Playing Starcraft in big LAN event were a big deal during the old days of the classic RTS. These days I suppose the LAN party phenomenon has dwindled perhaps because of faster broadband connections. Blizzard said during their recently held press event that StarCraft II will not support offline LAN support. According to a Blizzard PR spokesperson's reply to bigdownload:
“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."
Many other sites have posted news about this and it is still a little vague if LAN support is not supported at all. Speculation is that Battle.net will be similar to how Steam is and will require an internet connection to set up a p2p LAN match.
PS : I need to reiterate that this does not mean you will not be able to play StarCraft II on a LAN with friends or in competitions. Blizzard has said they want to make StarCraft II an important e-sport game like its predecessor. Which mean they might look at a solution that might allow LAN when connected to Battle.net or a virtual LAN type setup. Again we do not have enough information about the new Battle.net to make any conclusions.
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