This generation of Blizzard games has been a little divisive hasn’t it? You’ve the Diablo game which has a community crying out for singleplayer, and you have a Starcraft audience who literally cried out for LAN support (chanting “We want LAN! We want LAN!” at this year’s IPL 4 Vegas tournament).
Well, Heart of the Swarm designer David Kim has spoken up about why this traditional feature has been canned.
“We’re building Starcraft 2 as an online game,” Kim told PC Gamer, “
So from very early on our focus was making a game that people were connected to.
We’re building things around the ladder, we’re building achievement systems, so our system is about making an online game.”
So no Local Area Networking going on with that game.
It will feature a singleplayer element, which is more than a number of other big RTSs on the horizon, includingCommand and Conquer and Planetary Annihilation.
“We do have an offline mode where you can play the campaign mode, where you can play the AI without having to be connected to the internet,” adds Kim.