However, there’s one thing that I don’t like at all about StarCraft II. One thing that I find almost inexcusably loathsome. Horrible. Hideous. Disgustingly terrible.

I hate, hate, hate, hate that it’s an online game. Or rather, I hate that it has to be one. I have no problem with Battle.net, Blizzard’s multiplayer network. In fact, I kind of love it. I love that it matches players of like skill level and that you can import Facebook friends. I love that there are all kinds of achievements that you can get to decorate your profile. I love how easy it makes online gaming.

But I don’t want to have to be there.

It is impossible to play StarCraft II without logging into Battle.net. This is distasteful. Right now, I’m playing through the single player campaign, yet every time I start up the game, I have to log into Battle.net, and that offends my sensibilities. This is not because I don’t like Battle.net- it is a veritable strategy game paradise- but because StarCraft II is so closed and locked-down, it might as well have been designed by Apple.

There is no option to play on a LAN. This is repulsively horrid. I have fond memories of playing SC on my dorms LAN back in college. It’s ridiculous that a multiplayer game won’t allow for such things- multiplayer games and LANs are practically synonymous.

Mods and whatnot will be much more difficult to implement. I’ve played quite a bit of Civilization IV, and that game was greatly enriched by Fall From Heaven, a fantasy-based mod. Several other player-made mods (sometimes of dubious quality) abounded on the Civ forums, and the old copy of Unreal Tournament that I’ve got socked away on an old hard drive is very heavily modded with all kinds of ridiculous add-ons and extra widgets.

I also very much believe that games should be playable for an indefinite period of time. If you get a copy of Risk, for example, that game is playable as long as you have all the pieces. Likewise, if you were to get an old NES you could fire up any old cartridge you wanted and it would still function. Games that are dependent on online support don’t have this. StarCraftII demands that you authenticate it with Blizzard in order to work. I know that some enterprising hacker will find a way around this, but it’s terrible that if in thirty years there’s no more Blizzard, those old SCII discs will be unplayable as-is. Old NES cartridges and copies of Risk, on the other hand, will still work fine.

I guess I’m starting to sound like Corey Doctrow or some other anti-DRM digital web-libertarian type. I’ve all but shouted “screws, not glue!” I do believe in that sort of thing. I do believe that once you own something, you should do with it as you please, and that games, after money is exchanged, should be play-withable without a lot of mandatory interference from their makers. And, it’s not that I don’t like Battle.net. But, as beautiful, as wonderful, and as expertly engineered as it is- it should be optional.