Cannot play offline

This is what i get when i click play next to my username when internet is not on "We couldn't log you back in as username please try again using your username & password" so when i do i get this message "sorry, but we couldn't connect to our servers. Please make sure that you are online and that minecraft is not blocked and i did all of this

Steps to reproduce:
1. Run the launcher with internet connection. Ensure all login credentials are correct and click Play
2. Close and reopen the launcher without internet connection
3. Click on Play on the username login screen

but I cant login with out internet sorry for the long comment.

This bug is awful. It makes me so mad when it says "we can't reach our servers, please make sure you are connected to the Internet". Well FYI your not supposed to need to! That's the whole point of an OFFLINE MODE!!!! I believe it works by when you put in a new login and password, it goes to the Mojang list of registered users and if it finds a match, it will record those login credentials in an encrypted file in the minecraft folder. This is for when someone tries to connect to minecraft if it can't reach Mojang's list of users, it will then immediately go to the file and check the list of names there, and if it finds a match, it commences offline mode. But I can't get this to happen..

For the time being, if you are having this issue, the only workaround is to login while connected to the internet, then after the login, you may turn off the connection once the game screen appears. You will still be able to switch worlds in singleplayer mode, as normal. Make sure that you don't incidentally close the game or you'll have to go through the above process again (which isn't all that grueling).

For now, hang in there until the devs get around to fixing it when they have the time.

Confirmed.

Hi, I am also experiencing this issue. We have lots of outages and very poor bandwidth. I am also running Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit.