Small patch, thicc download?

[Jahjahbinks]

Last patch, v1.32.3, was 1.2gb. There are just a few "hotfixes." Why is it 1.2gb? All the patches seem to be a little heavy.

Hotfixes

• Fixed an issue with customized spells that was crashing some popular custom maps.

• Resolved an issue with Banewood Bog and Banewood Bog_LV that caused the wrong melee data to be used in gameplay.
  • Banewood Bog_LV is added back to the 4v4 Versus map pool.

• Fixed an issue with item stacking that impacted some popular custom maps.

via Hotfixes -- March 23, 2020

 

[Blarto]

This is commonplace nowadays due to shitty devs being trash at their job.

For example, some badly done steam games have a 500kb patch that requires a complete restructure of a 30gb archive, causing a 1-2 hour update.

I'd imagine blizzard's casc file storage is no different. Some segment change requires a complete restructure of some of the chunks,and the easiest way is to just repair it by redownloading a newer version.

In 2002 bandwidth was exponentially more precious than today, so devs back then took great care not to be lazy with patches. Lost era. I guess.

 

[Jahjahbinks]

Twas wondering if it was a casc thing. Was Mpq quick to rebuild or was it just that wc3 in its entirety was smaller than this patch, so it seemed quick?

 

[DracoL1ch]

In 2002 bandwidth was exponentially more precious than today, so devs back then took great care not to be lazy with patches. Lost era. I guess.

simple math - cost of developer's time vs cost of internet connection. No reason to waste time on precise patching system when every user has enough bandwidth to work with it as is

 

[Blarto]

Twas wondering if it was a casc thing. Was Mpq quick to rebuild or was it just that wc3 in its entirety was smaller than this patch, so it seemed quick?

MPQ is just a zip-like archive. So patching it was simple.

simple math - cost of developer's time vs cost of internet connection.

Yes. They offload the cost of their development on to us (so now we have 30+ GB games with 2 hour updates). Its fine in the grand scheme of things, as we the public demand 20-60 dollar games where the rest of the world has inflation surpassing that (adjusted for inflation games should cost around US$ 150+ per copy). The devs merely cut corners to keep the price low.

That still makes the developers trash in my book though. They (not just AB, but other companies as well) use their monopoly over their IP to abuse our computer systems and internet.

 

[DracoL1ch]

it's buyers to decide. And I cant see AB being low at market. so I believe their strategy is working just fine.