Unlike the PS3 Slim’s lack of Playstation 2 backwards compatibility, StarCraft II‘s lack of LAN does nothing to ruffle my feathers [source]. Do people who don’t have laptops still drag their computers over to other people’s houses to play games? To the best of my knowledge that’s all handled online now. They play their World of WarCraft, Left 4 Dead and Command & Conquers through the internet and people aren’t complaining. Maybe the huge LAN competitions might warrant being able to host the tournament locally, but that’s only a small fraction of the people who are actually going to play the game. But that’s just my opinion. You guys probably game a hell of a lot more than me. So, what’s your opinion?
Update: A recent article stated that Blizzard is working on a “pseudo-LAN” solution to the StarCraft II LAN-less problem, that would allow play very similar to a LAN party, with Battle.net only being pinged once or periodically for authentication purposes. [source]
Also, Tradewest has “risen” from the grave… theoretically. Now let’s see if I can finally get my Battletoad fix. Possible happy day indeed.