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LIVE STREAM - Ralle and Grubby - Tomorrow at 19:30 UTC+2

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Archian

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Be sure to watch @Ralle & Grubby talk about the latest Warcraft 3 Patch and the future of Warcraft 3 modding.

STREAM ENDED - WATCH THE VIDEO


EDIT:
Turns out that the "cease and desist" letter was a hoax. Retera has confirmed this.
We apologize for unknowingly spreading fake news.


 
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Bannar

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Thank you, @Ralle, for doing this and representing community in such a professional fashion. Watched the entire thing!

You covered a lot of important stuff. Thank you for mentioning backward compatibility problems - one of key things that made me (and I believe many of us) lag behind instead of jumping in on the Reforged hype train even at the release date.

There were some problems with sound - your voice was quite low. Boosted the volume to hear you well :D

@WaterKnight it's "recorded" in Grubby's videos/all.
 
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Come to think of it watching the "reason" since is mostly lawyers acting like retards and not knowing the law itself
Blizzard is fucking desperate to protect the IP and making stupid decisions all over the place out of pure stupidity and fear.
Even the reasons to add that shady forced online DRM and login are badly explained til this day
 

SeedinAethyr

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Thank you Ralle for doing that stream! So glad you were able to get the message spread to a wider audience, and you did it very well too! One piece of feedback is that it might have helped to talk a little more about what Warsmash is when Grubby asked you at 28:05, just to help those viewing who weren't familiar.
 
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Ralle came across really well and made great points.

Come to think of it watching the "reason" since is mostly lawyers acting like retards and not knowing the law itself
Blizzard is fucking desperate to protect the IP and making stupid decisions all over the place out of pure stupidity and fear.
Even the reasons to add that shady forced online DRM and login are badly explained til this day
"Too little, too late." or Blizzard is "crying over spilled milk." The most valuable thing to come out of wc3 was DotA. I can't think of words describe how out of touch Blizz is at this point. They want copy right over user created content but then at the same time make World Editor an undesirable place to mod. What a waste.

They are going to release a patch focused on ranked play but they are being out done by a hobbyist made mod (w3champs)? Any shareholder should be outranged. I guess executives and shareholders alike are too out-of-touch.
 

Ralle

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I'm watching right now! How many viewers did you have? These are epic endeavours, keep them coming! :)
Over 1000 from what I could tell, but I was mostly focusing on my own thing. I had the stream paused while talking to Grubby so I was mostly blind :D
The biggest question remains unanswered- is it Rally or Ralluh?
Hey I pronounced it at the start didn't I? rall-E.
Ralle came across really well and made great points.
Thank you :)
 

deepstrasz

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Come to think of it watching the "reason" since is mostly lawyers acting like retards and not knowing the law itself
Blizzard is fucking desperate to protect the IP and making stupid decisions all over the place out of pure stupidity and fear.
Even the reasons to add that shady forced online DRM and login are badly explained til this day
They are more than stupid if they think WarSmash is going to be a better competitor than say CliCli and Frost Giant Studio's RTS.
Frankly, the attention WarSmash gets compared to other stuff, even Warcraft III itself, is quite mild.

dallemini_2022-7-8_14-51-17.png
dallemini_2022-7-8_14-54-16.png
Definitely RALL - E.

Thank you Ralle for doing that stream! So glad you were able to get the message spread to a wider audience, and you did it very well too! One piece of feedback is that it might have helped to talk a little more about what Warsmash is when Grubby asked you at 28:05, just to help those viewing who weren't familiar.
Grubby should just get Retera in for such a discussion, IMHO. Ralle can only know so much. There isn't time for everything in detail from one person. Hiveworkshop is pretty immense in its own little way.

The most valuable thing to come out of wc3 was DotA.
Maybe monetary-wise because honestly, it's just a dopamine surge game, nothing more. Lots of intelligent and good potential projects get left out in the dark in the depths of Warcraft III's myriad of maps. And yes, tower defense games are also pretty much ka-ching too.
 
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Seeing how so many people are getting agitated by the cease and desist, I felt it was important to show why I have doubts about the whole thing and maybe you should too.



Here is the letter in question.
cease_and_desist.jpg
A few things are quite odd:
- "Hi RETERA" is not what I would expect from a legal letter but maybe they couldn't get his real credentials.

- Overall how short and unprofessional the mail read compared to other cease and desists from Blizzard. Here is a picture of one made by Blizzard towards a WoW private server:
44958.jpg
So when I read "WarsmashModEngine" without a single mention of where it is hosted or distributed and what type of specific infringements they claim it's making - it makes me very suspicious on the veracity of this letter.

- "Replies to this message are undeliverable. Please do not replies to this message. [...]" Which is typically something attached to promotional mails and not cease and desist letters that actually want you to answer them. Maybe because Retera used one of those promotional mail as the base of this mail?

- The fact that he received it on the day of the 20th anniversary of ROC. Very dramatic!

- Finally, if you type "cease and desist example" on google, one of the first thing you would get is this:
Capture.PNG
Notice how this is very similar to the mail that Retera apparently received?



If you still aren't convinced I recommend you search around to see what real cease and desist issued by Blizzard-like corporations look like. They certainly don't look like the templates you can find around the web or the one received by Retera.

Anybody familiar with Retera should have been conscious of this possibility right away since he is quite the pranker. Maybe some of you were already aware what I just shared, but I haven't seen it being discussed anywhere.
To me this video was just him vanishing with the "ring" (Warsmash), the cease and desist being an excuse he created.
 
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Seeing how so many people are getting agitated by the cease and desist, I felt it was important to show why I have doubts about the whole thing and maybe you should too.



Here is the letter in question.
A few things are quite odd:
- "Hi RETERA" is not what I would expect from a legal letter but maybe they couldn't get his real credentials.

- Overall how short and unprofessional the mail read compared to other cease and desists from Blizzard. Here is a picture of one made by Blizzard towards a WoW private server:
So when I read "WarsmashModEngine" without a single mention of where it is hosted or distributed and what type of specific infringements they claim it's making - it makes me very suspicious on the veracity of this letter.

- "Replies to this message are undeliverable. Please do not replies to this message. [...]" Which is typically something attached to promotional mails and not cease and desist letters that actually want you to answer them. Maybe because Retera used one of those promotional mail as the base of this mail?

- The fact that he received it on the day of the 20th anniversary of ROC. Very dramatic!

- Finally, if you type "cease and desist example" on google, one of the first thing you would get is this:
Notice how this is very similar to the mail that Retera apparently received?



If you still aren't convinced I recommend you search around to see what real cease and desist issued by Blizzard-like corporations look like. They certainly don't look like the templates you can find around the web or the one received by Retera.

Anybody familiar with Retera should have been conscious of this possibility right away since he is quite the pranker. Maybe some of you were already aware what I just shared, but I haven't seen it being discussed anywhere.
To me this video was just him vanishing with the "ring" (Warsmash), the cease and desist being an excuse he created.
I'll admit this is the first time I actually read the c&d letter and by giving it a brief glance I must say like you I am not convinced of its authenticity and you raise valid points. Whether authentic or not, I am quite convinced it would not hold up in court.

This letter reminds me of a friend who received a demand from some sketchy company for using a copyrighted picture on his private blog (which in fact he did), but the company making the demand clearly didn't make their homework and adressed him as "dear [email address]". Obviously that claim was not valid (at least in Sweden), he simply ignored it and after one or two reminder emails from them he never heard back.

All that said, I obviously can't know the truth (only Retera and Blizzard can) and honestly it's either way something Blizzard could've done, whether they did so in this particular case. They did this in the past with the open source Wc2 and Battle.Net, and this was even before the Activision merger. Corpos gonna corp, no matter the legal name of the company.
 
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