When I tried to watch the replay of a game that happened on January 3rd, 2017. When I almost finished downloading data for that replay, the game crashed.
Error code: 3796E7A9-3EFE-4E3F-985E-4D448BFB23F0
There is a time limit after which replays are unviewable. The current cutoff is somewhere around 2019.
The game client from 2014-2017 is too different from the current one to allow viewing replays from that time period. Even the maps look different and have different mechanisms like Tower Ammo that no longer exist.
There are also abilities like Zeratul’s Shadow Assault heroic that are completely deleted from the game files, making viewing impossible even after downloading an old client.
If you try to view replays from a year like 2017, 2016 etc. the client will crash every time.
I managed to test it, so the actual cutoff is probably the HotS 2.0 Launch (Spring 2017) as the replays from March 2017 don’t work and June 2017 do work.
I have a replay from a match I played on 4-29-20, just 3 weeks ago. It is doing the same thing- giving a fatal error and crashing the game.
I got Error 21E6201A-2D2A-4BE2-ABD2-F787B3890A85, and provided some information into text box in the UI from the automated crash reporting system.
I have repro’ed this 3/3 times for a 100% crash rate.
I’ll send the replay to the heroes bug attachments email.