I’m not a huge fan, although that’s part of the point, because I’ve purchased most of Blizzard’s games anyway. I appreciated the Warcraft RTS games more, but the idea of Starcraft 2 has been growing on me. I love a good RTS and the genre has certainly slowed down.

This is exactly the style of game that I like playing on a LAN or directly with friends. For an RTS I’m not interested in some match-making service, competition ladders or ego-driven stats comparisons (oh god, the clicks-per-minute tracking I’m assuming they’re gonna do). In this case, a centralized stats service is actually a turn-off, the e-peen waggling of Blizzard fans is already hella annoying.

I’d also prefer the immediacy and quality of service of my own PC, my own network, or peer-to-peer directly to my friends in near-local networks with great ping (meaning same city, without bouncing thru a server somewhere south of the border). This is not a click-and-wait RPG, immediacy matters or the game style is changed.

I’d be interested in buying the game, not a game service. This isn’t an MMO.

The paradox is that Blizzard is doing this to avoid piracy, but it’ll give a compelling boost to LAN cracks and bnetd. Update: PvPGN is probably the better solution.

If Starcraft 2 ships without ways to opt out of the “community service” and play directly (LAN or peer-to-peer), then I’m just not interested. It wasn’t super high on my radar, but this just shoved it under it.