Blizzard will bring a much-requested feature to Starcraft II at or around the launch of Heart of the Swarm, allowing players from different territories to play together.

Global play was announced for Diablo III last week, with Blizzard confirming the feature is on the way to Starcraft II in a new developer blog.

The post also outed a number of other eSports (or eSports training)-friendly features including resume from replay for multiplayer matches, multiplayer replay viewing and a clan or group system.

Additionally, Blizzard intends to allow unranked matchmaking, and to add in support for multiple languages.

Zerg-centric expansion Heart of the Swarm is expected later this year; you can get a sneak preview at the MLG Spring Championship in June, and those who participate in Blizzard’s Arcade testing will have a better chance at getting into the beta.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/08/starcraft-ii-to-introduce-global-play-multiplayer-replays-more/

Finally unranked matchmaking so I can buddy up with drunk friends without feeling bad, looks like I'll be picking this up then.

And still no LAN.

LAN is really three issues:

- Playing without a persistent internet connection - mostly resolved by the fact that everyone now has one and a lot of other games require it now, it's not a deal breaker.

- Low latency cross region play, specifically EU -> Korea and NA -> Korea, which were perfect in SC1 but far too laggy for competitive play in SC2. This can be fixed by changing the server code, I would say this should be priority #1 after these changes.

- Games disconnecting - now resolved by this resume function

It's stil ridiculous it took all this time to add the functionality when SC1 had this on the day of release. Blizzard are still behind Riot and Valve in terms of Esports/tournament support.

I highlighted the ginormous flaw in your argument, from whence the rest of it falls apart.

OK, sure, people in countries with unreliable internet will have problems. But they also have to deal with an electronics markup of 2-300%, nothing ever being released there, lack of translations for some games, and so on. Do you know of anyone in the major markets Blizzard is focusing on that has such a problem?

I wish Blizzard added LAN. But I wish even more that people would quit whining about it (they're not going to get it and that's final) and focus on the issues that make them want LAN and get Blizzard to address those (and disconnects and cross-region play are by far the biggest problems that Blizzard is capable of fixing).

And I still don't care.

I live in the US. I like to not sit in front of my PC and rot all the time, instead so I choose to go abroad. Sometimes travelling takes a while, and coinidentally not every place has internet, but oh what a glorious thing a switch is. I think you know where this is headed from here.

It's ok, I dont really give a damn about what you think either, so call it even?

Agreed, LAN is also useful for precisely that. I don't think many people find themselves in your situation. The last time I went to an SC2 LAN party we had a switch in the middle of the room but we also had a phone socket and all we had to do was take one cable from the switch to the wall. My point isn't that LAN isn't useful, it's that the OTHER consequences of LAN missing (disconnects etc.) are in more demand and need to be addressed sooner than that. Which Blizzard are doing. You pointing out your specific situation is good, but being a general reddit/TL troll saying "We want LAN" is misguided.

If you really want LAN, there is a working hack with a website and everything.