The original SC2 was really fun. There was no need to change the game for casual players. It was also when the game was the most popular. Some would argue that the new units and changes hurt the game, rather than helped it. Even if it’s a seperate ladder, it’s still a fondly remembered part of SC2.
2 Likes
It was new but crappy that were the game fell they didn’t nerf stim as they should they could got rid queen and brought hydra tier 1 remove bane.
No all they wanted one side to be highly micro because people thought it was cool even though most tournaments was t vs t.
1 Like
Yeah, split the queuing pool. Ingenious!
2 Likes
Holy bro, I got a headache trying to read your post. Maybe take a break from Sc2 & go back to school to learn basic grammer lol.
If they brought back WoL ladder, there might be older players returning, rather than current players splitting between the two. 
Most of the tournaments were in Korea, Terran was the most popular race because half of the participants had military service coming up.
Both WOL and HOTS had much more fun team games than lotv.
2 Likes
Didn’t I just write this post a few weeks ago?
I agree. Though if they did anything I would want them to add a custom ladder queue system for that map makers could set up so that they could put together playlists of custom maps to queue up for. That way players could create a ladder for any game mode they wanted to play.
Right now those mods that have added all these new races looks amazing.
1 Like
That’s a very big “might” - and frankly the WoL ladder was an absolutely awful experience. I think you greatly overestimate the number of players who would return to that over the current game.
WoL had so, so many issues.
1 Like
Every game has issues, including LotV.
What can’t be denied is that WoL was incredibly popular and is time that many SC2 fans remember fondly, warts and all.
I am one of them. WoL was a superior game to both HotS and LotV. There is a reason players aren’t playing SC2 today but it’s not because they thought WoL was an absolute awful experience.
Nothing can be worse than some of the stuff we still have now, like proxy 4 gate ZvP, 12 pool, cannon rush. These things still ruin the game for casuals.
WoL ladder won’t fix that, but it has its own flavour. Less units to think about, slower expanding, some stuff that sounds OP but isn’t (compared to what I mentioned). The ‘OP’ stuff in WoL still takes more skill to execute than these bronze rushes.
You’re a diamond level player, what you think is unfair and what the average silver/gold level player thinks is unfair is completely different. They also aren’t going to put in the time to ‘get good’, because they play games for fun.
1 Like
Wasnt there already a WoL ladder during HotS? The population wasnt big at all compared to HotS when the expansion was released.
Not that I am against this idea, just saying that I dont think the number of returning players would be very big.
Newsflash, all of this was present in WoL and vastly more prevalent. All of these were also significantly more difficult to counter and play against too.
Yes, there was. It was removed because almost nobody played it. I think it had less players than archon mode did more than a year after it’s release.
I mean, you’re not wrong here, but objectively the average silver/gold level player struggles to have some semblance of consistent macro, let alone micro.
Sure. I put in the time to “get good” because I actively enjoy the game, and I continue to play it because I still enjoy the game now. “Getting good” comes as a direct result of playing the game at all. The more you play, the better you get, though obviously there is a scale as to how much play constitutes improvement. But even doing a couple games a week will still be more than enough to improve to at least low platinum in most cases.
Most players in bronze/silver/gold barely do 1 game a week, let alone more.
What’s OP to bronze/silver/gold is rarely actually OP and is more often a direct result of their general failure to have more stuff, because more stuff beats less stuff. Regardless of what that stuff is. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a player in diamond could likely beat a player in bronze/silver with just a worker rush. A player in GM could probably do the same for a player in platinum. Diamond might be pushing it, but it would probably still be doable depending on the level the diamond player is at.
Sure - I remember WoL fondly too, I had some great games and some great times back then. However I’m under no delusions that it was - for the most part - an objectively worse game than LotV is, for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was the utterly absurd balance and the generally terrible map design back then.
The difference is that, as players, as a community, as map makers - we now have over 10 years of experience in the engine, with the units, and with the game as a whole. RTS was a vastly more popular genre back then than it is now and there are a number of reasons behind that that I won’t go into now, but suffice to say that bringing WoL back would do absolutely nothing to help the player-count nor would it help the ladder experience in any way shape or form.
It would almost certainly make it less feasible for the game to continue simply due to the necessity of up-keeping multiple different versions of the game in addition to the additional server(s) that would be necessary to allow it to run, and potentially would fracture the player-base further, though that’s assuming anyone would play it at all.
Is LOTV perfect? Not at all. Far from it - it has its fair share of problems. But it is still SC2, and is still, frankly, the best RTS out there bar none.
You say these things like everybody shares the same opinion. I had no issue with the maps. I liked the balance. The slower start + less units made the game easier to play. You also talk about RTS games dying. AoE2 is still going strong. Patches and changes actively ruin the game for some players, because everything they’ve learnt becomes less useful. Timings, etc.
You know, these patches actually deter some people from playing the game, because they can’t trust it to stay the same.
Imagine if someone played chess for 20 years, and then one day they change how the queen moves. What a waste.
At this point SC2 feels more like an experiment.
Even if a game appears to be ‘dead’, there is a certain comfort in knowing that it isn’t changing. Look at Brood War, none of the pros wanted any updates there, and it’s still popular in Korea. The ladder for every expansion should have never been taken away, even if there were ‘server costs’, just make it P2P (peer to peer) connection or something. It’s pathetic.
For those that don’t know, back in the day all 3 races had good cheese strats at bronze level. Zerg had 6 pool, Terran had strong reapers and Protoss had cannon/zealot. Because some pros could micro reapers really well, Blizz decided to nerf them. Now at an average level, only Protoss has good cheese. It’s not even fun cheese because controlling reapers is more fun than making cannons.
If I’m being honest, I’d say that zerg has decent low-level cheese as well, because I would never want to roach rush or zergling flood someone on ladder, for fear of being called a noob. So it doesn’t feel fair of them to nerf the reapers to me.
I think that if the pro scene dies, Blizz is going to have to revert some of these changes, because they were made solely for the pros/viewers. That’s why the game is more popular to watch than to play now, besides people being lazy/having no interest in a war game.
I’ll tell you all another change made against Terran, for the viewership. Giving Zerg more tools to deal with Siege Tank. In Brood War, Siege Tanks are a symbol of power. They cannot be moved. In SC2, after years of gameplay, they add the Ravager and especially, the Viper. Now mech isn’t that good anymore, and a classic Terran staple, the Tank, is ruined.
Here’s another one, about my favourite OP thing, the Nydus Worm. From Google: In WoL and HotS, the Nydus Worm had no special protection during its set up phase, leading to players often being able to kill it before emerging using only workers or very few units. To counteract this in LotV the Nydus Worm at first was completely invincible during set up. This was relaxed to a significant armor buff in Patch 4.7.1.
You can look up the patch notes, but it seems that players didn’t like that their Nydus Worm could be killed lol. This is how pathetic this game gets.
The difference between me and these zerg cheesers is that I used to cheese with banshees, but I knew it was bad, and kinda weak, so I stopped.
They asked for buffs.
It’s the same as giving BCs warp, and giving DTs blink, they buffed some of the lamest stuff in the game.
Another unit that should never have existed is the protoss Adept. That shade design is so annoying. I don’t care about any of the new units, I never liked the Liberators or the Widow Mine. Just bloat.
1 Like
Probably one of the worst buffs was the Overlord speed buff. What, so Zerg can just scout quicker at the start of the game now? They shouldn’t be able to change stuff like that.
1 Like
Mech is more viable now than it’s ever been. Mech in WoL was straight up not viable in any matchup.
Mech had no front line unit since the hellbat didn’t exist. Tanks did less damage than they do now (and required research for siege mode), Thors had an energy bar for a single target ability that immobilized them for a period of time that was, frankly pretty much useless, Mech’s anti-air capability was almost nonexistant, Vikings were significantly worse than they are now, Battlecruisers were even more of a waste of money than they are now with no tac jump, weaker auto attack and an energy bar that against protoss meant they straight up weren’t useable at all.
Of all the mech units, the Raven is arguably the only mech unit that was actually stronger in WoL, and even that’s debatable given that the Seeker missile would slowly follow you for a period of time until it either hit your units, or it ran out of “fuel” and dropped.
And all of this is without even considering the units that had to be changed in order to make mech viable.
Was added primarily as a way to deal with forcefields. It’s useful against tanks, sure, but they fall off hard against tanks.
Was honestly needed given Zerg’s rather lackluster AA. Blinding cloud can also be played around with simple spacing of units, or through EMP.
Killing it with workers only was always stupid, and the Nydus was also expensive to set up as well. It only takes a couple units to kill it going up.
Eh? Banshees are fine. They’re significantly stronger than they were in WoL given Hyperflight rotors exist.
I would forever argue that both of these were stupid decisions. The former though actually makes the unit useable (even if the unit should have been straight up redesigned, rather than simply being an expensive paperweight that was literally never used.
The latter was unnecessary, but definitely gives it some late-game power that might have been needed.
Of all the Protoss units that I wish didn’t exist, the Carrier is the biggest one.
The Swarm-host is a Zerg unit that shouldn’t ever have been implemented.
The Thor I think is frankly more problematic than the widow mine.
The adept I think could have been a great unit. The shade, I think, rather limits it.
A direct result of the larger map sizes, but effectively, yes. That’s exactly the reason why, given Zerg is arguably the most reliant on that early scouting to hold aggression from their opponents.
Fun fact, neither the Widow Mine or the Liberator would exist if the Mutalisk didn’t exist. Both were created as a direct response to the fact that the Mutalisk was a huge problem unit after it received Rapid Regeneration. The widow mine also directly replaced the Siege Tank in HotS because the siege tank was a garbage unit.
The only reason Tanks were used in WoL at all was because it was the only form of splash that Terran had in WoL, given that Helions were functionally useless at the roll for Bio, and Mech was straight up not viable. When mines were introduced, they fully replaced Tanks during HotS because mines were cheaper, more mobile and otherwise served the same roll the Tank did at that period of time, while simultaneously being better against mutalisks which were - as I said before - a problem unit.
3 Likes