• 🏆 Texturing Contest #33 is OPEN! Contestants must re-texture a SD unit model found in-game (Warcraft 3 Classic), recreating the unit into a peaceful NPC version. 🔗Click here to enter!
  • It's time for the first HD Modeling Contest of 2024. Join the theme discussion for Hive's HD Modeling Contest #6! Click here to post your idea!

Warcraft III - Patch 1.28.2

Status
Not open for further replies.
Level 6
Joined
Mar 28, 2007
Messages
192
So, i have no luck for this patch. 1.28a patch completely fine, 1.28.1 patched successfully after i reinstalled warcraft 3. Now 1.28.2 is totally mess up for me. The update progress display at 68% before this error popp out :


full



Would like to ask if someone have any suggestion for fixing it? What I have tried :

1.Reinstall warcraft 3 completely
2.Run as admin
3.Delete bnet folder
4.Blizzard app is unable to install, as installing it have error message as well...

My patch was also stuck at 68 (64?) %, but after 40 minutes it continued. So maybe waiting is key.
 
Level 11
Joined
Dec 19, 2012
Messages
411
Another thing to potentially do is remove all wc3 registry keys. Don't do that if you don't know how though; screwing with the registry is an easy way to make your OS inoperable.
Did as well, no luck

My patch was also stuck at 68 (64?) %, but after 40 minutes it continued. So maybe waiting is key.
I'm not stucking, once it reached 68%, around 2 seconds later it pop out the error.


EDIT : Well just to tell you guys that I might found out the problem source. That is, when I'm using VPN, the installation stuck at 68% without poping up the error (and I assume it is downloading files), might be due to my school network for blocking it.
Looks like you are having problems staying connected with the Blizzard servers. As such it cannot download the 1GB of data files needed and so fails.
And you are right here.. just that I never thought about that my school might have blocked it...
 
Last edited:
Level 3
Joined
Dec 11, 2013
Messages
21
Has anyone experienced a bug where all buff (Status) icons are missing?

I can play games fine, but this is starting to bother me a bit.
 
Level 1
Joined
May 15, 2017
Messages
3
Has anyone else noticed the Aspect ratio and resolution option no longer offer 1366x768 and so on?
I'm confused
Did it roll back s a few updates?
Anywho I love Warcraft 3
Where's the petition for 4
Lol
 
Level 1
Joined
May 15, 2017
Messages
3
Has anyone experienced a bug where all buff (Status) icons are missing?

I can play games fine, but this is starting to bother me a bit.
What about aspect ratio and resolution?
Can you play it on your screens resolution or does ot only give you the option og 1024x640 whatever
 
Level 11
Joined
Jun 2, 2004
Messages
849
Tiny bug I just noticed:

If you already have wc3 running and try to open it again, it gives a "warcraft 3 was unable to initialize" error. Previously it gave the more descriptive "warcraft 3 is already running" error.

Ideally it'd allow multiple instances of wc3 but that would be a new feature, as as far as I know wc3's never been allowed to run multiple instances.
 
Level 11
Joined
Jun 2, 2004
Messages
849
Looking forward, are there any plans to allow people to update to arbitrary version numbers (1.28+) instead of the most recent patch with the new patching system?

The main purpose for this being replays of course. I don't think Blizz wants people trading around the entirety of the game files solely so they can watch replays.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pyf

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,178
Looking forward, are there any plans to allow people to update to arbitrary version numbers (1.28+) instead of the most recent patch with the new patching system?

The main purpose for this being replays of course. I don't think Blizz wants people trading around the entirety of the game files solely so they can watch replays.
I would hope in the long run they add StarCraft II style replay system, where it downloads the required files on demand to playback a replay.
 
Level 1
Joined
Apr 7, 2017
Messages
9
i could never update to 1.28 but thought it might work now that 1.28.2 is out so thought id give it a shot, but i am still getting the "something went wrong... blah blah" error fml
 
Level 16
Joined
May 2, 2011
Messages
1,345
Hello,

my WC3 directory is not inside C:/programs, it is inside another directory I made for all games. will that miss things up when I update patch? what should I do?

the path is something like:

C:\Users\MyUser\Games\PC\War3\Warcraft III

Also do I have to remember CD key? I did install it from cd but I do not remember where it is.
 
Level 1
Joined
Jan 27, 2017
Messages
5
Hello,

my WC3 directory is not inside C:/programs, it is inside another directory I made for all games. will that miss things up when I update patch? what should I do?

the path is something like:

C:\Users\MyUser\Games\PC\War3\Warcraft III

Also do I have to remember CD key? I did install it from cd but I do not remember where it is.

All you have to do is update. My install location is also not the usual program files. Everything will continue working and your CD key should remain usable :)
 

HB.

HB.

Level 3
Joined
May 6, 2017
Messages
44
There is a fatal bug which makes using hostbots impossible and Blizzard seems to be totally unaware of it.

It started probably after the 1.28.2 premiere and it is related to the commands the user sends. It doesn't matter if it's just some line someone wants to share with others or a command typed to manage a hostbot. They are sent, but some of them never appear on the screen. Even using /f m is impossible at times. If they are displayed on the screen, the hostbots often do not respond at all.

My website has been in a partnership with a hostbot provider for many years and for the last couple of weeks I have been unable to use my hostbots at all.

Considering all the problems regarding ladder (the delay & AMM being the most alarming ones), custom games are the main thing which has been keeping BN alive for the last years. Now they are not really on the table anymore, except for the automatically generated ones (like DOTA).

This is outrageous.
 
Level 11
Joined
Jun 2, 2004
Messages
849
They'd have to implement several large-scale features to match hosting bots. "Can be done better" != "will be done better".

Anyway, my experience with MMH and Ent bots are pretty much the same as always. I don't think Blizz did anything deliberately to harm them. You probably got muted by the server (seems they implemented some sort of spam filter). You should be able to talk again within 5 minutes of being muted, though.
 
Hostbots also makes it impossible to use Battle.net normally, so I doubt you'll see Blizzard supporting them in the future. Any advantage hostbots provide can be done better by Blizzard. We are already seeing evidence that they're working on improving the latency.

Repeating game names in the same list due to not enough games being hosted, near-empty game lists, server-locked games, unable to save laggers in-game and in-lobby, unable to reconnect, Loss of epic mapmaker potential, no stat recording, bad replay recording, slow downloads returning while limit is above 8MB. Yeah you are right, lots to look forward too.
 
Last edited:

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,178
near-empty game lists
Better than fake full game lists where most game lobbies have no players in them.

server-locked games
What is meant by this?

unable to save laggers in-game and in-lobby
Standard hosting does not boot laggers in lobby. In game they are given well over 60 seconds to reconnect which is usually enough.

unable to reconnect
I assume this was done by a host robot starting another lobby with fake state and getting you to fast forward until caught up?

slow downloads returning while limit is above 8MB
Common host robots have terrible upload rates. It takes them near a minute to upload a 8 MB map. To put it in perspective the download should finish for me in under 1 second (10 MB/sec download speed). If I were to upload the map it would only take 4-8 seconds...
 
Better than fake full game lists where most game lobbies have no players in them.

Reply: No not really, though it would be nice if everyone stopped auto hosting as that almost never works anymore except for a few famous maps/games.

What is meant by this?

Reply: Bots allow anyone to join no matter their server, even the non-blizzard ones which are sadly way superior to Blizzard's.

Standard hosting does not boot laggers in lobby. In game they are given well over 60 seconds to reconnect which is usually enough.

Reply: There is no such thing as reconnection from Blizzard, once you are gone you are gone. Bot hosting boots laggers in lobby for good reason as they are too far from the selected location to actually enjoy the game and this can still be disabled/bypassed by !hold name...

I assume this was done by a host robot starting another lobby with fake state and getting you to fast forward until caught up?

Reply: In-game, Gproxy DLL.

Common host robots have terrible upload rates. It takes them near a minute to upload a 8 MB map. To put it in perspective the download should finish for me in under 1 second (10 MB/sec download speed). If I were to upload the map it would only take 4-8 seconds...

Reply: Mostly only MMH and cheap private bots nowadays, not ENT.

Seems you have some kind of hatred against WC3 bots for no good reason as you are unaware of what they provide, replied to you in the quote. They can even provide communication from game to different game meaning you could make a map based on chat strings to have a 13+ player workaround. Can also make a bot to have a new chat system through whispers when blizzard isn't wrecking the whisper system to allow for 100+ people conversations instead of the low limited 40 per channel.

Bots are literally the only reason WC3 lasted long enough for Blizzard to actually notice something besides dota 1 after a decade and why multiplayer in WC3 is still possible. Both dota and melee are terribly bad however thanks to bots, players actually get the chance to play something not bad.
 
Last edited:

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,178
Reply: There is no such thing as reconnection from Blizzard, once you are gone you are gone. Bot hosting boots laggers in lobby for good reason as they are too far from the selected location to actually enjoy the game and this can still be disabled/bypassed by !hold name...
Most people are kicked because the bot servers have bad internet so introduce a 2,000 ms nonsense latency spike into their own ping readings. The number of times ENT and MMH robots have kicked me randomly is disgraceful. To put it in perspective before when people used to manually host the worst latency I had was 200ms and that was literally to the other side of the world. Sure when streaming came about it got worse, but to compensate my connection has got better so there still is no excuse. I should never be kicked for latency, as I know I do not have any problems with it.

Also most robots still do not allow for rejoin functionality like HotS has. Once you are gone, which they make sure your disconnect timer expires very quickly, you are gone for good just like before. In the old system players could at least hold the dialog for an extra minute or so before a force disconnect occurred, which was often enough.

Reply: In-game, Gproxy DLL.
As far as I am aware Warcraft III clients do not load that DLL. If they do this is a major security risk as one cannot go about running arbitrary DLLs on client computers.

Reply: Mostly only MMH and cheap private bots nowadays, not ENT.
Well if not for the robots I could just host myself and people could enjoy 1-2 MB/sec download speeds. Too bad no one ever joins due to the robots constantly thrashing the game list queue with empty lobbies.

Instead I go to StarCraft II and look at the open games list where it shows only lobbies with players in them. If only WC3 was as progressive as SC2...
 
Most people are kicked because the bot servers have bad internet so introduce a 2,000 ms nonsense latency spike into their own ping readings. The number of times ENT and MMH robots have kicked me randomly is disgraceful. To put it in perspective before when people used to manually host the worst latency I had was 200ms and that was literally to the other side of the world. Sure when streaming came about it got worse, but to compensate my connection has got better so there still is no excuse. I should never be kicked for latency, as I know I do not have any problems with it.

Reply: Should use Gproxy with bots if you have that unreliable a connection on b.net. Since 1.28 this has gotten much worse for even players with good/better internet so of course you'd be affected too if you still play. Make sure to not run steam and/or discord while on b.net.

Also most robots still do not allow for rejoin functionality like HotS has. Once you are gone, which they make sure your disconnect timer expires very quickly, you are gone for good just like before. In the old system players could at least hold the dialog for an extra minute or so before a force disconnect occurred, which was often enough.

Reply: Most games don't and since I have never played HotS I wouldn't know what you meant however most bots will hold you for about 60-80 seconds, even longer/better with gproxy which is usually 180. You are force dropped after 60 seconds because you won't recover unless you have Gproxy which then the bot gives you 180 seconds which is 3 minutes.

As far as I am aware Warcraft III clients do not load that DLL. If they do this is a major security risk as one cannot go about running arbitrary DLLs on client computers.

Reply: Your expected to go get it yourself which takes less then a minute, even easier then installing your WC3 copy. No security risks there, just better gameplay.

Well if not for the robots I could just host myself and people could enjoy 1-2 MB/sec download speeds. Too bad no one ever joins due to the robots constantly thrashing the game list queue with empty lobbies.

Reply: You would be lonely unless you had a group ready to play with you whenever you are online, you'll be stuck in one server with no ability to control your hosted game and unless you use bots or some third-party program your download speed won't ever reach that high in-lobby. It's somehow locked and usually only bots can unlock that. Nobody would join if bots were gone because there wouldn't be anyone to join, I know I would rather go back to the patch with memory bug if Blizzard decides to repeat their past and most of the Custom Game community will follow if the maps they play are still being updated.

Instead I go to StarCraft II and look at the open games list where it shows only lobbies with players in them. If only WC3 was as progressive as SC2...

Reply: Looks quite bad over there, my apologies... =(
Definitely way too progressive, its already below zero health within a couple years. Hope they improve the engine and world editor over there some time for those players before another game like WC3 enters the world.

I am glad WC3 is nothing like SC2.

Will reply again in the quote.

I sort of do agree with you however as it currently stands I don't agree with you until Blizzard smartens up and unlocks what is already there.
 
Level 11
Joined
Jun 2, 2004
Messages
849
The bot's upload speeds are usually much higher than my fellow player's upload speeds.

Remember back in the day being kicked because of a slow download due to getting the map from a player with an awful upload speed? Not fun times.
 

HB.

HB.

Level 3
Joined
May 6, 2017
Messages
44
Hostbots also makes it impossible to use Battle.net normally, so I doubt you'll see Blizzard supporting them in the future. Any advantage hostbots provide can be done better by Blizzard. We are already seeing evidence that they're working on improving the latency.

Impossible in what way?

I've been an active ladder player for many years (despite all the well-known issues regarding it) and the existence of hostbots didn't affect my gaming in any negative way. On the contrary, I was able to practice specific match-ups to improve my game.

I've hosted ~150 tournaments over the years via hostbots and now I can't anymore and it makes people leave the game. Among Reign of Chaos community I've had a reputation of the person "keeping RoC alive" for a long time, who's also been a spokesman against leaving Battle Net and moving to w3arena.net, so I'd appreciate some gratitude from Blizzard's side. Are you really going to tell me that this is a change for the better? Killing the hostbot experience without offering anything in exchange?

You probably got muted by the server (seems they implemented some sort of spam filter). You should be able to talk again within 5 minutes of being muted, though.

I am not muted. It's a global issue. And It's been like this for weeks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pyf

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,178
Reply: Should use Gproxy with bots if you have that unreliable a connection on b.net. Since 1.28 this has gotten much worse for even players with good/better internet so of course you'd be affected too if you still play. Make sure to not run steam and/or discord while on b.net.
Running steam or discord will make no difference. If they do then something is wrong with the reliability of your internet connection, and not BattleNet.

Most games don't and since I have never played HotS I wouldn't know what you meant however most bots will hold you for about 60-80 seconds, even longer/better with gproxy which is usually 180. You are force dropped after 60 seconds because you won't recover unless you have Gproxy which then the bot gives you 180 seconds which is 3 minutes.
HotS is based on SC2 engine. Due to the nature of the game it will not pause and wait for people. To compensate for this if you are dropped you can rejoin the game in progress. Depending how you dropped you will either need to load from the beginning (case of crash) or load from a temporary save game (case of quitting the game). The game then runs at maximum speed to catch up with the rest of the clients, at which time control resumes and you can continue playing.

In theory host robots could be made to do something similar, offering the player a dummy lobby from which they can reload the beginning of the game and then fast forward the replay commands until they are back in sync. However clearly no one has made this so no one will miss it.

Reply: Your expected to go get it yourself which takes less then a minute, even easier then installing your WC3 copy. No security risks there, just better gameplay.
All third party DLLs are a security risk of sorts. That said as long as you have to download it, and it does not download automatically, that risk is minimal.

Reply: You would be lonely unless you had a group ready to play with you whenever you are online, you'll be stuck in one server with no ability to control your hosted game and unless you use bots or some third-party program your download speed won't ever reach that high in-lobby. It's somehow locked and usually only bots can unlock that. Nobody would join if bots were gone because there wouldn't be anyone to join, I know I would rather go back to the patch with memory bug if Blizzard decides to repeat their past and most of the Custom Game community will follow if the maps they play are still being updated.
People would all be playing on 1 server so if anything filling games would be even easier. I know that I stopped playing WC3 because I could not fill games, even robot ones, with players unless they are popular maps I do not want to play. People eventually stopped trying to join unpopular maps as they know there will be no players in the lobby. I gave up playing WC3 almost completely as a result of robots.

Definitely way too progressive, its already below zero health within a couple years. Hope they improve the engine and world editor over there some time for those players before another game like WC3 enters the world.
SC2 has about 4-6 times the players playing Arcade as WC3 has playing custom games at any given time... You can host any map, even a brand new one, and within a few minutes during peek hours it will be filled. And by filled I actually mean full house of 6-12 players, not WC3 bot filled of 2/3-3/4 slots empty.
 
Running steam or discord will make no difference. If they do then something is wrong with the reliability of your internet connection, and not BattleNet.

Reply: Sure makes a difference however doubtful you would know since you main a different game and nope.

HotS is based on SC2 engine. Due to the nature of the game it will not pause and wait for people. To compensate for this if you are dropped you can rejoin the game in progress. Depending how you dropped you will either need to load from the beginning (case of crash) or load from a temporary save game (case of quitting the game). The game then runs at maximum speed to catch up with the rest of the clients, at which time control resumes and you can continue playing.

In theory host robots could be made to do something similar, offering the player a dummy lobby from which they can reload the beginning of the game and then fast forward the replay commands until they are back in sync. However clearly no one has made this so no one will miss it.

Reply: Shouldn't Blizzard be doing this instead of their players who want to enjoy their game, a bit ridiculous if you ask me.

All third party DLLs are a security risk of sorts. That said as long as you have to download it, and it does not download automatically, that risk is minimal.

Reply: WC3 itself is a security risk due to the fact when you manually host instead of bot host your ip becomes visible to whoever joins your game, not to mention other obvious flaws in other games too.

People would all be playing on 1 server so if anything filling games would be even easier. I know that I stopped playing WC3 because I could not fill games, even robot ones, with players unless they are popular maps I do not want to play. People eventually stopped trying to join unpopular maps as they know there will be no players in the lobby. I gave up playing WC3 almost completely as a result of robots.

Reply: No they wouldn't, currently filling games is easier... The crowd you are looking for has already moved to different stuff maybe even SC2 and it is very doubtful they'll ever return. Then you quit for a very silly reason because you have to find your players, it is quite ignorant to expect them to come to you 24/7 in a game older then a decade. I know quite a few people who can fill games aka get FH's within minutes to a hour depending on the map. MMH is usually better for getting players on the official servers while ENT seems to be better for rpg-like and more complex maps. So wrong you are, seems you aren't willing to try either and you likely shouldn't since you found the better game for yourself.

SC2 has about 4-6 times the players playing Arcade as WC3 has playing custom games at any given time... You can host any map, even a brand new one, and within a few minutes during peek hours it will be filled. And by filled I actually mean full house of 6-12 players, not WC3 bot filled of 2/3-3/4 slots empty.

Reply: I wouldn't know because I uninstalled as soon as I saw the screen after logging in, it was such a badly made game then I wonder if its gotten any better. From what I heard it definitely only has that amount for "popular" maps. Do unknown maps stand a chance now in their bad listing for custom games? The only reason it is doing better if it is, is because arcade is free while WC3 isn't and WC3 should be free by now. During peek hours...? How about any hour of the day? If it has that many players then doing FH's any time in a day should be quite easy. It's all about how you host, some know how while others fail to perceive the slightest know how. Getting 12 players in a WC3 game is easy, I usually dislike that because 50% or more of those players are the common/average troll leaver/flamer who spam go/start that usually come from dota 1 or melee.

Glad you enjoy SC2, as long as Blizzard doesn't destroy WC3 then others will be able to enjoy this game like myself. I'm not asking for them to keep bots, I'm asking for them to actually open their eyes and look before "patching". You and I weren't and aren't using an edited .exe for wc3 right? Just vanilla/original which in that case means every feature a bot has provided is a feature Blizzard has kept locked or was clueless about since you can only use the code that is already there.
 
Last edited:

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,178
Reply: Sure makes a difference however doubtful you would know since you main a different game and nope.
I studied how the internet works... It makes no difference as the application network traffic does not interfere with each other.

Exception being if your network is congested. Then packet loss and buffer size adds latency to communications, or in other words unreliable network. Can be the result of a congested backbone network node, a common problem in the USA at the moment which affects a lot of players trying to connect to Blizzard US servers.

Reply: Shouldn't Blizzard be doing this instead of their players who want to enjoy their game, a bit ridiculous if you ask me.
They have. As I said, HotS uses it.

SC2 does not since it pre-dates the feature and the feature is not really suited for the gameplay of SC2. Same goes for WC3 which is why it lacks the feature.

Reply: WC3 itself is a security risk due to the fact when you manually host instead of bot host your ip becomes visible to whoever joins your game, not to mention other obvious flaws in other games too.
That is not a security risk, especially since with IPv4 most consumers are behind NAT so unsolicited communications are dropped by the NAT. It is also not a risk for IPv6 since the IP addresses are already public and the computer will drop unsolicited incoming traffic. With IPv6 one should be able to host without worrying about configuring port forwarding in the NAT.

That said only the host sees all the IP addresses as all clients must communicate with them. Currently most robots have commands that list IP addresses for all players anyway, making it no more secure.

Reply: No they wouldn't, currently filling games is easier... The crowd you are looking for has already moved to different stuff maybe even SC2 and it is very doubtful they'll ever return. Then you quit for a very silly reason because you have to find your players, it is quite ignorant to expect them to come to you 24/7 in a game older then a decade. I know quite a few people who can fill games aka get FH's within minutes to a hour depending on the map. MMH is usually better for getting players on the official servers while ENT seems to be better for rpg-like and more complex maps. So wrong you are, seems you aren't willing to try either and you likely shouldn't since you found the better game for yourself.
Fact is before robots I could fill any lobby I hosted. Fact is soon after robots showed up it was impossible to fill any lobby, even robots and self hosting was impossible. Fact is a lot of people quit WC3 because trying to find players for any map other than those that are popular is extremely hard. Fact is that is why I quit playing WC3 seriously.

Most robots are configured to start with only 1/4 of the lobby filled. Even reaching that amount in some maps is near impossible. I do not want to play with mostly empty games, I want full houses. If robots had not chased so many players away it would not be so hard.

From what I heard it definitely only has that amount for "popular" maps. Do unknown maps stand a chance now in their bad listing for custom games?
SC2 fixed that issue for Heart of the Swarm. Ironically SC2 lobby works like a better version of how Wc3 used to work before host robots took over, despite originally being the opposite way round. In SC2 you can filter arcade lobbies for only those with at least 1 player in them (no empty games with no one in them), like how Wc3 was before robots. In Wc3 now most lobbies are empty with no players in them, like how SC2 was originally back in WoL before the first lobby revision (which is now at least 5 years old).

In SC2 one can publish a fresh map, never advertised before and needing 10-12 players, and fill all slots in under 15 minutes during prime times. In Wc3 I cannot even get a full house SWAT Aftermath game going.

During peek hours...? How about any hour of the day?
People have to sleep. Even Wc3 has always had peek times. For example EU Northrend server in Wc3 was a ghost town during the EU night but was decently active during the day. The US servers also suffered from reduced activity during the US nights. It can be very hard to fill unknown lobbies in SC2 during off peak times due to people being asleep, however the same lobby will fill very fast during peek times as there are a lot of players. Unlike Wc3 which encouraged everyone to join the Azeroth US server, in SC2 you are encouraged to remain inside your locale region so that Blizzard App friend functionality remains operational. Hence in SC2 the day night activity cycle is more extreme.

Wc3 now has so few players that one cannot even notice if it even has a day night cycle. A new map lobby will not fill at any time of the day.

It's all about how you host, some know how while others fail to perceive the slightest know how.
If you use IPv4 you need to configure your NAT to forward the TCP port for incoming join requests to your local IP address. This might not be possible if you are behind a carrier grade NAT, such as a cheap internet service or most mobile internet services (not that you should game on those anyway).

If you use IPv6 then nothing should need to be done at all. If you have a firewall you might need to add an exception to it, but this will most likely be a computer setting rather than a network setting.
 
Level 5
Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
108
It is kind of humorous to me to see anti-host bot sentiments nowadays. Host bots are probably the best thing to happen to Wc3 custom games, at least from a feature perspective. In particular, the host bot GHost++ basically encompasses most of the important hosting tools released over the years. Instead of running some combination of PLC/DR, Banlist, Autorefresher, VCK, and perhaps still more, you can just run GHost++ and get all of those features and many more.

Do people want to go back to vanilla hosting? 250ms delay, not being able to see your ping, manually refreshing slots, hosting only on a single server, and so on? I highly doubt it, as all of those tools gained traction for a reason. I remember being asked frequently if I was running PLC back in those days, or DR when that became popular.

Though in regards to hosting custom games, there is some evidence they changed the 250ms delay to 100ms lately.

Regarding the decline of Wc3, I think of things like:
- the old custom games lists where like 50-80% (and sometimes more) of the game list was DotA
- the game has not received any sort of content or balance update in a long time
- the game is just old
These are the sorts of things that I think significantly contributed to Wc3 declining. In particular, the DotA players will have mostly moved on. The ladder players will have left, maybe some of them to alternative Wc3 ladders. And some portion will just move on to newer games, like SC2.

Host bot code has existed since at least 2008, and I remember hosting and playing games in the time between 2008-2011. I am not a fan of autohosted games, but I do remember when they frequently filled. To me, autohosted games serve to exacerbate the problem of a dying user base, but I doubt they were the cause. Hosting on multiple servers served to unite the user base and speed up games filling, but I would not doubt the user base was already in decline by then.

I do think with a small user base, all these autohosted games are a negative influence on the random user. I do not think host bots themselves are a negative influence, though, as they are straight up superior hosting to vanilla Wc3 in basically every regard. There are two downsides I can think of right now to host bots, one of which is the initial difficulty in setting one up. The other is that host migration most likely will not work, since the base GHost++ does not report player IPs to each other upon them joining, if I recall correctly.

I would not be opposed to autohosted games going away. I do not support getting rid of standalone dedicated hosting software that can run on Linux and Windows, though. Simply having hosting software allows for great flexibility.

I would be surprised if SC2's custom game user base was only four to six times greater than Wc3's. It is hard to remember, but the last times I remember being able to /users, the entire player base across all classic games was probably less than 150k. With some portion less than half of that logged in to TFT. And as the trend was for that total number to drop rapidly, I imagine it is much smaller now.

Though who knows, maybe the recent stuff with D2 and SC (and eventually Wc3) has/will bump up the numbers.

Anyway, this is mostly speculation on my part. I only have mostly anecdotal information after all. It would be pretty cool if someone had /users data across all the years up to now, though.


Regarding some other specific things...

Regarding GProxy:
GProxy++, if I recall, was something originally by the same guy that wrote GHost++. The original exists in .exe form. It works by basically acting as a proxy between a Wc3 client and the host. If the user disconnects from the host (but remains on the lag screen), GProxy++ allows for reestablishing the connection. By default it is setup to allow for three minutes for the reconnection to happen. There are other technical details in regards to how it does that, but that is the essence of the design. The source to GProxy++ is available and you can probably easily compile it yourself.

The DLL being brought up is, I think, a modification to the original that is auto-loaded by Wc3 by placing it as a .mix file in the Wc3 directory.

It was such a long time ago, but from what I remember, something like plug pulling would 100% disconnect you from a Wc3 game. GProxy++ is designed to work in that kind of scenario, though.


Regarding download speeds in game:
From what I remember browsing the GHost++ source, it was mentioned that Wc3's default map download mechanism involves basically acking small chunks of the map. So basically your download speed will be constrained by your ping, because chunks will not be sent until you request the next part. GHost++ tries to mitigate this by preemptively sending additional parts.

If this all works as expected, then in theory, GHost++ will allow for superior download speeds simply by design. If you have slow download speeds, it most likely is because they configured their host bot to limit the upload speed. And they probably do that to avoid people in game suffering lag spikes or some such, from having many people downloading max out the upload of the host the bot is on.

I am not sure how the big public hosts (like ENT) setup their bot network, but I imagine they will have numerous (perhaps many) Wc3 games hosted on a single VPS or some such.


Regarding rejoining a game you have completely left already:
From what I know, there is no public GHost++ distribution that has this feature... but there is reason to believe it is doable. As GHost++ bots already are capable of building replay files, I imagine it would be just a bit of work to make rejoining games a possibility.

I think there is a Wc3 client that allows rejoining through this sort of method. I think I was watching a NetEase Wc3 stream once and saw a "rejoin" take place when someone disconnected.


Regarding empty lobbies:
It would be a welcome change to the custom games list if they showed how many players are in a game, I think. D2 shows the players in a game. SC and Wc3 LAN show how many slots are taken up, from what I remember. Not sure why the developers opted for Wc3 Battle.net to not show something.



To the guy having problems with his host bots:
Blizzard seems to have added some spam filtering stuff on the server side. If I type www.google.com into chat, for example, I get muted. When I am muted, normal chat looks like it is going through (but it is not), and my whispers (/w and /f m) do not show on my screen (ie, they are not going through). Easy way to check if you are muted is to try to whisper yourself. You can switch accounts if you get muted this way.

Next, your bots might be muted. This does not mean they are not working, just that you will not see their chat responses. Provided you, yourself, are not muted, you may still be able to go through the typical steps to host. Like loading up a map config or map, sending the host game command, then joining that game and spoof checking. Once in the game it should work like normal. Though not being able to see responses might present challenges in the case of errors occurring.

Finally, it might even be possible that specific messages are filtered without actually muting you. I am not sure about this case.
 
Last edited:

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,178
Do people want to go back to vanilla hosting? 250ms delay, not being able to see your ping, manually refreshing slots, hosting only on a single server, and so on? I highly doubt it, as all of those tools gained traction for a reason. I remember being asked frequently if I was running PLC back in those days, or DR when that became popular.
They gained traction because they forced themselves on everyone. There is no option to filter away robot games.

- the old custom games lists where like 50-80% (and sometimes more) of the game list was DotA
It still was the case until recently when the map lost popularity for games like DotA 2, HoN, LoL and HotS. Used to be like 40 robots hosting DotA all the time, of which you could get entire game lists of DotA.

It would be a welcome change to the custom games list if they showed how many players are in a game, I think. D2 shows the players in a game. SC and Wc3 LAN show how many slots are taken up, from what I remember. Not sure why the developers opted for Wc3 Battle.net to not show something.
The robots will just report fake user metrics to BattleNet then so as not to have their game filtered. Half the problem is irresponsible robot owners that keep empty lobbies open.
 
Level 5
Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
108
The tools gained traction because they were useful and improved the game experience. I was not limiting that statement to GHost++ and host bots. In my view, it is only natural that a tool like GHost++ which encompassed all those popular tools would become widespread.

I do not disagree that bot owners could find a way to lie about how full the game is, but considering ENT and MMH show on their websites how full the games are, I am inclined to believe they would not in this case. Still, at that point it is fighting against what people want pretty explicitly, and I would not be opposed to such offenses being punished.

I do not like the game list full of empty games either, I would not mind some changes in that regard. Though breaking the host bot software itself is something I am opposed to unless Blizzard provides a good replacement.
 
Last edited:

HB.

HB.

Level 3
Joined
May 6, 2017
Messages
44
There is a fatal bug which makes using hostbots impossible and Blizzard seems to be totally unaware of it.

It started probably after the 1.28.2 premiere and it is related to the commands the user sends. It doesn't matter if it's just some line someone wants to share with others or a command typed to manage a hostbot. They are sent, but some of them never appear on the screen. Even using /f m is impossible at times. If they are displayed on the screen, the hostbots often do not respond at all.

My website has been in a partnership with a hostbot provider for many years and for the last couple of weeks I have been unable to use my hostbots at all.

Considering all the problems regarding ladder (the delay & AMM being the most alarming ones), custom games are the main thing which has been keeping BN alive for the last years. Now they are not really on the table anymore, except for the automatically generated ones (like DOTA).

This is outrageous.

I've got the botlog finally:
[Wed Jun 14 08:51:48 2017] [BNET: Europe] admin [RoC.Adam] sent command [,load]
[Wed Jun 14 08:51:48 2017] [QUEUED: Europe] The currently loaded map config file is: [mapcfgs/(4)rLostTemple2.0.cfg]

Which is why I can't see it on my screen.

I have never seen anything like "QUEUED" before and this are the very first lines sent both by me and the hostbot, hours after logging into Battle Net, so there is no way it's some kind of spam prevention.
 

HB.

HB.

Level 3
Joined
May 6, 2017
Messages
44
This isn't my bot, it comes from an external provider (living-bots.net) owning a large number of them.
 
Level 1
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
9
Don't change RoC please, its great as it is, changing armor/attack types and making the game more TFT like just ruins RoC.

I understand for fixing few things, for example defending undeads early expanding or getting harrased by all races(so basically buffing undeads early defenses)

Nerfing elf by making expanding more expensive or tree of lifes build time to grow or repairing elf goldmine to cost recourses.

But leave the towers/xpgains/armor/attacktypes as they are, thank you.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top