You'll likely remember almost two months ago when Blizzard announced there would be no LAN support for StarCraft 2. No? It was that time you tried angrily tearing your favorite Kerrigan poster in twain before collapsing breathlessly on the floor of your grandmother's rumpus room.
It may be lucky your attempt failed, though: Blizzard tells Shacknews it's working on a "pseudo-LAN" solution to the problem, that might allow play very similar to a regular LAN party, with Battle.net only being pinged once or periodically for authentication purposes.
Even better, Shacknews also reports that a similar system will be included with Diablo III. While it's not quite offline play, we're hoping it's close enough to keep both developers and fans happy.