Warcraft III - Patch 1.28.6 PTR

[StoPCampinGn00b]

Warcraft 3 Patch 1.28.6 PTR
Link to Patch 1.28.6 PTR battle.net post

The public test realm for patch 1.28.6 is out now! This means that you can test the new patch on a separate server (Mac & PC PTR installers are is included on the battle.net post, green link is above).

The two biggest things that come in 1.28.6 are both ladder centric. One being a new map pool for ladder, and the other being various changes to existing melee maps, also for ladder. They include a selection 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and FFA maps. In a sense, it is a balance patch, but not one where the stats of the four races units and heroes are altered. You can read the changes in detail on the battle.net post up top as well. Blizzard also stated two other things: That they're looking into fixing game search times and lowering the latency even more.

The takeaway: After months of updates aimed at improving compatibility and technical aspects, (besides the 8mb map size limit being lifted) the first major wave of content arrived. There's still lots more to improve, but it's great the progress made finally being turned into significant substance. We await the modding and the custom game scene to see similar progress in the near future.

Current 1.28.6 PTR map pools:
- 1v1 Map Pool (New)
- 2v2 Map Pool (New)
- 3v3 Map Pool (New)
- 4v4 Map Pool (New)
- FFA Map Pool (New)

August 18: PTR is back up!

 

[Kyrbi0]

Neat.

 

[FeruEnzeruJKun]

I wish that will fix some problems for World Edit (Including versions of them) such imports in new patches and updates. I think the import editor always having problems and issues with things.

 

[TriggerHappy]

The Blizzard post states this is for patch "1.28.6", not 1.29.

 

[FeruEnzeruJKun]

The Blizzard post states this is for patch "1.28.6", not 1.29.

That is true or false. It depends.

 

[_lycan]

Nice new balance changes

 

[Kam]

I wish that will fix some problems for World Edit (Including versions of them) such imports in new patches and updates. I think the import editor always having problems and issues with things.

Blizzard is aware of the issues. Right now the focus is on ladder and the PTR.

If you are still updating without the Blizzard App open and up to date that will cause issues.

 

[FeruEnzeruJKun]

Blizzard is aware of the issues. Right now the focus is on ladder and the PTR.

If you are still updating without the Blizzard App open and up to date that will cause issues.

That's true. I'll might get my own Blizzard/BN account eventually right until i get a desktop for Warcraft 3.

I think it's important that Warcraft 3 on Blizzard App could be fine.

I'll agree with you and Warcraft 3 on Blizzard App then.

 

[Championfighter25]

Nice,a lot of people bash Blizzard doing nothing for this game with these patches.I hope this calms them a bit.

 

[Freddyk]

The last point worries me:
"Removed the rolling shoreline waves from rolling hills"

Does that mean most custom terrains (where hills are preferred to cliffs) will have no more shoreline waves? That would be ugly...

 

[Kostyarik]

The last point worries me:
"Removed the rolling shoreline waves from rolling hills"

Does that mean most custom terrains (where hills are preferred to cliffs) will have no more shoreline waves? That would be ugly...

You took the words out of my mouth

 

[Jampion]

The last point worries me:
"Removed the rolling shoreline waves from rolling hills"

Does that mean most custom terrains (where hills are preferred to cliffs) will have no more shoreline waves? That would be ugly...

I think all they did is edit the maps, so it won't affect custom maps in any way.
Under Scenario -> Map Options you can select whether you want water waves on rolling shores and cliff shores. If you compare the new maps with their old version you can see, that they disabled the option to have water waves on rolling shores.

 

[Hero]

Guys... do you think we are going to see WC3 in the launcher? It feels like this is the only way to attract more people.

As a long-term ladder player, it depresses me to see that not even one in-game tournament gets carried out completely.

 

[ankan55]

Guys... do you think we are going to see WC3 in the launcher? It feels like this is the only way to attract more people.

As a long-term ladder player, it depresses me to see that not even one in-game tournament gets carried out completely.

That's what i'm waiting for.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

PTR is down for maintenance and aims to be back early next week.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20758576598?page=4#post-74

 

[N'zoth]

How do I get an offline patch? I am not able to find any of the google world.

 

[Anaxie]

On bnet forums people are saying huge clusters of trees are uncuttable. Likely bugged to hell since they randomly secided to alter tree size

Creep aquisiton range is utterly pathetic many maps you can mine gold or go to a merc place without them even blinking.

The classic team are idiots i have no hope for the potential wc3 remastered to be anything except an absolute bug riddled clusterfuck

 

[Chaosy]

Something remotely useful - nice.

 

[A]mun]

Might be time to jump into ladder games again, although i hope there are more changes coming.
Something creative, to refresh the age-old meta (new tech for underused units or so?).

 

[Dr Super Good]

How do I get an offline patch? I am not able to find any of the google world.

I do not think there is one.. I suspect one has to use the Blizzard app style patcher to update now. In the world of permanently connected high speed internet connections this is mostly not a problem.

 

[trebla ratilla]

blizzard should make new patches which also work on mobile , fix the so called problem in world editor and add more default units which have unique skins

Edit : which you can play wc3 maps on mobile

 

[Kaijyuu]

I would think there are windows emulators for phones that could run a game this old. Maybe I'm overestimating phones.

 

[Anaxie]

I think it's sad that the WC3 Remaster may end up being a shitty 4k HD like the SC1 Remaster.

Compared to actually editing units using Hive assets to give units quality above and beyond what we damn well know blizzard will give us.

Then again the true remake and highest quality of games usually comes down to modders in PC gaming anyhow.

 

[FeruEnzeruJKun]

blizzard should make new patches which also work on mobile , fix the so called problem in world editor and add more default units which have unique skins

Edit : which you can play wc3 maps on mobile

Yeah, I liked it when there's new and better gimmicks, functions, triggers, improvements, map scripts, customs (races, ability strings, sound sets, tilesets, etc.) and other stuff for WC3: Remastered since SC1 remastered came out 2 days ago. I wish that i would dream for someone do a Notepad++ plugin and support for Warcraft 3 files (Especially MPQs, Maps and others. It would be cool to see it just like OXC modding).

But I think WC3 on Mobile can be a piece of cake.

I'll agree with you then.

 

[trebla ratilla]

Yeah, I liked it when there's new and better gimmicks, functions, triggers, improvements, map scripts, customs (races, ability strings, sound sets, tilesets, etc.) and other stuff for WC3: Remastered since SC1 remastered came out 2 days ago. I wish that i would dream for someone do a Notepad++ plugin and support for Warcraft 3 files (Especially MPQs, Maps and others. It would be cool to see it just like OXC modding).

But I think WC3 on Mobile can be a piece of cake.

I'll agree with you then.

yeah, hope they can do it we don't need old wc3 it should be improve

 

[millzy]

is it just me or evry time i try play on bnet now it has to download the patch ?

 

[Dr Super Good]

is it just me or evry time i try play on bnet now it has to download the patch ?

Does it actually download anything? Or is it just verifying the existing files?

 

[millzy]

Does it actually download anything? Or is it just verifying the existing files?

I dont think so but it has to dl and restart every time

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

PTR is back up. Blizzard hasn't made an official post on it, but please participate it and give your feedback.

I've arranged some gaming. "Melee Map Evening"
When: 20:00 Today (Friday) UTC
Where: Warcraft 3 PTR
Channel: w3 usa-1 / Hive Discord

Feel free to join

EDIT: REMEMBER, you need to download the PTR in order to play the new ladder. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/12790218/

 

[ScrewTheTrees]

Oh yeah baby, they dont stand a chance against the might clan THW

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

I forgot that the clan isn't on the PTR, so meetup channel on PTR Battle.net is w3 usa-1.

We start in 10 minutes!

 

[N'zoth]

Perhaps they may want to enable in-game triggers. Making permanent spells. That will be a ton of epicness.

 

[Rui]

It'd be nice if they just expanded the map pool. Both in Warcraft III and StarCraft II it seems as if we're always playing the same map after a while.

 

[FeruEnzeruJKun]

Perhaps they may want to enable in-game triggers. Making permanent spells. That will be a ton of epicness.

I'll agree with N'zoth.

Warcraft III's engine and Starcraft II's engine are the best game engines for strategy games, RTS games and action RPG games. (Especially WoW's engine)

Besides: My massive single player WC3 RPG needs warcraft III engine.

 

[N'zoth]

I'll agree with N'zoth.

Warcraft III's engine and Starcraft II's engine are the best game engines for strategy games, RTS games and action RPG games. (Especially WoW's engine)

Besides: My massive single player WC3 RPG needs warcraft III engine.

Good to know a large project lies ahead in the future. Hope Blizzard makes things like triggers, object data, and others to be insertable ingame instead of loading them into each map.

 

[FeruEnzeruJKun]

Good to know a large project lies ahead in the future. Hope Blizzard makes things like triggers, object data, and others to be insertable ingame instead of loading them into each map.

Yep. That's kinda true.

 

[Abovegame]

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20758796370

"As we move forward with future map pool changes we will add community maps."

 

[Zephyrius2412]

I think Blizzard can make a great update, bringing great plus in Warcraft III.

In Editor, I think about break the limit:
- A tool that allow to merge .w3o and .imp files (I don't think that it would be difficult for Blizzard's developpers).
- Allow to use ALL terrain types in the same map (Ashenvale, Barrens, etc...).
- Extend the map size limit to 480.
- REALY extend the max number of destructibles/doodads/units.
- Add some basic actions in the Trigger Editor, like "Unit - Change Unit Name", "Hero - Change Hero Proper Name", "Max Leveled Unit in Unit Group", "Get Unit Field of Value" (like the icon path, the base damage, the main hero characteristic, etc...", "Change game constant/game interface" (like change the max hero level, the UI of a player in-game), etc...
- REALY correct some bugs in the triggers, functions, etc... like the "Export/Import unit data", because this function export/import ALL the object data, not just the data of the selected unit. So, to correct please.
- Allow to modify custom units/doodads/destrutibles ID in the Object Editor.
- Extend the max cliff level in the terrain editor.

In the Game:
- REALY extend the local network max map size (4 MB) to 20 MB, or 30 MB, see 50 MB !
- Allow to play custom multiplayer campains in local network.



Blizzard, you can still improve Warcraft III, at least for the remaining community: The Hive Workshop, please.

Thanks in advance

 

[Dr Super Good]

- Allow to use ALL terrain types in the same map (Ashenvale, Barrens, etc...).

Not possible without major changes. The only reason there is a limit is due to terrain type being allocated a 4 bit bit field. That said I see no reason why cliff type limit could not also be raised to 16 as that also has a 4 bit bit field that currently only values 0 and 1 work properly for.

- Extend the map size limit to 480.

Bigger is not better. As it is most 480 sized maps perform badly. WC3 is an RTS game so does not scale well with field area such as games like Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild which had specially crafted game engines to cope with such huge scaling.

REALY extend the max number of destructibles/doodads/units.

Same problem as above. Scalability in RTS games is a huge problem.

Allow to modify custom units/doodads/destrutibles ID in the Object Editor.

This is a really needed baseline feature. One of the main reasons to use JNGP, and possibly SharpCraft if it supports this, is to be able to customize object type IDs.

- Extend the max cliff level in the terrain editor.

Not possible for the same reason as raising number of terrain types. The game only allocates a small bit field for cliff height. Altering this will cause non trivial performance degradation and possibly major backwards compatibility problems.

REALY extend the local network max map size (4 MB) to 20 MB, or 30 MB, see 50 MB !

So you want them to SHRINK the maximum map size?! It is already 128 MB... In fact it has been over 4 MB for a good part of a decade already, with it being 8 MB up until 1.27b which raised it to 128 MB.

- Allow to play custom multiplayer campains in local network.

No need for that if one can start another map in multiplayer. Rather request that feature.

 

[Zephyrius2412]

Dr Super Good ? Do you know the principle of an update ? It's to improve the game by modify the game data, not changing some value in a snap of fingers. And for the developper of Blizzard, I don't think that it would be difficult.

 

[Kam]

Dr Super Good ? Do you know the principle of an update ? It's to improve the game by modify the game data, not changing some value in a snap of fingers. And for the developper of Blizzard, I don't think that it would be difficult.

As @Dr Super Good stated scaling to modern system capabilities is not simple. We have discussed many of the game limitations with Blizzard over the last year and they will be adjusted when and if stability can be guaranteed.

We all want more trees.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Dr Super Good ? Do you know the principle of an update ? It's to improve the game by modify the game data, not changing some value in a snap of fingers. And for the developper of Blizzard, I don't think that it would be difficult.

Chances are it is a lot more difficult than you think, especially seeing the kind of errors that were introduced in previous patches.

It's to improve the game by modify the game data, not changing some value in a snap of fingers.

Many of the features requested cannot be done by modifying game data. Instead they require major code changes.

 

[Zephyrius2412]

Code changes is changing game data. Game data include the code.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Code changes is changing game data. Game data include the code.

Code and data are quite different, as you learn in software engineering courses. To put it in simple terms, code describes program logic while data is fed into running program logic. Code can be treated as data, eg for storage or transmission purposes, as it is being fed into running program logic however in this form it may be considered no different than data consisting of a sequence of randomly generated bits rather than describing program logic.

 

[Anaxie]

Code and data are quite different, as you learn in software engineering courses. To put it in simple terms, code describes program logic while data is fed into running program logic. Code can be treated as data, eg for storage or transmission purposes, as it is being fed into running program logic however in this form it may be considered no different than data consisting of a sequence of randomly generated bits rather than describing program logic.

Id just quit wasting your breath. Hes 15. Hes not going to get it

 

[Zephyrius2412]

Code and data are quite different, as you learn in software engineering courses. To put it in simple terms, code describes program logic while data is fed into running program logic. Code can be treated as data, eg for storage or transmission purposes, as it is being fed into running program logic however in this form it may be considered no different than data consisting of a sequence of randomly generated bits rather than describing program logic.

Dr Super Good, I'm not a specialist, when I written "game data" I wanted to say everything that is in a game, don't search the word means, but what I want to means.

 

[Anaxie]

Dr Super Good, I'm not a specialist, when I written "game data" I wanted to say everything that is in a game, don't search the word means, but what I want to means.

just shut up already

 

[AlexChuyKey]

I'm glad that Blizzard again develops Warcraft 3! And it can be seen from the actively appearing updates.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Dr Super Good, I'm not a specialist, when I written "game data" I wanted to say everything that is in a game, don't search the word means, but what I want to means.

I'm sorry, but I have to call this out... How exactly do you propose DSG should divine your intentions, if not through "what your words mean"?? That is, like, the definition of language: "using words to communicate intent". The alternatives are, what... Mind-reading? Spying?

 

[Kaijyuu]

xkcd: Communicating