Warcraft 3 patch 1.21b

[Dr Super Good]

Today a new Warcraft 3 patch (1.21b) was released and is now required to play on battlenet. This patch has no melee changes or engine changes that are apparent currently but has done one very important thing.

Warcraft 3 no longer needs a TFT/RoC disk in your machine to be started up.

Warcraft III patch 1.21b has been released!

The Warcraft III patch v1.21b has been released! With this patch, players are no longer required to have the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos or Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne CD in the CD-rom drive to play the game. Simply connect to Battle.net to update to the latest version, or visit the patch page for standalone patches. Once you have the patch installed, launch the game as you normally would but now you won't need the CD.

 

[Dr Super Good]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patch 1.21b
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEATURES

- The game no longer requires the CD to play.

Update to Warcraft III 1.21b by. . .

• logging onto battlenet, which will start the auto update system.
• going to their offical Warcraft 3 patch page and downloading the patch you need as separate .exe file and then running that file after the download is complete.

Upon immediate testing, the most noticeable thing is that Warcraft 3 (both TFT and RoC) now start up near instantly (under 2-3 seconds). This is obvious as they no longer have to check that your CD is valid. WorldEditor is also starting up a lot faster as well which will make all you mappers happy but still note that it overall still has map loading delays.

However it is too early to tell if this was the only performance boost or if this patch brings any nasty side affects.

Finally, I strongly advise that you carefully remove your Warcraft 3 disk from your CD drive and gently place it back in its holder for use in a distant future period of time. As for now both the disk and your CD drive can take a long deserved rest.

 

[HeretoDLstuff]

I attempted to start up my bot. They no longer work.

I think they changed more than that, It showed a Longer list than that for me...

 

[Pyritie]

Ahh, finally I don't have to worry about my CD drive popping open in my bag any more.

 

[madcat2]

FINALLY my little brothers have about destroyed all my warcraft 3 discs and my last one was about to be destroyed!! HORRAY FOR NO MORE DISCS, And i like the fast start up

 

[Dr Super Good]

They changed the .exe a lot (no more CD check) and so the actual runtime application is different in a lot of ways so many third party applications like WEU and JNGP will probably not function correctly.

 

[Wolverabid]

Thanks for the update Blizzard; thanks for cluing us in DSG.

February 6, 2008
Warcraft III patch 1.21b has been released!

The Warcraft III patch v1.21b has been released! With this patch, players are no longer required to have the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos or Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne CD in the CD-rom drive to play the game. Simply connect to Battle.net to update to the latest version, or visit the patch page for standalone patches. Once you have the patch installed, launch the game as you normally would but now you won't need the CD.

 

[Night_Gob]

Fantastic! Just awesome!

 

[redmarine]

Nice... I hope Starcraft 2 doens't use CD.

 

[~Void~]

This is the first good thing Blizzard has done in a really long time (except for announcing SC2, but that's saying not doing)

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

This is a sad day.

Doing a change like this means they have completly stopped adding any content for the game.

 

[Dr Super Good]

No, they are just modernising. Expect another patch next month for WC3 with melee fixes and new Bnet features.

 

[markone]

Guys how is possible that there isnt any word abt 1.21b on blizzard.com ?
i think that this is big abuse

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

If you can download it by the Blizzard auto-update, I think it's safe to assume this is a legit update.

EDIT: Hmmm... apparently there isn't any 1.21b version downloadable at Battle.net (the website)...

 

[corley]

wow this is cool, have been waiting a while for this

 

[redmarine]

Why don't everyone just download it from auto-download when entering battle.net?

 

[HeretoDLstuff]

This is a sad day.

Doing a change like this means they have completly stopped adding any content for the game.

Noway, they are working lots on a new patch... See here: http://www.battle.net/forums/war3/thread.aspx?fn=war3-general&t=1877805&p=1&tmp=1#new1877805

This is just to hold out cause they are taking so long.

 

[Xarwin]

Horray for the crackers, no more creating 'no-cd cracks'!

Sorry, this patch is useless in my opinion.
One patch, with only that feature?
Come on, they could have done a lot more!
(at least released much more in one patch)

I admit it is much easyer to start the game without cd, but the no-cd patch gives me the feeling: "warcraft 3 is now freeware", thank you.

~- Heero

 

[Hakeem]

Why don't everyone just download it from auto-download when entering battle.net?

Dial-up for one.
A better reason is so you don't need to download it each time if you reinstall.
I, for one, am waiting for the .exe.

 

[Earth-Fury]

Horray for the crackers, no more creating 'no-cd cracks'!

Sorry, this patch is useless in my opinion.
One patch, with only that feature?
Come on, they could have done a lot more!
(at least released much more in one patch)

I admit it is much easyer to start the game without cd, but the no-cd patch gives me the feeling: "warcraft 3 is now freeware", thank you.

~- Heero

They're still working on a patch with more content. They simply released the no-cd patch on its own as it was ready much sooner. And really, complaining that they remove copy protection? It makes it easyer to play the game, with less of a hassle in having to have a disk or mini-image. And just because the game no longer requires a CD doesn't mean its freeware... is GalCiv2 freeware? (it shiped not needing the CD to play.)

Dial-up for one.
A better reason is so you don't need to download it each time if you reinstall.
I, for one, am waiting for the .exe.

Or you could update over bnet, wait for the next patch, and grab the modern full patch including all patches WC3 will see for years or ever.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

W00000t!! I've been waiting for it for weeks since they announced it weeks ago!

So far I was using a mounted image of my CD, which loaded faster than a CD and safer (my TFT CD kinda broke into pieces - the DVD laser of destruction). But now this may be even faster, yeee so cool! But why so late to do it! oO

Besides whats ur prob Heero, this makes everyone happier. The game is dying and people care to play Bnet, so it doesn't matter you can enter Single like that.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Change of management probably, they have also done this for SC1 a while ago and will probably do it for Diablo II next.

Still waiting for them to offically host the patch for download outside of battlenet so a quick link can be put up for everyone who can not download it off battlenet.

The next patch comming in approximatly a month (1.22) should be more major regarding game play and heavily influence melee (and thus interfear with custom games a bit). Until then atleast our CD drives can now rest a bit.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

The next patch comming in approximatly a month (1.22) should be more major regarding game play and heavily influence melee (and thus interfear with custom games a bit). Until then atleast our CD drives can now rest a bit.

As you can see I'm more of a player than a mapper, it really matters for me. Such changes may screw up the races for melee. Our CDs can rest for life. And how do you know about a 1.22 patch? There was a post by Blizzard about the no-cd patch but no news about a patch with such changes.

 

[donut3.5]

This will help me greatly, as my computer did often times did not recognize the disc was in, making JNGP and Test Map work only about 20% of the time.
--donut3.5--

 

[Dr Super Good]

They mentioned it here.

January 29th, 2008 - Today, the eSports Team is meeting with Rob Pardo, (Senior Vice President of Game Design), and Chris Sigaty, (Lead Producer of StarCraft II), Dustin Browder (Lead Designer of StarCraft II),and David Kim (Balance Designer of StarCraft II) for the second round of discussions on the balance changes that will happen for Patch 1.22. Many of the balance changes mentioned by both professional eSports players and the community alike, such as 'nerfs' to Human Guard Tower repair rates are on the top of the balance list for these rounds of discussion.

When balance changes are more solidified, I will give you an update on what these may be, and a better approximate release time. Furthermore, there is the possibility of additional Battle.net features to be added in Patch 1.22 that would further add to the longevity of the game online.

Patch 1.21b, the 'no CD' patch for Warcraft III is being signed off as we speak, and is aiming at a release for next week.

We try and keep uptodate with what is happening over at blizzard as far as Warcraft 3 goes and so what we tend to say mostly is accurate.

However, wether they keep their promises we can not predict.

 

[Chorale]

This is great, i know a few player who will love that upgrade.

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

You mean the nerf of hu towers? Only all newb uds!

Thx for the info Dr Super Good. Also even if now a burnt CD can also make it work, the most important for Blizzard and I agree is not the access to the game but the access to BNet. And cd-keys are like 80% of the game's price. As who will stay with single player and campaigns for long?? People are looking for BNet, no one cares if you can play single or not. Vs PCs lol... or Dota alone.

 

[GoD.RoK]

this is wontiferous

 

[sacridshadow]

sweet. finally. sadly, I can't have it running on bnet using same CD key.

 

[Samuraid]

This is indeed great news from Blizzard. Thanks for keeping an eye out for it, DSG.

 

[PhoenixFeather]

Wow, fast loading indeed. No more image-files for Wc3!

 

[Gauntlet2021]

finally, and what good timing! Only recently, my laptop has had problems reading the disc, prompting me repeatedly "make sure your CD is inserted" (or w.e). Hopefully WEU won't be effected though...
Fingers crossed for a d2 no-cd patch.

 

[brad.dude03]

I get mixed feelings from this. The No-CD option can mean one of two things: that Blizzard is bringing the game back to life, or that Blizzard expects very few new purchases of the game so it makes it no-cd for the playerbase.

However, this news of a gameplay patch gives me hope. The last gameplay patches were just fixing exploits and things like that for melee games, remember how long ago it was when the Firelord and Goblin Alchemist were released? That was the last major patch.

 

[Parrothead]

I have 3 computers and it was annoyyyyiinnngg when I had to keep swaping the disks around . Do you think they will add something else with this next patch like new tavern heroes?

 

[Pyritie]

Either that or they give us the beta models.

You never know...

 

[Parrothead]

You never know...

Or do I ...

 

[Dr Super Good]

They have finally offically release the patch as a separate downloadable file for all you users that are having trouble getting it from logging into battlenet. The links to where to get them are on the starting post of this thread under how to update to the latest patch.

 

[NobodyHere]

Yes indeed,it is true,always download from battle.net

 

[Xarwin]

The patch was just for, hello we're still here to patch world o.. I mean, We're still working on Warcraft 3!

 

[NobodyHere]

Heero i dont quite understand

 

[Pyritie]

DSG you forgot to add the link.

 

[NobodyHere]

He really did,got to battle.net downloads,patches and poof

 

[Dr Super Good]

I did add the links. . . Just attaching the english patches is taking a long time.

 

[Global_idiot]

No diference than... i use daemon tools so i cant scratch or damage my original CD

 

[NobodyHere]

I Dont even use the normal CD,I have a nice 1.21 crack that permits me to acces bnet and world editor

 

[redmarine]

I Dont even use the normal CD,I have a nice 1.21 crack that permits me to acces bnet and world editor

Does that mean you are unable to update your Warcraft III? Which means you will be unable enter battle.net lol?

 

[Kuhneghetz]

I Dont even use the normal CD,I have a nice 1.21 crack that permits me to acces bnet and world editor

1.21b > 1.21a + crack

And I hope they give us the alpha and beta models (at least in a hidden cathegory like the Volverine-like Fel Orc) in the upcoming patch.

 

[Nudl9]

Wooo, finally my cd can rest in peace...

 

[The_wand_mirror]

It gives a weird feeling playing without a CD...

Hope they make something else soon, otherwise than that this was the least feature i could think about.

 

[Oziris]

Well nothing special but it's fine....