Evolution of Multiplayer Games and Online Play

Ranga14 writes: "The recently announced Command & Conquer 4 seems to be following the same path of Blizzard's Starcraft 2 in having no Lan/offline multiplayer. They will require users to be logged in at all times to even be able to play any facet of the game. What will this mean for Lan Parties, Gaming Events and those who don't play online? Is this a sound business decision or do EA & Blizzard not get that this method of attempting to thwart piracy will fail like others have?"