Blizzard: StarCraft II and Diablo III Are Getting LAN-Like “Solutions”

LAN? You still use that? People gathered together and sat around the
old LAN, like, back in the days of vee-see-arrrrs and stuff, right?
That’s old news, man. But how about that new thing Blizzard’s got cooking?
It lets you play multiplayer games with a blazing connection, as if the
Internet isn’t even involved. It’s crazy. What will these developers
think of next?
"We are working on solutions with regard to things we can do to
maintain connectivity to Battle.net in some way, but also provide a
great quality connection between players," said Battle.net developer
Greg Canessa.
The plan, it would seem, is for the game to authenticate with Blizzard’s server before switching into LAN mode.
"Something like that," Canessa replied when asked about such a
solution. "Maintaining a connection with Battle.net, I don't know if
it's once or periodically, but then also having a peer-to-peer
connection between players to facilitate a very low-ping,
high-bandwidth connection… those are the things that we're working on."
So then, can we never talk about LAN in Blizzard games ever again?
With this solution, Blizzard’s happy and you’re happy. Unless, of
course, you’re a pirate, in which case, it looks like your luck's
finally run out.