- Joined
- Apr 19, 2008
- Messages
- 2,491
The future of Warcraft 3 seems rather uncertain, and often I find people do not agree on what they want for this game. But to be honest, when I look at Patch 1.33 and the extensive amount of work it needs to eliminate all bugs that it would otherwise introduce, I just have a sense of foreboding. I do not know anything about the people who are touching the code of this game now, so I could be wrong about this, but I know that I have felt for years that Activision Blizzard King corporate's agenda and my own personal interests have not always aligned. Their company requires a constant revenue stream in order to function, versus me where I just wanted to mod Warcraft III for some fun.
And as time has gone on in the past few years I feel like I have gotten further from the Warcraft III game itself and more into the Warcraft III communication channels and social media tech like Hive and Discord, and I am probably the worse for it. It may be that even the very fabric of how my brain works has changed. Perhaps I am now less helpful and more toxic towards the people who are doing the actual and legitimate Warcraft III modding.
But I think this... feeling and sense of "foreboding" are why I wanted to ask if we have any collective plan here at Hive Workshop. If Blizzard pushes the Patch 1.33 live as-is, with all of its new bugs, I think that would signal that we should begin to consider acting on some kind of collective plan to be able to continue our creativity and the feeling of artsy RTS fantasy modding without requiring the support of Activision Blizzard King. I reckon we can ask no more of ABK. The state of Reforged in the public eye is terrible, but as far as its support for past custom maps it was actually doing rather well. These good times when it was that way... I fear they may not last forever. I know this is an unpopular opinion in our private social circles of Warcraft III modding, but I believe that from the perspective of ABK the support of past WC3 maps built into Warcraft III: Reforged was a form of charity. And, it simply would not surprise me if they decided to be less charitable in the future.
And yet I am not here to ask your opinion on ABK and their workforce. Please do not bother to offer opinions on that. I am wondering what we will do, collectively, when they stop being as charitable to us as they are today. Hive has thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, of custom 3D model files. Surely we are just one patch away from ABK's Reforged service no longer supporting these models. It looks like on Patch 1.33, any of the custom "HD Reforged models" that use custom particle effects will probably no longer be supported and will crash the game any time that they are used in a custom map. Maybe dropping support for the "SD Classic models" might come in the patch after it. This is not, and does not have to be an intentional act of sabotage by ABK -- it's merely a matter of apathy. Their job is to come together as a company, collectively, and obtain a revenue stream. It is not a job to make us happy.
So, perhaps the best future personally that I can imagine for my own uses of this kind of technology would be a fully open-source game experience using:
Is anybody able to help on either of these points? I think that getting a set of public domain or "open source" art assets to fulfill the need(s) for running these tools is probably the biggest and most challenging of these two possible future goals. But it would be really cool to make progress on this front, I think. At least, this idea would interest me. Would it interest you? Or, do you believe the costs would simply outweigh the benefits? Please let me know.
And as time has gone on in the past few years I feel like I have gotten further from the Warcraft III game itself and more into the Warcraft III communication channels and social media tech like Hive and Discord, and I am probably the worse for it. It may be that even the very fabric of how my brain works has changed. Perhaps I am now less helpful and more toxic towards the people who are doing the actual and legitimate Warcraft III modding.
But I think this... feeling and sense of "foreboding" are why I wanted to ask if we have any collective plan here at Hive Workshop. If Blizzard pushes the Patch 1.33 live as-is, with all of its new bugs, I think that would signal that we should begin to consider acting on some kind of collective plan to be able to continue our creativity and the feeling of artsy RTS fantasy modding without requiring the support of Activision Blizzard King. I reckon we can ask no more of ABK. The state of Reforged in the public eye is terrible, but as far as its support for past custom maps it was actually doing rather well. These good times when it was that way... I fear they may not last forever. I know this is an unpopular opinion in our private social circles of Warcraft III modding, but I believe that from the perspective of ABK the support of past WC3 maps built into Warcraft III: Reforged was a form of charity. And, it simply would not surprise me if they decided to be less charitable in the future.
And yet I am not here to ask your opinion on ABK and their workforce. Please do not bother to offer opinions on that. I am wondering what we will do, collectively, when they stop being as charitable to us as they are today. Hive has thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, of custom 3D model files. Surely we are just one patch away from ABK's Reforged service no longer supporting these models. It looks like on Patch 1.33, any of the custom "HD Reforged models" that use custom particle effects will probably no longer be supported and will crash the game any time that they are used in a custom map. Maybe dropping support for the "SD Classic models" might come in the patch after it. This is not, and does not have to be an intentional act of sabotage by ABK -- it's merely a matter of apathy. Their job is to come together as a company, collectively, and obtain a revenue stream. It is not a job to make us happy.
So, perhaps the best future personally that I can imagine for my own uses of this kind of technology would be a fully open-source game experience using:
- HiveWE as an open source map editor tool to draw maps
- Retera Model Studio as an open source tool to create 3D art
- Warsmash mod engine as an open source client to play the maps
- Obtain a set of game data and assets that are not proprietary ABK property but that fulfill the formats necessary to run the above listed tools. I would want them to be public domain, specifically
- Learn from a legal professional if these tools are and will continue to be immune to any lawsuit regarding their current code (as it pertains to having originally been inspired by proprietary ABK software)
Is anybody able to help on either of these points? I think that getting a set of public domain or "open source" art assets to fulfill the need(s) for running these tools is probably the biggest and most challenging of these two possible future goals. But it would be really cool to make progress on this front, I think. At least, this idea would interest me. Would it interest you? Or, do you believe the costs would simply outweigh the benefits? Please let me know.