If someone deletes their resource, forum needs to respect that decision.
Then why do so many people praise it when someone posts Warcraft 3 game models from Blizzard that were deleted or overridden by Reforged:
Lost Reign of Chaos Models
Are we to believe that everything you are saying about resources being made by real people does not apply to Activision Blizzard? What if Activision Blizzard decides next year to make a patch to Warcraft 3 to delete the "Classic Graphics" to make the game easier to maintain? On some level, wouldn't efforts of the Hive users to preserve this game that could in theory be deleted by its creators...... be cherished efforts? Because we enjoy some manner of preservation of our history or something, and the historical technology experiences?
This is mere speculation and I might be totally wrong about what I'm saying but it seems like the whole thing might be a little bit more morally gray than our first thought on the surface level.
Perhaps a more relevant example, my Retera Model Studio tool for making Warcraft 3 models is something many users have thanked me for and told me was really useful to them. But I built it originally to make "Classic" graphics... and support for "Reforged" graphics was a hack and an afterthought. But no one cares about my motivation or my particular focus; we simply use what others published and allowed us to use, but for our own ends. In this way, I receive many requests for help making HD models on my tool because the Retera Model Studio became almost "like what Magos War3ModelEditor was for Classic graphics" but for the Reforged models artists, like something fairly ubiquitous that many people use because it is effective in helping them accomplish their goals.
But all the while after Reforged released, while other people used this technology for Reforged modding, I had begun to focus on how to use basically the same technology and what I learned to build a game client for playing with the type of "Classic" graphics that I spent 18 years making before Reforged, but where the client itself was my own code (like Retera Model Studio) and could be maintained so that Activision cannot break it out from under me.
And that client that I have made my pride and joy the last two years only can exist because the Hive user Ghostwolf spent 7 years reverse engineering the "Classic" graphics render engine from Warcraft III and then publishing its code openly for the "View in 3D" button on Hive, which then allowed me to borrow that same code to create a game-like system.
But nobody reverse engineered Reforged graphic rendering in the same manner, and that rendering uses technologies that would appear to be chosen almost as if by intention to be exceedingly complicated so that they will not be likewise reverse engineered. As such, while I was using a derivative work of my Retera Model Studio technology to try to achieve intellectual freedom for the last 3 years, many of the users of the public Retera Model Studio program use this technology
for the exact opposite of what I lately used it for to give up their intellectual freedom by making "Reforged" models that will always be somewhat technologically tied to Activision's game program, and making Activision still in control of them.
So, my apologies for giving you my personal sob story or whatever, and largely I choose to just not care and enjoy some Reforged intermixed with my other activities and cater to the people a little, but it is entirely possible that if I had a bad day or a bad month in life and if my life circumstances changed... that I am able to imagine I might want to "do a Grendel" we might say and try to use my authority as author of Retera Model Studio to try to purge my past work from the internet and delete this tool from Hive Workshop. It could happen for any number of reasons but the most likely would be this personal dilemma I just described and maybe from a misguided hope to prevent Reforged graphics from getting made so that Warcraft 3 Classic graphics would get more attention and be more likely to win out over Reforged graphics -- because for me it is not a matter of visual choice but rather a case of two 3D formats were only the classic one works in my custom open source game engine that seeks to be free of Activision.
But this is where I am different from Grendel, because I do not think this community would offer me the power or the ownership of my own work like that. My personal theory would be that if I deleted Retera Model Studio from the Hive, then within about a month someone would re-upload it or possibly upload the "Twilac fork" of my project which some Reforged modders say is better anyway.
Likewise, if Mr Magos comes back and "does a Grendel" and tries to delete Magos War3ModelEditor from this community.... I mean... somebody is going to just re-upload it because of how useful it is. Isn't that probably what would happen?
So, isn't this a lot more morally gray than you at first make it sound
@Murlocologist ? I know it's just a thought experiment (for as long as I remain sane) but isn't forgetting the human effort behind War3ModelEditor or behind Retera Model Studio something that is very totally acceptable to our people? Why should they have to think about human effort? In many cases they just want to make some Reforged models...
