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I find the whole mountains of salt behind the controversy so amusing. The game itself is nothing more than a Warcraft III total conversion mod of SC2/HOTS. It was pretty obvious from the start that old client and custom map scene was on the clopping block. The decision to force classic-only users to download "unused" reforged assets seems to come from pure laziness/incompetence rather then malice. The game itself felt like it could have use more polish here and there. Thoughts?

https://www.pcgamer.com/warcraft-3-refo ... ntroversy/

https://www.ccn.com/blizzard-is-finally ... -backlash/

Morons they must be, to anger their fanbase like that. Someone needs to get fired, unless the decisions are coming from the very top. J. Allen Brack looks like a proper prick to me. Activision Blizzard, wake up, DAMMIT!

My thoughts: Blizzard are slowly poisoning themselves. The lack of awareness with the Diablo: Immortal announcement, that [you-know-what] Hearthstone ordeal, and now the botched Warcraft III remaster... I think they're all having an effect, but it's not immediately apparent. There won't be a single event that brings the whole house down, but I get the feeling that the numbers will keep sliding until there's a management shakeup, or worse, a reorganization that further erodes any distinction between Blizzard and Activision.

More specifically with Warcraft III: Reforged, I think this is false advertising. It was sold as a massive rehaul of the original game (specifically cutscenes), but instead it just got minor tweaks. Then there's the whole copyrighting of mods thing...which is just dumb.

superjawes wrote:

More specifically with Warcraft III: Reforged, I think this is false advertising. It was sold as a massive rehaul of the original game (specifically cutscenes), but instead it just got minor tweaks. Then there's the whole copyrighting of mods thing...which is just dumb.

Further, they broke a lot of what made Warcraft III classic still playable - custom maps (why, WHY did they have to **** with the older game too???). Leave it to Blizzard to poison such a ferverous fanbase.

I'm feeling no regrets after having Blizzard delete my account last year. I tossed a decent amount of money and games I liked away but it's consistently validated by their lack of self-awareness.

Waco wrote:

superjawes wrote:

More specifically with Warcraft III: Reforged, I think this is false advertising. It was sold as a massive rehaul of the original game (specifically cutscenes), but instead it just got minor tweaks. Then there's the whole copyrighting of mods thing...which is just dumb.

Further, they broke a lot of what made Warcraft III classic still playable - custom maps (why, WHY did they have to **** with the older game too???). Leave it to Blizzard to poison such a ferverous fanbase.

I'm feeling no regrets after having Blizzard delete my account last year. I tossed a decent amount of money and games I liked away but it's consistently validated by their lack of self-awareness.

It is because they ported the entire codebase to Starcraft2/HOTS family. It isn't fully compatible with old Warcraft 3 codebase so there's a good chance some of the old custom maps wouldn't have work anyway. Blizzard-Activison was going to retire the old Warcraft III client and servers. This was coming along well before Warcraft III: Reforged was even a thing (Just look at developer notes in patch log of previous versions). There's a good chance that Diablo 2 is next on the chopping block once Diablo 4 comes out. It was only spared for so long because Diablo 3 was such a flop at launch. Warcraft2/Diablo 1 are already there and required a recent remaster to work correctly on modern platforms.

Most of the problems seem to stem from the fact Warcraft 3: Reforged is a total conversion mod of SC2/HOTS and they didn't bother polish the UI/client to make it match classic as much as possible. There's no reason that WC3 classic-only users should be forced to download Reforged-only assets. It ends bumping the download to 18GiB for an "update" . The locked down EULA/TOS for the editor (matching Starcraft 2) is just trying to prevent another DOTA from slipping away(It was entirely Blizzard's fault because they turn down Icefrog's original offer).

The art style is suppose to match WoW aesthetics and lore to help build a better connection between the two installations. They extended Orc prologue to flesh out how the jungle trolls came into the Horde instead of cramming them in without any real explanation (I suspect that originally it was supposed have been forest trolls with earlier drafts). WoW addressed this later.

Krogoth wrote:

It is because they ported the entire codebase to Starcraft2/HOTS family. It isn't fully compatible with old Warcraft 3 codebase so there's a good chance some of the old custom maps wouldn't have work anyway. Blizzard-Activison was going to retire the old Warcraft III client and servers. This was coming along well before Warcraft III: Reforged was even a thing (Just look at developer notes in patch log of previous versions). There's a good chance that Diablo 2 is next on the chopping block once Diablo 4 comes out. It was only spared for so long because Diablo 3 was such a flop at launch. Warcraft2/Diablo 1 are already there and required a recent remaster to work correctly on modern platforms.

It's because they made a stupid decision, yes. They're systematically destroying every shred of goodwill anyone ever had towards them.

If they manage to screw up Diablo 2 I wouldn't be at all surprised if the kickback is even more severe.

Diablo 1 and Warcraft 1 work fine without much drama on modern platforms - I recently reinstalled them with the same patches I'd downloaded 10+ years ago and had them running without issue. Mucking with a working product that everyone loves is asinine; the amount of effort maintaining legacy code / compatibility code is not that great (I wear a software dev hat some of the time at my day job).

Waco wrote:

Mucking with a working product that everyone loves is asinine; the amount of effort maintaining legacy code / compatibility code is not that great (I wear a software dev hat some of the time at my day job).

These kinds of things happen in meetings. One of them suggests a stupid idea. The highest ranking person likes it so everyone stupidly starts shaking their head in agreement, not bothering to say anything in opposition no matter how bad the idea is, for fear of becoming the butt of jokes or worse, getting confronted by the boss to present a better idea. This is the reason I hate meetings. They almost always lead to deciding something that could have serious ramifications down the line in an hour or less. Every group meeting should have at least one bold soothsayer of doom and gloom, to make them realize the worst that could happen.

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

These kinds of things happen in meetings.

I doubt a single sane developer / maintainer was in any of the meetings leading up to this ****.

Waco wrote:

Krogoth wrote:

It is because they ported the entire codebase to Starcraft2/HOTS family. It isn't fully compatible with old Warcraft 3 codebase so there's a good chance some of the old custom maps wouldn't have work anyway. Blizzard-Activison was going to retire the old Warcraft III client and servers. This was coming along well before Warcraft III: Reforged was even a thing (Just look at developer notes in patch log of previous versions). There's a good chance that Diablo 2 is next on the chopping block once Diablo 4 comes out. It was only spared for so long because Diablo 3 was such a flop at launch. Warcraft2/Diablo 1 are already there and required a recent remaster to work correctly on modern platforms.

It's because they made a stupid decision, yes. They're systematically destroying every shred of goodwill anyone ever had towards them.

If they manage to screw up Diablo 2 I wouldn't be at all surprised if the kickback is even more severe.

Diablo 1 and Warcraft 1 work fine without much drama on modern platforms - I recently reinstalled them with the same patches I'd downloaded 10+ years ago and had them running without issue. Mucking with a working product that everyone loves is asinine; the amount of effort maintaining legacy code / compatibility code is not that great (I wear a software dev hat some of the time at my day job).

Most of the people who know the old codebase are gone or retired. It costs time and money to maintain it all while it is generating nothing in return. This is the dilemma that faces all commercial software well past their prime, especially when the ecosystem is undergoing a paradigm change. Windows 7's official EOL is going to start another wave of planned obsolescence/abandonware.

Krogoth wrote:

Most of the people who know the old codebase are gone or retired. It costs time and money to maintain it all while it is generating nothing in return. This is the dilemma that faces all commercial software well past their prime, especially when the ecosystem is undergoing a paradigm change. Windows 7's official EOL is going to start another wave of planned obsolescence/abandonware.

I appreciate the mansplaining (no I don't) but they broke the core reason the game was still being played. The goodwill they've burned far exceeds the cost of running a few legacy VMs.

Krogoth wrote:

Windows 7's official EOL is going to start another wave of planned obsolescence/abandonware.

Why they don't build a separate abstraction layer for games is beyond me. In some ways, DirectX was supposed to be that abstraction layer. If a game supports DirectX 9, then it should run fine with the latest DirectX version. Why the game should be affected by an OS version change is something they should ask themselves.

Waco wrote:

Krogoth wrote:

Most of the people who know the old codebase are gone or retired. It costs time and money to maintain it all while it is generating nothing in return. This is the dilemma that faces all commercial software well past their prime, especially when the ecosystem is undergoing a paradigm change. Windows 7's official EOL is going to start another wave of planned obsolescence/abandonware.

I appreciate the mansplaining (no I don't) but they broke the core reason the game was still being played. The goodwill they've burned far exceeds the cost of running a few legacy VMs.

It costs a bit more then running a few "legacy VMs" on some backwater server closet to continue to support Warcraft III classic in its pre-reforged form. If Blizzard-Activision took the abandonware route then fans will still complain that Battle.net doesn't work anymore (once old servers shut down permanently) and the game stops working properly on future platforms. This is the reality that often happens to abandonware.

The whole EULA on how they own any mods has soured me quite a bit. seems like a money grab. Is a money grab.

tanker27 wrote:

The whole EULA on how they own any mods has soured me quite a bit. seems like a money grab. Is a money grab.

Yea. Things like that make me want to delete my account.

Blizzard may be the only developers I still trust.

Blizzard have been out of touch for a while. I played WoW 10+ years ago and with every update the game got worse and worse until I quit.
I never bothered trying Diablo 3 from all the bad reviews and auction house crap.

riocensisi4126 wrote:

Blizzard may be the only developers I still trust.

In Blizzard We Trust