activate the game online to even play it.
- The stupid DRM in some games such as Spore which only allow for 3 installs, pretty much making it as if you're renting the game
- And now no LAN play, something I find to be vital in keeping RTS life span up and something I take into account when purchasing. Lan play could be patched in at a later date once the piracy peak period has passed. Usually at or before launch.
As for Battlenet I would guess it won't be long before they start charging for it. after all Activision Blizzard are the new EA. | 
