Blizzard upgrades their software regularly. THAT’S GREAT!
Why not offer Mac users the option to DOWNGRADE to an earlier version that actually works. Then when the bugs are sorted out with the current version we are given the option to upgrade.
Brian
Just as a side note…I’ve dealing with Blizzard since Warcraft 1 and I’ve never seen anything even close to this foul up.
People assume that what else came in the patch is of no consquence, thus it can be rolled back, downgraded, etc. They don’t seem to see the other possibility that what else came in the patch outweighs anything it that breaks, thus it cannot be rolled back, downgraded, etc.
Bliz can physically roll code back, sure.
But based on the facts that they chose fix what the patch broke and that it has gone on this long, it’s not far-fetched that what is in the patch is too important to take off customers’ machines.
That’s another assumption people are jumping to. Completely deleting the game’s functionality could be interpreted as a mistake or “foul up” if they turned right around a fixed it in a panic. But it’s not that black and white now that it’s gone on for this long.
Again, it’s not far-fetched that Bliz fully knew and intended for this to happen. And so, pointing back to what else is in the patch, it’s appearing more that Bliz pushed the important, mandatory changes knowing it would break things, and then after the fact get to fixing what it broke.
I don’t know what your intention is in posting such a hypothesis. I does make zero sense. Why patch something if you know it will break something and then afterwards go fix the collateral damage. A rational way forward is creating a patch which fixes the issue and properly handles potential collateral damage → then release the patch.
And before you reply with the argument of security incidents: even closing an exploit would not require such an action as deleting the whole installation on all client machines of one supported platform. That would not make sense either as exploits will have to be closed on the server side. There’s no need of deleting clients.
To educate how things often unfold in the coding industries.
As to your question, because there can be times when something critical needs to be put out asap. It doesn’t have to be, but the typical example is security updates. A serious security issue could be identified that puts users at a significant risk. The priority could be protecting customers above what less damaging issues it creates.
Similarly, not if the initial patch is critical and the side fixes aren’t ready.
Security is/was just an example, alcumikaze.
But all reasons aside, says who? You are privy to the details of what needed fixing, its severity, its priority? What can and can’t be preserved in the fixing process? How can you possibly know what is at stake or where the problem lies or under what conditions it’s addressed?
Again, so certain? What makes you think the issue was on the server side? Seems you believe that it couldn’t have possibly been in the actual client? Because it could most certainly could have.
Just because something doesn’t make sense to a person, especially someone without the background to criticize it, doesn’t mean it’s not true, or in this case, not feasible. Your rebuttals do demonstrate your lack of qualification to be criticizing what I’ve proposed.
Alrrright. So you … educate… others… how the software industry works. Interesting. Everything I read from you is that everything could have happened and nothing is clear and Blizzard probably has a reason to act like they did. I don’t see there any helpful information which could be considered educational. If at least you would have mentioned that this could have been handled much more professional.
I have seen a lot of good examples dealing with issues (incl. security incidents) in my career and the WC3 issue does certainly not included there. So when you want to educate others you should at least mention that there are a lot of other companies which follow industry best-practices and care about all of their customers.
You are incorrectly rephrasing what I said. I did not say the issue (if there is any) is located on the server side. However the server side provides the primary attack surface where all clients connect to. Clients alone are not exposed without being logged into Battle.net. So closing attack vectors on the server-side instead of simply deleting clients makes a lot more sense.
You have no idea on my background. You excuse Blizzard by stating that this is how the industry works - so obviously you never experienced positive examples where companies professionally handled such issues (even severe ones). I would call this a lack of qualification on your side. So stop pretending you would be the only person here which qualifies to criticize others.
We’ve explained this in other threads. Having different verisons of the game out there is problematic at best. You can’t guarantee compatability and it would require just as much testing as fixing the actual problem.
This is something so many people have asked and I don’t know why none of you can understand why it doesn’t make sense. Adding options itself means adding features which means doing work that would again, be better spent fixing the problem.
If you’re so desperate to play, you have options. Your license isn’t platform specific. Use virtualization or actually run Windows and play the Windows version. It’s no less practical than asking them to add version reversion feature.
As someone who does have industry experience, you really have no idea what you’re talking about. And no one’s trying to excuse Blizzard here (or rather, PlaySide Studios, who were contracted to work on the game and have custody of it). But this discussion is unproductive. As I said, logically it makes more sense to fix the problem then to program a feature to let you revert to a past version. Either way, work is required, and one option makes more sense than the other. So if any work is done at all, it makes far more sense for that work to be put towards just fixing the bleepin’ problem.
Well, they delete my posts off of this forum for being against guidelines, sometimes, but I have been writing a Warcraft 3 emulator for several years as a weekend hobby – using a different game engine than Warcraft 3 itself.
My emulator has a github with a git history, and the multiplayer server is in the same repo. So if I want to play on last week’s version, I can spin up the server and game both on that using git checkout a3705d21a55af1cbf484b76f809afe9737b768c4 and then run the build automation with ./gradlew runtime to compile the runtime for the server and game.
Then, independent of that, if you and your friend are playing last year’s version, you guys can clone down the repo and do git checkout 4651522a3419f49603ba5066d06530764cb62936 and use ./gradlew runtime on your computer to build and compile the server and client of last year’s version. Everyone wins.
But when we are dealing with the professional game release, it’s not like my rewritten emulator of Warcraft III. Nor is it like Minecraft was back in the day before Microsoft bought it, where I recall having a version downloader that let the user pick 1.2 or 1.4 or whatever and play the one they wanted. Because in both of those situations, we have a technical system that allows the users to decide what is happening.
In the case of Warcraft III Reforged, this is a technical system that is not built to allow the users to decide what is happening. Instead, Microsoft decides what is happening. And they decided that this patch is the version you will have.
For my own part, on my rewritten emulator of Warcraft III, when people come and ask me how to make it run on Mac – and of course there was at least one new fellow asking about that in the last few weeks – I have to tell them that it doesn’t run on Mac. This is because Mac decided to make everything work differently, and I did not bother to rewrite all of my code to work on Mac. All of my code is public, so if the users wanted to port the emulator rewrite of Warcraft III to get it running on the Mac, the users are free to do so.
But they don’t. It’s not worth their time.
Then you’re avoiding it because proposing realistic scenarios as to why Bliz is doing what they are doing is education. It’s providing possible explainations why Bliz isn’t doing what the uninformed masses ignorantly demand.
I get that people are frustrated, however, attempting criticize Bliz using extremely limited knowledge/understanding unnecessarily rouses the rabble, and for nothing.
Many times, across many games, across many years I’ve criticized Bliz for their communication culture. But, I’m not going to copy and paste that into every post I make.
Again, speaking as if you know anything about what’s going on. If you have an inside track, please, inform Bliz of what they don’t know.
So with this, your credibility is shot. You should be wary of who you’re debating. You could be talking to people who do know, people who see through the armchair expertise.
Correct, but when you attempt to present as knowledgeable to someone(s) who actually is, that rules out the chunk of your background that pertains to the topic at hand.
From what I’ve seen, there is a pattern to what they’ve removed of yours. I’d wager advertising a way to ilicitly play the company’s game. Just sayin in case that one is removed too. If it is, you’ll have a good idea on what the reason is.
I don’t really think it’s illicit. My emulator only works if the player has Warcraft 3 on their computer, and I do not provide downloads to the Warcraft 3 game. So, the player has to have a valid install of Warcraft 3, and if they do, then using the game graphic files it’s possible to run the emulator that I wrote. It’s also possible to run the emulator off of art that I made myself that doesn’t involve Warcraft 3, such as the April Fuels game that I made last spring.
So these are two different things. The user can get Warcraft 3, or they can get my emulator thing and use Warcraft 3 on it, if they wish. They could also simulate Starcraft or WoW on it, as I have done on my YouTube channel. It’s basically like playing with computer graphics. Doesn’t really seem illicit at all to me.
Source:
Starcraft emulation via my program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZOk8qqkzus
WoW emulation via my program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW53tiIgip0
Unfortunately, it’s all Bliz’s interpretation.
On this forum, that may be true. Outside of this forum, on my own physical computer, I can do whatever I want.
I’m only talking about the forum.
But, as for doing what you want on your own system, you’re doing more than that when you advertise it out to others.
Well, what if all my videos of emulating this stuff were just AI dreams created with Microsoft copilot so I could pretend to be technically inclined? I mean, who really knows?
It’s still under your name. You are held responsible for everything that happens on your account.
Plus, you’ve been talking about this for longer than those tools have existed.
You’re only explaining in great detail why what you’re asking for isn’t a trivial ask… lol