The Future of Warcraft

[Ralle]

27 March 2016

Members of the Hive staff Kam and PurgeandFire visited Blizzard on the week of patch 1.27. They went there to discuss the patch and the future of Warcraft 3. We are excited to share some great news and the account of their journey.

The Beginning

A few months ago rumors began sprouting about a potential patch to Warcraft III. Blizzard was supposedly in contact with a number of competitive players in China. With the success of NetEase and Blizzard's official GOLD tournament many of us were optimistic that life would be breathed into Warcraft III. A few of you are aware of dialogue that began late January with Blizzard in regards to patch 1.27a - here is the story.

One of our users, Kam, was extra optimistic and resolved to contact Blizzard directly to give input for the patch. He decided to start by contacting Mike Morhaime. The response was rapid and Mike forwarded the conversation to the new Classic Games department headed by Rob Bridenbecker and Pete Stilwell. It was clear from early conversations that there was a genuine investment in helping Warcraft 3 thrive. Kam asked Ralle for help and was adviced to start a thread in Staff Contact to gather as much information as possible for a document to submit to Blizzard. Kam, PurgeandFire and several other staff members participated in the creation of this document. Kam had several phone conferences with Blizzard discussing its contents.

It was compiled using Ezekiel's patch thread along with various suggestions from the Hive community within the Patch 1.27 rumor thread. We wanted it to be open but "razor sharp" so we tried to condense and refine multiple takes on similar themes throughout the forums. We reached out to multiple users and staff members to get feedback as well as read the public threads. It purposely left out melee balance changes since the competitive players have already discussed that with them.

As for Blizzard's feedback on the list and what they will accomplish we can't say because of the scope and we signed non-disclosure agreements. They were definitely excited and extremely appreciative of the report and they'll do what they can at their own discretion. Some tasks have extended production schedules, some are rather vague, some might not be possible, and quite a few are already in production. You can all rest assured that the focus is "not to break shit"!

The document is attached to this thread.

The Journey

Fast forward to the past few weeks. Blizzard invited Kam to visit their headquarters in Irvine, California. He was asked to invite other key members to come along. He extended the invite to several staff and community members, however only PurgeandFire was able to attend.

We traveled to Irvine, spent a few days exploring southern California on the weekend, and visited them on Monday. It started off with a campus tour through their museum which changes regularly, and then through many of their 12 or so buildings which are laced with fantastic Blizzard art. It was pretty amazing - PurgeandFire tried to take as many photos as were allowed:
Blizzard HQ

After that, we went and visited the Classic Games department. We first met with Pete Stilwell and had a conversation with him about ourselves and about Warcraft III. Unfortunately, Monday was substantially hectic. They were expecting to release the patch within a few hours! We also met with Rob Bridenbecker and several programmers. Then we went to lunch at the World's End Tavern and chatted about the future of Warcraft III as well as the details of how things were implemented/going to be implemented.

We met roughly 11 people total on the team for Classic Games (including Rob and Pete... 12 if you include Felix). After lunch, they decided to let us test out the patch before its release! They set up two computers for us and had us duke it out in a 1v1 NE (PurgeandFire) vs. Kam (Orc).

Afterwards we talked a bit about third party tools and assisted in installing JassNewGenPack on their system. It would be unfortunate if the patch ended up having JNGP no longer working (people would have to go back to 1.26a for development or migrate their maps away until someone fixed Grimoire). We showed them how to set it up and it ended up working without any issues.

We talked with the devs a bit more and then, unfortunately, it was time to leave. They had to get the patch out before a deadline, and Pete saw us out.

All in all, it was a fantastic day and it genuinely left me excited for Warcraft III. It is crazy to think that a game so old still has such an enormous fanbase and a company that cares enough to update it.

The Takeaway

There is an enormous amount of information we are not able to share with you. I know this is frustrating but we will attempt to communicate Blizzard's intentions in place of specifics. Please do not ask Kam and PurgeandFire for information - all we can currently share is here.

Blizzard has been really supportive of our feedback and this compatibility patch is just the first step. Some people have been a bit disappointed with the most recent patch. They had actually been working on the OS updates for a few months, and I believe they wanted to get those issues out of the way before moving on to bigger things. Sorting through the code sounded a bit like archaeology from the way they described it. Fixing all the old compatibility problems was not trivial, but they found some cool stuff along the way -- some of which may be related to the arbitrary order-per-second limit placed on BNet servers.

Blizzard is reading the Hive and other fan sites, and are interested in a continued feedback loop. Most of the document we created will be addressed in the coming patches. This includes the launch of Bnet 2.0 and a substantial increase in map file size limit, perhaps 150 MB+.

Kam and PurgeandFire met numerous coders working in the Classic Games division in addition to Rob and Pete. All of their team is genuinely excited about the future of Warcraft 3. This patch is not a one time deal.

Destiny awaits, my friends.



UPDATE 19 JUNE 2017

Article: Warcraft III - State of the Union
Remaster hints and rumors, patch summary, Warcraft 3 to possibly follow Starcraft: Remastered model

 

[Kam]

Hello!

This has been an extraordinary process for me thus far and I hope to continue bringing you updates in the coming years.

I will add questions and answers to this post as I get them.

I've been wanting to share this with you all for some time!

Edit:
Some more scenic photos, and a gift I made for Blizzard:
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin.php?id=gc1e0x

 

[TriggerHappy]

Great news can't wait to see the changes

 

[KILLCIDE]

a substantial increase in map file size limit, perhaps 150 MB+.

Lord have mercy...

 

[Heinvers]

This must be a heaven sent gift. Thank you for sharing with us.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Well I'll be damned, this looks freaking amazing!

 

[Avahor]

cry... I cry... I remember 2002 when RoC was released after 4 o 5 years of delay... My Pc wasn't able to run war3 without spikes. I tried to open WE. all with spikes... it was amazing. Today I've the same feeling reading this.

 

[Meatmuffin]

Amazing news! And a huge thanks to Kam, Purgeandfire and anyone who was involved in this!

 

[Himperion]

Hopefully one of these days we get a patch with new content even if is only a hero and four new hard coded skills ; )

 

[Kasrkin]

Awesome

 

[Eat_Bacon_Daily]

This has made me more excited then when i heard about the upcoming patch. Now we have insurance that it aint a buncha ding-dongs working on this, but smart open minded people who have taken our qualms into consideration. I although reading this, i also realise the near impossible task the classics team has with trying to please the mod community that has broken beyond the limits of editor and keeping the game a professional product that *shouldn't* require any third party software.

 

[Aniki]

Poor "Classic Games department" programmers, having to understand/modify/update Warcraft III's game engine (aka "brainfuck"), are probably not having a lot of fun! =)

PS: could blame C++/OOP for being "major league" complexity magnifiers =)

 

[The World Is Flat]

Fantastic news!

:3 So excited!

 

[A Void]

Looking trough the list, I must say that I was not disappointed. Looks like Hive marked itself into Warcraft 3 history, I just wonder when will the Hive anniversary be?

Anyway, looking forward to this. Blizzard and Hive cooperating together.

 

[APproject]

Amazing work, guys, especially the part with Ezekiel's list and JNGP issue. Looking forward to see what tomorrow brings.

 

[fenix140]

Ready for next Upgrade

 

[Zwiebelchen]

This includes the launch of Bnet 2.0 and a substantial increase in map file size limit, perhaps 150 MB+

Wait, bnet 2.0 is coming to WC3 aswell?

HOLY FUCKING ALMIGHTY SPACE COW!


Also, yay for the map size increase. I hope we won't get a flood of 150+ MB maps though, because that could certainly turn out to become really annoying (folder bloat inc)... but then again, if we get Bnet 2.0, chances are we won't need hostbots anyway and get a map module downloader similar to how SC2 does it.


But anyway, I'm really excited to finally import higher quality textures and unit models without regrets.

 

[Linaze]

If anything will motivate me to finish SoC.....

 

[Bumhunter]

Great news!
I wonder how Bnet 2.0 would change the online experience.
I hope it makes hosting custom maps a breeze.
Also, what does a 150mb WC3 map look like? Must be like a new game.

 

[PROXY]

Wow, these are some fantastic news. Getting very excited indeed.

 

[PurgeandFire]

Thanks everyone. We were dying to get this out. We visited them on patch day, it was hectic but a worthwhile experience!

Poor "Classic Games department" programmers, having to understand/modify/update Warcraft III's game engine (aka "brainfuck"), are probably not having a lot of fun! =)

PS: could blame C++/OOP for being "major league" complexity magnifiers =)

Hehe. Yeah, the stories they described were pretty painful. Some of their classic games were even old enough to use a mixture of assembly and C.

And there are very few employees who are still around who actually contributed to the code, so it is definitely an uphill battle. But it seems they made a lot of progress to help the deployment cycle (especially with their patcher), so hopefully it'll be smoother sailing from here.

Wait, bnet 2.0 is coming to WC3 aswell?

HOLY FUCKING ALMIGHTY SPACE COW!

That is the plan! I imagine we'll see some improvements to the existing BNet first, though. For example, the devs noted that there were some arbitrary constants that were in place due to hardware limitations. I don't know their time schedule for these things (so this is pure speculation), but hopefully they'd be able to implement some improvements in time for the next patch. iirc, NetEase already did a lot on this front--so hopefully it'll be able to carryover for the rest of the world.

If anything will motivate me to finish SoC.....

That's the spirit!

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Also, what does a 150mb WC3 map look like? Must be like a new game.

You can consult many of the solo maps out there for how that could look.

Short answer:
Not much different. Expect hundreds of poorly made WoW-import maps and tons of music imports that violate several copyright laws.
You can probably destinguish the quality maps from the poorly made ones by just looking at the filesize. Good mappers will still try to keep the size down, but do less compromises than before, instead of just going on a random import spree.


As for myself, I will use the extra space for importing more unit models and higher resolution textures, such as a custom UI design and custom icons. That will probably take around 10 megabyte tops.
Other than that, I can't think of much I was missing even with the old 8MB limit. Adding music or voice acting to the core game files could be an option, but that depends a lot on how Bnet 2.0 is implemented. I wouldn't want players to download 150MB of music and voice acted files on every single map update, so that would still be externalized.

 

[Meatmuffin]

^ Like your map, are you considering updating it using fancier models and other imports, once the updates arrive?

 

[Vengeancekael]

I'm so jealous. If you'd told me I could visit Blizzard, I would get on the next plane as soon as possible.

Great to hear this though! It's reassuring to know that they're this serious about their classic games. Thanks to the people behind this endeavor, especially Kam and Purge.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I hope people do realize that BattleNet 2.0 has a strong chance of killing all robot hosted games right? Additionally they might add a map hosting system similar to StarCraft II where their servers host (like robots) removing all control from you.

The fact so much of it is behind non-disclosure means it is almost certain to be on the table but might never happen. The only time you do not want to disclose something is if it might come back to haunt you (a "promise" you cannot deliver). Well next to the obvious showing of source code and other such assets but that is hardly a patch feature.

This sounds like the thousands of pages StarCraft II Editor user manual that various SC2 developers rumored about. I am still not sure if it was just a rumor or if it really was a thing that never happened.

 

[Bumhunter]

Not much different. Expect hundreds of poorly made WoW-import maps and tons of music imports that violate several copyright laws.
You can probably destinguish the quality maps from the poorly made ones by just looking at the filesize. Good mappers will still try to keep the size down, but do less compromises than before, instead of just going on a random import spree.

Now that you mention that, I remember a big singleplayer map with some WoW dragon models and cringy music at the end. 14mb of pure manure iirc.(One can achieve so much with just rescaling and rotating of existing models.)

 

[Shar Dundred]

I'm so jealous. If you'd told me I could visit Blizzard, I would get on the next plane as soon as possible.

If only we had known...
I think then there'd have been many people wanting to go there (including me).

 

[Rex.]

Amazing Pictures.

 

[bear_369]

Mapmakers' wish is about to be real. That's is +150 mb map.

 

[pyf]

If only we had known...
I think then there'd have been many people wanting to go there (including me).

Quoted from first post : "One of our users, Kam, was extra optimistic and resolved to contact Blizzard directly to give input for the patch."

=> who dares wins

 

[Wareditor]

Great news! Really looking forward to the next patch!

 

[Ezekiel12]

Very stoked about this news! Mind though that Blizzard has to work in reasonable boundaries and we most likely by far not get the whole list or even half of it.

Expect nothing, be happy about every positive change.

 

[Shaeam]

I'd be incredibly disappointed if they carried over the idea of Starcraft II's method of 'hosting maps', it's easily one of my biggest gripes with that game's custom maps. (well... that and the inefficient editor)

If anything, I'd really enjoy them to keep the lobby system they've got going on; just make it more accessible for people to host maps. A method of bypassing firewall exceptions and router forwarding, so you can simply click "Host Map", find your map, and then click "Accept" and host it. That way lesser known maps have equal playtime as games like DotA or Island Defense. The lobby system was a brilliant concept; and it has significantly fewer flaws than Starcraft's system. The only thing besides bypassing port forwarding that I could recommend would be a built-in method of refreshing the lobby.

 

[DracoL1ch]

Very stoked about this news! Mind though that Blizzard has to work in reasonable boundaries and we most likely by far not get the whole list or even half of it.

Expect nothing, be happy about every positive change.

I can't see how such idea may even exists. Do they want to give a small breath to wc3 or just earn more money, adapting it onto win10? In the 1st case those "positive changes" means nothing at all. Game cannot even close compare to sc2, not to speak of dota2 custom games possibilities. Moreover, wc3 isn't mainsttream today, especially with tons of given restrictions, putted into engine. If they aren't going to do their 8-h job well every day, they could as well just do nothing.

 

[Heaven Editor]

That's wonderful! THUMBS UP!!!

 

[JaysProjex]

I really want to take the time to thank all of you for this & the hive community. I'm really glad we had the opportunity to be chosen for what is known to be one of the greatest games in history & to read what could be shared by are fellow hive staff/members I'm very thankful to be part of it.

Ralle
As I've thanked many times before & here's another to you, the amount of work you put into hive plus keeping it alive all these years & to think we made it this far you made it all happen, great job everyone!

Thank you!

 

[WhiteFang]

Wow,just wow.The feels are strong.I just finished The Witcher 3 now I have to deal wit this?I'm going to break down and cry later today if something else happens

Needless to say,this amazing news,and I'm excited to see Warcraft III stay alive,along with the Hive.Good times lie ahead.

 

[Rheiko]

This is certainly a good news. God bless Blizzard and very much appreciation for those who behind this.

 

[btdonald]

This news make my day <3 Awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee <3

 

[Kazeon]

I can't imagine how many new game play mechanisms there would be as following of that new keyboard and mouse tracker, if implemented. I really hope this will grow some more activities in the modding community as new features could possibly tickles ol'timers interests. Just let's hope Blizzard will do good job on advertising the new patches, so it can be delivered to everyone.

THW did a good job in keeping track on user suggested patch notes, I don't see anything's left behind. Thanks to Ezekiel's thread as well to keep everything in a single piece.

Just out of curiosity why it takes times to synchronize arrow buttons, but not for hotkeys? You know when you press buttons for quick accessing abilities, it doesn't need synchronization in Single Player, it triggers the ability right away. But why not for arrow keys as well? I hope this will be and possible to be improved in the future patches.

Ou, I also forgot to mention a suggestion. It would be nice if the default map scrolling, either by mouse or by keyboard (arrow keys), can be disabled via trigger. As well as the camera scrolling. So that we can fully re-create our camera mechanism to truly fits our maps.

 

[Skyflash]

Fantastic !!!
it seems we would have a lot of useful things in future patches specially the +150mb map limit!!!! Omg !!!! I`m so excited to hear that they have already solved the compatibility issue in high priority list ,it would be great too if the map limit and Dynamic Change Field at the run time and desync issues getting solved ,
I have to say thank you to PurgeandFire and Kam for bringing us the good news,
I think the Blizzard must cooperate with Hive`s Staffs and all of genius members of this site in order to Resurrect the Warcraft III,

 

[Chaosy]

Well fuck my life.

I guess I can't be blamed for entering the hype train now compared to the 1.27 hype.

 

[31337]

This is terrific! This feels as great as when they announce SC2.

The update to map size limite is absolutely amazing. I can't wait.

 

[MiniMage]

I wonder if it would be possible for them to ensure that you could add sound effects in ".ogg" format instead of ".wav", because ".wav" is unncessarily huge.

 

[Skyflash]

The update to map size limite is absolutely amazing. I can't wait.

Keep Downloading Cool Models and Skins We will Have Unlimited MapSize(Compared with 8mb )

 

[Chaosy]

I wonder if it would be possible for them to ensure that you could add sound effects in ".ogg" format instead of ".wav", because ".wav" is unncessarily huge.

WoW use .ogg in their MPQ, so I think that is fairly likely.

 

[Barade]

"the abilities within a spell-book reset to level 1" I thought they reset to level 0.

"Load a Map For Multiple Players" If they support this one day, I will mod Warcraft III forever

 

[Ralle]

Blizzard should have asked us if we have room for 150 MB maps before doing this. I guess it's time to begin using cloud storage .

 

[Edge45]

A new future awaits us!

 

[Radicool]

Additionally they might add a map hosting system similar to StarCraft II where their servers host (like robots) removing all control from you.

I Hope not. I never like the automated map making system. Rather I would prefer the current system improved. Seeing the games real people have hosted gives a better sense of community.

- Maybe an integrated server to download maps could improve download times. Less waiting for every1 to download the map, particularly when map sizes are likely to increase.

- Like mentioned before, a better refresh system to automatically remove maps which have already started.

- Could port forwarding be bypassed? If not, maybe there could a clear link within the map creating process. Something like "Hosting Instructions", or "How to Host". This link could open up clear instructions with pictures to explain to a beginner how to port forward their router.

- Allow chat channels to remain open when switching between menus. Players could remain in contact with friends while searching for games.

- Allow players to "group" before entering games, so they all automatically enter together given enough players slots are available.

Me: "I entered this game, join quick before it fills up!"
Them: "I can't find the game"
Me: "Hurry its filling up, just type the game name into the search"
Them: "Its a long confusing game name. Let me get a pen and paper"
Me: "Argh!"
Them: "We're finally In"
Me: "Where the hell is Tom"?
Game Announcement: *tick* 5
Game Announcement: *tick* 4
Me: "God, every1 leave quick!"

(Note, players cannot talk while searching for games. Constant menu switching is required to talk)

- I'm personally against bots. Reason being, it overloads the game list with a bunch of empty games. The sense of community disappears when everything is empty and automated. When the player base is spread thin amongst the over abundance of game lobbies, games take too long to fill up and start. Que times explode. Perhaps it could be fixed if all games are required to have at least 1 person in them or something to remain open? I'm not sure of a solution, but it is a problem.