Judging from all those MASSIVE changes to the SC2 editor, it looks very likely that they’re making War4, especially when they already have the new assets from Reforged. With these massive changes to the editor, which are essentially a big upgrade to the engine, it’s more than ready to support anything War4 would require.
So many of these changes specifically reference War3 and its mechanics, combine that with the major asset rework that was done for Reforged, it only makes sense that they had bigger things brewing, WarCraft IV.
I am suggesting that maybe a “free DLC” is coming to relaunch the Game.
If you really care it wouldn’t be a bad strategy. Total they have to re-launch the campaign … add a few not too long and they seem to care. They can even use it as a trailer for a WoW expansion.
it would be sad if wc4 is based on the sc2 engine. the current engine doesn’t make use of more than 4 cpu cores and even the gpu is kind of idling all the time.
Supporting more CPU cores would not necessarily add much benefit in terms of performance. It could allow for some new gameplay mechanics, which is what I believe Age of Empires 4 is doing, or better AI but generally single thread will remain the bottleneck, as is the case with most games.
I could see them optimizing towards 4 or 6, possibly to do more ambient physics and other decorative effects, but gameplay might still be limited to 1 or 2 cores as is the case with most RTS games. Scripting will likely never support multiple core execution and that is the main bottleneck for many custom maps.
The reason the GPU idles a lot in SC2 is not because SC2 cannot use the GPU properly, but rather it uses the GPU so efficiently that the CPU is likely struggling to keep it fed. SC2 was developed with pretty cutting edge shaders, for the time it was released. They were so efficient that some inherently flawed GPU designs such as the GT 8800 from Nvidia with stock cooling were prone to literally burning out while running SC2 due to not being designed to handle such workloads. Many games can do that now to such old GPUs, but as far as I am aware StarCraft II was the first.
If one looked at the Blizzard job listings over the last few years there have been mention of positions for an undisclosed new intellectual property RTS game. It is possible that the SC2 engine is seeing an increase in development effort as a part of this. It is also possible that the RTS game failed during development and that some of the engine work done for it was back ported to SC2 instead of being thrown away.
they will never make warcraft 4, the audience for RTS games is not big enough to invest in it, most gamers want to play easy mind numbing games and that’s why the RTS genre is dead.
what we can hope is that they will add features they promised us would be here at launch (ladder, better optimization, in game custom keys, etc) and then maintain the servers and provide small optimization updates over the years and that’s it.
It really depends on what people expect from Warcraft 4 gameplay wise. One can argue, that WC4 could be created with WC3 engine as well, without introducing any new, or improved features. Just continuing the story. But doing that will indeed be stupid, as the WC3 mechanics (such as pathing) are extremely outdated and can’t be used for a new game, without causing WC4 Refunded.
I doubt there’s a WC4 coming. If they were going to make any new RTS, they’d start either with their flagship game or a new RTS altogether, not a less players, less visible predecessor.
Additionally, WoW is carrying the Warcraft story atm. So either WoW would have to end first, or some side story would have to be the focus of WC4.
However, they could be planning to make something with SC2’s editor for SC2 itself. Mods/maps/custom campaigns/etc.
Well precisely because WoW is very bad at telling its story and it always needs to be complemented is that a W4 would make sense.
For example, the entire Story of Tyrande (not to say almost the entire story of BFA) seems to have happened off camera.
All the “power of the night warrior” all the plot that Jaina kills “too much” as rezzar says. Any sign of Baien’s repentance or honor. and blah blah blah.
The only way we will have Warcraft 4 is for Blizzard to kill/stop WoW. It won’t have any sense tell a history in the future of the WC lore while still having developments in WoW.
What makes sense is to bring the lore of WoW to Reforged, with updated assets, maps and lore…wait, we were promised with that during Blizzcon 2018!!!
What also makes sense, is to bring the stories of WoW back to W3R, as new DLC campaigns. WoW is just an extension/stretch of the tells after Frozen Throne.
Most who didnt want to join SC2 map making did not like its difficulty, they left SC2 long ago for that.
People will make War3 maps in SC2?? is this what it is about? Look I still use a library of people who made an animated monitor system, an item system (as in use items libraries that didnt exist in SC2)
All the SC2 features are oriented to make war3 maps, with hero systems like ‘strength agility hero’ etc and inventory yet I still have to use those community libs… because what they bring isnt what I need. Like I said that is like features only to make war3 maps in sc2, what for go on reforged, arent they splitting people even more to make war3 in sc2 than use war3 itself.
Now 10 years later Blizz decided to bring them back not during those years? For me SC2 editor is fine… only the too many fields cause freezes on windows, even so, I still prefer this SC2 detailed view than table view, lots of things missing on it and im used to SC2’s ‘hard’ way Idc about the new table or EZ mode of it.
If that is impossible.
On the other hand, use the W3 to reopen the WoW cannon, which always has to reconfirm the WoW cannon because they change it from time to time. If it would be much more useful.