Community Appeal to Blizzard

[ShadiHD]

Dear Blizzard Entertainment,

We are a passionate team of developers working on a custom campaign for Warcraft III: Reforged. which is entitled: Chronicles of the Second War.

We are approaching two years since Reforged was released. During this time a number of projects have shown the potential the game has, and that there is a vibrant community waiting for further development. A global community has rallied around W3Champions, Warcraft III: Re-Reforged, The Quenching Mod, The Hive Workshop, Chronicles of the Second War, and more. For us this has been motivation to continue what has been a substantial undertaking, however we continue to face technical limitations imposed by missing features. For our team in particular the lack of Custom Campaigns is crippling. The last major patch was well over a year ago with nothing but silence and small back-end patches since that have continued to cause, sometimes severe, bugs.

Due to the now defunct Classic Team’s communications we know much of what we need is at least partially developed in patch 1.33. Custom Campaigns was even accessible in the Reforged Beta. Please do not continue to neglect this game. We know there has been little progress internally, that an outsource studio has yet to be found, and that Warcraft III is not a financial priority. The community is here, we want to work with you to develop the game as we did from patch 1.28.5 - through 1.32. Please once again communicate in a meaningful way, start incremental patches, use the PTR, publish patch notes, and have a dialogue with map makers. Your devs worked with the community for years on Discord and so many important issues were corrected. This community kept the game thriving for 15 years. Please work with us to ensure your resources are used where they are needed rather than where they are assumed to be needed. To this end we have included a list below of where we suggest you start.

We are here, ready to walk with you. We all want our game to be better.

LoreCraft Designs Team and their friends,


Cheers


Missing major legacy features:

• Ranked play
• Player profiles
• Custom campaigns
• Global custom games
• The lag/drop screen in multiplayer
• Clans
• Chat channels for Clans and separate lobby chat for custom games
• Foreign language support for World Editor (Only English and Mandarin now)

Missing major Reforged features:

• HD animations are locked to 30 fps, and missing many animations
• Reporting
• Skins for melee heroes
• Blizzard campaign balance was not completed. (We know this exists in 1.33.)

High priority bugs:

• SD graphics are degraded: Reforged - Research into Warcraft III Reforged's Classic Mode (SD models and visuals)
• Poor WebUI performance (We know this was substantially improved in 1.33.)
• Unable to load custom game saves in multiplayer
• Friend invites not working in custom games
• Many World Editor bugs, such as:
  • Abilities ignoring multiple requirements in custom maps
  • Engineering upgrade not updating in custom maps

 

[Nobelian]

Can we trust Blizzard? After what happened all this time.

 

[InsaneMonster]

I agree on everything, though I sadly believe this to be the most pointless post of the... decade. But I hope to be proven wrong!

 

[ShadiHD]

I agree on everything, though I sadly believe this to be the most pointless post of the... decade. But I hope to be proven wrong!

we never go pointless, @Kam reached out to influential people who will support us in reading this outloud.

 

[InsaneMonster]

we never go pointless, @Kam reached out to influential people who will support us in reading this outloud.

Yeah... I mean, WC3 is worth very little for Blizzard right now, so... those who decide would not care. But as I said, I hope to be proven wrong!

 

[ShadiHD]

Yeah... I mean, WC3 is worth very little for Blizzard right now, so... those who decide would not care. But as I said, I hope to be proven wrong!

we did our part, let's hope the ball keeps rolling and our voices heard.

 

[YourArthas]

There are models that are still not reforged

1) Ramps are using old models
2) There are several bridges missing replaceable textures and/or have wrong replaceable textures I've reported all of them back then to Kam
3) Rolling Stone Gate's are missing their replaceable textures and are only usable in icecrown and sunken ruins due to that.
4) That archway model using a stromreaver warlock model is still there, I've explained the way to fix it before.
5) Tilesets have that 'neon green' tint into them which is plain wrong. Also Ashenvale tilesets are irrecognisable compared to original(Classic)
6) Some Outland doodads have got their orm maps wrong so those rocks are messed as fuck
7) Sea Giant's are using "stand ready" as their "stand" animation
8) Beastmaster's summons are missing their tileset specific textures and we lost the feature to edit tileset specific stuff with local files.
9) Portaits are not using games pbr engine properly

I'll not bother to post artsyle and model feedback.

 

[StormKnight]

Spoiler: A Starting Critique

This is a good post but i personally don't like the initial wording, if your intention is to be a beacon of voice for the community then its important for you to exercise neutrality.

The Chronicles team in my opinion has the full right to mention who they are and where is this post coming from as post authors, but saying "during this time a number of projects have shown potential" is where it gets biased as it completely disregards and ignores any of the great Classic projects people have been working on, during this process, mentioning listed out projects in such a post was a mistake to begin with, if you address the whole community, then keep it simple, keep it neutral.

This is about Blizzard, Warcraft 3, and the Entire community, not a place for shoutouts especially bias ones, it does not at all feel like you randomly picked out a mix of Classic SD and Reforged HD projects to highlight, atleast W3C and Hive are neutral platforms. as they should be. justifying this type of shout-out and self promotion always runs through the risk of what YOU personally consider worthy of mentioning.

Putting a specific project trailer in a post that is meant to request help from Blizzard, this runs into the same above argument i made, post trailers equally and across many projects, or dont at all. this isn't about how competent you are, which you are. no body doubts the CSW Team, nor would Blizzard need justification of "look people exist that do good things for war3" to develop it or fix it further, it is their duty to do so no questions asked. putting a giant Here be our trailer right before mentioning the issues is unnecessary and distracting, and even then putting a giant "Here be our trailer" then mentioning the details of the fixes and bugs UNDER it as if its an after thought, not to mention specifically highlighting Custom Campaigns above all other features or issues feels awkward and uncanny to me.

Also, how is it a missing feature for Reforged if they do not add skins to the game ? is this where you want their development time and effort go when the rest of the game is on fire ? its an absurd suggestion, we have no backlog of a hidden list of unreleased skins, so this is like a request for content not a missing feature, a request that is unjustified given the amount of work that needs to be done to fix the game in the first place, it might be reasonable however to request an easier plugin, basically making local files a bit more accessible to operate then it is now, to load up skin and model packs made by the community. Warcraft 3 was always player content driven anyway.

HD Animations being freed of 30FPS lock is also a very questionable suggestion, they would need to remodel, THE ENTIRE GAME. what type of rationalization did you make to think this is what the community needs right now, it seems to me that its just a short sided "power request".
Its imperative for Classic and HD to remain animation~wise in sync, which is also part time beneficial for recreating classic models using Reforged animations and having a relief that the models are by default in sync, also frame locked animations are mostly exclusive to attacks, and spell animations, the last thing this game needs is uncapped animations forcing the game FPS to drop lower then the already unoptimized and hardly fitting models have, and desyncing frames from models with classic models would make fun projects like maps that fully support both SD and HD "literally" impossible, if it wasn't hard already.

With that said i'd like to help expand your list:
• Suggestions that should be largely beneficial to the community:

- Support or allowWarcraft 3 Champions to continue doing what they are doing, they have long since established themselves as a quality service that provides Ranked, Ladder, Matchmaking, Clan Chats, Player Profiles, properly split up region play, much more dedicated servers then Blizzard that
provides a quality connection when playing online, so ~ if Manpower, resources and money isn't enough, i suggest sparing that to fix what the
community had less control over, instead of the melee department that's getting a well developed treatment with the W3C service, a service
made by players for the players and a service far more reachable then Blizzard, for feedback, moderation, and further development. why
replace or make what exists ?

- Do not force hotkey display in ability names for custom maps, give us the option that allow us to disable this in the world editor so that we can write
the hotkey wherever we desire, force displaying it on the front is just bad design.

- Provide better connection servers, they are really lacking providing better servers, they should also merge custom game regions and split up
melee regions as it was pre 1.32.

- Bringing back Custom Campaign feature is a nice suggestion, but it has to be done PROPERLY, that means, ALL of the old 3D animated
backgrounds and the old menu system needs to be replicated and working.

- Providing a Classic Only Download feature for people that excludes the HD assets, for a light-wight version of the game, since Blizzard completely
shut down and took away the original client. and many will majorly benefit from this feature across the board.

- Bring back the old Filter button added pre 1.32 which was available for custom games lobbies online but revise its options to be more useful allow us to check a set of settings and hit filter to parse the lobby with it.

• Additional bugs and missteps:

- Melee pathing issues were reported by people on maps that aren't functoining how they should be:

Spoiler: Details

" Yes that was me, presumably. Although I do not recall unit spawn changes. Myself, and other TFT friends, noticed this. And to this day, from time to time, you still do. Most notably that heroes pop out of tight surrounds quite unorthodox. I've checked this in with multiple players who have decent MMR; former EPS player Desnodesnodaard (retirded now) but also the active streamer ArminvB and ~ 1800 mmr Thaedalius noted: "What did they do to surrounds?!". Since I'm Dutch I checked with Grubby as well and he noted, to the best of my recollection "They did not change pathfinding, but they introduced bugs into it". He forwarded my cases to Chuddy, as that his expert on these more technical issues (it seems). Chuddy by that time, independently of my observations and limited empirics, found similar observations and results. He even actively dedicated some video's to it."

"Which resulted him in doing a more specific investigation;"

"Ultimately I aggregated the same results of myself, some friends, and Chuddy in a thread on the bnet forums But we run into one core issue: legacy has been terminated and it is though to measure change with a platform that is no longer there to run. Even if you could; some changes seem to have occurred in the patches in preperation towards reforged. I recall Tod trying to deploy an inventory tower on the spot he was standing and his archmage ran all around his base to ultimately not drop the tower on the spot he was standing on to begin with."

Pls correct the pathfinding

Pathfinding seems awfully off. It just feels weird. I had this. Friends and clanmate have this. Stream viewers confirm this. Just today my ally with TC HH could not attack an ancient of war from the left. There was no building or units in between. Yet his HH and my bears wanted to detour the...

us.forums.blizzard.com

"I did make an attempt to reinstall legacy and manually patch, at the time I could find some different pathing, same to what chuddy concluded in the last video linked. However, another player could not replicate this and got the same results in both TFT and reforged. Till this day I do not understand why, unless pathfinding can be different based on nuances of the map (i.e. we all used EI but one may have been the offical EI and the other might have been an non official updated version)."

The above research was provided by several people, including Kiezel which wrote the highlighted quotes .

- Fix the Asset Manager, or more specifically the game deleting your imports after a save, there was also some issues reported with folder mode while the persons problem was reversed, such as, Asset Manager imports and saving the map worked fine, but Folder Mode was busted for him.

- Pre 1.32 we were able to more easily navigate custom games, single player or multiplayer the game remembered the last game we created, and loaded it afterwards when going back, Map Previews loaded and showed properly, and player numbers didn't show incorrectly.

- Lack of ability to select DDS textures in the World Editor from the dropdown menu for abilities or otherwise.

- Lack of visual UI distinction between whether or not Classic or Reforged (SD or HD) Mode is selected displayed on the main menus, really... switching to Classic mode should reskin the entire UI of the main menus back to how classic looked, this includes the scorescreen features and visual distinctions that existed pre official launch of Reforged.

- A Camera flip feature available in pre 1.32 on 1.31 using the - and + buttons was lost.

 

[Retera]

When I read this, for me it feels as though you might as well make an appeal to God or to your favorite deity instead of to Blizzard. Nothing in your post describes why your suggestions would be financially profitable, so it looks kind of like you do not respect Blizzard or their time. This would be kind of like if I wrote an opinion piece making an emotional appeal to why Blizzard should walk my dog, because we have a community of people who have gathered around dogs and who really loves them.

To be honest, I would have more faith in some attempt at an appeal to governments rather than to Blizzard. Because this seems like a failure of government that we have created a situation in which you can spend 20 years passionately working with a technology, but someone else is allowed to claim ownership over the technology and block you from working with it or from progressing, simply because that someone else spent 2 or 3 years writing the technology. Do I need to go into much more detail than that to explain how this circumstance is one that seems like a very bad society design?

Even as a hypothetical, if someone actually does read what you are writing who has permission to do what you are asking, it would seem that the nature of how you have asked for this invites that someone, that Blizzard employee, to be abusing you. It seems that this is what you want. Because you want to continue the relationship where your creative thoughts and ideas exist within the confines of a technology that you are not allowed to improve upon (and perhaps not even allowed to create derivative works of).

Do you understand how you, collectively, and your entire team and everyone who tries to take you seriously are the people who are guilty of creating this circumstance? Please try to understand that I am not being facetious. Around the same time as Warcraft III, I had some other games in my childhood. For example, we had a 2D game on the computer called Push Push where some pink guy pushed around objects. Imagine if I went today to the Push Push author and told him I desperately need his support and approval to continue my modding of Push Push, because unknown to him I've been modding and creating Chronicles of the Push Push Push and it just refuses to run properly without a new patch from Push Push that adds a third Push into the title of the game. To the developer of the game Push Push, who already created it and accomplished his vision, my emphatic desire for his support would be basically indistinguishable from trolling.

Maybe if you were reading really carefully what I was typing until now you might be wanting to get really mad about this because it seems as though what I am saying is totally unreasonable. Maybe I want to get mad at myself, too. But is it unreasonable? Why is it unreasonable?

In the months following the announcement of Reforged, I drank some alcoholic beverage (I do not usually drink) and it got me really motivated and so I wrote a Google doc for a friend that night about an idea called "Warsmash Project Proposal". For the most part, this document was sort of like my parody on the Warcraft III modding experience, and the parody of how I knew the future would have to be given the Warcraft III: Reforged announcement day. It was inevitable. I thought this was because of how we, the people who were doing the custom game modding, wanted something more than what we were doing. We wanted to spend time on this hobby even when it was not profitable and was totally under the Blizzard Entertainment corporate radar, because of how unprofitable it was for them. The quality of Reforged as a future product was completely irrelevant to my modding experiences that I wanted to eventually have. Because a game like that has a release date, but the fun that I was having modding Warcraft III with friends did not have nor need an "end date".

Based upon this premise, because I knew that eventually there would be a day when I still wanted to mod Warcraft III, but the official further production of the game had halted, you can imagine how after you've had something to drink it's easy to imagine that on that future day... you want to be your own ruler. It really is a problem of software governance. On that future day, I want to be able to keep modding Warcraft III and keep getting new features, even when the official new features have stopped being developed.

Even if your ridiculous "Community Appeal to Blizzard" was acted upon by the last sentimental Warcraft player within the Blizzard corporate ecosystem, and someone did add features for you, in the end you're just going to bring that person down. You'll bring them down to the level of whoever it was that told you all this stuff about some supposed Patch 1.33. If we assume those are legitimate leaks, then that's dishonorable for whoever leaked them. My condolences to whoever that was, as it would appear they were not acting rationally (and/or not in their own best interest).

So, anyway, Reforged drastically exceeded my expectations because it basically delivered on all of its promises. But what I learned about myself in the process was that I was already too greedy for the future. I was so excited when I got the 1.31 PTR based on the rumors about what it would contain. But when I tried to use it to add 3x3 hero inventory natively to the game, and I found that this was largely impossible, it was very emotionally degrading. I had been hoping that Reforged would be able to keep me living in denial for a while longer, and keep me forgetting about this plan for the future -- the "Warsmash Project Proposal".

But I did not succeed in living in denial. The new features were not enough to satisfy my hunger for "the power to do anything if I keep modding indefinitely". So, I began... to do the most ridiculous thing. I began to take the "Warsmash Project Proposal" seriously. And with it, I am rebelling against Reign of Chaos, not Reforged. It was the Reign of Chaos 2002 product that threw me off. I mistakenly believed that this product was made by humans who cared enough about me to respect the possibility that I would want to mod this game indefinitely. However, that was not the case. It was not made like that. In fact it was quite the opposite. It seems it was more akin to a fork of the WoW engine used to hack together a strategy game. The people at the same time took legal action against Freecraft. Those people wanted a future... where you would have to beg to their successors like you are doing now.

I had already gotten free of that years ago and created my 2D own game engine system so that I could make my own stuff in my own alternate dimension. I rewrote my engine three times, and the third iteration has held up as something that continues to be mildly entertaining when we play it with minimal desyncs (although they still happen). But what I found was that I had associated with the wrong people online. My online friends wanted me to keep playing Warcraft III and this stimulated me to keep developing Retera Model Studio and learning and growing my knowledge about a particular set of domain specific topics and technologies. But we are not free. When we use these technologies, we are supporting the people who filed lawsuit against Freecraft. That's what Reign of Chaos is. When you play Reign of Chaos, you first have to agree that you will delete all of the custom maps that you ever created if the Blizzard Entertainment company terminates your agreement at their discretion. So, one possibility in return to your "Community Appeal" might be that they could command you delete the Chronicles of the Second War "custom campaign maps" and related contents from your computer-- just to prove a point. This is what you agreed to for twenty years. I just... didn't read it as a kid... I don't know why... I'm not sure why, that's just what happened.

So, I changed to trying to use a technology with a different license. The Hive Workshop user @GhostWolf created a technology substantially better than Reign of Chaos from a legal standpoint. The only agreement that you have to make with Ghostwolf to use his technology is the MIT license, which is a one paragraph statement about how Ghostwolf isn't responsible and doesn't endorse your project or something like that, and other than this you can do whatever you want. You even can have all of Ghostwolf's source code for his simulation.

I read through his code and over a span of two years I was able to create a mockup that was capable of playing WarChasers map file. Do you understand the grueling absurdity that this was, and yet how every moment was rewarding, as a step to try to get away from having to beg to Blizzard?

Have you watched this video and soaked it in, really, that we have the shader program code for every pixel? Everything that happens in the video is in a game that you can modify in any way, quite easily. You can even make it load your Chronicles of the Second War maps and play those, if you wanted. Then you could make your Chronicles of the Second War game executable based as a derivative work on Ghostwolf's engine.

How are you... why are you... not writing your appeal to Ghostwolf, then? Or to me, I guess, for the gross and hastily written extensions to his work that I attempted in order to play WarChasers? When I think about that, I think it's when I realize that you don't really care quite that much. You think you do, but you don't. Because if you really cared enough and wanted to make an independent game executable like that, if we're being really serious, you would probably go use a modern game engine and get things running in a couple of hours. But, of course, if you want to be an old-timer, you could use the Ghostwolf engine like me.

Why are you not doing this? This is my Community Appeal to CSW. I think your content looks really cool, so why wouldn't you develop it for an engine that respects the possibility of you wanting to mod and upgrade the engine indefinitely?

 

[InsaneMonster]

This is a good post but i personally don't like the initial wording, if your intention is to be a beacon of voice for the community then its important for you to exercise neutrality.

The Chronicles team in my opinion has the full right to mention who they are and where is this post coming from as post authors, but saying "during this time a number of projects have shown potential" is where it gets biased as it completely disregards and ignores any of the great Classic projects people have been working on, during this process, mentioning listed out projects in such a post was a mistake to begin with, if you address the whole community, then keep it simple, keep it neutral.

This is about Blizzard, Warcraft 3, and the Entire community, not a place for shoutouts especially bias ones, it does not at all feel like you randomly picked out a mix of Classic SD and Reforged HD projects to highlight, atleast W3C and Hive are neutral platforms. as they should be. justifying this type of shout-out and self promotion always runs through the risk of what YOU personally consider worthy of mentioning.

Putting a specific project trailer in a post that is meant to request help from Blizzard, this runs into the same above argument i made, post trailers equally and across many projects, or dont at all. this isn't about how competent you are, which you are. no body doubts the CSW Team, nor would Blizzard need justification of "look people exist that do good things for war3" to develop it or fix it further, it is their duty to do so no questions asked. putting a giant Here be our trailer right before mentioning the issues is unnecessary and distracting, and even then putting a giant "Here be our trailer" then mentioning the details of the fixes and bugs UNDER it as if its an after thought, not to mention specifically highlighting Custom Campaigns above all other features or issues feels awkward and uncanny to me.

Also, how is it a missing feature for Reforged if they do not add skins to the game ? is this where you want their development time and effort go when the rest of the game is on fire ? its an absurd suggestion, we have no backlog of a hidden list of unreleased skins, so this is like a request for content not a missing feature, a request that is unjustified given the amount of work that needs to be done to fix the game in the first place, it might be reasonable however to request an easier plugin, basically making local files a bit more accessible to operate then it is now, to load up skin and model packs made by the community. Warcraft 3 was always player content driven anyway.

HD Animations being freed of 30FPS lock is also a very questionable suggestion, they would need to remodel, THE ENTIRE GAME. what type of rationalization did you make to think this is what the community needs right now, it seems to me that its just a short sided "power request".
Its imperative for Classic and HD to remain animation~wise in sync, which is also part time beneficial for recreating classic models using Reforged animations and having a relief that the models are by default in sync, also frame locked animations are mostly exclusive to attacks, and spell animations, the last thing this game needs is uncapped animations forcing the game FPS to drop lower then the already unoptimized and hardly fitting models have, and desyncing frames from models with classic models would make fun projects like maps that fully support both SD and HD "literally" impossible, if it wasn't hard already.

I agree on the critique, maybe it could be better to remove the trailer to help get the message through. I barely noticed it when reading the post though!

 

[Retera]

Also, how is it a missing feature for Reforged if they do not add skins to the game ? is this where you want their development time and effort go when the rest of the game is on fire ? its an absurd suggestion, we have no backlog of a hidden list of unreleased skins, so this is like a request for content not a missing feature, a request that is unjustified given the amount of work that needs to be done to fix the game in the first place

So, if we continue with my very cynical and gross thoughts in my previous post that make me feel bad for sharing them -- even though I have not determined why I was inaccurate -- wouldn't skins be basically the one way that some Blizzard employee who answers to a "Community Appeal" could profit? So, the skins would seem to be his one and only motivation?

That's actually a really good idea because it can give an otherwise apathetic boss manager a reason to work with us. We might want to guarantee in advance how many people would buy the skins, however, so that we're bringing into the deal something that the other side (Blizzard) can depend upon.

StormKnight said "we have no backlog of a hidden list of unreleased skins", but actually, aren't there the files on Reforged for these skins? I had begun to believe skins were the reason that the Reforged heroes look unusually different from their old "SD" counterparts. I think anybody on Reforged who was used to using the HD graphics, but wanted their Paladin to look like Reforged Uther for example, could pay to make their Paladins look like Reforged Uther. That way, it would look and feel more like the old SD model.

And Reforged increased the number of campaign hero models like this. So we already know Reforged has separate models that could be sold as skins for:

• Human
  • Paladin skin: Uther, plus many others
  • Archmage: Antonidas, High Elven Archmage
  • Mountain King: Muradin
  • Blood Mage: Kael
• Orc
  • Blademaster: Samuro, Grom
  • Tauren Chieftain: Cairne
  • Far Seer: Thrall
  • Shadow Hunter: Rok'han
• Night Elf
  • Priestess of the Moon: Tyrande
  • Keeper of the Grove: Cenarius
  • Blade Master: Illidan
  • Warden: Maiev
• Undead
  • Lich: Kel'Thuzad
  • Dreadlord: many skins exist on Reforged, unique per campaign hero
  • Crypt Lord: Anub'arak
• Neutral
  • Beastmaster: Rexxar
  • Pit Lord: Magtheridon and others
  • Dark Ranger: Sylvanas
  • Sea Witch: Lady Vashj
  • Pandaren Brewmaster: Chen Stormstout
  • Tinker: that special other version of the tinker in the Orc campaign section or whatever
  • Firelord: that special hidden model of a campaign hero firelord guy or whatever who looks different

So, there are at least 22 heroes in the game who already have special additional skins on Reforged most of which were not separate skins on the old SD version of the game. So if we're talking Reforged specific skins sold from the existing art files, they could be selling each of these skins for $2 and get $44+ dollars per whale player who plays Warcraft III and would be willing to buy anything they put out regardless of how lazily it was done. So, if that's 1000 players who would be financial whales in this way, it could already gain Blizzard $44,000 from a very minimal set of effort. That's almost enough to pay one guy minimum wage for a year to keep upgrading the game in some countries. So, it might make enough money for 6 months of support while someone comes up with another step to take after this. That's a lot of support...

 

[Ardenaso]

Can we trust Blizzard? After what happened all this time.

with Ybarra seeming to listen to his fans and Vicarious Visions doing aight on Resurrected (and some rumors of them working on Reforged after that) there's hope !

 

[StormKnight]

they could be selling each of these skins for $2 and get $44+ dollars per whale player

Except War3 players and community are not whales
seriously Retera, i know you're half joking, but this playerbase is in my opinion for the better, relieved of modern gaming culture mindset where people are slowly submitted and dominated by excessive monetization mechanics.

All of this talk is on the back burner, they should fix the game instead of trying to milk us, and if they choose to milk us first there is also a very high possibility that popular news media and then some will restart a major bandwagon against War3, pointing out how the game is broken and ruined but Blizzard found time to add skins for sale, which would be an absolute insult to the community. that's a solid warning from me right there, we will have more people leaving, more bad press for the game, more reason for no one to ever look back on Warcraft III as it stands.

If this was a chess game, this specific suggestion is very strategically lackluster.

 

[Retera]

that's a solid warning from me right there, we will have more people leaving, more bad press for the game, more reason for no one to ever look back on Warcraft III as it stands.

When I continue to try to imagine how I would feel if I were a Blizzard manager who did not care about War3... When you say something like this, it sounds like you're threatening them to prevent them from ever having a way to finance supporting Warcraft III. Why or how then would anyone in a position of power at Blizzard ever want to do anything for you when you feel this way?

Put differently, is there anything that the manager could choose to monetize that you would be okay with? Or, do you believe what is right and just in this case would be for them to work for you for no further income?

 

[StormKnight]

I think this is guilt tripping me master Retera, a properly function Remaster should have had none of these issues since day 1, i'm not going to go on some tantrum against Blizzard, i'm also eager and ready to help and support them with infromation and organization, but i'm not going to agree that its suitable for us to sit in a round table and casually talk about how they should add skins to milk us because poor indie company Blizzard doesn't have any money.

 

[deepstrasz]

Or, do you believe what is right and just in this case would be for them to work for you for no further income?

First thing's first. Re-add what they took away. When we bought the game, it had things that it doesn't offer anymore. That "work" should be for free from their behalf. The natives they added only made people more enthusiastic. Fans didn't come back or start mapping again just because of the new natives. There were multiple workarounds anyway for that, all made by the community. The way the company was gaining something from the game was through the audience during melee contests. Custom games weren't a thing in that way since DotA got its own game.

 

[Retera]

First thing's first. Re-add what they took away. When we bought the game, it had things that it doesn't offer anymore. That "work" should be for free from their behalf.

I am inclined to think that I believe I understand how you feel... but technologically I do not see how this is achievable at all. Especially not for free. You guys know that I made Retera Model Studio and obviously it has a ton of bugs and maybe I'm not the world's greatest or most righteous human being... but... you can tell I legitimately enjoy modding Warcraft III, at least somewhat, right?

And even with that being who I am, honestly I believe that if I worked at Blizzard in the present today (I will not) and if I somehow had permission to decide what to do with Reforged, that I would basically be forced to do something to make enough money to fund doing what you're describing. Because unless you're going to put random guys who left the company on trial and sue them for removing your features and make them into indentured servants to add back your features, I do not personally have any mental image of who you think would be the "they" doing free "work" for you in this situation. The systems of incentives and human behavior do not appear to line up with how we wish the world was in this case. I see no incentive for anyone in that company to do what you are describing. They sell mounts in WoW for as much money as Reforged ever made. We have to understand that when we talk about them touching Reforged, we are asking people to do charity work for a group of other people that they know and care nothing about. I do not know for certain it is this way at their company, but from my standpoint this looks like a good approximation of what probably goes on at their company.

We can take one specific example and dive in technologically with our thinking caps for a moment to try to get a better picture what I am describing: custom campaigns. It's easy to say, "They should add back the custom campaigns that they took away. It should be added back at no cost!"
However, it is actually not that easy inside how the technology works. There is the new menu system which never had custom campaigns, so as far as I know I would not assume that adding custom campaigns back to the new menu is simple -- it probably would require inventing a new feature system for that menu to show the custom campaigns.
Or, alternatively, the other option would be to make the new menu have a magic button that when we click it jumps the program code to start executing the "old 2000s game menu". This is more likely the avenue that I would go if I had to do free work, because it is likely to be less work, since the old menu system already had custom campaigns. But obviously this opens its own set of problems.

1. The old menu does not require a Battle.net login every 30 days, so creating a magic button to run that code again invites hackers to look for a way to get around purchasing the game, which is baaaaad for company finances
2. The old menu was probably deleted from the code after the Reforged Beta -- during that time TOM_RUS and the other hackers created a version of Reforged where you could drop out of the web UI and go to the old menu and play Reforged for free with the 1.31 menu. Probably for this reason (I can only guess), during the Beta patches the HD 3D Reforged "old menu style" background art was deleted from the data files, and possibly other necessary files were removed as well
3. It looks super tacky to have a magic button to jump back to the old menu, if it's even still possible

So, contrary to our sense of right and wrong in this situation, even this simple thing that on the surface claims to be "adding back a feature" ends up basically being a new feature request for some programmer. How can we get away from that? If you say, "Well, Blizzard should just make a patch to Reforged to make it use the 1.31 menu system", then I think that you are oversimplifying the problem. There are mods on Reforged now, such as Quenching and W3C and others, who created custom systems that depend on the new WebUI menu whether we like it or not. If you get rid of that menu, we will get even more community hate from those people who will lose the ability to run their mods.

Any direction that we could go with this technology will be like walking on needles, and you're still advocating that it should be done for free. I do not mean to say that your feelings are wrong in this case, but I am saying that when I look at the technology, I legitimately do not understand how any person would be able to do what you want. Someone inside of Blizzard would get fired for trying, and someone outside of Blizzard would not have permission to do any of this.

Edit:

I think this is guilt tripping me master Retera, a properly function Remaster should have had none of these issues since day 1

Really my goal is not to mess with your feelings. Or, if it was ever partially to mess with your feelings, then I was subconsciously doing that because I hope that by providing information totally contrary to how you see the circumstances, this might help you to get closer to what I see as the technological truths and government/society truths of the circumstances of this game. You appear to have done an excellent job deflecting my question of how any human within that company would financially support doing what we all wish someone would do. You did not appear to answer my question regarding whether there was anything you would be willing to pay their company for on this game, unless you were beating around the bush to say that "No, there is not anything that I would pay them for."

 

[deepstrasz]

The systems of incentives and human behavior do not appear to line up with how we wish the world was in this case. I see no incentive for anyone in that company to do what you are describing.

I was looking at it from a honourable humane way but of course it's not the case. They would not do it even if it was their fault. They would not do it even as philanthropy.

However, it is actually not that easy inside how the technology works. There is the new menu system which never had custom campaigns, so as far as I know I would not assume that adding custom campaigns back to the new menu is simple

We didn't need/want the new menu in the first place. They really messed up and from what I remember it was not an issue pertaining the UI why they "couldn't" keep the feature.

There are mods on Reforged now, such as Quenching and W3C and others, who created custom systems that depend on the new WebUI menu whether we like it or not. If you get rid of that menu, we will get even more community hate from those people who will lose the ability to run their mods.

Quenching is a thing of its own. It's not part of the game, it's a workaround. When the new natives were added, basically MindWorX's custom editors went obsolete. Also, most people don't use these external programs, they map with the game's editor.
It can be done for Classic I presume but that would probably mean splitting it from Reforged or adding a third option: Vintage Classic where they start from 1.31.1 and patch further.

 

[Archian]

Thread stickied.

Last I heard, is that the team working on Reforged only cares about melee games.

The utter lack of updates to Reforged and communication from the current dev team is disconcerting.

I'm sorry to say this, but don't expect any updates on Reforged happening any time soon. Which I know, is unacceptable.

Still we need to remind them, that we are still here. So I support this.

 

[Retera]

Quenching is a thing of its own. It's not part of the game, it's a workaround. When the new natives were added, basically MindWorX's custom editors went obsolete. Also, most people don't use these external programs, they map with the game's editor.
It can be done for Classic I presume but that would probably mean splitting it from Reforged or adding a third option: Vintage Classic where they start from 1.31.1 and patch further.

So, are we to just throw W3Champions under the bus and forget about it in this case? Personally I haven't used it, but I am convinced that it does really exist.

Surely it would be a huge technical cost to them if Reforged WebUI menu was discontinued. Has anyone built anything remotely like W3Champions that runs on the old FDF menu system?

What does community mean? Is community where we throw groups of people like W3Champions under the bus because I like the 1.31 menu, so I get what I want at a huge technical cost to them?

Nothing against you in this case. I probably ultimately want what you want. But I feel like the technology is in a place where there is not a social system that will fix it for us. Then again, I have my own solution that makes this all kind of irrelevant called Warsmash, so maybe I am very biased.

 

[deepstrasz]

So, are we to just throw W3Champions under the bus and forget about it in this case? Personally I haven't used it, but I am convinced that it does really exist.

Sacrifices have to be made otherwise we stall.

Then again, I have my own solution that makes this all kind of irrelevant called Warsmash, so maybe I am very biased.

Your solution is good if we all move to it. The same way, we move to a proper Classic from 1.31.1.
In both cases, you throw something under the bus. It's sad but if there's no choice to continue/fix what the company did, then the community will have to do it but in a unitary fashion. Now, we're practically divided: Quenching/Reforged, Classic/1.31.1, so on, so forth.
Warsmash might be the solution to use the current broken Reforged as a foundation of sorts but somebody will have to be there to understand Warsmah and update it if something goes haywire with Reforged like updates. For instance memhack was killed with a patch so if Warsmash would get the same treatment... I don't know. Warsmash is not a game of its own, right? It needs Reforged/Warcraft III for a mutualistic functioning. Or maybe, it's just a recreation of the company's game which uses specific files designed for the original game (.mdx, .blp etc.).
You tell us what Warsmash really is and why it'll be better than the original game.

 

[StormKnight]

So, are we to just throw W3Champions under the bus and forget about it in this case? Personally I haven't used it, but I am convinced that it does really exist.

Surely it would be a huge technical cost to them if Reforged WebUI menu was discontinued. Has anyone built anything remotely like W3Champions that runs on the old FDF menu system?

What does community mean? Is community where we throw groups of people like W3Champions under the bus because I like the 1.31 menu, so I get what I want at a huge technical cost to them?

Nothing against you in this case. I probably ultimately want what you want. But I feel like the technology is in a place where there is not a social system that will fix it for us. Then again, I have my own solution that makes this all kind of irrelevant called Warsmash, so maybe I am very biased.

W3C is something i support as pointed in my first reply in this thread, but Quenching ? not sure, thing is, W3C didn't simply replicate all that was missing for melee players, it did a better job then Blizzard and then branched out to adding Reign of Chaos and support Custom Games, but i'm not really confident in Quenching, its trying to replicate... something, but i don't think its going to be better because they do not have access to the internal files to do a better if not equal replication of how it was. so...

Also, i don't like your whole idea that somehow Blizzard does things "for free" the amount of money the rake in is so astronomically high and the level of injustice done to Warcraft 3 so unfathomably large that the arguments you propose hardly hold any weight, go try them for Diablo 2 Ressurected and i'd agree with you because the initial game is not an utter disaster, you got things to work with.

You are effectively asking people, that after Blizzard screwed Reforged to such a high extent EVEN THOUGH they were taking in pre orders when later down the line a Blizzard developer admitted that maybe it wasn't a good idea to take in those pre orders given the situation they saw coming, even after that, you're asking everyone that they should be willing to pay Blizzard some more to have an incentive to fix the game, that's no longer being unbias or neutral to the argument, that's literally JOINING the mega corporations in their attempt to consistently under deliver and over promise in an endless cycle and reach a point where people will fork of money if the game launched at day one with pretty much anything besides the Play button working and leading you to the main menu. which is VERY close to how Day 1 Reforged was.

The inital product they delivered after the money they asked and what the promised was LITERALLY an abjact lack of deliverance for the asked price. they need to CATCH UP to the money we already paid, LOL

 

[Rui]

"A worthy effort", Mannaroth said, "but futile!"

In all seriousness, it is commendable to try to reach out. I am just unsure there's anyone listening. In any case, you'd best leave out language support and skins, and focus on the essential missing features.

 

[deepstrasz]

In all seriousness, it is commendable to try to reach out. I am just unsure there's anyone listening.

Spoiler

Maybe there's a chance

 

[Retera]

EVEN THOUGH they were taking in pre orders when later down the line a Blizzard developer admitted that maybe it wasn't a good idea to take in those pre orders given the situation they saw coming, even after that, you're asking everyone that they should be willing to pay Blizzard some more to have an incentive to fix the game, that's no longer being unbias or neutral to the argument, that's literally JOINING the mega corporations in their attempt to consistently under deliver and over promise in an endless cycle and reach a point where people will fork of money if the game launched at day one with pretty much anything besides the Play button working and leading you to the main menu. which is VERY close to how Day 1 Reforged was.

The inital product they delivered after the money they asked and what the promised was LITERALLY an abjact lack of deliverance for the asked price. they need to CATCH UP to the money we already paid, LOL

This is giving me an idea. I think that when you say this, two of the reasons I am looking at the situation differently are that

1. I do not value money as much because I am still pretty young and still have a lot to learn and to experience in life with how to get the worth out of money, so I am choosing to be more accepting of the work that was already done on Reforged (despite its evident and obvious flaws), as being somewhat equivalent to the amount of money that I already paid. (To be clear, I am saying it was equivalent work for the price even if the work was maybe misguided. I see this as similar to how you could pay a carpenter to rebuild one of the walls of your house and then realize that there was nothing wrong with the old wall... and the reason your house was having problems was actually the ceiling or the floor. In such case, as long as I decided the wall had a problem and I decided to pay for a new wall, I don't blame the carpenter and I don't tell him that he "didn't do anything". And so I would not demand that he has to fix it for free. But at the same time, I would not pay him again for the same job if I could rewind time since all the work that he did in the end did not solve my problem.) If there are published Blizzard corporate financial statements that explain the expenses versus profits on Reforged, and if it made millions of dollars that were not paid to the people developing it, my opinion on this could change drastically. I do not have that information. (And I have not looked for it.)
2. Secondly, if you choose to look at this situation in the manner you have described, then for me I find that it might be best if you assume that the money you already paid was absconded with basically. Assume it is gone, and whoever took it has nothing to do with Warcraft III now. Will you still hold anyone who takes up the banner at the office and tries to publish updates for this game as now being accountable to work for you for free, even though they were not the people who originally took the money?

Warsmash might be the solution to use the current broken Reforged as a foundation of sorts but somebody will have to be there to understand Warsmah and update it if something goes haywire with Reforged like updates. For instance memhack was killed with a patch so if Warsmash would get the same treatment... I don't know. Warsmash is not a game of its own, right? It needs Reforged/Warcraft III for a mutualistic functioning. Or maybe, it's just a recreation of the company's game which uses specific files designed for the original game (.mdx, .blp etc.).
You tell us what Warsmash really is and why it'll be better than the original game.

To respond to the question, "Warsmash is not a game of its own, right?", this really depends how you define game. (Edit: WarsmashGdxMultiScreenGame extends Game in my Java code, and this is using LibGDX. So, as far as the APIs used in the LibGDX game engine are concerned, Warsmash is a game running on the LibGDX game engine.) You can feed it Patch 1.22 or Patch 1.26 or Patch 1.32 as the source of data or whatever. If there were enough custom Hive models with entirely custom textures (no Blizzard art used by the models), and enough custom Hive UI files (not based on any Blizzard art), and then custom Hive workshop based unit data information (not based on Blizzard's game units) then it would be possible to run, let's call it Zerosmash that has Zero anything to do with Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft III other than technological similarities in the design of the game experience. (Edit: So it would just be an RTS running on LibGDX game engine.)

So, your question, "Or maybe, it's just a recreation of the company's game which uses specific files designed for the original game (.mdx, .blp etc.)." is the most accurate description of this technology currently. If we find that loading and rendering MDX or BLP files is actually illegal (such that Hive Models Download section and its viewer are illegal) then Warsmash might similarly have some problems since it's just using a port of Hive technologies. In that case, we could just modify Warsmash not to use those technologies and to use different technologies/formats.

Warsmash cannot get "killed" in a patch, unless Battle.net or Warcraft III game applications start behaving like malware and doing absurd damage to the integrity of your PC, which they would never do.

And actually that's kind of why I bring it up in situations like this. I see it is as the solution. And it will have its own problems in time, and probably need to become Zerosmash eventually, similar to how Terraria was originally developed with final fantasy characters but they had to be removed before the game was published.

Edit: But, so, when I say this is the solution, it may be the case that it is only the solution to my own hobbies in this area. Making my own War3 clone solves everything because on my War3 clone, I can mod anything that I want. If I want to have custom campaigns, I can add a button on my game's menu that lets us play custom campaigns. Maybe I will add that this weekend to make fun of this entire circumstance if I get the time. Of course, it would only support w3n files that had no triggers or something like that, since my engine does not support more than a small subset of the triggers that I might want in a campaign. So I would be making a tiny, trashy custom campaign because of technological limitations. But what is so interesting to me is that if I make a list of the technological limitations, then I can fix them one by one without asking anyone else for permission. In this way, it is the solution to all modding.

 

[StormKnight]

I appreciate your responses but i'm no longer going to reply in a lengthy manner afterwards, standard healthy examples of activities applied by other companies across the globe in common sense arguments and feedback, slowly balance between whether or not the product is fair or its consumer base is happy is numerous.

If you have to write half a book and then some about extremely detailed scenarios and cases on whether or not the ins and outs of a company structure works one way or the other to somehow convince a fellow person who'd be statisfied with a basic well functioning remaster with no overambitious goals that kept the game intact and helped a happy, a relieved... transition. then something is wrong with your arguments not mine.

They replicated the same process for 2 of their own games, and many more examples showered across the industry, Blizzard relied on all the emotions, the hype, the atmosphere, the promises the charm and a pre existing community of dedicated people who were filled with joy, wonder and happy emptions, looking forward to enjoying and/or seeing the Arch in the great story of Warcraft 3's legacy get the recognition it deserves.

These people were met with failure on all possible levels of delivery as singular individual developers scrambled quickly to do something before their times were up, i even put a smile on my face every time i see someone from the community saying "i'll work for free just let me do something". problem is Blizzard as an entity has the resources and wealth to very easily supply and pay developers and iron out the issues with this game to its upmost specific niches and because of the nature of the game and how less of a cost that will be compared to all other willing and intentional missteps that by their own hand costed them more money and was the fault of no consumer, and compared to costs of other mega projects, that your scramble to "save" Blizzard a couple bux comes out as borderline troll~like.

You also completely disregarded and ignored my statement earlier that is an assessment of the nature of the community of this old game and how people will barely pay for skins especially in a unique game situation where set skins are cheating accessible through custom maps and local files even with the help of the very tool you created, and the danger of the game being under attack from large media sources in a time where shitting on Blizzard is a norm for various reasons of misconduct and otherwise for adding skins and asking money for a game where its on fire and its wounded, it needs healing and care, not a sign that says pay me more.

One does not simply bargin the future of their life with someone who abused them and left them for dead.

In short, they deserted us for over a decade, there was 0 financially beneficial recommendation for them to do these low key remasters of old games when they could be earning money otherwise, so the inception of this undertaking, wherever it was, maybe under Mike Morhime, was ultimately not driven by a financial first incentive. but they came in, took money and flipped our table instead of repainting it, and here we have Retera saying we should pay them to unflip it and paint it properly. my answer to you is Just~No.

Not after they relied on all of the "gaslight" to get to a point, you come and ask me to relieve myself from any possible emotion and see the situation 200% logically and put myself in the shoes of some investor, well i dont deal in extremes, sorry, i use emotion just as much as i use logic. a fine balance, for sanity's sake.

 

[Retera]

One does not simply bargin the future of their life with someone who abused them and left them for dead.

It's only you that was abused. I had a number of developers contact me on Discord leading up to the release of Reforged and asking for suggestions on various topics. They basically did what I asked. So maybe I am the one who abused you, actually, by giving them my bad ideas to put into the game.

You also completely disregarded and ignored my statement earlier that is an assessment of the nature of the community of this old game and how people will barely pay for skins especially in a unique game situation where set skins are cheating accessible through custom maps and local files even with the help of the very tool you created

Well, people who aren't going to pay Blizzard to do anything -- while there may be be many such people -- are not people Blizzard would do anything for as a result. So, aren't they pretty irrelevant to an appeal to Blizzard?

 

[Kakerate]

it could already gain Blizzard $44,000 from a very minimal set of effort. That's almost enough to pay one guy minimum wage for a year to keep upgrading the game in some countries.

Minimum wage in CA is $14! 44 grand, ignoring the taxes employers pay, that would cover 19.5 months of labor ;D

 

[Retera]

Minimum wage in CA is $14! 44 grand, ignoring the taxes employers pay, that would cover 19.5 months of labor ;D

Oh, I wasn't suggesting that the employees get all the money. With any large corporation or system, if money is made then the people making it are likely to get less than 50%. The rest goes back to the top to pay for IT and legal stuff. 50% is probably honestly high to assume our minimum wage guy would be getting that.

 

[Venombite]

While this is nicely written and all, I have to agree with people who said that this probably the most pointless post ever.

Btw how do you know there were ever even plans for 1.33?

 

[Napoqe]

I believe Warcraft 3 Reforged has been abandoned.
His reputation was destroyed by the disastrous debut. With many videos on Youtube and analysis of users with strong negative opinions about the game. Pushing away nostalgic people and new players.

I believe Warcraft 3 Reforged has been abandoned. His reputation was destroyed by the disastrous debut. With many videos on Youtube and analysis of users with strong negative opinions about the game. Pushing away nostalgic people and new players. Blizzard is in a bad phase, and I suggest that the community try to depend as min as possible on it. The @Retera project is interesting, although I understand little about programming, it seems to be promising. And I already take advantage give congratulations to him for the work.

Just a simple comparison of good and bad phase.
Microsoft (Good phase): Made remakes\remastered of 4 Age of Empires (1, 2, 3 and Mythologies. With Age of Empires 2 DE adding new features (new civilizations, new campaigns, coop campaigns). And lastly: Quake 1 remaster: Added new features (Cross-platform, bots for deathmatch mode, good adaptation for xbox controls, new campaign, possibility to play with 4 friends on split-screen)
Blizzard (Bad Phase): Warcraft 3 Reforged: Several features removed. Promised resources not fulfilled. Diablo 2 remaster: Offline mode removal. Server instability.

 

[Ardenaso]

I believe Warcraft 3 Reforged has been abandoned.
His reputation was destroyed by the disastrous debut. With many videos on Youtube and analysis of users with strong negative opinions about the game. Pushing away nostalgic people and new players.

I believe Warcraft 3 Reforged has been abandoned. His reputation was destroyed by the disastrous debut. With many videos on Youtube and analysis of users with strong negative opinions about the game. Pushing away nostalgic people and new players. Blizzard is in a bad phase, and I suggest that the community try to depend as min as possible on it. The @Retera project is interesting, although I understand little about programming, it seems to be promising. And I already take advantage give congratulations to him for the work.

Just a simple comparison of good and bad phase.
Microsoft (Good phase): Made remakes\remastered of 4 Age of Empires (1, 2, 3 and Mythologies. With Age of Empires 2 DE adding new features (new civilizations, new campaigns, coop campaigns). And lastly: Quake 1 remaster: Added new features (Cross-platform, bots for deathmatch mode, good adaptation for xbox controls, new campaign, possibility to play with 4 friends on split-screen)
Blizzard (Bad Phase): Warcraft 3 Reforged: Several features removed. Promised resources not fulfilled. Diablo 2 remaster: Offline mode removal. Server instability.

there's a new job hiring for WC3 recently

Senior Software Engineer, Reliability - Classic Games in Irvine, California, United States of America | Engineering at Blizzard Entertainment

Apply for Senior Software Engineer, Reliability - Classic Games job with Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine, California, United States of America. Engineering at Blizzard Entertainment

careers.blizzard.com

 

[Retera]

The @Retera project is interesting, although I understand little about programming, it seems to be promising. And I already take advantage give congratulations to him for the work.

I know I said this to some people and I might have said it to you already, but I am reasonably convinced that if I ever finish what I am attempting to create then the people will declare that it is more buggy than Reforged and all be let down again.

His reputation was destroyed by the disastrous debut. With many videos on Youtube and analysis of users with strong negative opinions about the game. Pushing away nostalgic people and new players.

Have you reviewed what you said here? From my standpoint it appears you are saying that what's wrong with Reforged is all this social media stuff that nobody on the Reforged team even had anything to do with!

I was posting negative videos about Blizzard's work on Warcraft III from 2017 to 2019. When I look back on it, a particular instance that is memorable for me is my video titled "Please Save Warcraft III" in 2018 that was published before Reforged was announced and before I even knew about Reforged. No one did what I was asking for in that video. But it goes back even further. In the second half of 2017 I was at a really low point in my personal life for personal reasons and I was watching too much YouTube as a form of escape. I published a video of Arthas walking up the Frozen Throne at the end as everyone says he's gone nuts where then at the end when he smashes the Frozen Throne to become the lich king, in that moment I walk up to my PC where the cutscene video is playing and I smash my computer at the same moment as Arthas strikes the Frozen Throne.
During that same period of my life, what I clung to as being good in my life was my job where I develop software, so in order to keep trolling me and telling me I wasn't good enough so I would keep feeling bad the YouTube AI was frequently recommending me videos made by this crazy man who believed that he was the greatest programmer on Earth, literally chosen by God. I got so tired of these recommendations that to parody them I made my own video claiming that I had been chosen by God to create the one true Warcraft III mod. In this 2017 video -- although I meant it as a joke at the time -- I kid you not, I went on to say that villains of the world were "trying to make Warcraft III HD so that you all feel inferior to the graphics and believe you cannot mod Warcraft III, so instead you have to go and write your own game." Later in the video I also said something about how my mod I was playing, and how creative it was, was proof that the Warcraft III graphics were perfect and idyllically simple and you cannot make them better by making them "more HD."

Having been a part of all of that since then, there are times I feel like -- when I was being a content creator with this edgy negative spin on Blizzard's influence over Warcraft III -- that I was encouraging the way people see Reforged now for literal years before Reforged came out. And my YouTube videos get very low view counts so I never know if I truly influenced things to be this way, but I believe it's possible.

For all of us as members of society we have a serious influence on other people. In our modern social technology climate, it is so much easier to be negative about something than to be a technological innovator that it is honestly amazing sometimes that anything good gets done in the world. Imagine if Reforged had never existed, and then a time traveler posted it on the Hive as a new Warcraft III mod for people to play, but only if they wanted to. Everyone would look at it a completely different way. It would be a profoundly fantastical thing. For me personally I always felt like the reason people were upset was the loss of the support for the old Warcraft III client. If someone tells me to hate the Reforged graphics or campaign changes, they're so irrelevant to what I care about that I can't really describe it. From my standpoint that's just manufactured hatred to serve the goals of some unseen third party.

But if you watch the movie The Social Dilemma they talk about how with modern social media and recommendation systems, the ultra rich have measured and confirmed that they can trigger users to become passionate about a particular topic without the user knowing that anyone deliberately decided to make them feel this way. They're completely in the dark about the fact that it's not an accident. I often feel like people who vehemently hate Reforged might fall into this category -- that they are not considering how maybe their hatred was manufactured to meet someone else's goal. And that could be Riot Games or Dota 2 or really a lot of possible ultra rich entities that may have decided in advance to have everyone feel this way, and I do not even pretend to know which entity or entities, but it seems like the ultra rich in society have nothing but pure gain if everyone stops playing Warcraft III and especially the map editor. On the contrary, if people played the map editor and all learned how to make their own game experiences, that would be terrible for most of the ultra rich entities in the gaming industry who frequently are profiting off of little or zero effort game features. I heard somewhere that there are mounts on the WoW ingame store that have probably grossed more money than the entire Reforged game. So if you think about all of Reforged getting the same budget from management as what they give to one artist to make a fancy 3D model of a cat, it starts to make sense. And actually I think the management was very sentimental and put a lot more money than that into Reforged, even though they didn't get back more than they would have gotten for the cat in order to compensate for Reforged.

So, I think the Reforged backlash has shown management that the guys who are making mounts on WoW are the people who are doing their job well, since those mounts typically do not see as much backlash as Reforged.

I can't save you from this society. Even if I do end up making "Reforged as it should have been" in my eyes, someone will simply convince you not to play it. You matter, and we all matter, and this is the weight of the real responsibility of your ongoing decision for how to spend every passing moment of your time.

What if all I was actually doing all this time wasn't making a better Warcraft III but rather trolling everyone and claiming I was? There was a time when I was so inspired by Reforged that I honestly considered the idea that behaving that way would improve Reforged itself, because they would be pressured to respond to my trolling by adding features to Reforged to match what I had in my parody game engine.

Here's an amazing video. After the opening all of the contents are clipped from past YouTube videos on my channel.

Almost every image is an inside joke, displaying some kind of feature that my Warcraft III has but yours does not:

This includes Reforged Patch 1.32 but with the old menu and not the new crap menu. This includes 9 items inventory ingame. This includes multiple folders in the Object Editor, a Model Editor integrated with the World Editor, and the ability to select multiple Unit types at a time on Object Editor. This includes a Behavior section on Ability Editor where you can customize what existing abilities do. It even includes a flight simulator played on the Divide and Conquer Warcraft 3 map.

These are my actual Reforged experiences played back in front of us. Isn't it fascinating? Some people didn't have the Reforged experience they wanted. But maybe I had the Reforged experience you wanted?

 

[deepstrasz]

there's a new job hiring for WC3 recently

It's not Warcraft III specific. It's classic games multiplayer stability stuff.

 

[YourArthas]

I believe Warcraft 3 Reforged has been abandoned.
His reputation was destroyed by the disastrous debut. With many videos on Youtube and analysis of users with strong negative opinions about the game. Pushing away nostalgic people and new players.

I believe Warcraft 3 Reforged has been abandoned. His reputation was destroyed by the disastrous debut. With many videos on Youtube and analysis of users with strong negative opinions about the game. Pushing away nostalgic people and new players. Blizzard is in a bad phase, and I suggest that the community try to depend as min as possible on it. The @Retera project is interesting, although I understand little about programming, it seems to be promising. And I already take advantage give congratulations to him for the work.

Just a simple comparison of good and bad phase.
Microsoft (Good phase): Made remakes\remastered of 4 Age of Empires (1, 2, 3 and Mythologies. With Age of Empires 2 DE adding new features (new civilizations, new campaigns, coop campaigns). And lastly: Quake 1 remaster: Added new features (Cross-platform, bots for deathmatch mode, good adaptation for xbox controls, new campaign, possibility to play with 4 friends on split-screen)
Blizzard (Bad Phase): Warcraft 3 Reforged: Several features removed. Promised resources not fulfilled. Diablo 2 remaster: Offline mode removal. Server instability.

I don't think it's fair to call D2R a bad remaster. Servers are not stable yet but it basically has no other problem(and the amazon is now a dude but atleast it's just one model when every WCRefucked model is bad)

 

[Ardenaso]

It's not Warcraft III specific. It's classic games multiplayer stability stuff.

which should also cover WC3 and it's good

 

[Bitterman]

D2R is on maintenance mode with blizzard blaming the players for overloading the game, War 3 Refunded is sadly dead.

The Funniest thing is that no one wants to crack it like SC2 because the old versions are still playable.

 

[Rui]

Lmao @Retera love your posts and videos. I for one can't claim to be influenced by the rich companies on social media though, since my first and only stop for Reforged ever was the Hive

Hold on a second, since when did Warmash get an editor?

 

[Retera]

Hold on a second, since when did Warmash get an editor?

I don't think anyone said that it had that. I was thinking about adopting HiveWE into my workflow, but I got bored trying to compile it halfway through and went back to playing around on Warsmash. It's important to keep yourself entertained. I'm sure I'll get back to it later.

Edit: (That's pretty off-topic, though.)