One of the biggest downsides to the new Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, has been the talks of LAN Support. One of the best game features from the original Starcraft was the LAN capabilities. This helped Starcraft gain popularity among gamers. LAN based games have allowed gamers to connect with each other to have a local Multi-player environment. Some gamers had reported that this featured being taken out of Starcraft 2 was a selling point and they would not bother with the sequel due to this. Gamers are pissed!

Hundreds of negative comments can be found over the net about the LAN news. Gamers are trying to get a petition for the LAN support to get added to the game. Even some have reportedly planned to boycott the game entirely.

Why would Blizzard do this to the new game? Even today people are still playing the Original Starcraft with LAN support. It was a very much loved feature of the game. Blizzard has stated that due to piracy, the LAN support was removed to protect the game.

Now the gaming world turns to South Korea, where Starcraft is aired on television and treated as a professional sport.

In a recent statement, Bob Colayco (PR at Blizzard) said:

“We don’t currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.”

“Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we’re encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We’re looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.”

For now the world will wait and see where the newly anticipated game will lead.