While I grew up primarily with console games, I also tried my hand at a few PC titles in my youth. I played all of the classics: Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Unreal, The 7th Guest; both Diablo games; Deux Ex, and of course StarCraft. Getting together with a few friends for an all-night LAN party was the stuff of nerd dreams. StarCraft – a great sci-fi RTS by Blizzard — featured heavily in those parties.

Sadly, it’s sequel won’t. Blizzard announced that StarCraft II will not support local area network gaming. If players want to get their multiplayer on, they’ll need to do so via Blizzard’s Battle.net. Blizzard says that LAN support was excluded “because of the planned technology to be incorporated into Battle.net,” which they promise to explain in the near future.

I’m going to miss hauling my computer to a friend’s house for a crazy game-playing nerdathon, but at least I can still conquer fellow nerds through Battle.net. But as fun as that will surely be, it’s just not the same as a LAN party. HCG geeks, mourn with me, won’t you?