- Joined
- Sep 9, 2007
- Messages
- 6,759
I am a big lover of Warcraft 3. It was my first RTS and I have to give credits to this wonderful game for a lot of positive things in my life. Honestly, I wouldn't be having this great job today if it wasn't for Warcraft 3. It got me into programming and from there it just developed itself.
I spent the first 5-6 years after the launch of TFT with playing and modding daily. I've played so many custom maps I can't even remember most of them. I watched genres rise and fall, authors change and the community grow up. I've seen communities arise from nowhere, wc3sear.ch, thehelper.net, wc3c.net and alike. There were hundreds of clans active with many having their own forum/board.
During all of these times I was always excited about the World Editor. This tool was surely out concurrence back then. Even today it stands for it's ability to create rich content while providing a simple interface which is understood by everybody.
After at least 200 custom maps that I made, a lot of public systems and resources, I can really say that this editor hit the sweet spot between being easy and being able to create diverse content.
I've played the original Campaign several times, first on normal and then on harder difficulty. I also played melee for some time when grubby became famous and got into competitive versus games.
Going forward 10 years, Warcraft 3 Reforged arrives. A remake which keeps me speechless. Here is why:
TLDR:
Devs: I feel sorry for you.
CEO/Managers and alike: Stop being so greedy & turn away from sins or your whole department has to be purged.
I spent the first 5-6 years after the launch of TFT with playing and modding daily. I've played so many custom maps I can't even remember most of them. I watched genres rise and fall, authors change and the community grow up. I've seen communities arise from nowhere, wc3sear.ch, thehelper.net, wc3c.net and alike. There were hundreds of clans active with many having their own forum/board.
During all of these times I was always excited about the World Editor. This tool was surely out concurrence back then. Even today it stands for it's ability to create rich content while providing a simple interface which is understood by everybody.
After at least 200 custom maps that I made, a lot of public systems and resources, I can really say that this editor hit the sweet spot between being easy and being able to create diverse content.
I've played the original Campaign several times, first on normal and then on harder difficulty. I also played melee for some time when grubby became famous and got into competitive versus games.
Going forward 10 years, Warcraft 3 Reforged arrives. A remake which keeps me speechless. Here is why:
- We can clearly see how the budget for Reforged has been cut:
- Campaigns become less and less edited/modified the further you progress and also have been made easier in general. Normally as testers become better in a game, the difficulty is increased to make up for the new skills learned and to make the game more challenging.
- A lot of originally promised features were rolled back and either replaced by something worse or reverted back completely.
- The quality of Upgrades/Patches has been low during all the time. I don't get this point. I am a developer myself. So how do we end up with patches breaking more things and even returning bugs as we progress further with the game? Either there is no official bug tracker / issue list in the official Reforged team ... or there are no resources for testing. Either way, this is terrible.
- The new menu engine (a browser, wtf. Blizzard?) is such an insane concept. Why would we ship a browser for a new menu? To me it seems like there were not enough resources for a better UI implementation and they just threw the web developer team at it and made it all HTML. I can't stress enough how bad this idea is and just how desperate one needs to be in order to do this.
- The new EULA is basically killing the modding scene. I get that they're afraid of other genres developing from Warcraft 3 again without having a say in it (*cough* DotA *cough*) but this is not the way to do it.
- The new LUA runtime is a great addon. It makes things both easier and more modular.
- The new World Editor natives are great, even when they're lacking of quality and some don't work just yet
- The idea of reviving Warcraft 3 is noble and a big undertaking. I have read the story behind Warcraft 3 and so I know how flicked the engine itself is.
TLDR:
Devs: I feel sorry for you.
CEO/Managers and alike: Stop being so greedy & turn away from sins or your whole department has to be purged.