Patch 1.30.9922 Hotfix

[pyf]

[...] No, they didn't fix everything and yes, they do need better internal testing but to be fair the PTR was up for over a month and nobody reported any of these issues. [...]

They also added a lot of things in v1.30 which were not in v1.30 PTR

 

[GhostWolf]

I can definitely repeat this by letting my PC work for 30+ days, then due to timers overflow I won't see any effects. Reboot will fix this for me, but not for some others. Thats floating bug with no way to reproduce it by will. Other games work fine because their timers made properly? I guess. Whatever, in the end it's less irritating than the bug with inability to click anything.

Now I am legitimately intrigued, since I still have no clue how timers or floating point errors are related in any way to graphics code or the graphics driver.
In addition, like I said, I did force a reboot (albeit I turn off my computer every day regardless), and also manually restarted the graphics driver, which is surprisingly an easy shortcut in win10.

I just want to play the game and have it working properly... :/

 

[DracoL1ch]

Now I am legitimately intrigued, since I still have no clue how timers or floating point errors are related in any way to graphics code or the graphics driver.
In addition, like I said, I did force a reboot (albeit I turn off my computer every day regardless), and also manually restarted the graphics driver, which is surprisingly an easy shortcut in win10.

I just want to play the game and have it working properly... :/

Under the "floating bug" I meant bug which cannot be reproduced normally, not rounding errors etc. Ask blizzard about how dx handled within wc3, not me. I just know some solutions, reasons irrelevant for me

 

[Barade]

I just wanted to mention that the JassHelper 0.A.2.B has some bugs:

• Wc3C.net - View Single Post - JassHelper 0.A.2.B - A vJass and Zinc 2 Jass compiler
• Wc3C.net - View Single Post - JassHelper 0.A.2.B - A vJass and Zinc 2 Jass compiler

It does not allow you to write comments like // bla after expressions like static constant integer bla = 10.
Besides, it does not allow you to write // inside strings.
Therefore, I replaced the jasshelper.exe in the Warcraft III directory with the one of version 0.A.2.A but now it seems to ignore my //! import statements completely and does not modify the map script at all.
With the original jasshelper.exe from the latest patch it showed at least an error message.
Is the provided jasshelper.exe a modified version of the original JassHelper or just the original one?


It would be helpful if you add some menu items for the following to options for the JassHelper:

[forcemethodevaluate]
[noimplicitthis]

These menu items could simply be checked or unchecked like the ones for the debug mode etc.

 

[Rui]

but to be fair the PTR was up for over a month and nobody reported any of these issues.

I thought these problems turned up when the patch went live. I find it hard to believe the PTR was up for so long and nobody noticed sounds had went haywire.

 

[pyf]

Again, Blizzard added a lot of things in v1.30 which were not in v1.30 PTR.

 

[luchin70]

I installed it and continues crashing when using custom abilities with specialized targets, Does this happen to anyone else? Before installing it, I did not have that problem and now I have it

 

[Remixer]

I installed it and continues crashing when using custom abilities with specialized targets, Does this happen to anyone else? Before installing it, I did not have that problem and now I have it

Yes, it still happens, Blizzard claims they fixed it, but I don't think so.

 

[MyPad]

Again, Blizzard added a lot of things in v1.30 which were not in v1.30 PTR.

I am intrigued by this statement. Would you mind elaborating?

 

[aeman]

one thing is off in my war3 folder
where the hell is my custom campaign folder
i found out that and created new and toss in a test
and found out

 

[MyPad]

Perhaps try moving it either to the warcraft 3 directory within documents or the warcraft 3 installation folder.

 

[aeman]

directory?

this was taken before i create the campaign folder

 

[GhostWolf]

@aeman since 1.28 the maps and campaigns are in Documents/Warcraft III rather than the game directory.

 

[aeman]

thx for explain

 

[pyf]

I am intrigued by this statement. Would you mind elaborating?

@MyPad: Please read this post:
Warcraft III - Patch 1.30

Changes and additions that differ from the original 1.30 PTR build are highlighted in white.

 

[aeman]

now another thing has gone wrong
i dont found movies file in my warcraft 3 both document and game folder
the campaign i download contain cinematics but doesnt seem to work as i create new movies folder

 

[~El]

Some other things I found, after messing around with Preload a bit more. Not sure if this was introduced in 1.30, but it would be nice to lift these restrictions / fix them:

1. Calling

Preload(...)

with 4 or less characters instantly crashes the game.
2. Calling

Preload(...)

with 259 or more characters culls it down to 259 chars. Since Preload is our only way of reading/writing data from files, it would be nice to see this restriction lifted.

 

[_Guhun_]

I'm pretty sure these new Preload restrictions are what is causing my map to crash whenever someone tries to save now. Would be nice to have the restrictions lifted. The game doesn't even generate a crash log, which is pretty frustrating, to say the least.


Additionally, the Hardened Skin ability no longer works. I don't know how this got past QC, since it affects melee games as well?

 

[BobOfficialPando]

Anyone got idea what change was made in 1.30 that would cause a map to not be acknowledged by wc3? (reports "There was error reading map file" when hovered; desc: "could not find map file on your computer".) Worked just fine in all previous versions.

 

[Akolyt0r]

Anyone got idea what change was made in 1.30 that would cause a map to not be acknowledged by wc3? (reports "There was error reading map file" when hovered; desc: "could not find map file on your computer".) Worked just fine in all previous versions.

I believe some protected maps do not work anymore since some map protection tricks are not supported by wc3 anymore.
I only observed this behaviour for protected maps. But since most of the maps are protected that does not say a lot.

 

[YourArthas]

At reign of chaos , I still can't left click on destructibles, only can right click them. Also probably it is reported but fountains(doodad one) texture is messed up.

 

[_Guhun_]

At reign of chaos , I still can't left click on destructibles, only can right click them. Also probably it is reported but fountains(doodad one) texture is messed up.

This is so frustrating, even when only playing the campagin in RoC.

 

[BobOfficialPando]

I believe some protected maps do not work anymore since some map protection tricks are not supported by wc3 anymore.
I only observed this behaviour for protected maps. But since most of the maps are protected that does not say a lot.

Well shit, got any clue about what type of protection are we talking about? Like some basic world editor file being deleted or more like corrupted data through hex?

 

[Akolyt0r]

Well shit, got any clue about what type of protection are we talking about? Like some basic world editor file being deleted or more like corrupted data through hex?

Well i just now tried to find a map which yielded this bug. On Bnet the it displays an empty error message when you try to create a game with this issue. I tried it 3 times and got kicked from Bnet. When trying to reconnect i get a failed to connect dialog. Smells like an IP ban or something similar.

I attached a map which has this issue. Maybe someone wants to take a look at it.

Edit: The Ban only lasted 5 minutes.

 

[BobOfficialPando]

Well i just now tried to find a map which yielded this bug. On Bnet the it displays an empty error message when you try to create a game with this issue. I tried it 3 times and got kicked from Bnet. When trying to reconnect i get a failed to connect dialog. Smells like an IP ban or something similar.

I attached a map which has this issue. Maybe someone wants to take a look at it.

Ye happens to me sometimes when I copypaste gamename, the IP ban is rougly 15min. I will do testing on the maps I have and try to find the exact issue.

On another note, still waiting for the fix on customs crashing, pretty sure it's the stackable buffs, it's been over week, any news?

 

[Lord_Earthfire]

I think the IP Ban is alrteady in place long ago. It most of the time happens when you try to spam request to join games which don't exist, for me that happened sometimes on 1.29.2. I believe it is a somewhat old method to fight spam bots in the game lobbies. I wouldn't be suprised when it is stricter with game creation.

 

[pyf]

[...] it's been over week, any news?

Please visit the Blizzard forums and find out?

 

[BobOfficialPando]

Please visit the Blizzard forums and find out?

You got me

 

[GhostWolf]

Reinstalling DirectX did nothing, but reinstalling the graphics driver did. Maybe fix this 15 years later?

And still not a pip about audio or custom maps being totally broken. The amazing shift for me is to see even people on the Blizzard forums getting annoyed and not downvoting every single comment asking what's up with every map crashing or the audio not working. Way to go with this patch.

 

[DarhKoopa]

Is it really operating in 16bit colour or is it just displaying that as a default value for the list? If using Windows 8 or 10 it should not even be able to use 16bit colour directly as that mode is no longer supported.

It is really lowering it to 16 bit in my case. someone in blizzard Forums posted the same issue, that windowed mode lowers it to 16 bit

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20767618272

I am using Windows 7

 

[chusrubi2]

Looks like Blizzard's got a plan B.

Oh wait.

 

[Kam]

Some users have brought up the idea that we should allow downgrading, which is an understandable request.

If we allowed this you would be unable to access BNET. Many back-end changes are not backwards compatible. The better option is to help us understand and highlight the problems when we go to PTR. If we receive bug reports pointing out severe issues the release to production servers will be delayed to address them. Many of the severe issues that were reported after launching to production servers had been live on PTR for weeks and not reported. Since then we've been working to correct those issues and you'll see another PTR to test fixes. For our part we've been working with many users to create test maps in an effort to improve our QA process. We do also need help though as there are so many ways to manipulate the WE.

TL;DR: Allowing people to downgrade is currently both unproductive and counterproductive.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Blizzard tried to fix the campaign saving bug:
[Feedback] Compiled List of 1.30 / 1.29 Bugs & Issues
but I can confirm that it is still happening in 1.30.0.9922.

Blizzard would need to force campaigns always use 1.07 patch data and force that game data set also for campaign maps so that they are in sync.

Now, the campaign data can get out of sync, if you have a melee map, an empty map, or a black screen open in the main window (F3), and your campaign uses 1.07 patch data. If you save your campaign like that you will end up saving the campaign in a wrong game data set.

Something should be done also for custom campaigns, which use the melee game data set. They have the same problem, if they save their campaign when a map that uses patch 1.07 data is open in the main window (F3).

 

[Dr Super Good]

It is really lowering it to 16 bit in my case. someone in blizzard Forums posted the same issue, that windowed mode lowers it to 16 bit

Warcraft III should render at whatever resolution and colour depth your desktop is set to use. Hence those options should not be able to be changed or need to be changed in settings while the game is operating in windowed mode (default).

They should be fully selectable in "-nativefullscr" mode. Additionally Windows 7 should still allow one to select 16bit colour resolutions. Windows 8 and 10 do not support 16bit colour native display so should not be able to select it and if it is selected should not be using it.

 

[GhostWolf]

I don't see a single post here talking about downgrading. Any response to what IS written in this thread, by anyone?

Sorry to remind you, but 1.30 broke the game, it's not exactly something you can just ignore.

Weird how I keep seeing people talking about all the amazing communication, but it's all in private messages and legal documents rather than actually having any kind of response to your regular users.

Either way, I'll stop posting here too, it really is pointless, like talking to the walls.

 

[Wrda]

I don't see a single post here talking about downgrading. Any response to what IS written in this thread, by anyone?

Sorry to remind you, but 1.30 broke the game, it's not exactly something you can just ignore.

Weird how I keep seeing people talking about all the amazing communication, but it's all in private messages and legal documents rather than actually having any kind of response to your regular users.

Either way, I'll stop posting here too, it really is pointless, like talking to the walls.

You have to face it, some people are just too dense, not to say even worse.
People bindly dreaming about new stuff and "increasing limits" and saying that "they're finally updating an old game so it's good we have that"...but fail to realise the aggravating breaks it has been causing, bugs and glitches that still existed. Why I don't see anyone talking about "raising the limit of moving units per player"? Or make a more intelligent pathing when it comes to some custom maps like kodo tag where you base on a cliff, block the entrance and have towers, when kodos get attacked they don't go near walls or barricades, they just stand out of the cliff waiting to get killled, seems like a total game glitch, no? I guess adding more 12 players and increase map size to 480x480, increasing doodads and unit limit to an absurd value is more important fixing crucial bugs. But no, it doesn't stop there, they don't just increase limits and the game functions well with it, they increase it and create more garbage non-sensical bugs. 1.27 broke, 1.28 broke even more with even more unnecessary garbage (like the 2 sided black bars), 1.29 was somewhat stable, 1.30 broke again. From what I heard, on patch 1.26 the playerbase of custom games was around 50k and now patch 1.30 is around 3k. Pretty good updates I guess? What's the point of even increasing to 24 players if the playerdata base reduced greatly and there are not only hundrads of toxic autohost bots but also a great number of unnecessary hostbots like mmh and ent filling up the whole lobby of trash. Hardly any game fills up fast nowadays because of this, if anyone needs a hostbot then they can just get one for free on the internet or ask a friend, but I guess that's too much and too lazy.
If updating the game means to ruin the game even more, then I'd rather have no more patches or updates. 1.26 was good enough, till then, if they're going to update then freaking test the new changes both singleplayer and bnet before introducing them, play the actual game instead sitting in the backstage, also relevant changes, not just minor bug fixes every month or whatever...that would be annoying.

 

[Jouven]

The better option is to help us understand and highlight the problems when we go to PTR. If we receive bug reports pointing out severe issues the release to production servers will be delayed to address them. Many of the severe issues that were reported after launching to production servers had been live on PTR for weeks and not reported.

Nice guilt trip + escape forward there. Omitting that there are issues affecting melee maps and the regular campaign AKA your "custom maps", "we aren't testing, but you should have!", still, since effing when is the player base blizzards testing team?

So downgrading is not possible, but PTR is? flawed logic, not that non official servers exists running previous versions

Since then we've been working to correct those issues and you'll see another PTR to test fixes.

So fixing 1.30 is going to take a long time.

Do you understand that the business model of effing up your game and making the player base your test team isn't a good one, when you aren't adding anything significant (more like the opposite), when the game used to work previously and when the players can choose to play that previous working version.

Not only blizzard has killed community 3rd party stuff without adding anything to replace it, in touch are we?, it did what I couldn't even have imagined: FUBAR the game and double down. Maybe it's time ditch the official release.

I though blizzard would kill the bots first, making me leave the official release immediately, I guess their strat is "break the game rush"

 

[Chaosy]

While Blizzard is a large company, the classic team working on wc3 is minimal.

What do you expect? Blizzard hiring a 100 man internal testing team like they can do for WoW?
WoW actually brings in decent money unlike wc3 so keep dreaming
Which means they rely on the community, how is this surprising?

 

[~El]

While Blizzard is a large company, the classic team working on wc3 is minimal.

What do you expect? Blizzard hiring a 100 man internal testing team like they can do for WoW?
WoW actually brings in decent money unlike wc3 so keep dreaming
Which means they rely on the community, how is this surprising?

A single person a handful of custom maps over a few weekends can discover most of these bugs. They aren't hard to find. Some are very apparent. The sound bugs can be triggered by pressing Ctrl-S twice to turn sounds off/on, breaks sound every time. Some types of maps reliably crash after 20-40 minutes, like Survival Chaos.

Lack of QA is no excuse. You can't rely solely on the user base to test your game, especially when most of these bugs are so frequent now. Literally anyone playing a bunch of custom maps over a weekend will crash 3-7 times.

If Blizzard can't afford a QA team for Warcraft III, then they shouldn't release untested patches. If not enough people are playing on PTR, then they should add more features for people to test - why should I go on the PTR (which is a 1 GB+ download EVERY time), if there's nothing interesting on there to test? I'm not their personal QA team, I just want to play the game without crashing every 30 minutes. Installing the PTR alone is a time-consuming process and takes about 30 minutes to do, with all the downloads and everything.

The fact that not enough people play on PTR is not the problem of the community, it's a PR problem and one Blizzard needs to fix - with communication, interesting features to test, whatever. Draw people into the PTR, don't expect them to check it out if all there is is a bunch of tiny melee changes.

Not to mention that this patch launched with many changes that weren't even in the PTR.

EDIT: Seriously, why is this even acceptable nowadays? Every other game launches with game-breaking bugs and the publishers expect their user-base to be their personal QA team. I can understand that for smaller indie devs, but Blizzard? I get that their team is small, but the impression we're all getting is that the patch was literally tested like, launch game, play map for 5 minutes, exit game, x10. Blizzard is a big company, if they don't want to allocate resources to test their own game, then they shouldn't even fucking bother. Why does the community need to tell them this? Why does it need to come to the point where the whole community is pissed as fuck for them to realize that they're doing something wrong?

 

[Marshmalo]

Some users have brought up the idea that we should allow downgrading, which is an understandable request.

If we allowed this you would be unable to access BNET. Many back-end changes are not backwards compatible. The better option is to help us understand and highlight the problems when we go to PTR. If we receive bug reports pointing out severe issues the release to production servers will be delayed to address them. Many of the severe issues that were reported after launching to production servers had been live on PTR for weeks and not reported. Since then we've been working to correct those issues and you'll see another PTR to test fixes. For our part we've been working with many users to create test maps in an effort to improve our QA process. We do also need help though as there are so many ways to manipulate the WE.

TL;DR: Allowing people to downgrade is currently both unproductive and counterproductive.

Hi Kam, I really appreciate the update, I want to help! How can I help?

I have been a map maker for many years and 2 of my most popular maps: Lordaeron the Aftermath and Lordaeron the Foremath have been broken by this latest patch. They were hosted quite regularly and two of the most popular maps within the grand strategy genre.

They are huge maps which lots of triggers and massive amounts of custom map data, if you can fix these maps I think you would end up fixing ALOT of other maps in the process. They ahve multiple issues with many players crashing during map loading and others crashing ingame, it would be a real dream to have these maps become stable and fun to play again.

But this brings me ask what it is I can do, as a map maker, to help? I can PM you with unprotected versions of both these maps if that helps? Any crashes I get I always send to Blizzard.

I will download the latest PTR and test my maps on it.

 

[Chaosy]

I do not disagree with everything, but some points seem narrow minded to me.

A single person a handful of custom maps over a few weekends can discover most of these bugs. They aren't hard to find. Some are very apparent. The sound bugs can be triggered by pressing Ctrl-S twice to turn sounds off/on, breaks sound every time. Some types of maps reliably crash after 20-40 minutes, like Survival Chaos.

This is pretty unrealistic to me. So let's say I am a coder who has implemented something.
It seems pretty silly to me to test something for 20 minutes+ to make sure it is working, hopefully in multiple maps as well. I would spend at least a few hours testing various maps, something tells me a small team of developers do not want to spend time on this and rather just push it to PBE since it seems to be working in their shorter tests.

That said, I would expect this to be done once before the final push and not with every change done.
Still, the wc3 community does some rather wacky stuff in order to achieve certain functionality, it would be a miracle if nothing broke (among the thousands of maps over the years) when changes are made.
Games that do not allow this amount of crazy flexibility still come out with plenty of bugs, though mostly less critical.

Iwhy should I go on the PTR (which is a 1 GB+ download EVERY time), if there's nothing interesting on there to test? I'm not their personal QA team, I just want to play the game without crashing every 30 minutes. Installing the PTR alone is a time-consuming process and takes about 30 minutes to do, with all the downloads and everything.

I downloaded the PTR for 1.29 for the new natives, if I was interested in melee maps I would most certainly jump on the PTR for 1.30 as well just to be ahead of the curve with the new changes.
And it takes more like 10 minutes for me so it is not a big deal at all, especially considering I can make the download happen when I sleep or when I go to buy food etc. 1gb is nothing in today's world.

______________

An interesting parallel with this is the WoW Battle for Azeroth prepatch (8.0)
There was plenty of crashes, realms(servers) being unavailable, characters seeming to be deleted, ingame issues, certain mechanics oneshotting players.
Overall, one of their worst patches ever in terms of critical issues.
Blizzard's lead director apologized on stream and promised that they would do better in the future.
Suprise, the official BfA launch had very close to 0 issues. I played during their global launch at midnight with no delay or lag whatsoever, smooth sailing.

 

[Khazmo]

Any chance that the limit of 12 selectable units could be expanded somehow? In this day and age such a restriction is pretty frustrating and unnecessary.

 

[~El]

That said, I would expect this to be done once before the final push and not with every change done.

This is exactly what I'd expect them to do, too. After working for several weeks on a PTR patch, I don't think it's unreasonable to spend a weekend playtesting popular community maps, at the very least. Heck, it can even be fun, and double as QA testing.

I downloaded the PTR for 1.29 for the new natives, if I was interested in melee maps I would most certainly jump on the PTR for 1.30 as well just to be ahead of the curve with the new changes.
And it takes more like 10 minutes for me so it is not a big deal at all, especially considering I can make the download happen when I sleep or when I go to buy food etc. 1gb is nothing in today's world.

I did with 1.29 too, I even tested my map on the PTR to make sure everything worked correctly. Same deal with 1.30, but since 1.30 didn't offer much in the department of new functionality, I didn't expect it to be so broken, hence my angry message. It would be understandable if the bugs were related to some new functionality, but as far as that goes, most of that PTR was supposed to be bug-fixes. Ironically, it broke more than it fixed, so what gives?

I guess the biggest shift was moving to CASC and using some other sound library (where I'm assuming the sound bugs are coming from). I don't know if this is at all related to all the other crashes, but it might as well be.

If Blizzard wants the users to report more bugs, they should also consider extending their logging functionality. As it stands, WC3 doesn't even always dump a log after a crash, and even if it does, the information there is very sparse. Heck, even an action log containing 50 or so of the last user actions would help immensely in determining crash causes and help pinpoint and reproduce bugs reliably. Things like, unit received order, spell was cast, sound/model failed to load, etc. Heck, even if we do report bugs, it's more often than not just "we did something and something crashed", because we have no way of troubleshooting what caused it without spending hours on trying to pinpoint the cause - which most people don't have the time, patience or skills for.

 

[Ralle]

Guys,

Having Blizzard participating on Hive is a great subject of pride for me. It feels like a mission accomplished. Finally, Blizzard is listening to us. Finally, they acknowledge the existence of Hive. Please don't take that away from me, because you have the power to do exactly that.

I understand that you are frustrated about things that stop working. I understand it makes you angry and makes you want to post angry things. But think about what that results in. Do you think that angry frustrated users makes them want to improve or just abandon the project? I am certain that if you continue speaking of them as dense and worse they will just stop reading your feedback altogether and stop visiting the site.

The best feedback is a detailed bug report with a sample map/code and a neutral or helpful tone. I know they're not perfect, but I also know that they are doing their best.

Remember why you are posting.

Ralle

 

[YourArthas]

Well what concerns me is that Blizzard willingly did that, CASC + sound change was just a step that they know that will break one hell of stuff, and they wanted to do it, why? .mix usage , .mpq usage etc for hacks, mods , private serves. They knew it and took that step but it was really a bad move cause innocent mappers\modders were effected so badly cause of it, and yes I think it is just cause of this 2 changes that customs are not working (and hackers probably have already found some other ways to hack), I think blizzard can turn back to mpq usage and old sound engine, I know they won't but they could do it, another solution would be keeping mpq's just to make maps working but using casc storage still.
And to give the devil his due; with casc system patches won't be 1 gb downloads for sure and it might mean they are prepearing WC3 HD Remaster and Bnet configuration (It could be done with mpq's anyway see: SC2)

Note: I mostly still use ptr when I'm not online so you can say that I'm always testing things, but well when our mod first came live it had bugs that community find out for us but after that I started testing stuff alot more seriously and found some bugs they did not even notice\bother and fixed them before making 'testers' of our mod asking for them, Blizz can do it alot easier than an indie mod, sure ptr most have active people to test things out but reported stuff must also make Blizzard more focused about finding bugs and solving them before people can't even notice

 

[pyf]

[...] And to give the devil his due; with casc system patches won't be 1 gb downloads for sure [...]

@YourArthas: fyi.

 

[YourArthas]

@YourArthas: fyi.

I know, I already had them I back then when Blizzard first started to patch the game again I sensed stuff like that will happen and I have atleast 3 copies of 1.21-1.26 and all of them are connected to my tools already so they did not break

 

[pyf]

My point lies in the size of the patches which allow to update from one version of the game to the immediate next one.

 

[~El]

Guys,

Having Blizzard participating on Hive is a great subject of pride for me. It feels like a mission accomplished. Finally, Blizzard is listening to us. Finally, they acknowledge the existence of Hive. Please don't take that away from me, because you have the power to do exactly that.

I understand that you are frustrated about things that stop working. I understand it makes you angry and makes you want to post angry things. But think about what that results in. Do you think that angry frustrated users makes them want to improve or just abandon the project? I am certain that if you continue speaking of them as dense and worse they will just stop reading your feedback altogether and stop visiting the site.

The best feedback is a detailed bug report with a sample map/code and a neutral or helpful tone. I know they're not perfect, but I also know that they are doing their best.

Remember why you are posting.

Ralle

I understand that, but 90% of the feedback goes unanswered/unacknowledged. I wrote a crapton of posts detailing the kind of features, materials, natives etc. that would greatly benefit the modding community, but I've yet to even seen any confirmation that any of it has even been read by Blizzard, let alone noted and shelved for some future patch. I write bug reports when I can, whenever I stumble upon a crash or some other weird behaviour, just like you're asking us to, but with so little feedback from Blizzard, it sometimes feels like shouting into a void. Kam occasionally answers one question in a thread, leaving all the others unanswered, and it's even more disheartening than if he didn't answer it all, because it makes us all feel ignored, and makes him sound like the corporate voice of Blizzard afraid to say more than allowed.

So far, the only things we've got out of these patches are a handful of new natives (some are nice, but it just barely brings patch 1.29/1.30 slightly closer to the capabilities of MemHack). It's just surpising that the community, without access to the source code or any of the internal tooling and documentation, has been able to achieve so much more than Blizzard, the ones who have full authority over the game and access to the source code.

There is word that there are a lot of "background" changes so that they can develop features faster, etc. etc., but we, as a community, cannot see that. We've been promised great improvements, over and over again (better editor, more natives, etc. etc.) but so far the results are extremely underwhelming, for all the instability, breaking backwards-compat, and other issues we've been experiencing in return, not to mention how long it's taking to develop all of this. It's all very secretive, "We're working on this", "We're improving things behind the scenes", "Great improvements are coming", "Amazing natives are coming soon", but it all rings very empty after hearing it for the Nth time.

I've also heard from various sources that Blizzard's focus with these patches is the Asian scene, the primary driver behind all of this, not the Western community, not Hive. We're just along for the ride. I don't know how credible this is, but it certainly does ring true from at least some perspectives...

I really want to put trust in Blizzard, I really want to see great patches coming from them, and I know that they're going to fix these issues eventually - but the issue is time. It's taking a painfully long amount time.

Patch 1.27a was released on March 2016. That's more than 2 years ago.

The flurry of promises started back then. Here's a few excerpts from the Future of Warcraft news post:

You can all rest assured that the focus is "not to break shit"!

Some tasks have extended production schedules, some are rather vague, some might not be possible, and quite a few are already in production.

I don't know if this is all fault of the hype-train, but with how optimistic everyone was at the time, the results we're getting 2 years down the line are underwhelming.
I won't even comment on the "focus to not break shit".

Here's another excerpt from State of the Union, from May 2017:

They reaffirm their priority to make sure things don't break, along with adding improvements and fixes for both the modding / custom games and ladder community. Yes, World Editor features, melee map pool, Battle.net delay, balance, etc are going to be addressed in due time. It's also been said that Battle.net 2.0 integration is on its way. This means Warcraft 3 will be fully included with the BNet launcher, bots won't be needed to easily host and find games, better connection, cross platform communication with players from SC2, OW, etc, and more.

One year later, and the only 'major' features we've received (if I can even call them that, they are pretty minor IMO, compared to what the community has achieved), are:

• 24-player support
• A handful of new natives
• Widescreen support

And... that's it. For 2 years worth of work, that's about all we got, and in return, we have to endure the pain of patches regularly breaking the game, the tools and being generally unstable. I haven't heard a thing about BNet 2.0 integration for a long time, no status updates, no ETA, no nothing. It's like it disappeared entirely from their list.

I really hope they can catch up and speed up the development, but the first impressions are what counts, and the impressions of this new era of patches are underwhelming. If this is the pace that they're going to continue at, then it'll take what, two weeks to fix the game? Some more months to deliver a small handful of new, straightforward getter/setter natives? Nevermind the more complex stuff, I gave up on those requests already. Maybe in a year we'll get BNet 2.0 support, if we're lucky.

Unless they change their pace, their internal processes, stop breaking the game with every other patch, give us significant features that can REALLY open up new venues of modding, I doubt I'll have the patience to stay with this game for longer. I'm sorry to say this, but as far as modding goes, there are much greener pastures to go to.

EDIT:

I must point out, that these criticisms, while harsh and perhaps even disheartening, are not necessarily aimed solely at the Classic team. I've been following this scene very closely, but I'm getting a heavy impression that this isn't just fault of the Classic team. A lot of it feels like decisions dictated by higher corporate management. I have no way to gauge how much of this is true, but I'm certainly getting a feel like the Classic team itself is getting bogged down by external factors. There's no way to tell how much authority and autonomy they have within Blizzard themself, and how many of their decisions are their own, and how many are dictated by higher-ups. Especially when it comes with how open they can be with the community, and how much of their intentions and plans they communicate. With that said, take my criticisms with a pinch of salt.

EDIT2:

Not to mention that so far, the feedback I've seen on Hive is far more constructive in general than the swaths of cry-babies and fear-mongers and other general pissery that's going on on the Blizzard forums themselves. Seriously, every time I check those threads out, it's like walking into a stinking cesspool. At least Hive has a few, veteran regulars who take the time to detail what's wrong with the game.

 

[Kam]

@Sir Moriarty

I was hired coming up on nine months ago and I have read, to the best of my knowledge, every post made in these recent update threads.

An important point to remember is that much of our efforts are focused on back-end modernization. You correctly linked the sound bugs to the recent implementation of FMOD Ex.

I've seen many interpretations of our progress from the community. Some never expected as much as we've done, some like yourself are underwhelmed. We've added over 95 natives to date, but the list of requested natives is in the hundreds.

I'll be able to be more candid on what we are working towards in the future. I certainly understand how frustrating this process is as it wasn't too long ago I was a map maker looking in wondering what Blizzard was doing with the game I loved.