At least you can play the game, Jim.

Blizzard's upcoming RTS StarCraft II is easily one of the most anticipated PC titles for gamers. It comes as a fairly major surprise to learn that the full game will not include support for LAN play, with all users of the game required to be currently logged into Battle.net in order to play the game with friends.

This news may come to a shock, but Blizzard Vice President of Game Design, Rob Pardo has clarified the statements that he made in a recent interview, explaining that because of the "new" Battle.net that will be shipping with Starcraft II, several pieces of "planned technology" for the game are built right into Battle.net.

The revelation that the game will not support was broken by IncGamers, in an interview with Pardo.

When asked about the LAN functionality of Starcraft II Pardo responded that the development team "don't have any plans to support LAN". This is due to "planned technology" that will be incorporated into the Battle.net service.

While the lack of LAN play for StarCraft II is likely to irk people, the game will probably "work" over a LAN, but individual players will need to be logged into and authenticate their accounts via Battle.net in order to play.

Such functionality would also act as an anti-piracy measure, to prevent those who do not purchase the game from playing multiplayer.

To clarify the matter, Blizzard have stated that:

We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.

More information regarding StarCraft II can be found in our news archive. We've also got lots of screenshots and trailers you can watch, too. The game will be released for PC and Mac at some undisclosed point in the future.