Hi!
I got a lot to cover before we start here a few things that you need to know.
Because there are no other ways to get in contact with the right people. Am posting this here I would appreciate if you can consider sharing this with the management. with your boss and your bosses boss so on. For my sake. The player. ‘‘Every voice matters’’
Am requesting this post to be locked for two reasons. 1. an open letter does not require a response regardless of the content being ‘‘right’’ or ‘‘wrong’’
2. This thread must be locked for my and blizzards benefit. This is due to a point I will make later. which I can not make by directly or indirectly violating forum guidelines. Everyone can off-course refer to the post like in any post.
The goal here is to shed light on the issues at hand and setting a realistic plan moving forward. To get wc3 back to its days of glory. How that is done may vary from what will happen. I can only share what I think and how I feel. Before we get more into this. it’s important to mention some general stuff.
Like any company’s wc3 is not the only game from a AAA company that has/had problems. To put that in perspective Star Wars Battlefront 2 had one of the worst launches in history. It did however redeemed itself after a lot of frustration from players and hard work from the company. Yes, there still are bugs that are didn’t get fixed. But most of them are caused by the player’s system, not the game. But there were even more bugs fixed on the game, overtime.
other eg is Nvidia’s launch. but so has AMD and so.
In other words, I have empathy for people behind the game. You do your best under conditions of what you can do.
The main reason why people are upset is not so much about the failed launch, it’s about what you took away before the launch with the combination of the launch.
(not directed to anyone personally)
For years Wc3 has survived & flourished through it’s dedicated players and the hardworking people behind it. Who not only invested time but also money.
Although there is nobility in the reason that players shouldn’t have to do that and the company should solve any need for it. That conviction has been Reforged downfall. Not the reason why you did it. But how you did it, your contentiousness to negligent the error in your own decisions and keep doing the same thing.
I feel like you are putting more effort into preventing players to go back to old wc3 then you are on bringing solutions and acceptable replacements for what made wc3 so great.
I also feel like your under delusion thinking focusing on the graphics and updates will make those other issues magically disappear.
You hurt us. We’re not happy with the job you did so we want to go back to was it was. But we can’t even do that. So you hurt us even more.
To put that feeling into perspective and simplifying. I bought a pair of shoes from you many years ago. They ait was great looking and they ait perfect. I’ve been taking care of those shoes for years and their just my size. Now after all those years you force me to change to another pair of shoes and you don’t ask me if I wanted other shoes. You came into my home and swamped my shoes.
I know my example of this isn’t realistic tho. Because it would be illegal. Which is exactly point. I don’t care how fancy or pretty the new shoes are.
I can with confidence say on the behalf of the community the shoe doesn’t fit!
We don’t trust you, because you keep giving us reasons not to.
I want to remind everyone that I can’t ask people to confirm what they feel or not feel. Doing so would violate forum guidelines. Nor what employes feel about this or do not feel about it. That can and can not put loyalty in question. Kindly lock the thread, regardless of what anyone agrees or does not agree with it. Per my request.
I’ll give you the key to our trust. You may not want to hear it or you may not even what to use it because with trust comes responsibility. There are not any cutting corners on that.
Here is you need to do.
Transparency. We demand that you sit down with us and answer our questions and listen to our feedback. You have a history of making the same mistakes over and over again. You did it for Diablo, Reforged and for upcoming Black Ops, that is guaranteed to fail in sales for the same reason. Look what Activision does in their company management. Compare theirs to your own. I think you can learn a lot by just doing that.
People on the top doesn’t get the correct feedback and information to make the right decisions. At the same time, you don’t allow this information to be posted.
No one can make a statement and ask if people agree. Eg
I feel this is what’s happening. does anyone else agree? raise your hand if you do.
Nope can’t do that. It’s not rocket science to figure out why thing are as they are.
To be clear am not talking about spamming stuff. There is no reason to spam the same complaints all over the forum. That I get. But to not allow it at all is not the right way to handle it. You can, however, direct subjects about the same things in the same thread. Then if the same person makes the same post 4 times yes you should put in a warning or penalty (depending on what it was).
Restoring what was taken with a promise to never remove it, no matter what.
I cannot stress enough the importance of opening the ports again. With the ports, I mean the ability to use bots & custom servers again. I know why you don’t want to do it.
- You don’t have control over them. 2. It makes the game vulnerable to being cracked. Since it’s online verification is what’s protecting it.
Why are you protecting it? My impression is that you don’t care and want to forget about it. Why is that may you ask. Well, you barely mentation it in the annual report for the investors. That is a recipe for confirmation on failure.
Your support is awesome, devs and QA are just a good.
It’s not their fault. They can’t compensate for the company management deficiency.
To put an example of this. When it comes to desyncs which happens A LOT, But when you check them the servers looking mostly fine. so it must be a local issue with the players PC. No!
you are checking the wrong server. The problems are at the servers for Custom games NOT Verses.
you only posted the IP’s for the Versus servers.
The US server and EU server (for custom games at least) are in the same building in Europe. Asia server is in Asia. Probably due to international law.
Here’s ide how to solve the ms issue and regardless of underlying instability with game or system.
Server 1. It has 2 jobs. Handling connectivity for both US and EU as well as verification security.
Server 2. Handles the actual game without restrictions to server 1.
Players > Server 1
Server 1 > Server 2
Bnet Account / ID key confirms in server 1.
Rules for server 1. The same account can not be active on different IPs at the same time. Allow for the occasional ‘‘hiccup’’ in verification drops. If a player is connected to the server allow a 12-second delay before enforcing restrictions. If the player is not connected server pause timer allow player reconnect within 7min. Under that 7 min Server 1 will hold the spot in Server 2.
The same principle is in hots but not as ambitious.
Regarding crashes & desync. Thankfully for some outstanding technical support a lot trial and error I can with confidence say we have narrow it down.
In short, Hyperthreading on makes menu lag insanely. But also makes the game feel flawless when playing. Disabling integrated graphics if you’re using a discrete GPU will remove most of the lag in the menu. Although this isn’t a viable option for people with integrated graphics. It’s hard to find cause and contributor.
This was a very ‘‘wide’’ letter, it addresses issues at a larger scale. Some will of course not relate. Hence the reason I want people in the loop.
I’ll make a few other posts inside a week or so. Providing more specific feedback, brainstorming solutions and discussions. We’ll get Wc3 back on track.
Hope you can see and use what am trying to do here.
p.s we are getting that dam open again. in a wishful world you’ll blow it up to your self. Metaphorically speaking ofc.
To put that in perspective I know 4 different community to Wc3 that has a working well-designed ranking system, it’s sadly built on workarounds but it’s the best on what they can do, with what they got. If we had access to the information i could simply snap my fingers and they get it up faster then warpten. Am not saying you shouldn’t finish the profiles. Am saying you can not defeat passion. we’ll play how we want to play. The real question is are you with us?
PPS. If I see one more update about footprint or chicken footprints, am going to lose it. Am serious. it’s disrespectful. Comments speak for themself.