Some of our readers were a bit put off by the suggestion that the single player portion of StarCraft II would require logging into Battle.net, as evidenced by some of the comments in the post following the Battle.net panel at BlizzCon this weekend. The next day we followed up on the issue with Blizzard vice president of game design Rob Pardo, who clarified the single player situation for us.

"You don't technically have to (login), but you'll want to. You can play in offline mode if you want - I just don't think you're going to want to. You'll be giving up lots and lots of features, and why would you want to be giving up features?"

We covered the features exhaustively in the original post, but perhaps we didn't draw your attention to the button on the above screenshot labeled "Play As Guest." That button kicks off the game without connecting, so those of you without internet who couldn't possibly be reading this post should be happy, unless they try to set up a LAN.

Pardo was in good spirits when we spoke to him yesterday afternoon when I touched on the controversial subject, which has spawned a wave of forum rage and countless petitions calling for the reinstatement of feature. "You're the first person who asked me about that this weekend," he joked. When I asked if the company was still receiving flack over the decision, his good humor continued. "Only from you guys. Only from the press. Everyone else has accepted it."

Once I finished giggling, Rob got down to brass tacks.

"Everyone is going to give us flack until it's out. None of us is going to know how big a deal it is until it's out. We believe that it's really not that big of a deal - that most people are not really going to notice that it's missing. There's a lot of people out there I think that are just afraid that they're suddenly not going to be able to connect to the internet tonight and they won't be able to play. I actually think that case is extremely rare, and I think we're going to be okay."

And what of the rare cases where no direct-connection option wouldn't be okay?

"There's a few legitimate cases that we're going to try and address over time. Location-based tournaments, or let's say I'm in a dorm with a firewall or something like that, hopefully there's a way to determine that and maybe start a peer-to-peer game."

So it really doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but as Pardo said, we won't really know until the game comes out.

Historically for us, the game industry hasn’t been affected by recessions like a lot of other businesses. I think the reason for that is [that] games really offer some of the best entertainment value on the market. People might not want to go out to the movies and spend $100 for a couple of hours and then go to a restaurant. You can go home and pay $15 a month for 100 hours of entertainment if you’re staying at home more — and I think that’s one of the reasons why you don’t see games really go in the same recession as the rest of the economy a lot of times.

What about you? Will the economic pinch curb your game spending?

Blizzard: Economic Downturn Won’t Hurt ‘World of Warcraft’ [Multiplayer]

Blizzard's "solution" is Battle.net, the service it launched in 1997 to handle its online gaming capabilities.

"If you wanna play online on Battle.net with other players you’re going to have to have a legitimate copy," Pardo said in a BlizzCon interview. Battle.net, he says, has "saved us from a lot of the PC piracy that I think hurts a lot of other single-player-only games."

Q&A: Blizzard's Executive Vice President of Game Design Rob Pardo [Game|Life]

Console Diablo "theoretically possible" [Eurogamer]

I love our Blizzard fans, they’re the best in the world. But they can get pretty angry...I’ve gotten sixteen-page diatribes.

Completely understandable. We can totally see how the same kind of energy they display scouring the source code of a splash marketing page can be misdirected as pure, white-hot nerd rage.

Blizzard: "Our Fans Can Get Pretty Angry" [Next-Gen]

So you want me to announce the game before our announcement? No offense, but I think there's like 300 people here, and I'll be ripped apart by 8000 people there [at the Invitational] if I pre-announce it — but it's going to be really exciting. I think everybody here will be really excited about the announcement.

Sounds really exciting, and yes, we're really excited.

Blizzard to unveil new title at Worldwide Invitational? [Games Industry] [Pic]

While we're certain that Blizzard is enjoying the 10 million or so World of Warcraft subscribers forking over $13 to $15 each month in fees, it would be interesting to peek into the alternate universe where WoW was funded by ads.

While we're on subscriptions, Pardo said that one of the reasons behind MMOs failing to take off on consoles is the bite that console makers want to take out. In addition to a "lack of hard drive space, and difficulty in certifying patches" taking a percentage off the top is, literally, laughable to Pardo. Many more Pardo-isms at the full report.

Paris GDC: The Rob Pardo Experience [Gamasutra]