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Bad responses to new patches?

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Hi. Recently, I've mostly only seen bad reactions about the new warcraft 3 patches, and I just do not understand it. I myself use 1.30 version now and I love it. It runs FAR smoother on my pc, than the older versions, and I have experienced no bugs or anything at all. The most exciting thing for me is the upgrades to the world editor, that now allow far bigger maps with more doodads and units. Not to mention, that blizzard already added JassHelper to standard WE and is seemingly planning to add TESH, as well.

The way I see it, the new patches brought only benefits, though I do not really play multiplayer on battle.net, so cannot say much about that. Even the whole thing with CASC... For now, we still can create and edit models using older mpqs. Also, can't we create tools to use CASC like we used mpqs?

All in all, I am just baffled by all the bad responses. Personally, I find this amazing. While not being warcraft 4, this still brings lots of new things to the game, and, with the map limits increased, gives US more freedom to explore and create.
 
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~El

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Hi. Recently, I've mostly only seen bad reactions about the new warcraft 3 patches, and I just do not understand it. I myself use 1.30 version now and I love it. It runs FAR smoother on my pc, than the older versions, and I have experienced no bugs or anything at all. The most exciting thing for me is the upgrades to the world editor, that now allow far bigger maps with more doodads and units. Not to mention, that blizzard already added JassHelper to standard WE and is seemingly planning to add TESH, as well.

The way I see it, the new patches brought only benefits, though I do not really play multiplayer on battle.net, so cannot say much about that. Even the whole thing with CASC... For now, we still can create and edit models using older mpqs. Also, can't we create tools to use CASC like we used mpqs?

All in all, I am just baffled by all the bad responses. Personally, I find this amazing. While not being warcraft 4, this still brings lots of new things to the game, and, with the map limits increased, gives US more freedom to explore and create.
Many reasons.

Patches 1.28, 1.29 and 1.30 broke a lot of custom maps as they were rolled out, and introduced a lot of bugs along the way. Some were fixed with hotfixes, some weren't, some (critical) bugs took 2-3 weeks to fix, leaving the game unplayable for many.

A lot of tools got broken, and it is not just about CASC. Many tools are no longer supported by the original creators, and there is no source code / replacement for them, so once they are gone, they are gone. A lot of tools were irrevocably broken when Blizzard introduced encryption to their binaries, with basically no hopes of ever updating them to work on new patches.

For a lot of people, these patches simply aren't worth the trouble they're introducing, and the classic team seems to have their own vision in mind regarding the game, which doesn't seem to coincide all that much with the community itself.

Poor communication from Blizzard also isn't helping anyone, and builds further tension. We have no idea what their vision is, what their plans are, what they're going to break, what they aren't going to break, what they're giving us in return, etc. etc. etc.

The WE upgrade you're citing isn't really all that much of an upgrade. JNPG and other similar world editor forks already had uncapped limits. They are simply bringing the stock world editor up to par with what the community had created.

Not to mention the whole bot debaucle, which naturally upset a lot of people.
 
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@Sir Moriarty
As I said before, I have not encountered a single bug with the 1.30 version. Speaking about Jass, this version runs it better than earlier ones, and even the error reporting was updated, giving the user better descriptions of the problem.

You say tools are not working anymore... What tools? SharpCraft? Again, as far as I heard, blizzard is planning to add TESH functionality to standard WE in one of the next patches. And what other tools are there missing?

About WE... Those ARE upgrades. JNPG could remove limits, but they did not make the game actually playable with them removed. You would most likely have crashed, had lags, etc. Blizzard made this and made the game playable. These limit increases are actually usable now.

Eventually, poor communication? Blizzard seems to be posting plenty in their forums and even here. What are you talking about?

As for the bot issue... I am not really playing multiplayer, but I've seen more than a few commenters saying bots were bad.

Maybe the issue is not with blizzard not listening. Maybe it is with the community not knowing what they want.
 
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As I said before, I have not encountered a single bug with the 1.30 version.
Just because you haven't run into any problems doesn't mean they don't exist. They still haven't fixed the animated textures yet and every single map with a waterfall on it is affected.

The original version of 1.30.0 completely broke Custom Campaigns.

For my own sanity I'm attempting to keep my own work 1.26-compliant because that was the last truly stable build (even though that also had its issues) while having things work on the current patch. So far that seems to be working out for me, although I can't use the WE 1.26 Object Editor anymore without it crashing, nor can I control things that 1.30 broke that used to work before.
 
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@DracoL1ch
Do you have something substantial to say, without throwing around insults?

@Razorclaw_X
Yes, there may be bugs, when new patches are released. That's not news in any game.
But those bugs are being fixed. Every new patch fixes more bugs. Have patience, for God's sake.
And BECAUSE I haven't encountered bugs, I do not agree, that there are so many of them.

I, for one, am glad, that this almost-20-year old game is being updated. The game already runs much smoother, and WE is being made more comfortable for Jass. And when blizz adds TESH to WE, it'll be perfect.
 
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~El

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@Amigoltu
Please, don't take my post as some kind of rant. You asked why people were upset, and I explained. I'll elaborate more on each point.

@Sir Moriarty
As I said before, I have not encountered a single bug with the 1.30 version. Speaking about Jass, this version runs it better than earlier ones, and even the error reporting was updated, giving the user better descriptions of the problem.

Just because you didn't encounter them, doesn't mean there weren't any. Patch 1.29 utterly broke the sound system, and introduced a slew of weird crashes and bugs. Some of them were fixed with 1.30, most weren't. Sound issues are still present in 1.30.1, like sounds not playing properly at all, or playing globally instead of locally, etc. The game was nigh unplayable for a period of around several weeks after patch 1.29, many popular custom maps consistently crashed. The game still desyncs very frequently at the start of a map - if you have a lobby of 8+ people, it's almost guaranteed that someone will desync.

Yeah, these bugs are being fixed, but:
1) These patches did not introduce significant improvements that outweigh the lack of poor testing on Blizzard's behalf,
2) It takes a long time for Blizzard to fix these bugs, while the game remains broken or unplayable for weeks at a time.

Considering the above, the inevitable question comes up - are these patches really that important that they need to be rushed out in half-finished states, potentially introducing bugs, while not really improving much at all?

@Sir Moriarty
You say tools are not working anymore... What tools? SharpCraft? Again, as far as I heard, blizzard is planning to add TESH functionality to standard WE in one of the next patches. And what other tools are there missing?

Any tools that relied on injecting themselves into the WC3/WorldEditor process. There was an extremely useful utility called GProxy++ that allowed reconnecting to a host bot game if you lost connection - now that will be gone. There was also another variant of that same tool that didn't require injecting - but it will be broken, too, once 1.30.2 is rolled out. GMSI, which is a utility for procedurally generating object data, relied on reading .mpq archives for initializing itself. WEX, obviously, is broken - and the JassHelper version included with the game now doesn't work for my map for some reason, effectively killing my map entirely, because I can't update it anymore. Useful utilities that came with JNGP such as ObjectMerger are also gone. The TileSetter from JNGP was also a nice tool - and while it's use is diminished now that the stock worldeditor properly supports tileset editing, worldedit still can't remove/replace cliff tiles, for example. TileSetter can. A lot of people have to keep a copy of WC3 1.26 just to work on their maps because of these reasons. The Blizzard replacements are simply not on par with the community tooling yet.

@Sir Moriarty
About WE... Those ARE upgrades. JNPG could remove limits, but they did not make the game actually playable with them removed. You would most likely have crashed, had lags, etc. Blizzard made this and made the game playable. These limit increases are actually usable now.

That's not true at all. The limit removers were just that - they adjusted several constants within WE to allow to bypass the doodad/whatever limit. Maps that did so before worked perfectly fine in my experience. The only useful limit that was raised was the JASS Instruction Ops limit.

@Sir Moriarty
Eventually, poor communication? Blizzard seems to be posting plenty in their forums and even here. What are you talking about?

Most of their tooling-breaking changes come out entirely out of the blue when they land in PTR. That was the case with CASC, now with host bots. There is rarely any explanation as to why these changes are necessary, what they would break, what they wouldn't, etc. We don't know what plans Blizzard has for the game in the long-term - there's no communication regarding that. Communication with Hive ceased after PTR 1.30.2 landed, as far as I know, and the blizzard forums are such a cesspool of immature toxicity that I don't even want to go there.

Most of community requests after 1.29 remain unanswered - not even denied, just ignored.

Maybe the issue is not with blizzard not listening. Maybe it is with the community not knowing what they want.

There are multiple thread with aggregated community requests. Each patch prior to 1.30 received tons of feedback, suggestions, and requests, but they stopped after that, because almost all of them went unanswered. The problem is that the community isn't united. There are multiple subsections that each want their own thing - melee people want fixes and updates to the ladder system, custom games competitive scene want bots and ban lists, custom games casual scene want to be able to play without bots, casual modders want updates to worldeditor and GUI triggering, veteran modders want extensions to JASS, better documentation, more expandability, and most importantly, for tools not to break.

Unfortunately, the recent patches haven't done much to please any of these groups, whilst breaking a lot, as I described above. The whole hostbot situation seems to be resolving itself as Blizzard address the concerns regarding it, but, a lot of people wonder whether it was really that important? There are many other things that could significantly improve WC3, but they choose to do the most controversial things.

Most of this is just fact, not my opinion, with the exception of a few points. You asked and you got an answer, and I hope this helps to understand the whole perspective.
If you want to argue about any of this with me, I will promptly ignore you.
 
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Dr Super Good

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A lot of tools got broken, and it is not just about CASC. Many tools are no longer supported by the original creators, and there is no source code / replacement for them, so once they are gone, they are gone. A lot of tools were irrevocably broken when Blizzard introduced encryption to their binaries, with basically no hopes of ever updating them to work on new patches.
Blame the tool authors for being so short sighted...
Poor communication from Blizzard also isn't helping anyone, and builds further tension. We have no idea what their vision is, what their plans are, what they're going to break, what they aren't going to break, what they're giving us in return, etc. etc. etc.
They are communicating regularly on discord.

Part of their current goal is to get WorldEdit at feature parity with SharpCraft/JNGP. One also does not need to be psychic to see that they are trying to incorporate WC3 into BattleNet application. A lot of the engine changes, eg the sound API, are simply routine maintenance of a very old product.
The WE upgrade you're citing isn't really all that much of an upgrade. JNPG and other similar world editor forks already had uncapped limits. They are simply bringing the stock world editor up to par with what the community had created.
For now. One can expect new features coming to it later once it reaches parity.
About WE... Those ARE upgrades. JNPG could remove limits, but they did not make the game actually playable with them removed. You would most likely have crashed, had lags, etc. Blizzard made this and made the game playable. These limit increases are actually usable now.
The limits are and have always been World Edit only. They were more guide lines on what a 2003 computer could run rather than actually hard limits before performance tanked. Performance improvements are likely from other sources such as not using as many deprecated Windows API calls.
The only useful limit that was raised was the JASS Instruction Ops limit.
And maximum array size...
Most of their tooling-breaking changes come out entirely out of the blue when they land in PTR. That was the case with CASC, now with host bots.
Not out of the blue. People like myself predicted them coming years ago... Just everyone was in denial about it instead of doing something such as open sourcing their tools or decoupling their maps from robots.
There are many other things that could significantly improve WC3, but they choose to do the most controversial things.
Which ultimately had to be done. With all their supported products using CASC it only makes sense WC3 would move to it. Like wise seeing how effective StarCraft II custom map hosting is it only makes sense they would do the same for Warcraft III.

The only thing that is not making sense so far is why there is no 64 bit executable for Warcraft III yet, instead we are having to use a hacky memory flag (with 32 bit builds) for some custom maps to work.
 
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@Sir Moriarty
Well, thanks for the explanation. I am not asking for you to reply to this, but...

First of all, both 1.30.2 updates fixed a number of issues you mentioned. And they both came out suprisingly fast. I wouldn't call 1 - 2 weeks a long time to wait at all. Many games (including WoW) would take months or years to update, and bugs were not immediately fixed.

Again, thanks for explaining, but I simply do not agree with such views of the people. Blizz is listening, but everything cannot be done instantly. It all requires time. For me personally, these updates fixed many things, e.g. having low fps on newer pcs, jasshelper not working propely, WE itself not working properly.
 
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Chaosy

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@Amigoltu


That's not true at all. The limit removers were just that - they adjusted several constants within WE to allow to bypass the doodad/whatever limit. Maps that did so before worked perfectly fine in my experience.

Err, what?

Yeah they worked perfectly but it requires addons to edit, how is that a good thing?
Obviously using the normal WE is better, so it is an upgrade. Though not in the way described by Amigoltu.
 

Dr Super Good

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and Will just does it as Will the person, not an official statement from blizzard.
He officially acknowledges and records bugs from what I can tell. He also occasionally asks what people think of various potential changes to WorldEdit, for example the other week he was asking if people wanted destructable and doodad explicit heights to drag and copy/paste friendly.
 
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