Warcraft III being revamped by Blizzard

[sethmachine]

It looks like Blizzard is hiring engineers specifically to bring back WC3 and Starcraft to modern OS.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/1...k-to-glory-is-hiring-engineers-to-do-that.htm

They may even be providing an open developer's API (C/C++) to allow full control to developers and modders.

WC3 may be catching its second wind.

The days of WC3 will be revived, and the bots wiped out. Once again, any custom game being hosted by a human will fill in 10 seconds. The possibilities are endless. There's been a lot of worry on the game hosting clans, like ENT. Blizzard plans to put back on Warden and bring an end to all bot hosting and hacking.

Many would be WC3 will return once the bots are finally dealt with.

The days of glory are not far off my friends.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

ENT's issue is that the reputation of bots have already got to them even though they're trying to regulate the games free of hackers and exploiters. They're basically doing blizzard's job but having the burden of the only way of doing it is through bots.

I still would be using MMH, if it doesn't get terminated, to host cross realm though. After all, I don't expect people to stop looking at the makemehost.com/games.php list even if auto hosted bots are killed.

 

[Chaosy]

Already been posted quite a few times, maybe check before creating a new thread.

As far as I know it would pretty much only be a HD remake. Though I suppose a few performance tweaks will be included.

 

[Roland]

It seems they're just reviving wc3 but only in sc2. By converting Wc3's units into HD ones.

 

[WhiteFang]

Already been posted quite a few times, maybe check before creating a new thread.

This

 

[sethmachine]

Well, thankfully this isn't Stackoverflow.com

And I guess I should have checked the history. But why isn't this discussion going on daily? This is literally a breath of life into a dying game. People have been speculating the end of the older titles for many years, and now Blizzard is getting new engineers to bring them to up to speed. They aren't going away like we thought.

 

[Avex]

It's not going on daily because each thread goes exactly the same.

It's just porting over for better optimization in more modern operating systems and better compatibility with newer hardware. Blizzcon just passed and they announced this "port" long before it, if they were really doing some HD remake kind of deal, they would've announced it already.

It's likely that they're also just trying to integrate the older games into Bnet 2.0.

 

[Dr Super Good]

They may even be providing an open developer's API (C/C++) to allow full control to developers and modders.

Highly doubt that...

WC3 may be catching its second wind.

Yes I will be able to adjust Gamma without using OpenGL mode. It might also crash less and have a few bug fixes if we are lucky. Mac users will be happy with a refreshed mac port that works better.

As far as I know it would pretty much only be a HD remake. Though I suppose a few performance tweaks will be included.

As far as I know they are simply fixing them. These are not remakes but rather some much needed maintenance. Main job would be BattleNet 2.0 integration.

It seems they're just reviving wc3 but only in sc2. By converting Wc3's units into HD ones.

That project ran out of resources after a few structures, all the base heroes and some demon models. That said Blizzard will be investigating fantasy projects now that SC2 trilogy is complete so a revised take on Warcraft is possible.

And I guess I should have checked the history. But why isn't this discussion going on daily? This is literally a breath of life into a dying game. People have been speculating the end of the older titles for many years, and now Blizzard is getting new engineers to bring them to up to speed. They aren't going away like we thought.

There really is not much to discuss. This is routeine software maintenance stuff so that the game can still be commercially sold. As it is Diablo II struggles to run nowadays. Even Warcraft III has broken gamma in Direct3D mode.

 

[Avex]

Yeah they made a few re-dos like the trees, the heroes and some random creep models. The rest can be done with WoW models, be it units or buildings, especially going into Legion, I don't think there's a single unit or building from Wc3 that can't be taken from WoW.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yeah they made a few re-dos like the trees, the heroes and some random creep models. The rest can be done with WoW models, be it units or buildings, especially going into Legion, I don't think there's a single unit or building from Wc3 that can't be taken from WoW.

WC3 engine is not designed to support such complex geometry.

 

[Roland]

Yeah they made a few re-dos like the trees, the heroes and some random creep models. The rest can be done with WoW models, be it units or buildings, especially going into Legion, I don't think there's a single unit or building from Wc3 that can't be taken from WoW.

It's only compatible to Low-poly models and LQ Skins.

 

[Avex]

Talkin Sc2 not Wc3.

Besides, there's a bunch of stuff on sc2mapster already with a bunch of heroes assets.

 

[Tal'Rarity]

This might kill WC3, no bots means no cross-realm hosting means less players means less games means GG wc3.

Hope Blizzard decides to not turn warden back online or at least add cross-realm hosting themselves though like they'd know how.

Thanks for the news, wasn't aware of it until now. Would be nice to get rid of crash,control,speed,vision hacks. Though a mapmaker can protect against vision and speed and control hacks... Crash is sadly impossible.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

This might kill WC3, no bots means no cross-realm hosting means less players means less games means GG wc3.

Hope Blizzard decides to not turn warden back online or at least add cross-realm hosting themselves though like they'd know how.

Thanks for the news, wasn't aware of it until now. Would be nice to get rid of crash,control,speed,vision hacks. Though a mapmaker can protect against vision and speed and control hacks... Crash is sadly impossible.

http://us.battle.net/en/forum/topic/19973037318
Debating whether I should share this with a bunch of people to get our voices heard.

 

[Wietlol]

"Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos" NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"along with their expansions" ... nvm

 

[Nordmar]

the bots are the best thing that happened to this game in the last 3-4 years. If they put warden online then yeah..im out.

 

[Dr Super Good]

They just need to remove the bots and fuse the realms. That way there is only 1 realm to host on and that way everyone can see your game. Also one does not need to use third party sites then since all games in the list will have at least 1 human player in them.

 

[ultravegan]

Remove the bots? Remove the bots that give us a safe server to meet on? I mean -- yeah "safe" is relative, but it gives us a trusted service rather than how it used to be -- where my game was either hosted on my end or someone else's end. And who knows what happened on that host's computer. How can you assure that each individual player can be trusted? I would like to see Bliz and ENT to work together either formally or allow them to do what they've been doing to keep customs alive. It's such a great service to the community.

 

[Ezekiel12]

It's such a great service to the community.

Maybe you were not around ~2008 when bots started destroying majority of custom game hosting and therefore huge parts of bnet?

I don't know about which "safety" you're talking about, but that argument does not change my opinion of bots. Elaborate please..

 

[WhiteFang]

they just need to remove the bots and fuse the realms. That way there is only 1 realm to host on and that way everyone can see your game. Also one does not need to use third party sites then since all games in the list will have at least 1 human player in them.

yash!

 

[Vladadamm]

Maybe you were not around ~2008 when bots started destroying majority of custom game hosting and therefore huge parts of bnet?

I don't know about which "safety" you're talking about, but that argument does not change my opinion of bots. Elaborate please..

Well, problems aren't hosting bots themselves, but the way they're used.
I partly agree with what you've said because yeah, auto-hosting bots will only cover a small set of maps that are already well-known and create more games than needed, flooding the list. All of that making it harder to see/play less known maps.
But on the other side, look at what bots are giving : Lower latencies, more stability, cross-realm, bans/kicks (ok, those can be misused), etc...
If a bot is used to host games for a player/clan to host his/their games, then the result will be better than if the player hosts it himself. I've been playing slides a few years, and sliding requires you to have a low latency to play properly (~300apm, reactivity needed, etc...) and in cases like that, we need bots.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Lower latencies

Higher latencies since as host I have 0 latency and most bots are not nearby me.

more stability

No they are still as stable as I am since when I crash I am not playing. Beyond that does one care? Also there is no ability to recover from a host drop as the robot can terminate everyone's session without trying to promote someone else to host which makes it less stable.

cross-realm

Which is only needed if there are separate realms and completely defeats the point of them.

bans/kicks (ok, those can be misused)

These existed before robots when people used to host with the game client.

If a bot is used to host games for a player/clan to host his/their games, then the result will be better than if the player hosts it himself. I've been playing slides a few years, and sliding requires you to have a low latency to play properly (~300apm, reactivity needed, etc...) and in cases like that, we need bots.

Manual hosting is good for ~100ms latency due to a hard coded limit which supports ~600 apm. As such you do not need bots to play slide games.

Also a properly made slide game does not need 300apm. It is just the idiot map makers have yet to find out about SetUnitX/Y which does not interrupt orders making turning a click-fest pain based on the timing of their "slide" trigger.

 

[Tal'Rarity]

Higher latencies since as host I have 0 latency and most bots are not nearby me.

Well what about your players? That's being a bit selfish and why bots are better.

No they are still as stable as I am since when I crash I am not playing. Beyond that does one care? Also there is no ability to recover from a host drop as the robot can terminate everyone's session without trying to promote someone else to host which makes it less stable.

Bots are more stable and people can recover from states such as D/C where as it is impossible when manually hosted and then you have server splits so you won't know if your still in the same game as everyone else. Too many problems for manual hosting to return while bots give so many more benefits then they do issues.

Which is only needed if there are separate realms and completely defeats the point of them.

It'd be nice if it was one realm only however this won't work since all people have to do is stay one version before this all changes. Too much freedom was given so Blizzard can't claim their game back easily.

These existed before robots when people used to host with the game client.

Maps use to have these and some still do, no need for bans/kicks from a bot or custom program/tool.

Manual hosting is good for ~100ms latency due to a hard coded limit which supports ~600 apm. As such you do not need bots to play slide games.

Also a properly made slide game does not need 300apm. It is just the idiot map makers have yet to find out about SetUnitX/Y which does not interrupt orders making turning a click-fest pain based on the timing of their "slide" trigger.

Pretty sure manual hosting is forcefully set at 250ms and only listchecker did 100ms same as some other older ones. The best ones now do 20-35 so they're on par with bots. Yeah you do need bots to play most reaction-based maps/games.

Properly made? Some maps are made based on spam-clicking and people seem to enjoy damaging their hardware so sadly its a bit acceptable. Though it'd be nice if the option was given.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Well what about your players? That's being a bit selfish and why bots are better.

They will probably have better latency than MMH robots, and download maps faster thanks to actually having a high speed internet, not MMH's fake "100 Mbit" which is probably being read of the server's LAN connection.

Bots are more stable and people can recover from states such as D/C where as it is impossible when manually hosted and then you have server splits so you won't know if your still in the same game as everyone else. Too many problems for manual hosting to return while bots give so many more benefits then they do issues.

If you disconnect you are gone anyway. People drop you the moment they can and most bots auto drop after 30 seconds odd.

It'd be nice if it was one realm only however this won't work since all people have to do is stay one version before this all changes. Too much freedom was given so Blizzard can't claim their game back easily.

They would obviously shut down the current realms if they migrate to BattleNet 2.0. You should never be "1 version behind" because no one supports not the latest version of WC3. If you come asking me a WC3 related problem and are not using the latest version of Warcraft III I will tell you to update to the latest version. The only exception is for JNGP which needs the old editor executable because the developers never updated it to use the new executables, and the editor is not supported by Blizzard anyway.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

This discussion is pretty pointless.
For many technical reasons (most of them security reasons and firewall issues), blizzard would never go back to user hosting anyway and instead make Bnet host all games on user demand - just like it works in Starcraft II.

 

[Vladadamm]

Also a properly made slide game does not need 300apm. It is just the idiot map makers have yet to find out about SetUnitX/Y which does not interrupt orders making turning a click-fest pain based on the timing of their "slide" trigger.

You're totally wrong here. I've never seen a working slide map that didn't use setunitx/y. And if people are having 300apm, that's because you're constantly changing your trajectory, atleast in harder slides.

On the other side, you're right with the point that some might have better connections than some bots (such as MMH, ENT, etc... but rented bots ?). There's way more people with 100mb/s than a few years ago, so less need for bots, but i still think that having bots used by groups of players (such as clans) for their personal use is good, as not everyone has a good enough connection.

On the question of kicks/bans. Ok, there can be kick systems implemented in the map itself, but no bans. You won't always remember the people you don't want to play with and kick them from the lobby. Best way of having that without the use of bots would be a 'blacklist' to be integrated into bnet, and people in your blacklist won't be able to see/join your game (dunno if this already exists for sc2).

This discussion is pretty pointless.
For many technical reasons (most of them security reasons and firewall issues), blizzard would never go back to user hosting anyway and instead make Bnet host all games on user demand - just like it works in Starcraft II.

I wouldn't be so sure about it. The servers to host these games will cost them money, for a game they're not making profits anymore (or atleast i think so).

 

[Tal'Rarity]

They will probably have better latency than MMH robots, and download maps faster thanks to actually having a high speed internet, not MMH's fake "100 Mbit" which is probably being read of the server's LAN connection.

There you go assuming again, they might have better however its quite doubtful not to mention you can't change the latency yourself without something similar to a bot in the first place so your forced at 250ms like every other human host and player. Also WC3 limits download speed for some dumb reason so you can't go above a certain speed I am pretty sure and I kind of agree with you here, MMH definitely doesn't have that speed however the rest aren't the same while MMH is free.

If you disconnect you are gone anyway. People drop you the moment they can and most bots auto drop after 30 seconds odd.

Nope your not, with the latest bot tech you can usually recover and people can no longer drop you even if they spam the moment they can. Most bots auto drop after 180 seconds which by then if you haven't re-connected then your likely d/c'd for good from that session. I've seen it work quite often so yet again manual hosting is defeated unless everyone starts using RtC.

They would obviously shut down the current realms if they migrate to BattleNet 2.0. You should never be "1 version behind" because no one supports not the latest version of WC3. If you come asking me a WC3 related problem and are not using the latest version of Warcraft III I will tell you to update to the latest version. The only exception is for JNGP which needs the old editor executable because the developers never updated it to use the new executables, and the editor is not supported by Blizzard anyway.

There is custom servers so it is impossible to shut down current realms and you aren't the only WC3 pro so they could just ask someone else. Though it would be nice if it were possible, everyone playing on one realm would be awesome.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I wouldn't be so sure about it. The servers to host these games will cost them money, for a game they're not making profits anymore (or atleast i think so).

Blizzard is currently generating 1.7 billion dollars of turnover each year.

How many games of WC3 are currently played on Bnet at the same time? A couple hundred? In contrast, how many games do you think are played in SC2, HotS, Diablo III, etc....?
... I think they can afford a lonely server blade in their basement for WC3 and an intern to check on it every 3 months (without spilling coffee on it in the process).

 

[Dr Super Good]

You're totally wrong here. I've never seen a working slide map that didn't use setunitx/y. And if people are having 300apm, that's because you're constantly changing your trajectory, atleast in harder slides.

All of them use the GUI way. At least back when WC3 was still newish. This issues an implicit stop order which is why you need to press 10+ times to do a 90 degree turn.

ere's way more people with 100mb/s than a few years ago

Practically no one has 100Mbps since that is server level bandwidth (expensive). Many have 200Mbps download but their upload is still only 20Mbps or less. MMH seems to have an upload of 0.5Mbps.

Most bots auto drop after 180 seconds which by then if you haven't re-connected then your likely d/c'd for good from that session.

That is how long your BT Hub 2 takes to restart when it decides to restart randomly. HotS does not drop me thanks to it actually having proper rejoin tech in it. WC3 or SC2 always drop me when that happens. Robots make no difference because they drop at 30 seconds (no one wants to wait).

There is custom servers so it is impossible to shut down current realms and you aren't the only WC3 pro so they could just ask someone else. Though it would be nice if it were possible, everyone playing on one realm would be awesome.

Officially there are no custom servers. If Blizzard cared or could they would have closed all custom servers for promoting piracy (why else not use BattleNet?).

Blizzard is currently generating 1.7 billion dollars of turnover each year.

So? They might be spending 1.7 billion dollars a year to make that. Turnover is a useless metric as it has no relationship to how much money the company actually has free. Hence why people usually use profit, which is almost always 0 or negative thanks to cheap borrowing and greedy owners.

How many games of WC3 are currently played on Bnet at the same time? A couple hundred? In contrast, how many games do you think are played in SC2, HotS, Diablo III, etc....?
... I think they can afford a lonely server blade in their basement for WC3 and an intern to check on it every 3 months (without spilling coffee on it in the process).

Authentication can use the normal authentication servers of BattleNet 2.0. The servers themselves then become easy to maintain, especially since they do not need to host anything (people can host themselves). As such you could probably run WC3 BattleNet out of a single computer in this day and age. If some trolls decide to overload it by forming a 100,000 party of former players then they can use modern cloud computing practices to dynamically add servers as required.

 

[ultravegan]

I don't know about which "safety" you're talking about, but that argument does not change my opinion of bots. Elaborate please..

In no way is this a complete argument, so don't take it so formally. However, you should be aware of the problems that do occur when not having a buffer between you and the "host."

What is the most common way someone "hacks" your computer besides social engineering? Usually it's from downloading a file that is someway manipulated to do malicious things. Since the host has full control of the content, there's no way of knowing if the map that is being hosted has been compromised.

As far as I know, there is no hashing system to check if the map you've downloaded is the map you think you downloaded. And there's no way of assuring that it's the same map others are using (however, I expect B.net to do something to make sure this doesn't happen -- I've never witnessed it personally).

Users host their own content. There doesn't seem to be any internal checking for the integrity of each map. Though decentralization is good for freedom and creativity, it also opens up other users being serviced via the host to attack.

ENT from as far as I can see -- doesn't have any way of checking the integrity of maps. However, it is more stable and efficient and secure to host maps from a database then from hosting them separately from different people's computer regardless their Internet policies, server quality, etc. Users could possible be opening their connection to attacks depending if the connection can be exploited. Blizzard tends to be a trustworthy service, but meh -- I can see holes.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

So? They might be spending 1.7 billion dollars a year to make that. Turnover is a useless metric as it has no relationship to how much money the company actually has free. Hence why people usually use profit, which is almost always 0 or negative thanks to cheap borrowing and greedy owners.

In business economics, turnover is what matters, not profit.
Why? Because profit is dead weight, money that is not doing anything for your company. The keyword here is investment.
If a company has a large amount of profit, they are wasting growth potential.

That is why large companies don't have high profits, but a huge turnover. This has nothing to do with greedy owners or borrowing.
Profit just does not matter in corporate economics.

You say that as if companies need free money to pay for something. That is not how it works. You are just shifting your ins and outs around to tap on the cashflow (= you just reduce on investments if your expenses rise).


Besides: how would that even matter? It's not like the annual upkeep of a server blade goes into the tenthousands.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

Maybe you were not around ~2008 when bots started destroying majority of custom game hosting and therefore huge parts of bnet?

Different bots we're talking about here. Not 24/7 DotA spam bots
Makemehost.com's (our partner, Hive's partner) and entgaming.net's (also a nice community) bots.

If you disconnect you are gone anyway. People drop you the moment they can and most bots auto drop after 30 seconds odd.

That is how long your BT Hub 2 takes to restart when it decides to restart randomly. HotS does not drop me thanks to it actually having proper rejoin tech in it. WC3 or SC2 always drop me when that happens. Robots make no difference because they drop at 30 seconds (no one wants to wait).

You'd be surprised. I play competitive and team emphasized games most of the time and people will wait until they reconnect for more than 45 seconds. That is depending on the bot's timer which in general are more tolerant these days.

Which is only needed if there are separate realms and completely defeats the point of them.

Obviously the point of them has already been willingly defeated by the playerbase besides seperation from Kalimdor / Asia for language reasons. So why try to justify that the point of realms being a thing is a significant one?

They just need to remove the bots and fuse the realms. That way there is only 1 realm to host on and that way everyone can see your game. Also one does not need to use third party sites then since all games in the list will have at least 1 human player in them.

Removing the bots is a terrible idea if blizzard doesn't fix the following that the bots have fixed / offered:
- No reconnects
- No cross realm
- No / minimal regulation of exploiters and offenders (Hackers, trolls, teamers in leagues / ranked games)
- Limited game control (commands, obviously very useful)

MMH commands (mostly parallel to ENT commands)

Lobby:
!a alias to !abort
!abort abort countdown
!announce set the announce message (the bot will print every seconds), leave blank or "off" to disable the announce message
!autostart auto start the game when the specified number of players have joined, leave blank or "off" to disable auto start
!check check a user's status (leave blank to check your own status)
!checkme check your own status (can be used by non admins, sends a private message visible only to the user)
!clearhcl clear the HCL command string
!close ... close slot
!closeall close all open slots
!comp create a computer in slot of skill (skill is 0 for easy, 1 for normal, 2 for insane)
!compcolour <s> <c> change a computer's colour in slot <s> to <c> (c goes from 1 to 12)
!comphandicap <s> <h> change a computer's handicap in slot <s> to <h> (h is 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, or 100)
!comprace <s> <r> change a computer's race in slot <s> to <r> (r is "human", "orc", "night elf", "undead", or "random")
!compteam <s> <t> change a computer's team in slot <s> to <t> (t goes from 1 to # of teams)
!dl <name> alias to !download
!download <name> allow a user to start downloading the map (only used with conditional map downloads, it tries to do a partial match)
!fakeplayer create or delete a fake player to occupy a slot during the game (the player will not do anything except stay AFK)
!from display the country each player is from
!hcl <string> set the HCL command string
!hold <name> ... hold a slot for someone
!kick <name> kick a player (it tries to do a partial match)
!latency <number> set game latency (20-500), leave blank to see current latency
!lock lock the game so only the game owner can run commands
!mute <name> mute a player (it tries to do a partial match)
!open <number> ... open slot
!openall open all closed slots
!owner [name] set game owner to yourself, optionally add [name] to set game owner to someone else
!ping [number] ping players, optionally add [number] to kick players with ping above [number]
!priv <name> rehost as private game
!pub <name> rehost as public game
!refresh <on/off> enable or disable refresh messages
!sp shuffle players
!start [force] start game, optionally add [force] to skip checks
!startn to start the game immediately and skip checks
!stats [name] display basic player statistics, optionally add [name] to display statistics for another player (can be used by non admins)
!statsdota [name] display DotA player statistics, optionally add [name] to display statistics for another player (can be used by non admins)
!swap <n1> <n2> swap slots
!synclimit <number> set sync limit for the lag screen (10-10000), leave blank to see current sync limit
!unhost unhost game
!unlock unlock the game
!unmute <name> unmute a player (it tries to do a partial match)
!version display version information (can be used by non admins, sends a private message visible only to the user)
!virtualhost <name> change the virtual host name
!votecancel cancel a votekick
!votekick <name> start a votekick (it tries to do a partial match, can be used by non admins)

Ingame:
!check <name> check a user's status (leave blank to check your own status)
!checkme check your own status (can be used by non admins, sends a private message visible only to the user)
!drop drop all lagging players
!end end the game (disconnect everyone)
!fppause force the FakePlayer (if it exists) to pause the game
!fpresume force the FakePlayer (if it exists) to resume the game
!from display the country each player is from
!kick <name> kick a player (it tries to do a partial match)
!latency <number> set game latency (20-500), leave blank to see current latency
!lock lock the game so only the game owner can run commands
!messages <on/off> enable or disable local admin messages for this game (battle.net messages relayed to local admins in game)
!mute <name> mute a player (it tries to do a partial match)
!muteall mute global chat (allied and private chat still works)
!owner [name] set game owner to yourself, optionally add [name] to set game owner to someone else
!ping ping players
!stats [name] display basic player statistics, optionally add [name] to display statistics for another player (can be used by non admins)
!statsdota [name] display DotA player statistics, optionally add [name] to display statistics for another player (can be used by non admins)
!synclimit <number> set sync limit for the lag screen (10-10000), leave blank to see current sync limit
!unlock unlock the game
!unmute <name> unmute a player (it tries to do a partial match)
!unmuteall unmute global chat
!votecancel cancel a votekick
!votekick <name> start a votekick (it tries to do a partial match, can be used by non admins)