A lot of RTS games that came out in the late 90’s and early 2000’s had the Local Area Network (LAN) function, which allowed the player to physically connect with other computers with an ethernet cord to play mulitplayer. (I’m probably not doing a great job at describing it to be honest). Overall, with LAN multiplayer people could play with each other without needing to play over the internet.
With more modern RTS games, I have not noticed the LAN feature being included in games. Which is understandable, as more players have better internet access today. However, I think LAN offers a great accessibility feature for players that want to play in big groups together.
In addition to the accessibility, I’d say LAN is almost mandatory for competitions/tournaments. While it’s nice to assume that the internet will never have issues in a competitive match, there is the possibility of a high-stakes game being ruined due to technical difficulties. This isn’t a problem for me, the matchmaker is just fine. But for international tournaments with the best players in the world it’s more important. Whether there is prize money on the line, or just the prestige of being the best player at the tournament, LAN multiplayer is much better than over the internet.
Again, sorry if something similar has been posted before. And it’s possible that LAN is already being developed. I just wanted to add a voice to the opinion that LAN is important
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I hope so as well, nobody seems to know if LAN is available. I’ve been playing Age of Empires since it first came out in 1997
maybe lan-mode like in age2de - the game detects if you are connected in lan automatic. this works pretty well - we did in on some lanparties.
For big tournaments I’d assume relic/Microsoft will provide on site servers but you are right that Lan would be helpful for smaller tournaments and local play. Seems pretty niche though.
Relic hasn’t added LAN in years. They even gutted their old games like Dawn of War that USED to have LAN for the steam releases. I don’t know why but if it’s “for piracy reasons” then that’s laughable because the lack of LAN functionality is why you HAVE TO pirate these games for offline/lagless (nice australian servers, relic) multiplayer!
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LAN and direct connection should be available a group of people could have their own server and not have to rely on the official servers. This would also allow people to play with friends and family even when the servers are down.
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I just want to play the game offline with my wife. Our internet cuts out all the time, and we aren’t able to finish a single match. The fact this happens in LAN too is completely absurd. There’s no point to having a LAN game, if the internet goes out for even a few seconds, you get booted from the game and lose all your XP. It’s infuriating and I don’t enjoy playing this game anymore simply because they won’t let me play a LAN game offline.