Ask Blizzard About Starcraft2, Diablo III, WoW, or Battle.net 520
Well, Blizzcon 2009 is about to get underway (look for the big news from the keynote in a few hours) and given how fast it sold out I'm sure there are still many rabid fans interested in what Blizzard might have to say that don't want to shell out the $40 for Pay-Per-View access. So, to that end we have interviews scheduled tomorrow with the teams from Starcraft2, Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and Battle.net. If there is anything you wish to know about the progress or juicy details from any of these teams please leave it in the comments below. We'll try to parse through for the best questions and get you answers during our interview slots tomorrow. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply.
Re:Starcraft 2 three games? (Score:4, Informative)
Will we still be able to play multiplayer matches of StarCraft II with all three races?
Yes! From the beginning, StarCraft II will be a fully featured multiplayer game, and all three races will be available for competitive play.
Re:The Status Quo of Delayed Release Dates (Score:3, Informative)
I just want to point out that they already do exactly what you're saying they should. They never announced a release date for SC2, but the gaming community slapped an imaginary 2009 date on there after statements to the effect that they hoped to be able to get the game out by the end of the year, but that it would be difficult.
Re:StarCraft II - LAN PLAY (Score:3, Informative)
Then why can't two people behind the same router play a game on battle.net where one of them is hosting? (With very little effort you'll find plenty of posts here on slashdot indicating that if you have two players behind a router, connected to battle.net, and they try to start a Starcraft game that way, one of them can't connect.) I could elaborate on the apparent technical reasons (public vs private IP addresses, for example) but I don't think it's necessary.
My point is, it's a little more complicated than you're making it out to be, and Blizzard has given exactly zero indication that Starcraft II will be any different.
More to the point, if I have 8 guys at my place trying to start a pseudo-LAN game via Battle.net, can Blizzard make it work without making me reconfigure my router? (Assume that a single person playing via Battle.net works fine with that router configuration.) The answer is probably "no", or at least "yes, if X, Y, and Z are true" which is bound to fail for a large portion of gamers. Furthermore, if each client thinks all the other clients have the same external IP address, presumably with different ports (the only way to make this work using the same external IP address), the router has to do a bunch of additional work mapping ports on its external IP to machines on its internal network, whereas a real LAN game would just spit the packets for each internal IP address in the appropriate direction with little effort.
But I can give a better real-world example. At my university, all computers on the network had a unique external IP address assigned to them for all traffic leaving the network (the mapping was handled by the externally-facing routers; our computers only knew about the 10.x.x.x internal address). So, with Blizzard's current plans, if I and my roommate wanted to start a LAN game of Starcraft II, we'd have to do it through Battle.net - but Battle.net would see a unique IP address for each client, and would have no way to know they're on the same LAN. The game clients themselves would have no way of knowing that they're in the same room, either.
That means once we get the game started, the game is not really local - if I'm hosting, my computer sends packets bound for my roommate's computer - which is connected to the same physical switch - all the way to the edge of the network, to the externally-facing routers. They shouldn't go further than that, but why force packets to go all the way across campus when they shouldn't have to go further than the switch handling our two wall sockets?
You might argue that this additional latency is negligible, and you have a valid point. However, I'm sure I could dig up hundreds of hardcore gamers who would insist that the extra latency is noticeable.
Re:Reduced Effort in World of Warcraft (Score:3, Informative)
i don't know what expansion you played because it wasn't wotlk.
quests are unquestionably more interesting than "go kill 8 spiders". in wotlk, you constantly get to drive vehicles, bomb things from the air, elad a charge up a hill, or take part in quests that truly matter in the world and even change the face of the zone (through phasing). you take part in meaningful battles with zone-wide consequences. you see huge chunks of lore unfurl before your eyes ...
speaking of which, did you even do the Wrathgate thing? best thing in WoW ever. look it up on youtube if you missed it.
70-80 unquestionably puts you more in the middle of the lore situation than anything previous. Arthas shows up at least once per zone to threaten you with the wrath of doom or whatever ... hell, in icecrown you actually get to BE Arthas for a while!