14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the changes made to the multiplayer for the upcoming Heart of the Swarm expansion for Starcraft II, the Blizzard development team working on the game has no plans to add the LAN support that most of the player community has been asking for since the game was first launched.
David Kim, the game balance designer working on Starcraft II, has told PC Gamer that, “We’re building Starcraft 2 as an online game and so from very early on our focus was making a game that people were connected to. We’re building things around the ladder, we’re building achievement systems, so our system is about making an online game.”
He says that the choice is determined mainly by Blizzard’s philosophy for Starcraft II and it does not reflect in any way on how the company is treating its player base.
Kim added, “I think moving forward we’ll be looking at things like ways where people who are nearer each other can find each other more easily. But that’s not necessarily LAN it’s just a way of finding people nearer to you.”
The game designer has not said exactly how Blizzard plans to make it easier for geographical location to count when setting up multiplayer Starcraft II matches.
The team has already revealed that, despite the fact that many new units are introduced in Heart of the Swarm, they are trying to keep the same balance that players have become familiar with after playing Wings of Liberty.
The focus of the Starcraft II expansion will be on the Zerg as a race and on Kerrigan as an individual, setting up the Protoss-focused Legacy of the Void.
Blizzard has not mentioned an actual launch date for Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, but a beta stage was promised before the end of 2012.