It may just be the state it’s in now: it appears to be always online because certain UI elements are missing. Meaning, it can be played offline, including LAN, and with AI. It’s just not as intuitive to find as before. Hopefully Bliz will streamline the UI to better match what players expect to see.
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You can play campaign offline and play maps against bots offline. LAN also works offline.
To punish pirates, you must inconvenience normal people.
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But how? War 3 TFT had a very simple way to do this. It was called “Single player;” I don’t have such an option when I open Warcraft 3 Reforged. Meaning, unless I get disconnected somehow (or pull the plug on my internet), I am “online.”
In the game menu, there’s a “Logout” button, that will drop you from Battle.net. From there you can create custom games to either play with others over a LAN, or to play alone with AI.
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Thanks Sikkun!
@LazyHydra. Sikkun linked my LAN guide above. The only difference between that and playing solo is choosing the AI instead of other players.
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If you installed over Classic you might have to delete your maps for custom games to work. I did have a bug where it kept trying to load my old maps and that did fail.
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Thanks guys. I still find it really stupid that they changed online from an “opt-in” to an “opt-out” process. Totally @$$-backwards, if you ask me. Instead of opening up the client and connecting to battle.net…you have to connect to battle.net first to open the client. What in the what what?!
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That’s the era we live in now. They want your game online 24 7 so they can act like they own you. This is 1 more reason why I’ll probably never buy this. I couldn’t play SC 2 for a good week when I had no internet because it won’t boot up if it can’t call daddy Blizzard for permission. I also had nagging popups telling me I lost connection to Battlenet. THIS WAS DURING THE SINGLEPLAYER CAMPAIGNS. When we ask for innovation in the remaster, this is not it.
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It just tries to auto connect when you load. If you were actually offline, you would fail to log in and then auto be in offline mode.
That’s true. If you have issues in the Custom Game lobbies, you’ll want to clear any maps out of:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Warcraft III\maps
C:\Users[USERNAME]\Documents\Warcraft III\Maps
… then relaunch the game and see if it helps. There’s several reports that clearing out old maps and letting the game repopulate with the new ones has helped.
Well, yea, Drain. This. I guess it is further evidence that none of us “own” the game anymore, but play our version of the game at the discretion of Blizzard, pretty much. You are always connected, so your use of the platform is subject to change at any time as opposed to you owning the game, as is, that you purchased
Although it doesn’t seem to be the case for Reforged, SC2 being online all the time was primarily for the achievements. Those are tracked and saved remotely.
When offline, the game will allow 30 days of play since the last log in. Obviously, it doesn’t help those who don’t have internet at all, but a week is definitely doable.
I couldn’t care less why it’s there. I didn’t want it and had no option to boot the game. Steam, a less dickish DRM client, actually lets you boot your games offline and play.
It gave me no such option at the time. Again, if this were a Steam game, I could play offline.
Fair enough. I’m just saying that it requires a connection for some of the game’s features.
That is actually a fair point because how one launches SC2 offline is not obvious. It’s bordering on ridiculous. It says to me that the developers are trying to deter people from using offline mode.
They should have learned from the newer sim city.
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The game isn’t always online. You can go offline from the menu. It’s online by default because most people have internet connections most of the time these days. Even at LAN parties, therefore they may have seen it fit not to include a special LAN mode. The game is peer-to-peer during gameplay anyway, so when you create a game with friends on the same network, the ping should be low.
Open the main menu in the game lobby (lower right hand corner) and select Logout. You are now offline (for all intents and purposes). You can still play the campaign and create custom games.
While I have no way to verify this, it may actually be possible to play LAN only games in the offline mode. Since the network protocols are still active (evidenced by a nonzero ping) the custom game list may show games on your network in this state. But I can’t currently test this.
“IS THERE A VALID REASON WHY THIS GAME IS ALWAYS ONLINE?”
No.
Well, it isn’t always online, so the question is irrelevant. It just starts online by default because, generally, you have an internet connection. You can go offline at any time by going to the main menu and selecting Logout.
Yes there are times when we don’t have one, but in this day and age, it is increasingly uncommon. Thus why would you want to not have access to your friends list and such when you have the connection there for it?
I’m legitimately tired of the paranoia surrounding games being online or connecting to the internet. I basically never not have the internet unless I have a power outage. I really don’t care about stuff like this provided it isn’t interfering with my ability to enjoy the product. Since there is indeed an option to go offline, I am unconcerned.