A Petition to Blizzard - Wc3 F2P

[WOWWARS]

Well we here at hive are well let's face it are losing more and more to well abandonment, Wc3 is just purely being abandoned by the eyes of the market (Well it is no longer sold anywhere really).
I think its time for Warcraft 3 users to just give in and ask for a Free 2 play Version of the game.

This might as well be the only chance to send Warcraft's modding community back into the spotlight, which i think is a much better risk than this slow abandonment process that is happening now.

Starcraft 2 has already done this although well starcraft 2 is the diablo 3 of Custom Games (Arcade), and probably won't improve for years after Legacy of the void.

I personally just want to show my friends and such the stuff they have been missing out on, and fill up games once again.

 

[loxie]

Wc3 is made and hosted cheaply, and it still sells its Battlechest for about $30. I don't see why Blizzard would release the game freely to people just yet. Also, the servers are alive and well. The community is a bit different too. If you want to play a game, find a bot or a forum that hosts bots and have the bot host your game. Get people involved and have them play with you at specific times. I actually am in love with the Wc3 community more than I've ever had.

EDIT:

If Wc3 became free, could Blizzard like refund me all the CD keys I bought? lolol

 

[Adiktuz]

I think he wants it to be free because his friends don't have it and they cannot find a copy of it

 

[loxie]

Buy a new copy. Support Blizzard.

 

[Adiktuz]

That is his problem actually, if you read his post, it states that he cannot find a copy of it for sale... (though isn't it sold on Blizzard's site?)

 

[gorillabull]

keep dreamin kid

 

[loxie]

That is his problem actually, if you read his post, it states that he cannot find a copy of it for sale... (though isn't it sold on Blizzard's site?)

You can find it online or on Blizzard's website.

I recommend the latter since it's more secure and better practice to buy directly from the company rather than get it second hand.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

Is Diablo 1 free nowadays? If not I don't think Wc3 will be for a long time.

 

[chobibo]

Don't worry about wc3 modding being abandoned dude, they're gonna re-release wc3, I just don't know if it will have new assets.

 

[WOWWARS]

They should just make custom games free, exclude the single player, I honestly never even finished TFT it was just so frustrating at times.

 

[Adiktuz]

Custom gaming is a huge part of maps played by people nowadays... so just removing the SP campaign has not much bearing

but really, just buy it from blizzard's website

 

[WOWWARS]

or get blizzard to release the Multiplayer for free which would allow thousands of more to join and it'll be free.

 

[Adiktuz]

And why would they do that? A company will almost always do things for money or other benefits... IMHO, there's no benefit for them on releasing wc3 for free... They won't need the additional players that got the game for free, it's actually more of a hassle since that would mean more load to their servers if these people will use BNET, while on their side they didn't even get a small payment from these people...

Now if they're going to release a Wc4, then releasing free SP/full version of Wc3 can be used for publicity and attracting a larger player base for Wc4... Though I do think the effect will be minimal, so it might still not even be worth it...

 

[Zwiebelchen]

As much as I'm against making games free (free to play always sucks out some life of the games), it actually makes a lot of sense here:

It will basicly kill Garena, as then, everyone can just get a legal copy and use Bnet again. This allows Blizzard to put some advertisement banners on the bnet lobby screens to get some cash out of the now joined userbase.

 

[Adiktuz]

I won't bet on it killing garena... since people who use garena to play other games that it supports will still probably prefer just using garena

 

[Dr Super Good]

The problem here is not will they, but can they? Activision has done this before with Civilization Call to Power 2 with some success but it also had a load of problems.

WC3 uses a lot of licenced libraries such as PKWare and CD Protection that do not come with a licence to distribute source code. Worse is these libraries may have a per unit sold licence preventing them from making WC3 free even if it is done closed source. These libraries would have to be stripped from the code prior before it can be made free which would leave the game without major functionality and needing a lot of development work.

Privacy is also another major problem if it were made open source. Many of the developers may have created comments that were never intended for public view. However this is only a problem if it is made open source.

 

[gorillabull]

lol what kind of comments to yo think they left

 

[loxie]

//undead sux
//lulz ikr
//sorcerer is hawt
//sc was better

 

[Zwiebelchen]

//undead sux
//lulz ikr
//sorcerer is hawt
//sc was better

//nobody needs mouse natives anyway
//networks will never be that fast in the future, so 2 syncs per second for arrow keys is perfectly fine
//I hate that prick writing the object editor... so I will delete all functions which allow changing anything on runtime and then go screw his wife


And possible the two most used comments in WC3 sourcecode:
//just a placeholder
//does not work yet

 

[Rao Dao Zao]

//todo: fix this

 

[Zwiebelchen]

//todo: fix this

I can actually see this at least in 30 native declarations.

 

[Dr Super Good]

//I hate that prick writing the object editor... so I will delete all functions which allow changing anything on runtime and then go screw his wife

Ironically this is quite possibly the sort of comment the source may contain. Although maybe not as malicious but most certainly aimed at a person on person level with probably not all having nice language.

I can actually see this at least in 30 native declarations.

Sadly I do not think the source is that well documented. Chances are the comment will either not exist in the first place or that the comment was a cnp or does not match the attached code in the slightest.

 

[TaShadan]

Getting atleast the multiplayer parts of the old Blizzard games would be cool but very unlikely. WC1 is the only game they released for free. Even WC2 is not officially free yet (Blizzard seems not to care about War2Combat though).

 

[loxie]

Getting atleast the multiplayer parts of the old Blizzard games would be cool but very unlikely. WC1 is the only game they released for free. Even WC2 is not officially free yet (Blizzard seems not to care about War2Combat though).

Does B.net still work for Wc2? I don't own the disk anymore, so I can't check myself.

 

[Dr Super Good]

WC2 and WC3 are apparently getting updated ports to address the problem with growing incompatibility. At least that is what people believe from the job advertisements Blizzard posted a while back.

However these are still likely ports. I doubt many bugs will be fixed.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

WC2 and WC3 are apparently getting updated ports to address the problem with growing incompatibility. At least that is what people believe from the job advertisements Blizzard posted a while back.

However these are still likely ports. I doubt many bugs will be fixed.

I only believe it when I see it.

 

[Dr Super Good]

You will, it would be stupid if they did not use their IP (they might as well open source it and use the publicity generated to advertise new games). However I doubt more than 1-2 people will work on it and most of that time will likely be spent just updating the game from using old and deprecated technology so that it remains future compatible or is more cross platform than actually spending a few minutes and fixing the local handle bug.