#1 - Aug. 1, 2011, 2:07 p.m.
Right now, There are well over 100,000 U.S. Troops in Afghanistan/Iraq. These numbers do not include private contractors, as well as many other support person personnel. In most of these area's, there is no Civilian internet to access. If there is, and you're lucky enough not to go from FOB (forward operating Base), It's VERY expensive and has maybe a 12k upload/download speed.
Blizzard started with Starcraft 2 and now, the upcoming Diable 3, forcing players to connect to battle.net for single player play. The men and women in these deployed area's won't have access to play these "single player" games.
As an ex-servicemen, and ex-government contractors, I know what life is life out there. Do you know what a lot of service men do out there? They play Diablo 2, and Starcraft 1.
Why you may ask? It's very simple.
Most people out there have a Laptop. They connect, and play right from their cots. The ability to play with your co-workers is a nice way to relieve stress, as well as Gank them when they aren't paying attention :-) Life is very slow, and very boring out there. A lot of us would come into work on our short lived "Off time" just because... what else where you going to do?
Try to remember the average age of men and women who like to play these types of games are late teens to late twenties. That is the average age of the "Servicemen". If you doubt the amount of American service men who play these games, you need only to look at the "choices" for stopping payment on a WoW account. One option is "deployment".
So Blizzard knows a lot of the Armed Forces plays their games. I'm just asking that they make the single player aspects of their games available for those without internet access. And if we are REALLY lucky, the ability to play these games on LAN (Hey, I can wish right?)
*TL:DL* Blizzard needs to make their single player games playable without an internet connection, so American Armed Forces Personnel can play their games deployed*
Thank you all for your time and input!
