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As many of you may have already realized, the Reign of Chaos ladder got severely broken after a server maintainance on May 22. Finally, with the introduction of patch 1.31 (May 28), the whole Reign of Chaos multiplayer got disabled.
The official patch notes state:
Battle.net disabled for Reign of Chaos
Dev Comment: We've been encountering non-trivial issues connecting players over Battle.net as we unify the game client - a prime example being disconnects caused by erroneous matches between Chaos and Throne. Custom maps created with RoC data are still playable, this affects melee only. A major benefit to this change is players who owned Reign of Chaos only now have The Frozen Throne.
I can't say I've really been satisfied with the given explanation. First off, because of the lack of any relevant information related to the issue, considering the big impact it has on our small community. Is there any hotfix ETA? Is this going to be addressed only with Reforged?
Secondly, the very last sentence, paired up with the fact that this is listed under "specific changes and improvements", makes me interpret it as a nice way to force people away from Reign of Chaos to embrace the expansion pack.
[...]
I've talked to one of Blizzard associate producers a few days ago, seeking for answers to the aforementioned questions. What came out of our conversation is that the disabling of Reign of Chaos multiplayer is, unfortunately, not going to be temporary. Also, maintaining a Reign of Chaos server isn't an option either, as its cost would be too high.
Aware of the fact nothing can really replace the good old ladder experience, as some consolation he offered to make a map template to allow Reign of Chaos melee dataset into The Frozen Throne custom games. New maps should be ready in the next few days and W3 Replayers will fully support them (if there's any map you would like to play in custom games, just let me know by commenting under this very newspost). Hopefully some of you will then show some love to our dying game and share his replays in these next few months of agony before the release of Reforged!
18 June Edit:
after repeated solicitations from my side, I first got told he "didn't have time over the weekend" and two weeks later, once more, that he has "not had time to work on the template". At this point, it's pretty obvious he doesn't have any intention to ever work on it (I even offered myself to do part of the job, but it was no use). Also, as a reply to my question concerning a possible return of Reign of Chaos ladder for Reforged, I simply got told there are "no plans at this time". Grim days are ahead of us. [...]