Warcraft 3 Reforged BETA

[deepstrasz]

Maybe they could get in some of the Alpha music in as well. Would love some more musical variety.

Any music player or YouTube helps a lot. Why be restrictive? You could listen to whatever you'd like.

You already decided that being civil won't get you desired results, and that may be fine for you personally, but you're not the only one who has a horse in this race; what do you lose by being polite?

I didn't say we shouldn't try the nice way first. I'm saying it might be better to, you know, get it done behind scenes, as in surprise them so they won't have a way to retaliate.

I mean, what's the chance that we'd be on one cross near them and they'd be willing to be redeemed?

 

[Augustus]

Any music player or YouTube helps a lot. Why be restrictive? You could listen to whatever you'd like.

Yeah but it's not "official", know what I'm saying? Like if there is a model I don't like I could replace it with a user-made one but it doesn't feel right for some reason.

Plus, there is not a whole lot of music that sounds like the old Blizzard style. There are many good modern WoW themes but most are too bombastic, choral and emotional. It's like they are adding more spikes but in music form. I want more music like this and the Ironforge theme from WoW. A lot of the modern WoW music sounds like overly-produced movie music.

 

[deepstrasz]

Yeah but it's not "official", know what I'm saying? Like if there is a model I don't like I could replace it with a user-made one but it doesn't feel right for some reason.

That sounds a bit alt-right

Plus, there is not a whole lot of music that sounds like the old Blizzard style. There are many good modern WoW themes but they most are too bombastic, choral and emotional. I want more music like this and the Ironforge theme from WoW. A lot of the modern WoW music sounds like overly-produced movie music.

Yeah, the music from the first WoW is the best from all WoW series, dare I say, objectively. There are some tracks here and there in the other albums too but overall, nah, cliche, predictable and similar to other works, especially in style.

 

[Augustus]

That sounds a bit alt-right

Perhaps I'm a bit dense but I don't get it

 

[deepstrasz]

Perhaps I'm a bit dense but I don't get it

It was an exaggerated joke on you needing stuff be official otherwise it'd be impure or something.

 

[nuck001]

Spoiler

I'd rather put it this way:A modding community which encourages artists to share their works is likely to be doomed by a communist-owned company sooner or later.

In case some of you would be confused,we Chinese are not pure-socialists while you westerners are not pure-captalists.Life is complicated,isn't it?Does money solve everything?There are always some bottom lines for mapmakers,crossing those lines could have severe consequences.

 

[Ardenaso]

Why would they offer skins as a bonus to collector's edition, when anyone can export them, post them on a modding community, and then anyone can import them? Doesn't make much sense tbh.

I think you can mod them or distribute them for custom games but the skins can only be used on official melee matchmaking if you did buy them

That said, I hope there will be Forsaken Sira Moonwarden for Warden and Forsaken Delaryn Summermoon for Dark Ranger

 

[Kazeon]

Holy crap, the chinesse "community" really sell a lot of Hive's resources: 资源下载-天天RPG
@Ralle @Archian , any word on this?

Someone can just go to that website and tell their members that they can get those resources for free in hiveworkshop. I think it'd kill their dirty business and get hive a bit of extra chinese traffic.


Anyway, I can't wait to see how the new light engine work with multiple light sources.

 

[Strydhaizer]

Ahh I remember back then Hiveworkshop was only dealing with Wc3MapsRU (totally stolen contents with uncredited authors from Hive and other forums), ChaosrealmInfo (english forum but stolen contents from Hiveworkshop and Trishroom - well some are original at least) and XGM (no big deal now since XGM community cooperate), now we're dealing with Chinese forums selling work of other people uncredited? IMO This is by far the worse one. I remember the reason why some resource owners here are removing their contents in Hive is because of people stealing their works. (Erm.. r'member Pyramidhead?).

 

[deepstrasz]

Someone can just go to that website and tell their members that they can get those resources for free in hiveworkshop. I think it'd kill their dirty business and get hive a bit of extra chinese traffic.

Good idea but is it that simple to make an account there via the Chinese security system?

 

[Venombite]

That said, I hope there will be Forsaken Sira Moonwarden for Warden and Forsaken Delaryn Summermoon for Dark Ranger

Most of all I'm hoping for a Night Warrior Tyrande as a Priestess of the Moon and Garrosh Hellscream as a Tauren Chieftain. I'd also like Turalyon as a Paladin, Mag'har Grom as a Blade Master, Diamond Magni and Falstad Wildhammer as Mountain Kings, Alleria and Vereesa Windrunner as Dark Rangers, Khadgar as the Archmage(though I would still use Daughter of the Sea) and Jaina as a Dreadlord.

 

[EredarArbeiterYU]

Most of all I'm hoping for a Night Warrior Tyrande as a Priestess of the Moon and Garrosh Hellscream as a Tauren Chieftain. I'd also like Turalyon as a Paladin, Mag'har Grom as a Blade Master, Diamond Magni and Falstad Wildhammer as Mountain Kings, Alleria and Vereesa Windrunner as Dark Rangers, Khadgar as the Archmage(though I would still use Daughter of the Sea) and Jaina as a Dreadlord.

How you fit so much heresy in one post? o_o

 

[deepstrasz]

How you fit so much heresy in one post? o_o

Too much HotStorm, I guess

 

[HerrDave]

Holy crap, the chinesse "community" really sell a lot of Hive's resources: 资源下载-天天RPG
@Ralle @Archian , any word on this?

Hooooly shit D:


A'ight gents, buckle up for another of HerrDave's little rants.

I clicked the link and after paging through uncountable WoW rips, missing textures, janky anime models, and works of renowned artists on the Hive, I found what I was looking for.
My own models being sold next to nude Draenei :\

Not only have they been snatching things off the Hive since before I joined (it seems) but even our most recent works are appearing on their lists.

If I, the actual model creator, don't charge a dime for my work, how dare you charge people for what we give away freely!

I've heard some pretty messed up things about China in recent years, and this is the scummy cherry on top for me.
/rant


Here are some of mine they're selling, and an example of a rather famous Hive model being butchered and sold.

Spoiler

 

[Strydhaizer]

Admins should really consider locking the resources to a member-only users of Hive instead of everyone (including anonymous guests), it may not prevent it a hundred percent but it will surely decrease it a lil bit. Other Warcraft modding community have been doing this for years, maybe Hive needs to step up the security of the resources too. Make it slightly demanding, user should need atleast 15 reps to download resources.

 

[HerrDave]

F*ck man :\

Spoiler

 

[nuck001]

My own models being sold next to nude Draenei :\

The tag "免费" means "Free" in Chinese,though most of your works were uploaded by Chinese without your permission.

Hidden

Besides,it's just an illegal third-party website which isn't operated by Netease or Blizzard.

The real problem is hidden in Netease platform.Being permitted by Blizzard,Netease is encouraging mapmakers to implant microtransactions into their maps as much as possible.They sell models,skins,even spells and bonus characters to break the balance of their maps intentionally.The profits split like 50-50 or something.(Netease even signed a contract with each mapmaker) There are some resources made by Chinese indeed,but as you can see,your models have a great possibility to be stolen.

On be half of old-school Chinese fans of WorldEditor,I'm really sorry for such a tragedy.Maybe the new generation of us no longer respect hard working or intellectual property.They're destroying the very foundation of wc3 communities in my opinion.All I can do is revealing some truth to you guys.

 

[HerrDave]

^Thank you for explaining that to me, Nunk001

+rep
(22 hour cooldown D: )

 

[Civil]

Make it slightly demanding, user should need atleast 15 reps to download resources.

Don't agree with this. Making it so you need an account is fine, but vast majority of legitimate people downloading resources are likely lurkers. I don't like this idea that you need to farm up rep or posts.

 

[Razorclaw_X]

Don't agree with this. Making it so you need an account is fine, but vast majority of legitimate people downloading resources are likely lurkers. I don't like this idea that you need to farm up rep or posts.

Agree. I only made an account within the past year and been using resources here since long before that. Making things too exclusive can come off as thumbing your nose at people who have nothing to do with the problem.

 

[Venombite]

Does anyone expect Undead and Night Elves at Blizzcon?

 

[EredarArbeiterYU]

Don't agree with this. Making it so you need an account is fine, but vast majority of legitimate people downloading resources are likely lurkers. I don't like this idea that you need to farm up rep or posts.

I think so too. :}

 

[deepstrasz]

You know, the funny thing is that @Strydhaizer at least came with some sort of solution unlike the spam messages after it.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

Most countries has some form of copyright laws, China included. If your work has been properly copyrighted then you can file a DMCA take down request to the appropriate authorities. If your work is not copyrighted then I think (don't quote me on it) anyone can monetize it without your permission (doesn't apply in EU or USA. There you own what you make, but still need copyright to win court cases).

If they have a DMCA ignored off-shore host you will have big trouble ever making them remove their resources, regardless of your work being copyright protected or not. I'm not sure of China's copyright laws, all I know is that China is NOT among the normal offshore hosting countries like the Seychelles and Bulgaria.

If I were you I would try copyrighting my work and then send a DMCA take down request.

Sucks for resource creators.

 

[Blarto]

I know from various accounts that they charge anywhere between 10-100 bucks for 3d models just for the RIGHT to use the models on netease (otherwise your map gets blocked + you get some unknown sanctions on you). Make no mistake, these scummy micro-transaction sites are making a profit off stolen content under some business model.

What's really puzzling is that people really DO pay for it. I mean a typical high quality map would have maybe over 10 quality custom models, so imagine that can be up to 1000 dollars just to make a map (not counting the fact you need labor for coding + terrain etc). Who's paying for this? How much money are they getting back from investing? What the hell is this market?

I guess it's about twice as true in china, that there's a sucker born every minute.

 

[yxq1122]

Can't wait!
I have received a test permission, how can I start to play with beta? On Bnet?

 

[Rui]

That boat had been sailing for a few months now, guys^^ I can't believe most of you hadn't heard about Netease already? It's got at least 10 months. Reforged - Warcraft III Reforged - Community Feedback (read the article in my quote)

The issue isn't really about money as much as being disrespectful.

While I agree with your approach, unfortunately respect is something that's just not treasured anymore. It requires morals and character, which is too difficult for most people to bear nowadays. Pretty sure Netease knows that they're profitting off free resources, essentially scamming unaware people. Doesn't sound like the kind to value that sort of things. Still, I concur it's worth a try, but keep scant hopes.

maybe Hive needs to step up the security of the resources too.

You'd likely end up with the familiar map deprotection problem. If it can be played online, it can be unprotected. Same goes for models. For the engine to display them, they've got to show up bare at some point. I'm afraid there really is no technical way to solve this.

I don't know anything about DMCA, or how the law works in practice. But if it can avail us at all, my proposal is simple, borrowing from @FeelsGoodMan. Perhaps the HIVE could cover each and every resource on this website under intellectual property rights and attribute it to its authors? This way, resource authors don't need to, individually, copyright their work. That'd be collectively covered by a deal with HIVE upon the act of resource submission. @Archian @Ralle?

Maybe this isn't well explaining, but hopefully you can see what I'm hinting.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

I don't know anything about DMCA, or how the law works in practice. But if it can avail us at all, my proposal is simple, borrowing from @FeelsGoodMan. Perhaps the HIVE could cover each and every resource on this website under intellectual property rights and attribute it to its authors? This way, resource authors don't need to, individually, copyright their work. That'd be collectively covered by a deal with HIVE upon the act of resource submission. @Archian @Ralle?

Each creator needs to copyright their work if they want to have rights to it. Copyrighting stuff isn't hard, but having a Chinese company adhere to copyright laws can prove to be challenging. It COULD work, but I wouldn't bet on it.

It costs around $30 to copyright something, and then you can register a number of works under the same license without extra costs. Look at it as having a category of models that you pay to have copyrighted.

I don't think there is an easy way to collectively cover all resources here, especially when many of the creators are inactive. There is a possibility to do so for future submissions of course, but it would be illegal to register other people's work under your own copyright license without their consent. It would also put some people off from submitting resources as they want rights to their own work.

I think if resource creators doesn't want their stuff to be monetized by other companies they need to acquire their own copyright license, and even then they can't really do anything if their copyrighted material is spread on DMCA ignored offshore hosts or Chinese websites.

 

[stein123]

:s

 

[Blarto]

Each creator needs to copyright their work if they want to have rights to it. Copyrighting stuff isn't hard, but having a Chinese company adhere to copyright laws can prove to be challenging. It COULD work, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Even in the U.S someone can steal your $100 worth of copyrighted material, and you can threaten to sue them, and they could just ignore you. Now you have to pay lawyers lots of money to drag the infringers to court. This will take you at-least a year or two, by the time which your original $100 work is probably irrelevant since someone came up with something better, or the target audience for that work have already moved on. There are no laws anywhere in the world to protect versus petty Intellectual Property theft, save for maybe countries with a summary jailing/execution. You'd have to band together for a class action lawsuit versus the sellers of the stolen content and the platform instead, and that's assuming you can discover they (in our case netease+bootleg chinese website) are making lots of profit.

It's a lose/lose situation.

The only solution I see is to license your work under strict GPL or similar licenses (see vexorian's license files for example), which necessitates them crediting you as the original author (which means big companies like Netease will be forced to put your license notice or else the FSF or can sue them). Of course this assumes that China cares about GPL copy-left style cases in their courts.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

Even in the U.S someone can steal your $100 worth of copyrighted material, and you can threaten to sue them, and they could just ignore you. Now you have to pay lawyers lots of money to drag the infringers to court. This will take you at-least a year or two, by the time which your original $100 work is probably irrelevant since someone came up with something better, or the target audience for that work have already moved on. There are no laws anywhere in the world to protect versus petty Intellectual Property theft, save for maybe countries with a summary jailing/execution. You'd have to band together for a class action lawsuit versus the sellers of the stolen content and the platform instead, and that's assuming you can discover they (in our case netease+bootleg chinese website) are making lots of profit.

It's a lose/lose situation.

The only solution I see is to license your work under strict GPL or similar licenses (see vexorian's license files for example), which necessitates them crediting you as the original author (which means big companies like Netease will be forced to put your license notice or else the FSF or can sue them). Of course this assumes that China cares about GPL copy-left style cases in their courts.

Well most hosts adheres to the copyright laws and will take down unlawfully hosted material without a court order if they are sent a DMCA take down request, but yes, the real problems starts when the host refuses to take down the material. Then you would need a court order and wait for the local police to actually visit the company that owns the physical servers.

 

[Blarto]

I'm not a lawyer so I'm not sure how such a hypothetical case would play out, especially since there might be some clauses that MDX/MDL/BLP is a proprietary format and Blizzard reserves all the rights for its use, which makes this entire Netease+Blizzard relationship a giant shit-show for us Creators.

(Defendant could argue Blizzard is hosting these and they are much bigger company, and they are not getting sued, and there are no TOS on the Art Asset stating that only Blizzard service can host them)

Hell, look at Japanese MMD model files for example, virtually all of them come with license saying only MMD software can use these models for free. Can't say the same for stuff posted for Wc3 the Hive or elsewhere.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

I'm not a lawyer so I'm not sure how such a hypothetical case would play out, especially since there might be some clauses that MDX/MDL/BLP is a proprietary format and Blizzard reserves all the rights for its use, which makes this entire Netease+Blizzard relationship a giant shit-show for us Creators.

I'm not a model creator so it's hard to say if a mdx/mdl/blp file is reserved by Blizzard but I highly doubt that, as models are composed of stuff made in programs not related to Blizzard at all like 3ds max etc.

In a normal case it would go like this:

1 - A website owner decides to host pirated content.
2 - Owner of said content sees it, and reports it to for example dmca.com.
3 - dmca.com will then contact the website owners host and request that they take it down.
4 - The host will contact the website owner and give him a deadline to take down the content. If the content is not taken down within the requested deadline the host will terminate the website owners services.

In the event where the host doesn't reply to the take down requests there will be sent reminders regularly until eventually dmca.com files a court order. Neither the website owner or the content creator will attend the court, and the court will rule in favor of the content creator, and then the police will visit the address of the physical server.

This is of course in a civilized country. In for example Bulgaria or The Seychelles (popular for DMCA ignored offshore hosts) the process of taking stuff like this to a court is so long, complicated and hard that it literally never happens. I have no idea how it would be in China.

 

[Blarto]

There's a way for the Website Host/Owner to immediately contest the DMCA takedown request, which would then immediately require the Owner of the content to either dismiss the claim, or file a lawsuit. Furthermore, in the case of "no-dismiss-no-lawsuit", the Website Host/Owner can also file a counter-claim with the possibility of a lawsuit on the source of the DMCA takedown (the Owner of the content).

Not sure, but I think that's how it works when there's an actual dispute and both parties refuse to budge.

In any case, for Wc3 stuff, you'd have to prove damages, and virtually all of the content is hosted for free with no TOS, so the dice will probably roll in the Website Owner's favour.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

There's a way for the Website Host/Owner to immediately contest the DMCA takedown request, which would then immediately require the Owner of the content to either dismiss the claim, or file a lawsuit. Furthermore, in the case of "no-dismiss-no-lawsuit", the Website Host/Owner can also file a counter-claim with the possibility of a lawsuit on the source of the DMCA takedown (the Owner of the content).

Not sure, but I think that's how it works when there's an actual dispute and both parties refuse to budge.

In any case, you'd have to prove damages, and virtually all of the content is hosted for free with no TOS, so the dice will probably roll in the Website Owner's favour.

The person requesting the take down will have to provide his/her copyright license which contains multiple samples of his/her work in various stages of development. This will serve as conclusive evidence that the one who requested the take down is indeed the rightful owner. A dispute will only do so much, but will ultimately be overruled in the face of evidence and proper licensing. It might buy the pirates some time, but not that much.

 

[Blarto]

The person requesting the take down will have to provide his/her copyright license...

That's what I'm trying to stress here. No one here in the EU/US wc3 community posts any license with their work, save for Vexorian and a few others. So yeah.

At-least Copy-paste a GPL (or the art equivalent to GPL), or SOMETHING. Or else your stuff will get inevitably used without Credit and you won't have any recourse.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

That's what I'm trying to stress here. No one here in the EU/US wc3 community posts any license with their work, save for Vexorian and a few others. So yeah.

At-least Copy-paste a GPL (or the art equivalent to GPL), or SOMETHING. Or else your stuff will get inevitably used without Credit and you won't have any recourse.

We are talking about the same thing, if you read my first post I'm also saying that people should get a proper license

 

[deepstrasz]

I have no idea how it would be in China.

Copyleft - Wikipedia

 

[Abelhawk]

So are those skins for heroes in multiplayer games? Like Jaina is an archmage, Fallen King Arthas is a death knight? Is it random? Can you choose which skins randomly show up when you hire heroes in multiplayer?

 

[tulee]

I was just watching videos of the beta being played. I am a loss for words at how disappointed I am. I don't really care about how the models look-- that is just an art style. What is seriously wrong is that almost none of the units are distinguishable from each other, with only for 3-4 exceptions (like the shadow hunter, with its gigantic glaive weapon).

I feel really embarrassed for the classic team, since they have been looking at these models for 1.5 + years, and didn't bother to tell lemonsky that melee gameplay will be negatively affected because it is near impossible to tell units apart on the battlefield. Who knows, maybe Lemonsky didn't even realize there was anything wrong, since blizzard apparently never gave feedback to them. This would not have happened if they showed models early and could get feedback on the models in terms of distinguishability. I mean, Blizzard must have been partly aware, since feedback on the footman being indistinguishable from the knight in battle back in the 2018 beta was given. Again-- this has nothing to do with artistic style of reforged. This is purely related to the units becoming indistinguishable in a game (melee) where you need to be able to immediately locate where units are on the screen.

Whoever was the Art director for classic team should have looked at how "classic" Warcraft 3 ensured distinguishability of units from a top-to-down perspective. The reforged model design will ensure the melee/ ladder aspect of the game is going to be ruined to an (significant) extent

 

[deepstrasz]

Whoever was the Art director for classic team should have looked at how "classic" Warcraft 3 ensured distinguishability of units from a top-to-down perspective. The reforged model design will ensure the melee/ ladder aspect of the game is going to be ruined to an (significant) extent

Guess they thought it'd work the same way as StarCraft II.

 

[Rui]

@Blarto @FeelsGoodMan thanks for the interesting discussion.

The only solution I see is to license your work under strict GPL or similar licenses (see vexorian's license files for example)

Yeah this seems like the only viable way. Though it would be nice to have a law expert see and comment on this. @YourArthas?

 

[deepstrasz]

Though it would be nice to have a law expert see and comment on this. @YourArthas?

@Paillan @Legal_Ease

 

[YourArthas]

@Blarto @FeelsGoodMan thanks for the interesting discussion.


Yeah this seems like the only viable way. Though it would be nice to have a law expert see and comment on this. @YourArthas?

Now I'll try to explain it with our law and probably basically it is same in Europe, now first of all we got a shared intellectual property on those stuff Blizzard owns a part of them because it's their format, we own our part this right include ,stoping people from publishing it and make benefit from it and especially this is an area I love working on just because my models got stolen I worked so hard on this copyright issues afterwards, now again if we are talking it in our law you can just request it by yourself or by a lawyer from the host or publisher, you need to prove that you made the thing first it is an issue but probably we can get past it even if we don't have a document we can use wip screens , show our similar work etc, to me it worked before atleast. Second issue is if someone earned money from our asset it means that we can get it , now in our law you can use 4 methods: you can try to prove the 'stealer' earned x amount of money , you can go an easier way and say he made me loss x a mount of money, or you can say I would have made x amount of money if I was selling it, or if you have proves you can say I'm selling the license of the asset for x amount of money he can get the rest.
There is also another article that if you can prove you can get your other losses if you have any caused by this thing. Now at this point all those things needs to be solved in either court or people being agreed upon it and proving those especially since our models are free to download is hard cause we have our easy way of saying ' I could have made x amount of money' closed.Side note: In our law we own what we make directly it is 'automatically copyrighted' there is no database for copyrights except you make licenses for publishers and stuff

But the most important issue is Chinese Copyright laws are different and it kinda means we have no choice but to contact the host and say goodbye to money.

I really copyright stroke one guy stealing assets at moddb he was making no money but he still stole them it was easy to do in moddb but Netease probably will not make it easy and sadly as a lawyer I'lld advise to try contacting but not hold too much hope for it,I got my models that are up on sale at netease stuff too , I can't do anything because let's get real even if you sue them they can just get away with it, it is hard to explain all in English to me but since this will be a global issue and we are just little artists trying to get something from a company that uses an entire different law system we are mostly up for their 'good will'. But in theory things should go like what I wrote atleast in our law.

ALSO A NOTE FOR MODELERS: Always try to leave a 'mark' of yourself on textures or just rename the root bone to something like 'made_by_yourarthas'

 

[Razorclaw_X]

ALSO A NOTE FOR MODELERS: Always try to leave a 'mark' of yourself on textures or just rename the root bone to something like 'made_by_yourarthas'

I would have to point that it absolutely positively has to be something you made because I see people do this exact same things on things they obviously did not make.

 

[Paillan]

Well, tbh the chinese law is an obscure topic to me (and I would even dare to assume it is an obscure topic to most lawyers).
But I can say this. The fact that netease is blizzard approved means we can only ask the admins nicely to take down the posts that distributed hive models without permission, this is highly unlikely.
As for the maps, it's an entirely different story. You would have to go map by map to see if the model in discussion is being used in premium and non premium content, and if it is used on premium content you might try to make a copyright claim (for unauthorized economical exploitaition), but tbh the chances of that succeding are slim too.

 

[Blackcat]

My impressions after having played ~20 matches on the Reforged beta.

Overall: the gameplay is still great. And most units look fantastic.
My two biggest gripes with the beta are:

- Recognizability of units

When playing the game I am having a hard time recognizing each unit separately. Militia and footmen look too much alike, raiders turn into a blurry mess, heroes aren't as 'in your face' as before. And during nighttime this gets twice as bad.

Some units don't have this problem, so there is hope. I feel riflemen are the best units they've done. They are easily recognizable, they have plenty of team colors and they look faithful to their original counterpart. I can't see the difference between a footman in attack stance and with defend activated. It's hard to differentiate footmen with militia, all the human casters together don't really look all that impressive on the battlefield, etc.

- The Battle.net experience

Ooof.. I already expected this, but I'm not happy about the Battle.net experience we're getting in the beta. It looks like StarCraft 2. And I hate the StarCraft 2 battle.net experience. Where are my oversized chatrooms? Where is the social aspect? Why do I have to click so many buttons to get anywhere?

/end rant