PTR Version 1.36.1 Notes – Updated Oct. 24

[Archian]

PTR Version 1.36.1 Notes – Updated Oct. 24

Blizzard said: UPDATED OCT. 24 Version 1.36.1 PTR 2​ Build 20631​ Based on your feedback, we’ve updated the PTR. Will continue to monitor and make changes until the end of November. PTR Bug Fixes​ Fixed an issue where players could not invite other players to their custom game Fixed an issue where tool tips were dispalying incorrect strings Fixed an issue where the reduced cost of raise dead did not apply after the player got Skeletal Mastery Added/Modified Balance Changes​ Militia duration increased from 42.5 to 45 seconds Bash Bonus Damage increased from 25/50/75 to 25/50/100 Bash Stun duration increased from 2/2/2 to 2/4/6 (1/2/3 for Heroes) Bash Chance reduced from 20/30/40 to 25/25/25 Devotion Aura reduced from 3/6/9 to 3/4/6 Keep food increased from 12 to 14 Castle food increased from 12 to 16 Immolation activation cost increased from 5 to 10 Immolation damaged reduced from 6/11/17 to 5.5/11/17 Mana Flare range reduced from 750 to 650 Fan of Knives max total damage changed from 480/800/1200 to 375/ 750/1330 (Unit cap increased to 4/5/5 to 5/6/7) Druid of the Claw starting mana increased from 100 to 110 Abomination collision size reduced from 48 to 40 Abomination turn rate increased from 0.4 to 0.5 Crypt Fiend turn rate increased from 0.5 to 0.6 Bladestorm damage reduced from 160 damage per second to 140 damage per second Troll headhunter hit points increased from 350 to 375 Firelord Incenerate mana cost reduced from 6 to 2 Firelord Lava Split requirement reduced from 12 to 9 Firelord Volcano Damage increased from 100 to 150 Staff of Teleportation now has a stock of 2 charges in the shop Crystal Ball moved from level 3 to 2 Reverted Changes​ Mountain King movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Paladin movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Crypt Lord movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Dread Lord movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Lich movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Tauren Chieftain movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Alchemist movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Goblin Tinker movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Naga Sea Switch movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Pandaren Brew Master movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 Rusty Minning Pick (Grants +1 damage and a 15% chance to Bash) added as a level 3 item Master Changelog​ General Added Save/Load Functionality back to online games (does not apply to Ranked Matches) Enabled the ability to view Hero’s XP bar by hovering the mouse over the bar in the selection panel in Observer Mode Added the ability to View Profile for your teammates and opponents in the Tournament Result screen Bugfixes Fixed a crash that would primarily happen on the Fall of Silvermoon where a VFX would try playing on a different game thread Fixed an issue where voice language and text were not interchangeable Fixed an issue where Tech Tree requirements won’t work for custom requirements Fixed an issue where custom Item Actions would not work in the world editor Fixed an issue where the match processing screen would time out consistently Fixed an issue where updating a sound on the Sound Editor would cause an issue with file generation Fixed an issue where the campaign would skip scores and then the game client would freeze Fixed an issue where campaign difficulty resets to normal on the next level Fixed an issue where custom loading screens would not load properly Fixed an issue where subfolders in the campaign folder would cause a crash Fixed an issue where players would disconnect when trying to retrieve their match history data Fixed an issue where Blizzard would be listed as the player list in replays Fixed an issue where AT Elimination matches were not being processed correctly Fixed an issue where viewing profiles would have no information while the Tournament Results screen is active Fixed an issue where the Tournament Results screen would be briefly visible when entering an Elimination game Fixed an issue where the countdown until the next Tournament would not properly start Fixed an issue where the Escape shortcut was not functional in the Tournament Results screen Fixed some issues where users would get kicked from matchmaking as they entered an Elimination game Fixed an issue where Elimination Bracket UI lines would not line up properly Fixed an issue where Bye victories were not being added to your profile Fixed an issue where Allies tab text was inconsistent Balance Human Militia duration increased from 40 to 45 seconds Bash Bonus Damage increased from 25 to 25/50/100 Bash Stun duration increased from 2/2/2 to 2/4/6 (1/2/3 for Heroes) Bash Chance reduced from 20/30/40 to 25/25/25 Devotion Aura increased from 2/3.5/5 to 3/4/6 Keep increasing food from 12 to 14 Castle increases food by 14 to 16 Night Elf Druid of the talon cost increased from 135 to 145 Immolation activation cost increased from 1 to 10 Immolation damaged reduced from 6/11/17 to 5.5/11/17 Immolation mana activation requirement increased from 9 to 10 Warden blink cooldown reduced from 10/7/4 to 10/5/2.5 Fan of Knives max total damage increased from 300/625/950 to 375/ 750/1330 (Unit cap increased to 4/5/5 to 5/6/7, and will still do 75 per target) Druid of the Claw starting mana increased from 100 to 110 Mana Flare range reduced from 750 to 650 Undead Spiked Carapace melee damage returned increased from 15/25/35 to 15/30/45% Spiked Carapace bonus armor increased from 3/5/7 to 4/8/12 Raise dead cost reduced from 75 to 50 mana Cripple cost reduced from 125 to 100 mana Skeletal Mastery cost reduced from 200/175 to 150/100 Nerubian Tower cooldown increased from 1 to 1.5 Abomination collision size reduced from 48 to 40 Abomination turn rate increased from 0.4 to 0.5 Crypt Fiend rate increased from 0.5 to 0.6 Orc Bladestorm damage increased from 110 damage per second to 140 damage per second Spirit Walker Build time reduced from 38 seconds to 33 seconds Spirit Walker Adept Training reduced from 60 to 45 Spirit Walker Master Training reduced from 75 to 60 Steel Armor Upgrade Lumber Increment Reduced from 150 to 125 Steel Melee Weapon Melee Lumber increment reduced from 100 to 75 Steel Ranged Weapons Lumber increment reduced from 100 to 75 Troll headhunter hit points increased from 350 to 375 Neutral Firelord Incenerate mana cost reduced from 6 to 2 Firelord Lava Split requirement reduced from 12 to 9 Firelord Volcano Damage increased from 100 to 150 Items Circlet item level reduced from 3 to 2 Tome of Retraining now has a stock of 2 charges in the shop Staff of Teleportation now has a stock of 2 charges in the shop Crystal Ball moved from level 3 to 2 Neutral Dark Troll Trapper movement speed reduced from 300 to 270 Ice Troll Berserker movement speed reduced from 300 to 270 Ice Troll High Priest movement speed reduced from 300 to 270 Assassin movement speed reduced from 300 to 270 Map Pool 1v1,2v2,4v4 and FFA Map Pool has been updated

 

[yuriy_valandil]

• Added Save/Load Functionality back to online games (does not apply to Ranked Matches)

How this will work ? same people can join the game or everyone can join ? Somebody knows ?

 

[Bleeq]

I was just watching Grubby's channel and him talking about balance.

I've had an idea for a major overhaul and I'd like people's feedback. I'm not a great wc3 player, but I've watched a lot of pros play so I feel like I have a bit of an idea on the theorycraft side. Feel free to flame me though.

Also I'm very much of the view that less is more, or elegant simplicity. I hate redundancy and bloat, and I think it's better to utilise what's already in the game.

The gist is a few massive changes:

• Delete Mountain Giants
  • Just delete them, and salt the earth. I don't think their design can be made to work and they're either OP or pointless, and they are anti-fun. They aren't needed anyway and don't fill some big role NE was missing. It also means you don't need other jank like the Knight upgrade to deal with them.
    • NE's Theme is supposed to be ranged, fragile, mobile, skirmishing but then they give them the total opposite as an uber unit? It's not clever or ironic or anything.
• Delete Spell Breakers
  • This solves Breaker Wars in HU vs HU and removes their cancerousness. They are an anti-fun unit, and don't present opportunities for outplay to make up for it.
    • HU already has great dispels from priests anyway, why the hell did they need more?
    • This is a tiny issue, but it also bugs me that HU has more Elf units than Human ones. Equal numbers if you include Heroes.
    • If people think this is a waste of the skin then rework it into another caster
  • Footmen get a T3 upgrade to make them Magic Immune (called Runed Armor, or Elven Enchantment or some BS) which changes their skin to the Captain model for differentiation.
    • This gives Footmen new life instead of becoming obsolete within 10mins of the game starting. Isn't it preferable to make all units viable in some niche through the entire game?
      • I foresee an issue where the enemy goes for AOE like Breath of Fire to deal with Footy spam, but then you make them immune and the spell becomes ~worthless. I guess that's not too different to current with Breath and Chain Lightning vs HU into Breakers.
• Delete Spirit Walkers
  • The revive isn't that important. If this is considered a nerf to Tauren then they should be reworked to become viable on their own because they hardly ever get used either way.
  • The dispel is important but I think the races should have more variety/identity in how they deal with magic. Perhaps dealing with buffs should be one of Orc's weaknesses?
  • Spirit Link is important and interesting, which is why I think it should be kept
• For the Witch Doctor, replace Stasis Trap with Spirit Link
  • Stasis in kinda interesting but doesn't get used much.
  • This gives easier synergy between Spirit Link and Healing Ward, so one buff spreads the damage, and the other AOE heals it away.
  • I think it would make Witch Doctor more useful as he is under-utilised. Pack more goodness into the one unit instead of spreading it thin among multiple units.

Undead is more complicated and most of my change ideas look ridiculous in isolation, so I'll give a few without going into too many details:

• Death Knight unchanged, but disincentivised/nerfed contextually or indirectly.
• Delete Rod of Necromancy
  • It's a crutch, and almost obsoletes the iconic Necromancer unit.
    • Hopefully it would indirectly nerf Death Knight too, reducing his creeping speed.
• Delete Statues
  • OP Crutch, Undead already have many healing abilities, most of which are overlooked.
  • Indirectly nerfs DK later game by reducing his mana regen.
  • Destroyers trained normally
• Buff Dark Ritual
  • Makes up for loss of Statue regen
  • Either you can sacrifice Ghouls/Acolytes for mana or it incentivises pairing Lich with Necros or Crypt Lord.
    • But the Mana returned needs to be worth saccing Acos for.
• Delete Dagger (was it already removed?)
  • Bad item that works badly
  • I think they wanted to make DK less necessary, but you also feel like porgue no los dos? and grab both.
• Buff Blight healing to 3 baseline
  • Makes it uniform across units
  • Incentivises spreading blight around the map. If you want dagger-style healing on the move, then take more Skulls.
• Obsidian Destroyers and Frost Wyrms swapped in the tech-tree/power-level.
  • By which I mean Wyrms become 4 food units, Destros become a 7 food uber unit.
  • Wyrms would become a support unit you can take 1 or 2 for the AOE slow breath without needing to lean massively into them.
    • This would probably make them less annoying in 4v4s, too.
  • Destros become more niche, but Devour Magic is buffed to counter magic and buffs even harder.
    • However, dealing with buffs becomes more of a weakness for UD again, just like Orcs.

This was bigger than I thought, I should have probably started a new thread for it >.<

 

[xorkatoss]

Based on your feedback, we’ve updated the PTR. Will continue to monitor and make changes until the end of November.

wait what?? Instead of doing useless crap why they don't fix the WE problems? >_<

 

[HerlySQR]

I was just watching Grubby's channel and him talking about balance.

I've had an idea for a major overhaul and I'd like people's feedback. I'm not a great wc3 player, but I've watched a lot of pros play so I feel like I have a bit of an idea on the theorycraft side. Feel free to flame me though.

Also I'm very much of the view that less is more, or elegant simplicity. I hate redundancy and bloat, and I think it's better to utilise what's already in the game.

The gist is a few massive changes:

• Delete Mountain Giants
  • Just delete them, and salt the earth. I don't think their design can be made to work and they're either OP or pointless, and they are anti-fun. They aren't needed anyway and don't fill some big role NE was missing. It also means you don't need other jank like the Knight upgrade to deal with them.
    • NE's Theme is supposed to be ranged, fragile, mobile, skirmishing but then they give them the total opposite as an uber unit? It's not clever or ironic or anything.
• Delete Spell Breakers
  • This solves Breaker Wars in HU vs HU and removes their cancerousness. They are an anti-fun unit, and don't present opportunities for outplay to make up for it.
    • HU already has great dispels from priests anyway, why the hell did they need more?
    • This is a tiny issue, but it also bugs me that HU has more Elf units than Human ones. Equal numbers if you include Heroes.
    • If people think this is a waste of the skin then rework it into another caster
  • Footmen get a T3 upgrade to make them Magic Immune (called Runed Armor, or Elven Enchantment or some BS) which changes their skin to the Captain model for differentiation.
    • This gives Footmen new life instead of becoming obsolete within 10mins of the game starting. Isn't it preferable to make all units viable in some niche through the entire game?
      • I foresee an issue where the enemy goes for AOE like Breath of Fire to deal with Footy spam, but then you make them immune and the spell becomes ~worthless. I guess that's not too different to current with Breath and Chain Lightning vs HU into Breakers.
• Delete Spirit Walkers
  • The revive isn't that important. If this is considered a nerf to Tauren then they should be reworked to become viable on their own because they hardly ever get used either way.
  • The dispel is important but I think the races should have more variety/identity in how they deal with magic. Perhaps dealing with buffs should be one of Orc's weaknesses?
  • Spirit Link is important and interesting, which is why I think it should be kept
• For the Witch Doctor, replace Stasis Trap with Spirit Link
  • Stasis in kinda interesting but doesn't get used much.
  • This gives easier synergy between Spirit Link and Healing Ward, so one buff spreads the damage, and the other AOE heals it away.
  • I think it would make Witch Doctor more useful as he is under-utilised. Pack more goodness into the one unit instead of spreading it thin among multiple units.

Undead is more complicated and most of my change ideas look ridiculous in isolation, so I'll give a few without going into too many details:

• Death Knight unchanged, but disincentivised/nerfed contextually or indirectly.
• Delete Rod of Necromancy
  • It's a crutch, and almost obsoletes the iconic Necromancer unit.
    • Hopefully it would indirectly nerf Death Knight too, reducing his creeping speed.
• Delete Statues
  • OP Crutch, Undead already have many healing abilities, most of which are overlooked.
  • Indirectly nerfs DK later game by reducing his mana regen.
  • Destroyers trained normally
• Buff Dark Ritual
  • Makes up for loss of Statue regen
  • Either you can sacrifice Ghouls/Acolytes for mana or it incentivises pairing Lich with Necros or Crypt Lord.
    • But the Mana returned needs to be worth saccing Acos for.
• Delete Dagger (was it already removed?)
  • Bad item that works badly
  • I think they wanted to make DK less necessary, but you also feel like porgue no los dos? and grab both.
• Buff Blight healing to 3 baseline
  • Makes it uniform across units
  • Incentivises spreading blight around the map. If you want dagger-style healing on the move, then take more Skulls.
• Obsidian Destroyers and Frost Wyrms swapped in the tech-tree/power-level.
  • By which I mean Wyrms become 4 food units, Destros become a 7 food uber unit.
  • Wyrms would become a support unit you can take 1 or 2 for the AOE slow breath without needing to lean massively into them.
    • This would probably make them less annoying in 4v4s, too.
  • Destros become more niche, but Devour Magic is buffed to counter magic and buffs even harder.
    • However, dealing with buffs becomes more of a weakness for UD again, just like Orcs.

This was bigger than I thought, I should have probably started a new thread for it >.<

Better just play ROC

 

[OutsiderXE]

Better just play ROC

Oh wait...^^

Damn. No WE fixes. Still needs a custom loading screen crest fix.

 

[TheZodiarch]

It's like they have people on the development team who never heard about warcraft 3..... Im asuming they are activily listening to the feedback of the communitry but honestly some of these changes are just either outragesly dumb and overpowered or subtle and doesnt make a difference. Perhaps they are trying to test things and see what it brings, since they arent gonna make perma changes until end of november as far as I understood XD

 

[Barade]

Based on your feedback, we’ve updated the PTR.

Not the modding feedback obviously. They could easily fix many bugs, provide more object data fields to be changed and extracted and finally raise limits for everything like tile and cliff types and max hero abilities. These are basically fixed constants or data types in the binary format which could be changed with a higher/new version. It is soo easy to do these things and the whole modding community wants it. Where do they get their information from?

• Added Save/Load Functionality back to online games (does not apply to Ranked Matches)

How this will work ? same people can join the game or everyone can join ? Somebody knows ?

I think that it was not possible to save and load a game in multiplayer previously. You can save a game and load the game with the same players you have played it. In Frozen Throne I think they needed the savegame and maybe even the player name they had in the game.
I don't think anyone can join a running game which would be really really cool.

 

[Kakerate]

I have no idea about melee balance, but I feel like design's approach to getting players to use underused heroes & their abilities is by providing some utility to them. Even a tradeoff that pigeonholes you into alternate builds could be interesting. Some random, mostly dumb, ideas;

Soul Burn silences target's auras for duration. Active's are not silenced, but have a mana flare effect wired in.
MKs abilities+bash deal bonus damage to stunned targets? Maybe Bash's stun is moved into root+ auto attack disable?
Paladin's Devotion aura is stronger for short period after being damaged by a hero
Panda's Brawler passive stronger on drunken enemies
Thorns aura cares about attacker's distance from target, instead of binary isRanged (for ground only ofc).

 

[coconut]

Advice to developers - don’t try to balance things that were done in the game back in 2002. Sometimes it’s worth removing or replacing something.

 

[ALADEEN]

Most of balance changes seems harmless. MOST of them. Well we can't have everything.
The only thing left is to laugh about it.

Better just play ROC

Or make changes in a map or via Local Files.

 

[Bleeq]

Or make changes in a map or via Local Files.

That's the plan, but I'd like to hear other peoples' opinions before bothering.

 

[Wiimeiser]

Don't delete them, as that would break custom maps. Just remove them from training in Melee and set their Campaign editor flag to 1 (and Destroyer's Special flag to 0). Also, do still include them in the campaign (Spell Breaker at least, that one makes story sense)

As far as other changes go:
-Fix the rain crash
-Fix PopcornFX errors in the Editor
-Fix the Pit Lord's missing sound
-Increase maximum file size beyond 2GB (this would really only be necessary for HD campaigns though) and add better error handling for when this limit is reached (though to be fair, at the time the game was made, 2GB was the maximum size of a Hard Drive on Windows)
-Make UnitAckSounds overridable via LocalFiles again (AFAIK it's literally the only file that can't be overridden in this manner)
-Somehow make advanced build menu
-Somehow incorporate Shipyards?

 

[deepstrasz]

I'd like to suggest some texture tweaking for Classic.
There are numerous neutral units and buildings (and not only) that have no team colour (besides villagers and critters that don't necessarily need it but could use it, I guess): Fel Stalker, Fel Beast, Fel Ravager, Ghost, Wraith, Sylvanas Wraith, Zombie, Infernal, Zergling, Hydralisk, Mannoroth, Azgalor. I might have missed some of course (+buildings like Shrine, Infected Granary, Demon Gate etc.).

As you can see, a user has already started fixing the issues:

Teamcoloring Banshee Ghost

This is most simple texture replacement for the creep Ghost unit to restore teamcolor parts of it. The model already has material setup to include teamcolor, its obvious error on part of Blizzard to not clear out the relevant parts once again after recoloring the texture.

www.hiveworkshop.com

Zombie Teamcolored

very simple edit of Zombie with Teamcoloring wristwraps. path for the texture is: units\creeps\Zombie\ZombieB.blp

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[noob]

A very interesting effect of the bash change is that level 3 bash increases excepted damage per attack more than level 3 critical strike if your hero deals less than 55.555... average damage per attack.
It means that now bash is a damage source that can compare a bit with critical strike. (really weird result of the patch)
Still weaker in terms of damage because it is on the mountain king which attacks slower.
However you get 6 seconds of stun which is a lot.

 

[LuisMenethil]

They have reverted the changes made to the campaign's Hard difficulty introduced in patch 1.33. They say that changes were the reason for the constant crashes. That is true?

 

[Wiimeiser]

The crash in Wrath of the Betrayer was caused by the rain, don't know of any other crashes.

 

[LuisMenethil]

I know of this rain crash, it's been present since the first Reforged patch, as far as I remember. I'm referring to the crashes that started after patch 1.33, which brought several difficulty changes to the campaigns. These are random crashes that occur in several missions in various campaigns, from Reign of Chaos to Frozen Throne.

Apparently, not even Blizzard knows what was causing them, so they decided to roll back the changes, as shown in the current PTR:

"Due to instabilities in the campaign as a result of numerous AI and scripting changes we are rolling back changes that were previously made in 1.33."

 

[Kakerate]

Can anyone elaborate on how the rain weather effect was causing crashes? That's fascinating to me, I kinda wanna open the map up and see what the function is all doing o.o

 

[Chaosium]

I wish they'd leave campaigns/ladder alone for a bit and focus exclusively on giving some love to the editor, I feel like custom stuff is mostly what keeps people playing

 

[Wiimeiser]

Can anyone elaborate on how the rain weather effect was causing crashes? That's fascinating to me, I kinda wanna open the map up and see what the function is all doing o.o

In my personal experiences, it's simply moving in and out of a rain area, though there seems to be more necessary criteria than that, seemingly the map's overall complexity. If you have a region with rain, moving to it freezes or crashes, though in at least some cases this doesn't happen. On the other hand, if the rain is a global effect, like on the melee map Phantom Grove, it does nothing out of the ordinary. Don't know if it's HD only or what. But Wrath of the Betrayer is unbeatable atm because of it.

I wish they'd leave campaigns/ladder alone for a bit and focus exclusively on giving some love to the editor, I feel like custom stuff is mostly what keeps people playing

Same here, the editor has a lot of issues. Also, I think GGG said something to that effect a while ago.

 

[Homor]

I'm amazed they're still bothering to do shit. Bobby Nodick is gonna be gone in just a little over a month and I can't imagine anything significant happening with the development of this game until then. Until Warcraft 3 gets some real money and manpower behind it, none of this matters much.

 

[tulee]

I'm amazed they're still bothering to do shit. Bobby Nodick is gonna be gone in just a little over a month and I can't imagine anything significant happening with the development of this game until then. Until Warcraft 3 gets some real money and manpower behind it, none of this matters much.

It matters to the people still playing it. Bringing back the load feature in multiplayer games is big news for people who play maps that do not have a way to load progress if the map takes too long to beat in 1 playthrough (Sunken City, etc).

And the melee changes are always welcome by melee players because it changes up the melee gameplay.

 

[Wlizer]

They are clueless about the key issues of the reforged. New craphics are useless to ladder if they dont separate new and old gfx user vs-play. They are indeed waysting our time, for me it's a time to abandom this sinking ship..
(im not even going to mention all the bugs that came with the compability issues of playing custom games created pre-reforged.)

 

[Homor]

It matters to the people still playing it. Bringing back the load feature in multiplayer games is big news for people who play maps that do not have a way to load progress if the map takes too long to beat in 1 playthrough (Sunken City, etc).

And the melee changes are always welcome by melee players because it changes up the melee gameplay.

I'm glad you're enjoying the small changes, but IMO the problems with Reforged are so many and so big that the small fixes don't impress me.
Of course, the overall message of my post is one of cautious optimism. If MS dedicates resources to fixing WC3 after the severe neglect it faced, I'm going to be really happy. If it works out, I think we're both gonna be really excited at what comes next.

 

[Retera]

Can anyone elaborate on how the rain weather effect was causing crashes?

When I heard that they were rolling back the campaign updates from 1.33 instead of fixing the rain crash, I recorded myself ranting at a camera for a while on this topic and kind of explained it.

Then, I went and played Wrath of the Betrayer on PTR, and Wrath of the Betrayer's map from current release extracted out of the CASC and played on PTR, and then played Wrath of the Betrayer on release, and I sort of humiliated myself.
On the PTR, the rain crash does indeed appear to be fixed. And that was not what I expected in my little as-of-yet unpublished "rant video." What I mean by this is that on my high-end gaming PC that should be capable of anything (and so I assume this applies to all users), if I simply launch Wrath of the Betrayer even just by typing "motherland nightelfex 4" cheat code from any single player map/campaign mission to skip to Wrath of the Betrayer, on the current release client if we simply click the minimap a bunch to move the camera -- or in my case I realized I could simply hold down Space Bar to jump the camera between recent "key locations" -- that as soon as the minimap is pinged revealing a second area of the map after the startup cinematic, the holding of Space Bar on the current release client causes the "rain crash" i.e. the game instantly exits to an error.

And on PTR this is fixed and no longer happens.

So, my video ranting about technology and bad management is sort of incorrect. Because in the video I was explaining how Patch 1.33 in August 17th, 2022 changed the format of all 3D models in the game and the format of all Reforged particle effects (a technology licensed from PopcornFX.com and not originally from Blizzard) and I was ranting to my camera when I had that opportunity about this idea that the incompetent people at this company are rolling back campaign changes when the actual problem was all the assets in the game changing format, and the changes having been authored by people who did not finish them and were laid off, and these stupid management problems from the top down that muck up everything. My thinking was that as a result, without even playing the campaign, I could simply expect that the future now will be (1) that we still have the rain crash because we have the new asset formats from fall 2022, and (2) that we won't have the updated campaign anymore. So that players will have the old 2020 release version of the Reforged campaign, with all its bugs, as well as the new August 2022 crash cases pushed into production by the new people such as the rain crash that come from all assets in the game changing format.

But, apparently, although the high level technology overview of what I thought was happening was accurate, and this multiple authors problem is probably still really happening, someone at Activision was actually able to review the rain crash and fix it while still on a version where at least the MDX models in the game are still all in the new 2022-2023 format. So, I'm assuming the PopcornFX particles are also in the new format, although I did not bother to check those yet because they are more frustrating for me to work with than the MDX models. I suppose it is possible but unlikely that they fixed the rain crash by reverting all of the PopcornFX emitters in the game release to their old 2020-2022 format. But I think that is probably not what happened; more likely, in this mosaic of software when the Warcraft III engine shovels camera coordinates into the proprietary licensed PopcornFX render pipeline that even Activision wouldn't be able to read/modify, after they upgraded the PopcornFx pipeline version in 2022 and introduced the "rain crash" someone probably went and looked and saw that the passing from CPU to GPU of the shader inputs that would instruct the PopcornFX pipeline what 4x4 matrix to use to offset particles based on camera or whatever... probably fixed that. It's as if someone at Activision actually used their brain for a bit, or rented time with a software engineer who has training, or something, instead of just mucking about in World Editor or Microsoft Excel to modify unit balance statistics and then call that a patch.

But I might just be misreading something, since that seems like maybe too good to be true. Either that, or I should stop giving these guys as much flak because maybe they actually want the game to work and at some point will realize that the problem was management all along. Not sure.

 

[tulee]

They are clueless about the key issues of the reforged. New craphics are useless to ladder if they dont separate new and old gfx user vs-play. They are indeed waysting our time, for me it's a time to abandom this sinking ship..
(im not even going to mention all the bugs that came with the compability issues of playing custom games created pre-reforged.)

What key issues? New graphics were purposely mixed with old graphics users so that there would be a bigger player base. If you are playing on the graphics settings you enjoy, it really shouldn't matter what the person opposite you is using (classic/reforged graphics).

What bugs with compatibility issues of playing custom games created pre-reforged? Those kinds of problems were fixed more than 1.5 years ago. Unless a map was made with third party editor, or used something like return bug pre 1.24, or memory hacks, or is a possibly protected map (not confirmed), there are no compatibility issues, based on my experience playing lots of multiplayer / single player custom content. All the accumulated bugs from the 1.29-1.31 which were left untouched because they rushed to push out Reforged have been fixed post 1.33+, so the latest version of wc3 is probably the best version to play custom maps.

I'm glad you're enjoying the small changes, but IMO the problems with Reforged are so many and so big that the small fixes don't impress me.
Of course, the overall message of my post is one of cautious optimism. If MS dedicates resources to fixing WC3 after the severe neglect it faced, I'm going to be really happy. If it works out, I think we're both gonna be really excited at what comes next.

The main reason wc3 was being played up till Reforged was released wasn't that blizzard kept maintaining the game, but because people kept making custom content. And players are still making content for the game. Not sure what you expect Blizzard to do. And like I said above, there are very few issues with Reforged, and many issues that have long plagued the game since Wc3 release 20 years have actually been fixed (like the custom campaign difficulty setting no longer resets itself to normal/the difficulty selected for the normal blizzard campaign) after each mission is finished.

 

[Retera]

What bugs with compatibility issues of playing custom games created pre-reforged? Those kinds of problems were fixed more than 1.5 years ago. Unless a map was made with third party editor, or used something like return bug pre 1.24, or memory hacks, or is a possibly protected map (not confirmed), there are no compatibility issues, based on my experience playing lots of multiplayer / single player custom content. All the accumulated bugs from the 1.29-1.31 which were left untouched because they rushed to push out Reforged have been fixed post 1.33+, so the latest version of wc3 is probably the best version to play custom maps

On the current release client of Reforged, there are tons of things wrong that weren't wrong even in 1.31! I heard maybe the current PTR was aiming to fix it, but for the past 4 years since 1.32 released any ability that requires more than 1 techtree item will unlock based simply on the first requirement! There are data bugs with skin IDs, such as Starfall not applying modified effect model file paths to things, and Robo-Goblin or similar morphing resetting the tooltips on Demolish to Upgrade Level 1 because of the Reforged spaghetti, and how "learning Engineering Upgrade immediately sets the Reforged skin ID of its affected abilities to their Upgrade ID" but "gaining an affected ability while already having Engineering Upgrade does not set the Reforged skin ID of the affected ability to its Upgrade ID." These ideas are gross attempts by multiple authors to patch over Reforged and make it as functional as Frozen Throne even though it isn't.

You can choose to patronize Reforged because you didn't notice the bugs, but please don't deny their objective existence.

Frozen Throne was not plagued by this lack of care for precision to details.

 

[tulee]

On the current release client of Reforged, there are tons of things wrong that weren't wrong even in 1.31! I heard maybe the current PTR was aiming to fix it, but for the past 4 years since 1.32 released any ability that requires more than 1 techtree item will unlock based simply on the first requirement! There are data bugs with skin IDs, such as Starfall not applying modified effect model file paths to things, and Robo-Goblin or similar morphing resetting the tooltips on Demolish to Upgrade Level 1 because of the Reforged spaghetti, and how "learning Engineering Upgrade immediately sets the Reforged skin ID of its affected abilities to their Upgrade ID" but "gaining an affected ability while already having Engineering Upgrade does not set the Reforged skin ID of the affected ability to its Upgrade ID." These ideas are gross attempts by multiple authors to patch over Reforged and make it as functional as Frozen Throne even though it isn't.

That is why I specifically said "based on my experience of playing". There will always be bugs, but those issues you listed are tiny compared to some of the problems left in 1.29-1.31, where on certain versions even saving the game breaks triggers. Plus, blizzard has said they are reverting the AI/campaign stuff that Kam added while he was still working for blizzard in order to fix a lot of the problems they cannot find solutions to, in the PTR.

You can choose to patronize Reforged because you didn't notice the bugs, but please don't deny their objective existence.

That is why I specifically said "based on my experience of playing". There will always be bugs, but those issues you listed are tiny compared to some of the problems left in 1.29-1.31, where on certain versions even saving the game breaks triggers. Plus, blizzard has said they are reverting the AI/campaign stuff that Kam added while he was still working for blizzard in order to fix a lot of the problems they cannot find solutions to, in the PTR.

 

[Homor]

there are very few issues with Reforged

????????

 

[coconut]

BLIZZARD FIX FUCKING NEW OBSERVER MODE WITH CINEMATICS
BUG FROM OTHER VERSION STILL NOT FIXED LOL

 

[Bitterman]

BLIZZARD FIX FUCKING NEW OBSERVER MODE WITH CINEMATICS
BUG FROM OTHER VERSION STILL NOT FIXED LOL
View attachment 454795

too complicated, think of our hires

 

[xorkatoss]

@Retera wow I didn't even know about those bugs! not that it matters for most of the modders anyway.
why?
1. Because I only use custom skills
2. I don't use techtree stuff lol

 

[Homor]

I wouldn't give the current team too much shit for what they haven't done, because they've been given no serious time or resources for the project. Kotick's Actiblizzard considers this an afterthought at best. The fact that fans have gotten the fixes they have now is amazing.

I've got cautious optimism for the future under Microsoft. Phil Spencer specifically singled out Warcraft 3 as something that interests him (along with freeing Raven from the CoD mines) but I've still got huge concerns and dealbreakers I'd have to believe will be dealt with before I trust them.

 

[Retera]

1. Because I only use custom skills

How would that help? Custom skills are the most affected, since things that were previously customizable are no longer customizable in reforged

 

[deepstrasz]

I've got cautious optimism for the future under Microsoft. Phil Spencer specifically singled out Warcraft 3 as something that interests him (along with freeing Raven from the CoD mines) but I've still got huge concerns and dealbreakers I'd have to believe will be dealt with before I trust them.

Are you sure it's Warcraft III and not Warcraft?

Xbox's Phil Spencer Wants to Increase 'World of Warcraft' Players

With Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard on the way, the Xbox boss wants to increase the players of "WoW."

www.techtimes.com

Blizzard devs reveal the focus of Phil Spencer's studio visit | Digital Trends

The devs in charge of Warcraft and Diablo told Digital Trends what Phil Spencer's Blizzard Entertainment studio visit ahead of BlizzCon 2023 was like.

www.digitaltrends.com

Blizzard’s president on the studio’s “new era” under Xbox

The studio is juggling a lot.

www.theverge.com

Even here there's no specific mention

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/01/20/xbox-activision-blizzard-phil-spencer/

But if we're talking about porting the game to Xbox, well... that doesn't really sound optimistic at all.

Phil Spencer Is Keen On The Idea Of Reviving StarCraft And Warcraft For Xbox

Xbox head Phil Spencer loves the idea of reviving Blizzard RTS games like StarCraft and Warcraft, but the road to doing so is long and comlex.

www.kotaku.com.au

 

[Homor]

Are you sure it's Warcraft III and not Warcraft?

Xbox's Phil Spencer Wants to Increase 'World of Warcraft' Players

With Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard on the way, the Xbox boss wants to increase the players of "WoW."

www.techtimes.com

Blizzard devs reveal the focus of Phil Spencer's studio visit | Digital Trends

The devs in charge of Warcraft and Diablo told Digital Trends what Phil Spencer's Blizzard Entertainment studio visit ahead of BlizzCon 2023 was like.

www.digitaltrends.com

Blizzard’s president on the studio’s “new era” under Xbox

The studio is juggling a lot.

www.theverge.com

Even here there's no specific mention

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/01/20/xbox-activision-blizzard-phil-spencer/

But if we're talking about porting the game to Xbox, well... that doesn't really sound optimistic at all.

Phil Spencer Is Keen On The Idea Of Reviving StarCraft And Warcraft For Xbox

Xbox head Phil Spencer loves the idea of reviving Blizzard RTS games like StarCraft and Warcraft, but the road to doing so is long and comlex.

www.kotaku.com.au

No "explicit" mention but he clearly mentioned reviving RTS games, and Blizzard only has two RTS franchises. That's why I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

[Wiimeiser]

To most people, "Warcraft" refers to the MMO. Even South Park (which did get several details wrong) basically said Warcraft had always been an MMO AFAIK (to be fair, I haven't actually seen that episode myself, only read about it)

No "explicit" mention but he clearly mentioned reviving RTS games, and Blizzard only has two RTS franchises. That's why I'm cautiously optimistic.

Considering Starcraft II development is done (my guess for the reason being the 43,280 actor-sound limit destroying their dreams of adding Grommash and Jaina as commanders) and Starcraft III already rumored... Add the above and it's probably Starcraft III.

Patch 1.33 in August 17th, 2022 changed the format of all 3D models in the game

Is that what's causing the crash I've been getting with certain unit models being loaded in the editor on startup? Because you mentioned using the 1.32 editor for 1.35 and I wasn't sure what you meant by that...

 

[Retera]

Is that what's causing the crash I've been getting with certain unit models being loaded in the editor on startup? Because you mentioned using the 1.32 editor for 1.35 and I wasn't sure what you meant by that...

I kind of stopped spending time on the live patch after 1.33 because I seem to no longer be their target audience and crashes like that make me sad, but I can surely shill in favor of editing maps with 1.32 even if you're going to play them on the latest patch. I think it would work. People asked me for help on maps from 1.32 that had not changed, but where now 1.33 couldn't open them. I don't have Blizzard's code and can't tell you what's wrong with 1.33 editor specifically, but I know that all the models in the game changed format and now "certain model imports" are reported to crash maps.

Edit: But I mean, like, tonight I am using 1.22ish editor not 1.32, since 1.22 is from before the Activision merger so it runs well and stuff

 

[Wiimeiser]

and now "certain model imports" are reported to crash maps

I know it's an issue with the custom HD Sammy. I tested various models and the only one that didn't crash was rated as "Lacking" on Hive, but that obviously won't affect anything in the actual editor. Is the mesh in a different format, I wonder?

 

[Retera]

Is the mesh in a different format, I wonder?

I don't think it's that simple. The editor became unstable after the model format changes. So, whether you feed it a model in the 2020 format or the 2023 format, it would probably crash likewise because the editor is unstable. I don't know more than that; I don't have their code and didn't invest the time and patience to find out what horrible nonsense they did to the code.

Maybe someone else will answer who knows more.

 

[Wlizer]

1.let me answer ur first question related to ladder gameplay
making new and old gfx users battle against eachother is not fair, since new gfx causes gameplay
to be slower due lower fps and with minor readibility issues like skeletons looking like footmen ect. i would sincerely like to use new gfx but i cannot afford it since i would lose everyfight in the end because of that (the fights on the professional level). giving new gfx users own playerpool would make battles more fair. claiming that it would make the playerbase smaller is delusional and it would attract a lot new players to use new gfx because it wouldnt be as competitive and it would require everybody a small to minor learning curve. hence players started using new gfx would also encourage developers to sharpen up already good craphics into even better like fixing errors like (1.missing fish animation, 2.oversized spell effects like lighting shield combined to bloodust). was that enought answer or are you just fixed into ur thinking and cannot assume anything else?

2.let me list some of the bugs since you carelessly claim there arent any.
-custom minimap screen isnt anymore allowed for custom game lobbies, this kind of takes out suprice for maps that are covered in darkness but has a minimap that should cover it up like final fantasy open rgp where you are not supposed to see whole map beforehand
-pokemon models in my map doesnt function anymore.
-i have also encountered various unseen bugs like data corruption of triggers (that were loaded from a map that was being
created before reforged)
-and I have also encountered a bug that crashes the editor when you are simply not doing anything but moving the playfield with cursor (this type of issues are extremely difficult to track the cause), so i just give up
-i also have seen a bug where multiplayer lobby doesnt load up player slots and there doesnt seem to be any cause

What key issues? New graphics were purposely mixed with old graphics users so that there would be a bigger player base. If you are playing on the graphics settings you enjoy, it really shouldn't matter what the person opposite you is using (classic/reforged graphics).

What bugs with compatibility issues of playing custom games created pre-reforged?

 

[Wiimeiser]

custom minimap screen isnt anymore allowed for custom game lobbies, this kind of takes out suprice for maps that are covered in darkness but has a minimap that should cover it up like final fantasy open rgp where you are not supposed to see whole map beforehand

Hiding the minimap in general no longer works, the only way to hide the minimap is to use a campaign loading screen and it only affects that (will need to test Monolith and Skibi to be sure though. I did test Monolith by reimporting the files from the 1.31.1 version and it seems the game actually blocks the loading screen textures from loading, the screen appears black except for the text and progress bar). In fact, it seems to generate the minimap on the loading screen, based on how long it takes to load sometimes.

In fact, the only options in Map Options that seem to do anything are "Masked areas are partially visible", "Show water waves on cliff shores", "Show water waves on rolling shores", "Use item classification system" (which AFAIK does nothing but disable the "Item Class" dropdown in the Editor), "Use Terrain Fog" (which depending on the parameters defined either does nothing or covers the entire map in a flat texture leaving the game unplayable), "Use global weather", possibly "Use water tinting color" (SD only), and "Game data set". I haven't checked the last three options though.

EDIT: Replaced the map preview on Skibi. When testing, the minimap was blank until the loading bar passed the end of "Blizzard Entertainment", then it displayed the ingame minimap. Seems it's hardcoded to render the actual minimap and block custom loading screens.

EDIT2: It's hardcoded to load War3mapMap.blp. I'm not sure what the filename of the original hidden preview is, but I don't think it exists in Reforged.

 

[Wlizer]

Hiding the minimap in general no longer works, the only way to hide the minimap is to use a campaign loading screen and it only affects that (will need to test Monolith and Skibi to be sure though. I did test Monolith by reimporting the files from the 1.31.1 version and it seems the game actually blocks the loading screen textures from loading, the screen appears black except for the text and progress bar). In fact, it seems to generate the minimap on the loading screen, based on how long it takes to load sometimes.

In fact, the only options in Map Options that seem to do anything are "Masked areas are partially visible", "Show water waves on cliff shores", "Show water waves on rolling shores", "Use item classification system" (which AFAIK does nothing but disable the "Item Class" dropdown in the Editor), "Use Terrain Fog" (which depending on the parameters defined either does nothing or covers the entire map in a flat texture leaving the game unplayable), "Use global weather", possibly "Use water tinting color" (SD only), and "Game data set". I haven't checked the last three options though.

EDIT: Replaced the map preview on Skibi. When testing, the minimap was blank until the loading bar passed the end of "Blizzard Entertainment", then it displayed the ingame minimap. Seems it's hardcoded to render the actual minimap and block custom loading screens.

EDIT2: It's hardcoded to load War3mapMap.blp. I'm not sure what the filename of the original hidden preview is, but I don't think it exists in Reforged.

Its useless to argue whether it´s hardcoded or a bug.. But they never stated on any of their patches that using custom minimap preview screens would be disabled by any of the reforged patches so I assume it´s the bug. You cant be sure they mean to do it since you cant have access to "hard code" and see the statements.