Hey guys,

Today I am announcing a new little feature called "Download Statistics". On every bundle, you can view the number of downloads by hour, day and month. I hope you like it.

Preview

NOTE: The monthly graph is empty and will be until April, but will only be full in a year.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20753167621

Battle.net maintence today for classic games. This includes Warcraft 3, of course.

Note that this is maintenance, not patch 1.27c or 1.28. AKA "The Patch". However, there is a possibility that this could be a blessing or for improving ping and removing exploits and hackers. We'll update the thread when necessary.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's day!

Fall in Love buff/effect

Greetings Hivers!
We bring you some updates regarding the sites hosted projects and a new useful feature for finding resources you like.

New Hosted Project Display
We have, for a long time, wanted to give hosted projects a place in the sun. A simple section far down on the forum list just wasn't good enough. So, we decided to give the projects display a worthy design update, in a relevant place.

If you haven't noticed it already, it is already live in the maps section!
It looks like this:


You can also check it out in the maps section in its full glory!

Every hour eight random projects are displayed of which two are completed and six are active.
If there is not enough projects to display of one type, it will fill in from the other type. That is why it currently displays more than two completed ones.
The completed projects are marked with a golden tick.


Completed Projects
We are pleased to announce that two hosted projects have been finished!
Those projects have been hosted and created new amazing content for a long time, and now, at long last, they are completed.

The projects we are talking about are The Dwarven Monster Slayers and The Chosen Ones.

The Dwarven Monster Slayers Dwarven Monster Slayers is a fast paced 1-5 player coop survival arcade RPG slasher game. The map features a massive load of completely new monsters, a detailed and atmospheric dungeon scenario, a considerably amount of gore and for the best: DWARVES! The project has been hosted on the hive since June 2013, and been active all the way until today, when it is finally finished. But its story doesn't end here! During the time it was hosted on the Hive, DMS have grown its own wings, and been turned into a standalone game, independent of Warcraft III! MoCo, the developer of DMS, has created an awesome website where you can follow the progress and development of the game, and I can only speak for myself but, it is looking so awesome. I'm sure he would be very glad if you check it out! www.dwarvenmonsterslayers.com Download - Forum

The Chosen Ones Enter the world of Oelivert and experience a strong storyline that covers hate, love, war and peace. The Chosen Ones is a singleplayer RPG that contains dozens of hours of content and an awesome amount of secrets to be found. The project has been hosted on the hive since February 2013, and have been finished for quite a while already. But wait! There's more! Aeroblyctos, the author of TCO, has lately been expanding even further on the already complex and intriguing story of the game in the form of a book! There has not yet been released even a sneakpeek on the story itself, but from the looks of Aeroblyctos casual updates, it seems like it is progressing just fine. However, I hope that he will do an offical shout out when he finishes it! Download - Forum

Thanks a bunch to both of you for contributing to the Hive with such awesome projects!

New Resource List Feature
Today we are also super excited to introduce another new feature for models, icons and textures called "View Usage" and one for maps called "View Resources In Use". When a map is uploaded, all files inside of the map are extracted for their "finger prints" to be indexed. This allows us to cross reference it with resources uploaded to the site and the reverse, see which maps use a resource you uploaded.
Let me show you how it works:

I am viewing the map Sunken City by SpasMaster and clicking "View Resources In Use":


The following page shows up with a list of all resources on the site that are in use in this map:


Now I click on the resource Grassie by HappyTauren and click "View Usage":


And this page shows up with a list of all maps that use this model:


We believe this feature will be awesome for a lot of you.
For those mappers that forget to make a credit list, they can get some pretty serious help making one this way.
For those artists wanting to see if people use their work and to shout at them for forgetting to give credit.
Enjoy this new feature!


Note: This news is most likely posted while the existing map database is being indexed, so please stand by while the indexing takes place. We have quite a lot of maps to index.

Hey guys,

We're happy to wish you all holiday greetings and a happy new year! The time has come for us to write something nice and feel-good about the ending of the year.

This year has been a very interesting one, for both the site and the Warcraft 3 community. Here is a summary of the highlights that happened during the past year:

• Blizzard started working on Warcraft 3 again:
  • Members Kam and PurgeandFire have visited Blizzard headquarters back in March regarding the Future of WC3.
    
  • Multiple Hive staff members have been in direct contact with Blizzard’s classic game team since.
    
  • Blizzard put up more and more classic game job listings.
    
  • Added the new Patch Discussion sub-forum.
  • Patch 1.27b raised the 8mb multiplayer limit to 128mb.
  • MindWorX, the official maintainer of JNGP, started working on JNGP for the updated versions of WC3 while in contact with Blizzard.
• The long awaited Hive 2 was released and updated rapidly throughout the year.
  
• Partnerships and collaborations with multiple dedicated WC3 communities, persons, and websites:
  • Our newest affiliate, Back2Warcraft, live-casted the biggest WC3 tournaments in the world and supported The Hive.
    
  • Map hosting and arranged gaming became more accessible by collaboration with MakeMeHost and ENT.
    
  • Showcased custom map inspired games such as Legion TD 2 and Element TD mobile.
• Added a new community live-streaming feature, with over 50 unique Twitch channels participating.
  
• Revived our Twitter, created our official Facebook page, and launched our YouTube channel.
  
• Made our first Hive Hoodie & T-Shirt merchandise.
  
• Hosted two new projects, World Domination and Warden, while current projects managed to keep pumping out great updates.
  
• Introduced resource reviewers to help out the resource moderation.
• The Art and Graphic Design section has been revitalized with amazing artwork and useful threads.
• Abelhawk created an amazing WC3 campaign easter egg series and interviewed campaign designer David Fried.
• Completed a total of 20 contests in The Arena, the most since 2011.
• Continuation of the community providing thousands of newly released resources, many with fantastic quality and creativity. Highest rated resources that were released in 2016:
  • n00b's Monter2 was the best rated multiplayer map.
  • Rufus' Warden was the best rated singleplayer campaign.
  • Tauer's Anduin Lothar was the best rated model.
  • Blood Raven's Soul Harvester Scythe was the best rated attachment.
  • Heinvers' Fel Lord was the best rated skin.
  • Sin'dorei300's Mirjana was the best rated icon.
  • KILLCIDE's Arcane Bomb was the best rated spell.
  • Flux's Dummy Recycler was the best rated system.
  • Quilnez's Warcraft 3 Shell Extension Register was the best rated tool.

It was a very good year for The Hive Workshop, but we can say that it still feels like this is just the beginning. The new site has been lacking in some areas compared to the old one, but is rapidly improving and in many cases far superior now. We're excited about being able to add new features that have been planned for years, and that we're sure you will love.
Keep on the lookout for current maps expanding past 8mb, and new maps being created to use the limit raise to its full potential. The hosted project Gaias Retaliation has even been ready for a while with their awesome 50 mb version.

Bring on 2017!

This news post has been updated frequently due to live coverage of the patch. You will see replies in reaction to earlier statements.

Can't access the patch through Battle.net? You can download the patch here: Patching Classic Games

Despite Blizzard's patch notes not mentioning it, we have confirmation that the 8mb multiplayer limit for maps has been removed on Battle.net, with the new limit being 128mb! Various Hive Workshop users have tested out maps over 8mb, including a specialized version Gaias Retalliation ORPG which is around 50mb. Map maker @Zwiebelchen succeeded to host and play that map online in Battle.net. Other map makers and testers reported the same.

What does this mean? This means one of the biggest limits of WC3 modding has been taken off. There is so much more map makers and other types of modders can do now! This makes room for more creativity, complexity, and higher quality content, along with more things to experience and improve in custom games online. The top RPGs can finally be expanded. Epic strategy maps can now have more room for upping the quality without sacrificing quantity. Horror, first person shooter, anime, Sci-Fi, and more types of maps can be taken to a whole another level. We can also see more hi-res imports from models, textures, etc.

There are also some World Editor and file changes (including bug fixes) reported by some users, and you can discuss some of the specifics in this thread or throughout the Patch Discussion forum. We'll hope to have some sort of list of the changes and bug fixes.

Here you can find our thread from may regarding our meeting with Blizzard about The Future of Warcraft. You can find the PDF document Blizzard seems to be following attached to the bottom of the mini-article's first post. We know there haven't been any melee / ladder changes, but those things plus more emphasized in the document we sent Blizzard.

UPDATE: Blizzard confirms everything! Added screenshot to the top. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752625996
Blizzard calls this a small patch, more to come in the future: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752465862#post-17


The older, announcement news for this patch is below.​

Old News

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752496109
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Battle.net players could be experiencing some downtime today.

@Ralle and I are betting it's just a compatibility patch that continues off of 1.27a. This should not be the 'big patch' we are expecting with our talks with Blizzard. However, with any patch, we'll keep everyone updated with details on this thread if anything notable happens!

UPDATE1: Patch notes. So far, unspecified bug fixes and maintenance.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752625996

UPDATE2: There are reports that the Northrend (Europe) realm is down or bugged at the moment. Azeroth (US East) seems to work, though.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752465862?page=1

UPDATE3: The Battle.net realms appear to be working now. Reported quick fix: Patch on a different server than Northrend, then Northrend should be able to work.

UPDATE4: Northrend is undergoing official maintenance / downtime.

UPDATE5: Maintenance appears to be over.