Some of my friends and I regularly lan Starcraft. On a large kitchen table. 8 of us. Just using my macbook to create a wireless network. No router. No battlenet. Not Third party. It always works. It's never down. We can play whenever, and really where ever we want. I'm really disappointed that blizzard is trying to compare the social aspect of gaming over battlenet to sitting across from your friends and screaming uncontrollably when you get lurked really really badly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop