14 DAY TRIAL // It has been known for quite a bit of time that Starcraft II will not be featuring pure Local Area Network multiplayer games, with Blizzard saying that it aims to eliminate LAN play, thus routing all the multiplayer gaming through a beefed up Battle.net.
But now, several statements from Blizzard people point the way to the possibility that a LAN-like mode might be implemented, with players able to set up fast a local connection after they log into Battle.net in order to authenticate.
In an interview conducted at BlizzCon, Greg Canessa told Shacknews that “Maintaining a connection with Battle.net, I don't know if it's once or periodically, but then also having a peer-to-peer connection between players to facilitate a very low-ping, high-bandwidth connection... those are the things that we're working on.” He added that “We really wanted to bring all these players together and keep them in the same pool, and make everything work, so your achievements work, your friends list works, everything just works correctly, as opposed to having two separated ways to play.”
Apparently, Starcraft II will allow players to get into the single player campaign using a so-called “guest account,” which will be offline and will not need a connection to Battle.net. But the developers are very determined to integrate as much information about the player as possible in their online profile, allowing them to match their skills in multiplayer games with similarly capable players and also to show off their achievements easily.
A lot of pieces of news regarding Starcraft II came out of BlizzCon. Some players were outraged to hear that Blizzard was planning to allow maps to be sold by mod makers for a fee, while other players were delighted to hear that the editor included in the game was powerful enough to create role-playing experiences and FPS games.