Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard

[Lizreu]

Repeat after me y'all: it won't get better.

 

[Gnuoy]

I'm not sure this is a good thing. This just rewards Activision with millions of dollars for all their just good enough pre ordered products. I'd like to hope this means change for the better but, if ur Microsoft, why not just continue juicing the brand for every penny? Maybe mega corp will do the right thing

Edit after reading some other posts: maybe the best route to take would be just dump WC3 at this point, make a new RTS that allows import of assets from WC3, and make a new editor that is user friendly like WE but not overly complicated like GE.

 

[aeman]

Xbox boss wants to revive old Activision Blizzard games

When Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard, they hope to see about reviving old game series like Hexen and King's Quest.

www.rockpapershotgun.com

 

[Spacebuns]

Xbox boss wants to revive old Activision Blizzard games

When Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard, they hope to see about reviving old game series like Hexen and King's Quest.

www.rockpapershotgun.com

Crossing fingers that Warcraft 3 will somehow qualify as "old" and the revive won't be Raise Dead/Animate Dead but Resurrection

 

[Tipsilon]

Lets not get our hopes up just yet. After the disaster that is wc3 reforged, I am hesitant to expect anything. My hopes amount to "just implement custom campaigns" and maybe fix some bugs.

But, if i were to hope, i would love for wc3 to get the Age of Empires definitive edition treatment, with new expansion and constant support. I think this community deserves it more than any other.

 

[Homor]

It isn't about "hope." I don't have any hope in any corporation. They're cold, emotionless and unfeeling. Instead, I have standards. If they don't live up to them, I don't support them.

My standard with classic games is you keep them playable in the state they were in when people bought them. That if you pay for a product, you should get what you paid for and not have it aggressively replaced with something that barely even resembles it. I don't care what your "internal" factors are that keep that from happening, you either find a way to overcome them or you stop defrauding your customers and take the product off the market.

It isn't about what I hope MS does. It's about what it should do. If it doesn't, shame on them. Just another company that isn't reputable to purchase from.

 

[Retera]

Repeat after me y'all: it won't get better.

It will get better. (But I have my doubts as to whether this will be because of Microsoft.)

 

[aeman]

It will get better. (But I have my doubts as to whether this will be because of Microsoft.)

you still progressing on it, what a dedication

 

[Shar Dundred]

It will get better. (But I have my doubts as to whether this will be because of Microsoft.)

Make sure to let us know if Microsoft decides to hire you.

 

[Retera]

Make sure to let us know if Microsoft decides to hire you.

I personally find this to be really unlikely, and I would be somewhat incredulous of an opportunity even if they offered it. I do not know how to make money from Warcraft III. When I play with Warcraft III and I create game mods, I do so because it is enjoyable to me and I get nothing in return. I am not even certain that how I relate with this hobby lately would even qualify as creating game mods, because sometimes I just chat with people online and then I have to go back to my daily life.

In 2017 I was specifically told to apply to Blizzard -- multiple times -- by someone on the inside. In some alternate universe timeline, I probably applied and got the job and helped create Reforged. But in this universe and in this timeline I did not even apply. Likewise if Microsoft extended a hand, on what grounds would I take it? I was chatting about this with my father the other day and we were discussing how if I found myself working at Microsoft trying to help them with the Reforged brand and the decision of what to do with it, presumably as a technologically skilled employee there my hypothetical job might be to decommission the Reforged game servers and sunset whatever is left of the Warcraft III brand in order to make room for other more lucrative games. I was joking to my father that if I found myself in that situation, I would probably go to my boss and say, "No. No I am an emotional human, so I will not decommission the servers as you ask, because I like this game." And then I would get fired and replaced with someone who did what was needed.

I do not understand how anyone could make Warcraft III into a career path. If I were hired to work on this game tomorrow, I hope you would offer me your abject sympathies for the loss of my sense of reason and rationality. I know a lot about the technology of how Warcraft III World Editor works; I really enjoy the product and I made a model editor to help myself create custom content. This does not translate into giving people in society what they want. Sometimes I empathize well with the people who tried to create Reforged; they created all that Patch 1.31 is and then were forced to create Patch 1.32 by managers and have all their work shot down by society at large without having the time budget to fix it. Now the social discourse surrounding Warcraft III often talks about missing features, but hardly ever talks about the Reforged team developing 16:9 resolution support and hacking in UI natives based on the binary exploits that the Chinese were doing -- instead of the Reforged team inventing their own new API that might have been worse. People talk about how the Reforged art assets look bad, but almost nobody talks about that one guy left in that last year trying to finish Reforged and polish the unit data over and over: the guy who renamed Orc Burrow to only be called Burrow out of an effort to polish the game even when he did not have support from the people around him to let do anything more than that.

If I woke up tomorrow with the C++ repository of Reforged open in MS Visual Studio in front of me, and a blank check from a manager that said, "Just do your thing bro!", then do you know what I would do? Do you know what I would become? I can easily imagine it.

• I would fix the ability requirements bug preventing custom skills from having more than 1 item applied in the "Techtree - Requirements" field in the Ability Editor.
• I would add a function to the "WebUI" React-native app that runs as Reforged's menu that spawns the same map selection menu, but to select W3N files, and then upon clicking them I would just make it exit the WebUI app and launch the FDF old ancient legacy code to draw the Custom Campaign screen per the individual W3N file. I would change the FDF button in that menu, which is probably a second instance spawned by the name "BackButton" from the UI template file "UI\FrameDef\Glue\CampaignMenu.fdf" and I would change the C++ binding for where that button goes so that instead of going back to the old custom campaign selection menu, instead it returns to the Reforged WebUI.

I could go on. There are other tasks in my mind and I just haven't thought of them, yet -- especially depending on how long I would have to work. A person could iterate on these designs and try to improve things to no end.

And then what? Who would pay Microsoft on behalf of the work that I did? What would be the return on investment for such works?

 

[aeman]

I personally find this to be really unlikely, and I would be somewhat incredulous of an opportunity even if they offered it. I do not know how to make money from Warcraft III. When I play with Warcraft III and I create game mods, I do so because it is enjoyable to me and I get nothing in return. I am not even certain that how I relate with this hobby lately would even qualify as creating game mods, because sometimes I just chat with people online and then I have to go back to my daily life.

In 2017 I was specifically told to apply to Blizzard -- multiple times -- by someone on the inside. In some alternate universe timeline, I probably applied and got the job and helped create Reforged. But in this universe and in this timeline I did not even apply. Likewise if Microsoft extended a hand, on what grounds would I take it? I was chatting about this with my father the other day and we were discussing how if I found myself working at Microsoft trying to help them with the Reforged brand and the decision of what to do with it, presumably as a technologically skilled employee there my hypothetical job might be to decommission the Reforged game servers and sunset whatever is left of the Warcraft III brand in order to make room for other more lucrative games. I was joking to my father that if I found myself in that situation, I would probably go to my boss and say, "No. No I am an emotional human, so I will not decommission the servers as you ask, because I like this game." And then I would get fired and replaced with someone who did what was needed.

I do not understand how anyone could make Warcraft III into a career path. If I were hired to work on this game tomorrow, I hope you would offer me your abject sympathies for the loss of my sense of reason and rationality. I know a lot about the technology of how Warcraft III World Editor works; I really enjoy the product and I made a model editor to help myself create custom content. This does not translate into giving people in society what they want. Sometimes I empathize well with the people who tried to create Reforged; they created all that Patch 1.31 is and then were forced to create Patch 1.32 by managers and have all their work shot down by society at large without having the time budget to fix it. Now the social discourse surrounding Warcraft III often talks about missing features, but hardly ever talks about the Reforged team developing 16:9 resolution support and hacking in UI natives based on the binary exploits that the Chinese were doing -- instead of the Reforged team inventing their own new API that might have been worse. People talk about how the Reforged art assets look bad, but almost nobody talks about that one guy left in that last year trying to finish Reforged and polish the unit data over and over: the guy who renamed Orc Burrow to only be called Burrow out of an effort to polish the game even when he did not have support from the people around him to let do anything more than that.

If I woke up tomorrow with the C++ repository of Reforged open in MS Visual Studio in front of me, and a blank check from a manager that said, "Just do your thing bro!", then do you know what I would do? Do you know what I would become? I can easily imagine it.

• I would fix the ability requirements bug preventing custom skills from having more than 1 item applied in the "Techtree - Requirements" field in the Ability Editor.
• I would add a function to the "WebUI" React-native app that runs as Reforged's menu that spawns the same map selection menu, but to select W3N files, and then upon clicking them I would just make it exit the WebUI app and launch the FDF old ancient legacy code to draw the Custom Campaign screen per the individual W3N file. I would change the FDF button in that menu, which is probably a second instance spawned by the name "BackButton" from the UI template file "UI\FrameDef\Glue\CampaignMenu.fdf" and I would change the C++ binding for where that button goes so that instead of going back to the old custom campaign selection menu, instead it returns to the Reforged WebUI.

I could go on. There are other tasks in my mind and I just haven't thought of them, yet -- especially depending on how long I would have to work. A person could iterate on these designs and try to improve things to no end.

And then what? Who would pay Microsoft on behalf of the work that I did? What would be the return on investment for such works?

Must've been awkward if one of the microsoft exec is lurking in this very website, this particular thread

 

[Retera]

the microsoft exec is lurking in this very website, this particular thread

I am very okay with this. Do you think they would not appreciate some part of what I just said? Surely they understand the necessity of making money.

 

[Homor]

I personally find this to be really unlikely, and I would be somewhat incredulous of an opportunity even if they offered it. I do not know how to make money from Warcraft III. When I play with Warcraft III and I create game mods, I do so because it is enjoyable to me and I get nothing in return. I am not even certain that how I relate with this hobby lately would even qualify as creating game mods, because sometimes I just chat with people online and then I have to go back to my daily life.

In 2017 I was specifically told to apply to Blizzard -- multiple times -- by someone on the inside. In some alternate universe timeline, I probably applied and got the job and helped create Reforged. But in this universe and in this timeline I did not even apply. Likewise if Microsoft extended a hand, on what grounds would I take it? I was chatting about this with my father the other day and we were discussing how if I found myself working at Microsoft trying to help them with the Reforged brand and the decision of what to do with it, presumably as a technologically skilled employee there my hypothetical job might be to decommission the Reforged game servers and sunset whatever is left of the Warcraft III brand in order to make room for other more lucrative games. I was joking to my father that if I found myself in that situation, I would probably go to my boss and say, "No. No I am an emotional human, so I will not decommission the servers as you ask, because I like this game." And then I would get fired and replaced with someone who did what was needed.

I do not understand how anyone could make Warcraft III into a career path. If I were hired to work on this game tomorrow, I hope you would offer me your abject sympathies for the loss of my sense of reason and rationality. I know a lot about the technology of how Warcraft III World Editor works; I really enjoy the product and I made a model editor to help myself create custom content. This does not translate into giving people in society what they want. Sometimes I empathize well with the people who tried to create Reforged; they created all that Patch 1.31 is and then were forced to create Patch 1.32 by managers and have all their work shot down by society at large without having the time budget to fix it. Now the social discourse surrounding Warcraft III often talks about missing features, but hardly ever talks about the Reforged team developing 16:9 resolution support and hacking in UI natives based on the binary exploits that the Chinese were doing -- instead of the Reforged team inventing their own new API that might have been worse. People talk about how the Reforged art assets look bad, but almost nobody talks about that one guy left in that last year trying to finish Reforged and polish the unit data over and over: the guy who renamed Orc Burrow to only be called Burrow out of an effort to polish the game even when he did not have support from the people around him to let do anything more than that.

If I woke up tomorrow with the C++ repository of Reforged open in MS Visual Studio in front of me, and a blank check from a manager that said, "Just do your thing bro!", then do you know what I would do? Do you know what I would become? I can easily imagine it.

• I would fix the ability requirements bug preventing custom skills from having more than 1 item applied in the "Techtree - Requirements" field in the Ability Editor.
• I would add a function to the "WebUI" React-native app that runs as Reforged's menu that spawns the same map selection menu, but to select W3N files, and then upon clicking them I would just make it exit the WebUI app and launch the FDF old ancient legacy code to draw the Custom Campaign screen per the individual W3N file. I would change the FDF button in that menu, which is probably a second instance spawned by the name "BackButton" from the UI template file "UI\FrameDef\Glue\CampaignMenu.fdf" and I would change the C++ binding for where that button goes so that instead of going back to the old custom campaign selection menu, instead it returns to the Reforged WebUI.

I could go on. There are other tasks in my mind and I just haven't thought of them, yet -- especially depending on how long I would have to work. A person could iterate on these designs and try to improve things to no end.

And then what? Who would pay Microsoft on behalf of the work that I did? What would be the return on investment for such works?

The sad truth is nobody is ever going to talk about the amazing technology leaps and feats of coding genius because you can't physically see them, and for the most part, they don't have any practical benefit beyond possibly a slight QoL improvement. You can't see the hundreds of hours of blood, sweat and tears it took reconfiguring 20 year old spaghetti code to allow for basic modern features we take for granted. But you can see that the menu looks like fried ass. You can't see the Herculean feats of strength it took to get a game from 2003 to support native 16:9 resolution, but you can see that there's no fucking custom campaign button.

The problems everyone has with Reforged are tangible, practical things you can notice at a glance, interact with and feel genuine disappointment or anger at. The huge efforts in programming aren't. Just like you can't notice the tears shed by a child sweatshop worker in the NIKE factory, but you can clearly see how cool the shoes look.

That's the biggest tragedy of this thing. Reforged is a huge disaster that took a lot of effort that didn't need to be made. Ironing out the bugs in 1.31 would have been more than enough.

 

[Mivel]

that picture of their gaming division cracked me up. they had to add all the "preferred pronouns" to the employees for absolutely no reason - everyone there uses the pronouns you would default to by their appearance - just to show how "woke" they are.

awesome i cant wait for the next wc3 remake where arthas comes out as trans, jaina shaves her head gets a ton of piercings and puts on a ton of weight, and all the night elves are hedonistic bisexuals

oh yeah and the orcs go from green to black, and the undead are literal nazis who throw the roman salute when theyre idle

Now we need to convince Phil Spencer that Warcraft 3 isn't some forgotten and non-profitable vaporware IP.

whats the most realistic way to go about this? everyone hand-write letters to the bigwigs at microsoft, activision and blizzard asking if theyre gonna touch wc3, while mentioning the extremely loyal community that sprouted here?

View attachment 393501

there's no we/us??? wow, where's the inclusion??? as a royal schizophrenic i am ashamed to see people arent partaking in my pronouns!

Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Calls For Cross-Platform Ban Program

If that can't happen, Spencer said he hopes to see a system that lets you bring a "banned user list" to a new network.

www.gamespot.com

oh cool i cant wait to be IP banned from wc3 for saying something politically incorrect
then i get to shell out another $30 or whatever it is on a new "key", and play behind a vpn
this is of course assuming they dont just take down wc3 bnet altogether because there's too much political incorrectness happening

Is there a famous company that is not interested in gaming these days? Seems that every company from any business will have a stake in gaming soon.
IN past it was all clear. You know that bakery is making bread, you know that pharmacy company is making medications, you know who was in charge for making games. Actually you know what company is dedicated to which product. Now, these days, everyone is stepping in everyone's business. And in a result, products decrease in quality. NETFLIX: REFORGED hahaha! It could happen actually.

sweet, a netflix adaptation. I can't wait for them to flesh out all the characters' sex lives and make sure there's enough identity diversity to go around, also the standard "bad guys are fascists!" with them literally using the word fascist in this fantasy setting, and dont forget all the females or female-identifying people are the leaders and all the biological males are cowardly, weak brainlets (unless they're lgbt)

Sure, Warcraft is a huge name on its own, but it's still old news the same way Mario64 is old news. Everyone have undoubtedly heard of Mario, but it's not to say sales had skyrocketed if they remade it with better graphics. Instead they choose to release new content with games like Mario Odyssey and so on, simply because new content will always create more hype than old content.

warcraft 4 by MicroActiBlizzard
except it's like cookie clicker with a wc3 skin, and it's mobile-only for $40 initially, along with microtransactions to proceed through the "campaign"

 

[tillinghast]

okay i got an idea
implement a new classification-type field but instead of "ancient" or "mechanical" it's just pronouns
it's always visible on every unit, might block hero exp or summons duration but whatever
grunts are "zug/zug", footmen are "don't ask/don't tell", arthas is "she/her" (come on now, we all know that that fabulous hair and merging with crusty old orc was just her way of rebelling against lordaeron gender norms)
first time when you click on a unit type you have a 50% chance of "getting the pronouns wrong" and unit switches to neutral hostile
hire me blizzard activision microsoft! i got lots of ideas (zero other skills though)

 

[aeman]

okay i got an idea
implement a new classification-type field but instead of "ancient" or "mechanical" it's just pronouns
it's always visible on every unit, might block hero exp or summons duration but whatever
grunts are "zug/zug", footmen are "don't ask/don't tell", arthas is "she/her" (come on now, we all know that that fabulous hair and merging with crusty old orc was just her way of rebelling against lordaeron gender norms)
first time when you click on a unit type you have a 50% chance of "getting the pronouns wrong" and unit switches to neutral hostile
hire me blizzard activision microsoft! i got lots of ideas (zero other skills though)

he/he - michael jackson pronouns

 

[RPG_F]

I don't looking forward to Warcraft 4, it maybe not help for the WE community and even ruin the whole Warcraft series.
but I'll change my mind if they are perfect to porting old maps or build a better WE community.

 

[Blackcat]

That organization/leadership chart was added for very obvious reasons. Blizzard is a fucked up company which had (has?) a rotten HR department, is filled with misogynists and employees who should finally grow up.

The chart added at the end of that blogposts tells the Blizzard employees very clearly you don't fuck around with Microsoft. The Xbox team has had their share in racist and mysognist problems in the past.

Microsoft's Xbox boss apologises for go-go dancer party

The firm hosted the party for games developers at a conference in San Francisco

www.bbc.com

They've cracked down hard on this kind of stuff since then. And I expect the same to happen to Blizzard.

 

[Spacebuns]

I'm not one to follow news on the gaming world, but when I hear that Microsoft is gearing up for their Game Pass, I have a hunch that they'll throw WC3 a bone sooner or later.

 

[RED BARON]

I'm not one to follow news on the gaming world, but when I hear that Microsoft is gearing up for their Game Pass, I have a hunch that they'll throw WC3 a bone sooner or later.

I would agree that it is not unlikely. Overall I am mostly looking forward to a Blizzard more free from the constant focus on short-term profit over making proper games that will stand the test of time, like Blizzard used to be famous for.

(And I have a slight, ever so slight hope that it will result in a change of the EULA - however unlikely), maybe return the original wc3.

 

[grimgrents]

We're back baby, the future is now!

 

[Steel_Stallion]

wild

 

[kantarion]

We're back baby, the future is now!

Back to the future ?

 

[Deleted member 238881]

In some way it may be good, however - correct me if I'm wrong - it also may affect in negative way possibility to play on Linux.

 

[Kakerate]

I'm not sure I'd agree that this is good news, but much remains to be seen. What I don't like to see is huge consolidation of the gaming industry so that there are only a few massive players. Microsoft might be a benefit to the games we like right now (no guarantees), but I'm not convinced this will be a positive move for the ecosystem as a whole in the long run.

Ironically enough, even companies don't like to see this. Once upon a time, Microsoft bailed out Apple to keep them from going out of business. Doesn't sound very capitalistic to me.

 

[ILikeMacNCheeze]

tbh, I'm sure they're only for the games not changing them for the community.

 

[Homor]

I want to set expectations here. Going back to the classic client simply isn't a reasonable option for many internal reasons. It's not simple at all. You'd also be forcing map makers who have used 1.32 to save their maps to essentially remake their maps because there is no backwards compatibility. That is many hundreds of maps.

If I had my way we would have not shipped Reforged and continued iterating on classic. That's all in the past though. The chances of the classic client returning are .01%. Please don't put stock in that idea.

I keep thinking back to this comment and getting really upset. I also don't know if it really explains the situation very well. I understand NDAs are a factor in a lot of this, but I feel like there's some important information here that's missing. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask a few follow up questions. Maybe understanding this comment better will put some of my concerns at ease.

1) This comment: "You'd also be forcing map makers who have used 1.32 to save their maps to essentially remake their maps because there is no backwards compatibility" confuses me a bit. Do you think I'm suggesting getting rid of Reforged entirely? Because I'm not. The idea in my head was a "WoW Classic" situation, where the original version of the game (or at least one as close to it as possible) is given an official release. Map makers wouldn't be "forced" to remake their maps at all, because they'd still work just fine with the main game. Like hypothetically, on the Blizzard launcher you'd have buttons for "Classic" and "Reforged" that would open completely different executables.

2) Is creating a "classic" version of the game really impossible or too difficult to even consider? I don't really know anything about the technology used for the game, but I've been playing on a downgraded version of 1.31 for years now. Is it really that difficult to create an official version of that with some kind of online functionality?

3) If it's impossible, would be for technical reasons or legal reasons? Is there some kind of contract that says Blizzard can't distribute older or alternate versions of the WC3 client? Is the code/framework for WC3 so jumbled that there's absolutely no way to restore it? I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this.

 

[Retera]

Hi Homor. I'm an outsider who doesn't have inside social knowledge, but trying to rewrite War3 to create a War3 classic gives me a lot of technical knowledge so I'd like to chip in the extent of my knowledge while you wait for a reply from Kam. Also, I am not under any NDA with Blizzard, so I can say whatever the $%^& I want to about Warcraft 3 technology online, for better or worse.

1.) You need to be really specific if you are going to be mad about the loss of a "classic client."

Map makers wouldn't be "forced" to remake their maps at all, because they'd still work just fine with the main game. Like hypothetically, on the Blizzard launcher you'd have buttons for "Classic" and "Reforged" that would open completely different executables.

Maybe you have not ever played Reforged, but the button you are talking about ALREADY EXISTS and it is ingame in the Reforged client so you don't have to restart the client. So from a developer perspective -- let's assume it were some engineer from Microsoft reviewing what to do with Reforged who was not familiar with it -- he will see that it's already EASIER to do what you are asking for than the manner in which you are asking for it. And this gets back to one of the deep-cutting problems in the communication between players and developers, because when you ask Microsoft to "give you back" you original game, the engineer is going to have no idea what the $%^& you're talking about or how to do it when he realizes that Reforged already has layers upon layers upon layers of code in it put in specifically upon the request of Kam to make Reforged ALREADY BE this idea you are describing of "a new engine that emulates the classic game."

I keep thinking back to this comment and getting really upset.

If you want to get the best future and be technical about it, we need to step back for a second and focus on truths in what the computer will and will not do by the laws of physics. In other words, in that one precious moment when a Microsoft engineer catches a break to think about this Reforged intellectual property, if you just tell him you're mad, then we're done here and the future will be a bad future. Because he will not have anything useful to do about your upsetness (he does not control you). But if you can outline steps for him to create the technology product you want, then there is hope.

So, let me ask you again to be very, very clear on this first question, what is actually the technology product that you want? I ask myself this question as I try to rewrite Warcraft 3 so that I can save myself from dealing with what this modding community is currently dealing with. Originally I believed that I would create a harmonious paradise for myself with no Reforged content, no Reforged technology, no lua, no skins, no HD models, and simply a freed version of an open source reference client that matched the behaviors of Patch 1.22 or maybe Patch 1.26 from the old days.

What I find is that everyone I have encountered on the Hive workshop, almost entirely, pushes me emotionally unilaterally against that initial vision of mine. They say I should support lua, or that I should have dynamic character shadows, or that I should have custom UI natives, or that I should open maps saved on the 1.32 World Editor in the SD graphics mode.

And the truth is that slowly, step by step, little by little, because of who we have left as a modding community I continually caved on my vision. First off, in order to parse the MDX model format and display it, I needed to copy the high performance rendering code from the Hive "View in 3D" model viewer written by Ghostwolf. By the time I finished copying it line by line into a desktop game language, I was already finding myself copying code for Reforged HD model buffer management and Reforged HD data parser. And to be honest I tried to cut out its guts and sabotage what I was copying to have as little of that as possible and try to cling to the past. But ultimately, Ghostwolf and others created pull requests on my replica of his code and added back the HD model parsing and handling, because it is what they want.

Finally I caved a month or two ago and put in the absurd hack in my map parser that two map doodad files of the same format version, based on whether its a 1.32 map or not, have to load differently and load unused doodad skins information in order to even just load the map. And for me if I was being ideological about it, making trash code to parse "doodad skins" and whatever stupid trash idea that was ever supposed to be (I just throw it away after parsing it!) ... ideologically this is stupid. I compromise my vision and create junk code -- code that grows into being what Reforged became -- simply so that I can load the SD "classic" maps of this modding community.

So, my point is, Reforged already has those same hacks. It already knows how to load a 1.31 map without doodad skins or a 1.32 map with the doodad skins, regardless of the fact that the doodad data file version number is stupidly the same between the two (very different!) file formats.

Reforged is a technology that bent over backwards wasting its developer time to make the game load map files from the old version.
So, you said you were very upset. When you read what I just said, and take a deep breath, please reply and just tell me if you think my statement is true. Let me say it again: Reforged is a technology that bent over backwards wasting its developer time to make the game load map files from the old version.

Do we agree whether this sentence is true? I am going to continue on assuming that it is, because I have observed Reforged to be able to play my old maps from older game versions without requiring me to run a converter on the map first like Reforged Beta actually did. I think I still have that converter I wrote somewhere, too.

So, I am sorry to write so much but I wanted to get that out of the way because when you say that you want a new updated game engine that plays the old maps and emulates the classic client -- essentially that you want Reforged -- I don't know what the $%^& you're talking about because that system already exists and it is called Reforged. Furthermore, if you actually want a "Classic WoW" technology, please realize how making that is substantially less technology effort than making Reforged for an important reason. Classic WoW plays from the WoW old maps ported into the Legion format and hence would be incompatible with any fanmade WoW map files (even tho there aren't any)

So if you had a Warcraft III technology made with an equivalent level of effort as Classic WoW, then all map files available for download on Hive would not run on it.

Again, please take a deep breath, do not bring your emotions into this, and read what I just said again: So if you had a Warcraft III technology made with an equivalent level of effort as Classic WoW, then all map files available for download on Hive would not run on it.

Again, I want to ask you a question about what is true and what is not. Not a statement of your feelings, but of technology: DO YOU or DO YOU NOT believe that what I just said is fundamentally true?

So, now that we hopefully both agreed on what is true, I would like to pivot back for a moment to talk about your feelings. Because obviously that matters to you, it just might not matter to the technology. So, I am going to extrapolate from what you said and try to imagine what you may have meant because -- as I just outlined -- technologically it sounded like you were saying you wanted Reforged Beta without any of the fixes, and I imagine if you go get a copy right now you might still get upset even then when you had the technology you seem to be saying you wanted.

So, what do you actually want? I for one sure as h$%^ don't want doodad skins in my map data because it is an ideological waste, but I assume for you stuff like that doesn't matter. I never met anyone else who cared about doodad skins in the format actually. Users like eejin making HiveWE just add their support for it and move on.

So, I am guessing you want for some guy to sit down with Reforged, and sit down with the old Frozen Throne code, and upgrade the menu -- arguably the most lacking part of Reforged in my opinion -- so that the new "classic" menu of Reforged you are asking to be created ends up meticulously being built to be functionally equivalent to the menu of Frozen Throne from the old CDs. That means it would have the menu options for forming a clan, playing a custom campaign, or whatnot.

Have you followed me this far? Do you agree that ideologically once you enter the game then Reforged is the legacy-supporting game engine we all wanted, essentially a fork of patch 1.31 -- but that the new menu is basically just like a pile of poop you have to walk past to play Warcraft 3's latest and greatest version? Because that is honestly how I have often felt about it, but now I'm saying those are my feelings on it, so I totally get it if you disagree or have a different opinion om that part -- such as when I described the new menu as poop just now (an emotional thing to do).

2.) Given what all I just described, I want to make another technological statement. And I am curious if you believe this statement is true:
Patch 1.31 is the Reforged engine without the HD models given to the community to let them use Reforged modding APIs on a build that emulates classic. Do you believe this statement to be true technologically? Again, I am not asking your feeling here. I am saying that when I go to rewrite the game, for example emulating 1.31 and 1.32 is more similar in my code than emulating 1.31 is to emulating 1.26.

I think this is really important because once you realize that Patch 1.31 is the Reforged engine masquerading as the legacy client by loading the old UI files, this may bring you closer to a technology understanding of what you want. It would appear that you like 1.31. So, I would say this means that you like Reforged -- here referring to the underlying game engine that was iterated on from 2017 to 2020 by the "Reforged" team even if maybe you prefer to use the word Reforged only to refer to the purchasable art style. This is where maybe the words and the language we are using breaks down, and so it is the technology and the meanings that are so important. We could give Reforged engine another name. Since it is based on ".w3mod" extension files internally (this is true of the structure of both the 1.31 and 1.32 engines) and no previous version of this game was built that way, we could refer to the engines as W3StormEngine and W3ModEngine. So when I think of W3StormEngine, that would be a game system from Patch 1.27 or prior that uses a Storm.dll binary to load assets from MPQ archives to play, and W3ModEngine is a game system that uses network sync'ed Battlenet 2.0 CASC storages containing w3mod bundles to play.

So, I think you are saying that you really enjoy playing the newer W3ModEngine version of Warcraft 3 but with the HD assets taken out of it. And then you are saying, technologically, can W3ModEngine play multiplayer? The answer to me is obvious -- yes, it can, and you can see this by playing Reforged multiplayer.

But now you are asking for the programmers to revert the W3ModEngine update that makes it use HTML ui instead of the old UIs, right?
Doing that revert would have weird ramifications for W3ModEngine users at this point. A lot of them use the HTML based mods called Quenching and W3Champions. If you take away the HTML menu, then you effectively kill those mods because the old menu is not nearly as moddable.
But actually, you seemed more to say you wouldn't kill those mods. Rather, you want two buttons to launch W3ModEngine -- one with the old menu and one with the new menu, right? So that we could claim to have pandered to everyone and supported everything.

The challenge here would be making your "old theme" menus have the new features and play on the new servers. This sucks because it means you have to change that old menu to make it require a Battlenet login from the moment it opens. Unfortunately ALMOST NOBODY ACTUALLY KNOWS HOW TO CHANGE THEM so probably that will not happen. Maybe Tasyen here on Hive could do it, but Blizzard probably does not have people like that. Or rather, they do have people but they're on company dollar so they cannot afford to waste time like fans like Tasyen can. Blizzard would rather to blow it all away and replace it with HTML... literally.

3.) It's this combination. Blizzard could copy the 1.31 download from Hive and put it on their launcher. But I heard a rumor they sold off the servers it connected to or something like that. So they might have also deleted the code it would connect to on the server side for all I know.

But I think the main problem that bringing that server back wouldn't fix would be the lack of features such as:
- requiring a user login (Blizz would not want to compromise on this, think of Facebook, essentially tracking when you play the game is probably worth more than your $30 you spending buying it)
- loading Reforged maps

So, basically it would just make Reforged worse since Reforged already has the features of 1.31 in it since it's copied from 1.31. You could just fix 1.32 if someone was spending this long looking at this game, presumably. Or even if that's not true, the technological complexity is just a giant nuisance and there's just no incentive for any human on Earth with the power to fix it to then make the decision to fix it.

Sorry at the end here I got distracted away and lost focus and so my answer for #3 is not very good. Maybe someone else can pitch in.

 

[Homor]

@Retera
With all due respect, reading your post up and down, it seems you... didn't actually understand what I wrote or what my problem is.

Reforged does not offer a version of the classic game. It offers "classic graphics." The new experience is still vastly different from even the previous patch. You still have no custom campaigns, you still have heavily altered campaign maps, you still have the cumbersome and poorly designed menu, it's a completely different experience. This isn't even getting into the bloated filesize and how the badly optimized menu basically makes it inaccessible for lower-end computers, but I digress.

Secondly, I find it hard to believe a "Classic" version of Warcraft 3 couldn't play fanmade maps considering I already downgraded to 1.31 and played maps just fine. I open up my version of Warcraft 3, boot it up and this is the first thing I see:

Sure, I can't play 1.32 or higher maps, but I don't want or need to. I just want to be able to play the game as it was when I first fell in love with it, with some QoL improvements. That's why I play 1.31, but many others play 1.26 - 1.28.

I don't get why what I mean by a "classic client" is so confusing to developers. Just take what the community has already done, but with official support from the developers, and use these game files. The community has already made previous versions of the game playable. I don't see why Blizzard couldn't.

As for the issue of Battle.Net: I really, really hope what you're saying about Blizzard selling off the original code isn't true, because that would be a disgusting case of downright criminal negligence. Putting aside how angry and disgusted that makes me, there's still a pretty simple solution: just use RF's online framework in this 1.31 fork. Put it on a separate server, etc. Like you said, Reforged is just a copy of 1.31 with extra stuff added to it. I see no reason they couldn't do for this hypothetical classic version what they already did for Reforged.

If it would require some extra manpower and resources to achieve, I say: yes, that's the price of having integrity and respecting your customers. If you can't do it, don't bother trying to fix War3 because you never will.

As for the issue of loading Reforged maps: you don't. You wouldn't have to. Reforged and this would be totally separate versions. You could still play Reforged just fine. It would be like it is now: separate maps for 1.26 - 1.31, and Reforged. Like this:

There might be some concern about "splitting the player base." My rebuttal is simple: The playerbase is already split, and you're never going to unsplit it. People like me are already playing forks of older versions and making maps in the older editors, and other people are playing Reforged. The dream of a "united" War3 playerbase is dead. "Splitting" isn't a concern anymore.

 

[Retera]

If you can't do it, don't bother trying to fix War3 because you never will.

Exactly. So they fired Kam and created Warcraft mobile games instead.

Why are you complaining if they are doing what you say?


---
Edit:

So for example, I created the above mod shown in the above video in an hour or two. I think it was stupid and I created it just to prove a point that it was stupid and doesn't fix anything.

I just want to be able to play the game as it was when I first fell in love with it, with some QoL improvements.

I created mods on the older version that don't work on 1.31 and never will. Our definition of "improvement" isn't necessarily the same. That being said, there's a lot of good in 1.31. When it was the live patch, I had a lot of fun playing it. But I have hardly ever played it since then, almost just on principle, because I can do the same thing on 1.32 almost unilaterally. Basically the one case when I have gone back a few times was to launch w3n files, because not being able to launch w3n files on 1.32 is obviously stupid.

As for the issue of loading Reforged maps: you don't. You wouldn't have to. Reforged and this would be totally separate versions. You could still play Reforged just fine. It would be like it is now: separate maps for 1.26 - 1.31, and Reforged.

So, I think the problem developers have with this is that you're picking what feels to the developer like an arbitrary point and drawing a line in the sand that after Blizzard warmed up the pot little by little, 1.31 is where you draw the line and can't go any further with the patches emotionally. But what if Microsoft's boss man actually really REALLY liked MPQ files, and so he decides to draw the line at the crossover between Patch 1.29 and Patch 1.30 and he says that Patch 1.30 is the unacceptable one that needs to be repealed along with Reforged? And let's assume that because hacks of 1.30 have shown that it has code in there to load a folder of Reforged HD models that within Blizz offices there is a build of 1.30 that plays Reforged also, so I'm talking about the patch version here (and by extension map version, etc) and not the art.

By artificially creating a new fork off of Patch 1.29 the Microsoft executive may believe that he is giving the world classic and doing what is right. In the meantime, he would create something where your 1.31 map might not load because he may say that that map was Reforged format and wasn't classic "enough", because in his case 1.29 was where he drew the line, not 1.32.

I know that for you because your emotions draw the line at the border between 1.31 and 1.32, that that specific increment is the one you want to repeal. But for the developers, that line isn't written in the technology. It's written in your feelings. And so we have to explain to them maybe on a case-by-case basis which features are in and which are out. For example if I made a list, I would say, for my version I don't want AbilitySkin, I don't want HTML menu, and I don't want legacy maps to default to HD graphics unless they specifically opt in from the World Editor. I could cherry pick these random things and figure the version that I want that makes me happy, and that's my "improved QoL" of the classic, but at the end of the day it just might be different from yours.

In order to achieve what you feel like you want, we have to agree technologically on the very specific featureset that we would ask Microsoft for, and I don't think people agree. As long as we don't all unilaterally agree, even though you may feel justified and be accurate from your viewpoint of where you drew the line in the sand of "too many" changes, you could just find someone else who draws that line in a different place.

We lost something as a community, and I don't think we're ever going to get it back, but when I look at the world today and the flow of information between people and how it affects friendly social discussion or even matters of government politics, I think that something or some part of the communication system in our world today is doing an excellent job creating a world where people fundamentally do not agree, and they all believe they are completely and totally right. So, please try to see it from the developer perspective that when they look in the code there WILL NOT be "the obvious thing to remove" from the Warcraft III repo in their office to "make it classic".

If any of us have an opportunity to do something about this, we have to be really, really particular and specific about technology changes. We can't just be upset. And I think that because in the office they have a version of 1.31 that runs with HD models and a version of 1.30 that runs with HD models, logically for me the nature of this codebase is A LOT more jumbled up inside than how you think it is with regards to what IS and what IS NOT your original experience you know that you enjoy.

Edit 2:

With all due respect

...
And by the by, am I actually due any respect? I am in fact not affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment at all. I can't steer this ship in any other direction any more than you can. I can only affect the future of my modding projects, such as Warsmash Mod Engine. I have very solid evidence and reason to believe that Warsmash is written more hastily, and more poorly in terms of left-brained "good code design" that the original Reign of Chaos was. It may be that that team back in those days was actually smarter than I am, but I am trying to emulate the work of their team with what has been until now almost exclusively a 1-man coding project. So I've got a lot to do and sometimes I just hack things together.
Why am I better than the Reforged developers? In what way is that possibly the case? Maybe I started my project to prove I was, and yet...

 

[Homor]

Retera, is English your first language? Because the grammar and syntax of your posts gets a little confusing to me.

 

[Retera]

Retera, is English your first language? Because the grammar and syntax of your posts gets a little confusing to me.

Yes. Due to some sleep deprivation maybe, and also talking to a lot of people on Hive for whom English was not their first language, I probably fall into a habit of communicating in my own particular way. In fact, when I think about the study of language, I find it likely that people who have studied English as a second language are probably moreso encouraged to do a good job than native speakers. For somebody who has lived as a native speaker it might be easier to not care and simply communicate however comes naturally.

It might also be brain damage. I think that generally there has to be a reason nobody else is trying to make a project like Warsmash.

That all seems pretty off-topic, though. Is there something I said previously that you would like for me to clarify?

 

[Homor]

Yes. Due to some sleep deprivation maybe, and also talking to a lot of people on Hive for whom English was not their first language, I probably fall into a habit of communicating in my own particular way. In fact, when I think about the study of language, I find it likely that people who have studied English as a second language are probably moreso encouraged to do a good job than native speakers. For somebody who has lived as a native speaker it might be easier to not care and simply communicate however comes naturally.

It might also be brain damage. I think that generally there has to be a reason nobody else is trying to make a project like Warsmash.

That all seems pretty off-topic, though. Is there something I said previously that you would like for me to clarify?

No, not in particular. I'd just like to clarify a few of my own points.

1) I would be totally okay with a War3 Legacy version that uses 1.26 - 1.28 as a base. I only name 1.31 in particular because it has the most potential compatibility with the highest amount of pre-Reforged maps. I just want a version that gives the user the closest possible version of the game as it was originally was. No stupid HTML menu, no "Reforged" campaign missions, UI and features left generally untouched. It would stink if I couldn't play my 1.31 maps in this new version, but if the way to get a more faithful and stable version of the classic game is by doing an earlier patch, I'd happily accept it.

Just like how the majority of the community is playing a Legacy patch, I want Blizzard to release and officially support a legacy version.

2) I don't want to overwrite or erase Reforged for this Classic version. I don't want or expect it to be compatible with Reforged content. I just want a Pre-Reforged version of the game, put out as a separate executable. Just like Diablo 2 and Resurrected have done.

3) I don't have a very specific featureset in mind. We could go as low as 1.26 or as high as 1.31. As long as there is a functional classic version of the game in some way, that doesn't have the bloated system requirements or filesize, and stays as faithful to the original game as possible, I will be happy.

 

[Retera]

Just like how the majority of the community is playing a Legacy patch

I heard a rumor that one of the Hive members who worked at Blizzard on Reforged, but was then laid off, had access to the numbers prior to being laid off and they said that their understanding was that the majority of the community is playing on the latest patch. Obviously this is hearsay and quite likely out of date, however.

Where you do you get your data that the majority of the community is playing on a Legacy patch?

I will be happy

But, unfortunately, theoretical future Microsoft employees working on a Warcraft III brand appreciation project have to make as many people happy as possible, rather than focusing on you. What gives you confidence that when you are happy, then everyone else will be happy?

Suppose the Microsoft employee tells himself that, in your words:

The playerbase is already split, and you're never going to unsplit it.

Essentially, he may decide that users like you are never going to stop using the old versions, so he might as well focus his time on the new version. And then all his time would get burned up on "fixing" Reforged, and he would not ever release this "War3 Classic" product that you are saying you want. How would you talk him out of doing that, and talk him out of focusing on the paying customer base?

 

[Dr Super Good]

At this point what really is needed is damage control. The scope and implementation of Reforged did not make sense to begin with which is why it ended up with problems. I even warned of these potential problems around the time of the announcement, the scope of the project just did not make sense. Why were they expanding an over 15 year old game with major, potentially compatibility breaking changes, where they did not make most of the content people use it to play? Why did they want to create brand new campaigns based on old campaigns in an old game that existed along side the originals? Why did they want a feature rich model editor built into World Editor?

Reading between the lines it felt like the scope of the project was aimed entirely at the Chinese community as they have been using features like Lua for years. There were even apparently leaked slides showing off Reforged features in China. Warcraft III in China still makes a ton of money, even for map makers, so an AAA tier budget would make sense. However my guess is this part of the plan failed. Without that potential money source the Reforged scope no longer made sense so budget had to be slashed. This resulted in an unfinished product that now is likely the most disappointing game on the BattleNet launcher.

What Reforged needs is to be feature complete. It needs custom campaign support added back. It needs some form of ladder added to it, even if basic. It needs most major regressive bugs fixed. I would even go as far as to say now that the ability to play with classic graphics should be given to everyone for free. Reforged graphics could be its own separate mode even, and have disclaimers about potential compatibility problems with older maps not made with the graphic set in mind. That would give a product that is at least feature parity with what it used to be. People should not be arguing over which version to use as the latest should be its best.

As for avoiding repeating mistakes in the future. What most Warcraft III players would have been happy with is a second expansion that brought the game to the BattleNet app, added a few brand new, and not remade, campaigns based on WoW lore. Added maybe a new race or two. Added a lot of assets and some new behaviours for modders to use for the previous mentioned content. Graphically all it had to give is wide screen support, more of the same art work except with some higher resolution textures available and possibly a move to allow real time shadows for everyone. Minimal engine changes required so game breaking changes would be kept low. Custom map makers would be happy, costs would be kept reasonable (assuming classic like assets are easier to make than Reforged style ones, and fewer of them would be needed), and I am pretty sure people would pay reforged prices for it with a smile. In case people have not realised this is basically the Age of Empires DLC model, so it could be repeated every year or so if there is still enough interest.

If they wanted to go a "Reforged" route with all new graphics and remade campaigns they should have not even touched Warcraft III and started with StarCraft II which was already a much more stable, capable and modern engine. From the start they could be focusing on new or more modern features like improved multi core support, new graphic technologies (tesselation, ray tracing, e.t.c.) and new features. No backwards compatibility with StarCraft II or Warcraft III would be provided. All the campaigns would be remade from scratch with heavy WoW references offering an entirely different experience. Melee would take advantage of the more responsive engine to allow more micro and large scopes of battle. The campaign could even be built around multiplayer coop play, a concept that proved very popular in StarCraft II. Custom map makers could make new custom maps for this remake using the editor. However what does this all sound like if you step back a moment? Yes, it is basically Warcraft IV which people would be super hyped about and again it would be unlikely to disappoint fans. New campaigns and assets could be periodically released as DLCs. Over time custom map makers would create new custom maps taking advantage of what the engine has to offer.

You still have no custom campaigns, you still have heavily altered campaign maps, you still have the cumbersome and poorly designed menu, it's a completely different experience.

Yet load up most custom multiplayer maps with classic graphics on and... Yeh feels the same.

The missing custom campaigns was actually something they were trying to fix before the plug was pulled. The engine obviously still supports it, just the wiring for it was never finished.

This isn't even getting into the bloated filesize and how the badly optimized menu basically makes it inaccessible for lower-end computers, but I digress.

The menu has no inherent performance problems on lower end systems. It has performance problems only due to a bug where if the system has 2 GPUs, such as a lot of modern Intel systems or systems using AMD APUs, it turns off hardware acceleration. Again this was likely going to be fixed before the plug was pulled. Given some of the comments from people experienced with integrated Chrome based browsers it likely was a flag that needed to be set to force hardware acceleration rather than letting it guess incorrectly.

I really, really hope what you're saying about Blizzard selling off the original code isn't true, because that would be a disgusting case of downright criminal negligence.

News flash...

 

[Homor]

But, unfortunately, theoretical future Microsoft employees working on a Warcraft III brand appreciation project have to make as many people happy as possible, rather than focusing on you. What gives you confidence that when you are happy, then everyone else will be happy?

If they want to focus on making everyone happy, and the simplest and easiest way to do that is allow players to cater their own experience. Making a separate Reforged and Legacy version would make the most amount of people happy as possible.

Essentially, he may decide that users like you are never going to stop using the old versions, so he might as well focus his time on the new version.

You could have applied the exact same logic to WoW Classic back before it was released. That turned out to be a smashing success that even impacted how they handled the main game. For years, Blizzard handwaved it away, probably saying "people will just play on their private servers" and when people asked for it, they smugly told people "you think you want that but you don't." Then they were proven totally wrong.

Just from a market standpoint, WoW classic is the perfect model for this.

I heard a rumor that one of the Hive members who worked at Blizzard on Reforged, but was then laid off, had access to the numbers prior to being laid off and they said that their understanding was that the majority of the community is playing on the latest patch.

Yeah, I didn't believe that when I heard it the first time. I don't think Blizzard ever had an accurate way of tracking who was playing on older/alternate patches and versions. But I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the playerbase was playing the current patch because it was the only easy way to play the game online. They playing it because they had to.

I don't have any raw data to suggest more people want a Legacy version, but given the abysmal and rightfully deserved disgust and backlash Reforged got, I think it's a pretty safe bet that more people would wanted to play an unbutchered version of the game.

As for avoiding repeating mistakes in the future. What most Warcraft III players would have been happy with is a second expansion

Oh, god. That's the worst idea I've heard the whole thread. Blizzard couldn't even recreate old content correctly. A second expansion would be a miserable disaster. You don't add a new room to a burning house.

 

[Retera]

a separate Reforged and Legacy version

So, as an example, I just recorded a video of myself playing:

Let's say I want to still be able to play this game just the same in 3 years. Would you say that in this video I was playing the Reforged version, or the Legacy version?

 

[Homor]

So, as an example, I just recorded a video of myself playing:

Let's say I want to still be able to play this game just the same in 3 years. Would you say that in this video I was playing the Reforged version, or the Legacy version?

I have absolutely no clue what I'm looking at, so I can't tell you anything.

 

[Retera]

I have absolutely no clue what I'm looking at

That's fair. It's a mod running on 1.32 and I thought it would be funny if I could bait you into saying it was classic in order to prove my point about versions versus menus. But really I was being silly.

Anyway, I'm off to sleep. I appreciate the chat. I'll check tomorrow if anyone said anything more. I would enjoy the make believe feeling that we could get Blizzard to release some updates that make us all happy, but I am so skeptical that I am to the point of hopelessness on this topic.

But hey, tinkering with the mod shown in that video is at least mildly entertaining, albeit absurdly broken feeling in some cases. Long live Warcraft 3!

 

[Dr Super Good]

Oh, god. That's the worst idea I've heard the whole thread. Blizzard couldn't even recreate old content correctly. A second expansion would be a miserable disaster. You don't add a new room to a burning house.

Not with the people they had/could have had on hand. Much of the original talent and many long and highly devoted fans. Let us not forget that Warcraft III, much like Diablo II, was never really perfect to begin with. It just had to be good enough to feel "more of the same" while paying to modernize the game to let people enjoy it for many more years to come.

 

[Homor]

Not with the people they had/could have had on hand. Much of the original talent and many long and highly devoted fans. Let us not forget that Warcraft III, much like Diablo II, was never really perfect to begin with. It just had to be good enough to feel "more of the same" while paying to modernize the game to let people enjoy it for many more years to come.

I'm open to the idea that a good team could make a good new War3 expansion. But the game is fundamentally broken right now, and when something is in a state as low quality and complexly shattered as this, adding new content would only give you more broken parts and make it resemble the original game even less. The poor quality of the new content in Reforged makes me dread the idea of Blizzard pushing out more. At least in the company's current state.

Maybe Microsoft will pull off a phenomenal turnaround, improve the company culture and save the game and the brand. But for right now, any pie in the sky plans for an imaginary new expansion pack should be saved for years down the line, after the company has invested serious time and resources into fixing the base game.

Again, you don't add a new room to a burning house. You put out the fire and repair the damage before you even think about anything else.

 

[Retera]

It sounds like you guys are talking about two different things. I believe DrSuperGood was referring to

What most Warcraft III players would have been happy with

and NOT referring to "the best next step forward given where we are today."

I generally also feel that if I had a time machine, and also infinite wealth, and I went back to the year 2017 and purchased the Warcraft III game ownership away from Blizzard, and I could do anything that I wanted with their team, what I might try could possibly be:

• With the old game that had a folder with "Warcraft III.exe" to play reign of chaos, and "Frozen Throne.exe" to play the expansion, since they had Kam on payroll at the time similar to how Microsoft brought in the Forgotten Empires fan mod and made it official techtrees on Age of Empires, just have Kam do that with his project. We upgrade the game to add "Beyond the Throne.exe" as the second expansion, officially sanctioning his custom content as an a third ruleset that can be played competitively using the same classic menus. By using those same menus, we would have versus mode systems including clan support and ladder etc (with no additional work to get those features since they were already working at the time).
• Along with this change, all three tiers of the game (Reign of Chaos, Frozen Throne, Beyond the Throne) would each have the 16:9 resolution support from Patch 1.31 because I think everyone likes to be able to play this game on a newer computer
• Maybe add a new campaign using Kam's mod, or else add a new prequel campaign using Warcraft 1 and 2 lore

It's easy for me to brainstorm what I would have done in that past situation, but also I don't have a time machine so when I brainstorm like that it's not something practical and we can't really put that into use at the moment given where we are today.

Again, you don't add a new room to a burning house.

So, again, I think you guys were talking about two different things, because you (Homor) are talking about what to do with the Reforged engine that we have today whereas DrSuperGood was talking about what players would have been happy with if we had a time machine to go back to the year 2016-2017 when the Reforged team started working.

But again, how does someone fix your "burning house"? Suppose I got hired at Microsoft to work on Reforged (I probably won't by the way). What could I possibly do that would make you happy, if we assume that the technology for the old servers is gone so I basically have to go "forward" from the Reforged code systems rather than "backward" to the older systems? Seems like we universally agree that -- akin to my mod I posted a video of -- it would be nice if the game used the old menu even for the newer version. That's a big technical undertaking that would be pretty thankless on Reforged, and possibly even get hate from the existing Reforged mods (W3Champions / Quenching). So I guess it's like you said, maybe when the game is starting up you get to choose which menu UI to use. If you choose 1.31 menu, then you get a 1.32 client with the 1.31 menu that plays the legacy maps.

But I don't really feel like people's dislike for 1.32 is based on any one rational thing -- it's just a feeling. So, if I was at Microsoft and I was in that position, and I made the 1.32 client that looked like 1.31's menu and played legacy maps (since 1.32 already does), what would stop you from just ending up hating that new "classic ui mode" on the 1.32?

---

Edit:

When the Warcraft III: Reforged was announced on the BlizzCon stage in 2018, at that time I sent this message to Kam on Discord about my feelings on the topic:

You have to understand the transaction that's taking place here. I would not even have bothered to think of World of Warcraft if I were left to my own devices. Just as I do not think of my stuffed animals from when I was a child. The data mining algorithms now are solving a math equation: which suggestions result in the maximum time spent at the computer. Caring about World of Warcraft at this juncture is an error in my brain because I am not going to play it again for a long time. The algorithm now uses this part of me, to feast upon errors in my brain. Drumming up a feeling of "caring" about this game serves the mathematical objective. It causes me to watch more videos. This kind of zombie that it wants to create within me is a danger to the gaming industry. They will come upon you in the thousands, wanting to cry out, wanting to be upset about the death of ancient games... This feeling, my feeling, was created by and for to serve the algorithm of YouTube. It has been slowly eroding what World of Warcraft actually was in me, enhancing its meaning to be something to watch videos about and care about lightly and not actually play.


Beware the World of Warcraft zombies. "Beware of me."


Will it do the same for Warcraft III?


You must make the game something whose success results in more videos being watched. Then the zombie horde who serves the algorithm will approve of the game.

So, other than the meme-ish joke reference to that song about Jaina that blizzard had recently released, I was generally being serious at the time. Essentially, I knew in advance that you and me and many other people would be upset @Homor . It was entirely predictable. I'm not even sure it mattered what Blizzard released under the Reforged brand.

But I was not able to do anything about it.
I do not feel like the circumstances have changed since then, other than seeing that I was right about this notion that I had. Do you think that I was wrong?

 

[Drake53]

Had to dig deep in my post history to find this but if an attempt to fix wc3 will be made I think this thread would be a good starting point: [Poll] How to fix Reforged?

I personally think debloating the game is most important (option to have an installation without HD assets and getting the old menu back), and to make SD free-to-play to maybe increase the player base a bit (also because I can't add my CD keys to my bnet account because they've already been claimed).

I think that generally there has to be a reason nobody else is trying to make a project like Warsmash.

I actually have a similar project but haven't worked on it for months, though it only supports one of my own maps that relies 100% on special effects, instead of terrain/units which I haven't even implemented yet.

 

[Homor]

But again, how does someone fix your "burning house"? Suppose I got hired at Microsoft to work on Reforged (I probably won't by the way). What could I possibly do that would make you happy, if we assume that the technology for the old servers is gone so I basically have to go "forward" from the Reforged code systems rather than "backward" to the older systems?

There's almost nothing you could do. If you can't get classic functioning again in any way, there is absolutely no amount of work you could do to Reforged to make it palatable to me. Except maybe sterilizing Reforged of every change that was made and making it as close to the previous versions as possible, right down to the restoring the original file size and system requirements, and making the online functionality totally identical to classic Battle.net.

You either get a classic client up and running, or you make the "current" version totally indistinguishable from pre-Reforged. Those are the two options.

 

[Napoqe]

I think it will now improve Activision Blizzard . Because Microsoft is in a good phase. I'm sure they're going to do some interior reforms.

I to dislike some Microsoft stuff like IE, and their email like Hotmail though it was mandatory for use MSN messager. But as time went by, it got better. Window 7 was excellent, they hired Forgotten Empire that made an unofficial expansion of Age 2 that later becomes official, Xbox 360 was a good video game, Xbox Serie X has good cost benefit here in Brazil, after so long arrived a Microsoft's good browser the "Edge".

Microsoft is also in the culture of making remakes and remasters of classic games like the Age of Empires franchise games: 1, 2 and 3 with their definitive versions.
And 2 that I play from time to time, having some fun events. And they're adding new content . I thank Microsoft for keeping Age 2 alive.

But I have little hope for Warcraft 3 and/or 4. Because Warcraft 3 Reforged has burned its brand too much. I believe Microsoft realized that, I think they'll think it's not worth investing.

I have good expectancy for the new Diablo (game), Lost Vikings and Rock Roll Racing.

 

[Retera]

If you can't get classic functioning again in any way,

So, you know what classic is because you already have it, don't you?

I was thinking about this some more. At one point after Reforged came out, I looked it up and if you rent an Ubuntu server for $5 per month and type a 1-line command in the Command Line (I believe it was something like sudo apt-get install bnetd) then it would install the BNet Daemon, which as far as I could tell was a fanmade replica of the whole War3 classic battlenet infrastructure.

You can get that running an hour due to that amazing open source tool stuff that's already freely available, then go to your Classic War3 and get some hack that allows it to connect to your own server rather than only to the old dead URLs like useast.battle.net or whatever it was. Unfortunately, hacking classic to do that was the hardest part, but there was a hack that just lets you type the URL of your server and then it should connect just fine if you're running a classic game client, such as the one currently available from Blizzard from the GetLegacy download.

So, in summary, you can already download both classic and a classic battlenet server. Blizzard even still offers download links for classic. What on Earth do you want? You want Blizzard to run servers for that and pay the $5/month server fee because you're too cheap to, essentially?

Basically, Blizzard doesn't seem to want to do that kind of free charity work of maintaining that server cost indefinitely anymore.

 

[Homor]

BNet Daemon, which as far as I could tell was a fanmade replica of the whole War3 classic battlenet infrastructure.

Well there you go. We have a solution, and thank god. Offer a download for a classic client on the Blizzard Launcher, use BNet Daemon for the online functionality, and there you have it. That completely satisfies me. Just make an easy, user-friendly way to do all of this in an official capacity and I'll be 100% satisfied. Put it all in one package and release it through the Blizzard launcher.

You said it yourself, the tools are already there. Now Blizzard just needs to use them for their own version of this, so that fans don't have to jump through a series of complicated hoops and setup to accomplish this on their own. In other words, just take what the fans already did and make it easier for people.

This would actually be an absolutely fantastic solution in my mind, and exactly what I want. Then, once we have a functioning "classic" client working again, I'm open to seeing what improvements they make to Reforged and, if they fix it well enough, I might even move over from classic to it. But restoring and preserving the classic experience, in my mind and heart, comes first.

Basically, Blizzard doesn't seem to want to do that kind of free charity work of maintaining that server cost indefinitely anymore.

That's a pretty shitty way to look at preserving the functionality of one of your classic games. :/
It isn't "charity." Anymore than running the servers for D1 and D2 (original) is "Charity." It's given your fans a product they want from you.

 

[Retera]

But restoring and preserving the classic experience, in my mind and heart, comes first.

Homor, Blizzard won the lawsuit

Actually, if you find a version of bnetd (which is apparently illegal because blizzard won the lawsuit according to the above) and you do that, the bnetd is not compatible with any version of Warcraft III that has 16:9 resolution for modern monitors, since the only versions of Warcraft III that do that are the Reforged engine and not classic, so they generally don't work with the bnetd.

So when you're talking about the classic experience, you're talking about a 4:3 resolution game that runs on windows XP, right? Also, in order to play multiplayer with someone else, you have to use the port forwarding systems to punch a hole in your router, so in order to do the multiplayer with the bnetd you have to know your router password, just like the classic experience.

 

[Homor]

Homor, Blizzard won the lawsuit

Actually, if you find a version of bnetd (which is apparently illegal because blizzard won the lawsuit according to the above) and you do that, the bnetd is not compatible with any version of Warcraft III that has 16:9 resolution for modern monitors, since the only versions of Warcraft III that do that are the Reforged engine and not classic, so they generally don't work with the bnetd.

So when you're talking about the classic experience, you're talking about a 4:3 resolution game that runs on windows XP, right? Also, in order to play multiplayer with someone else, you have to use the port forwarding systems to punch a hole in your router, so in order to do the multiplayer with the bnetd you have to know your router password, just like the classic experience.

I'm not sure what any of the first paragraph has to do with anything? We're talking about what Blizzard would do here.

The point is, and this is important: recreating and preserving the original experience is entirely possible. We know that because tools to do exactly that have already been made. I believe 100% that Blizzard is able to overcome and adjust to any technology hurtles and make it happen. The developers just need to be given the resources to do exactly that.

 

[Retera]

We're talking about what Blizzard would do here.

Yeah. I just mean that now I realize blizzard filed a DMCA lawsuit against bnetd and won. So, what Blizzard would do is not use bnetd. Even if just for social/political reasons and to retain the public image of their win in court.