Open Source Warcraft III

General Discussion
1

Humans rights and freedoms are important, and now there are five threads talking about them in some other country where I have never been.
This gave me an idea. Was there ever a better time to declare the manner in which Warcraft is freedom-disrespecting malware on the basis of the guidelines and policies posited by the Free Software Foundation?

Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user. (This does not include accidental errors.)

Types of Malware

  • [Back doors]
  • [Digital restrictions management] or “DRM”—functionalities designed to restrict what users can do with the data in their computers.
  • [Insecurity]
  • [Interference]
  • [Jails]—systems that impose censorship on application programs.
  • [Sabotage]
  • [Subscriptions]
  • [Surveillance]
  • [Tethers]—functionalities that require connection to a server.
  • [Tyrants]—systems that reject any operating system not “authorized” by the manufacturer.

Warcraft III as a game is not open source. It probably includes a DRM called the Warden, which I know nothing about. In addition, I have observed weird troubles on newer patches such as 1.30 that make it difficult to run them without connection to a Blizzard server.

Somewhere on the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy there is a large group of alien beings who deserve the right to play Warcraft III when and how they want to. However, according to their tests, the ping to Blizzard servers is sometimes as high as sixty or one hundred thousand years. One hundred thousand year ping is unacceptable. These aliens deserve the right to liberty and freedom, and deserve the right to play Warcraft III without a 3.154e+15 ms ping as long as they purchase a valid license.

We have determined that the duration time of a one hundred thousand year ping is less than the time required to reprogram the Warcraft III game from scratch in its entirety about ten thousand times given a very slow and meticulous programmer who takes 10 years to develop the software necessary to play the game.

For that reason, we need to have an ethical and free as in freedom version of Warcraft III’s code. This is both respectful to our neighbors on the far side of the Milky Way and also would enable mod developers to modify the game code in any way that they like.
To that end, I am referring to something like minetest for minecraft. If you look that up, basically the near exact likeness of the minecraft game was re-implemented as a game that you can download and play instantly, and also download the github source code for, which has some form of GPL licensing from the looks of it.

What I am interested in would be the minetest equivalent for Warcraft III. Basically the exact same game, but where I could hack it however I wanted.

Does anybody know if such a repo exists and if not should we be making it? Of course we would need to be sure to make it very slightly different so as not to violate the EULA.

9 Likes
2

minetest*

By the way, I upvote and fav all your posts <3

Human rights are a theologic concept. I thought we’re atheists? Oh wait, the Kant from the 18th Century made the golden rule a fact…

3

Thanks for pointing out the typo! I appreciate the upvote, although I certainly do sometimes say whatever I happen to think of without much foresight. So, feel no obligation about “always” :slight_smile:

I guess it’s theological maybe. I hadn’t thought of that. Are you a member of the Cult of the D***ed discord?

4

No, I hate Discords. I hate chatting with people. Especially without authority supervisors. The formal restraints constraints of the forum make me more comfortable.

5

Okay I was just curious. It’s basically a partially-in-jest channel made around the idea of open source Warcraft III as a religion. Thought it might be relevant since you mentioned the idea of human rights being theological

6

I wish I had time to do this. Best of luck in finding someone with the time to make this project happen.

BTW I would try the gamingonlinux .com forums.

7

if you try to create an open source version: blizzard would likely kill you.

8

i knew this thread would have been from you before even opening it.

• Something actually interesting ? :white_check_mark:
• Title name brings forward a lot of thoughts ? :white_check_mark:
• Posted in the middle of some other popular trend ? :white_check_mark:

who else besides Lord Retera ? :smile:

9

No. Warcraft III is blizzard’s product, and they have every right to control it as they see fit.

If you do not like what they do with it, you are under no obligation to purchases it. But you do not have the right to take it from them, for any reason.

10

Well if they were actually paying customers I am pretty sure Blizzard would set up a local licencing server on their worlds reducing ping to be similar to what we receive here on earth.

10 years full time employment might recreate some of the features of WC3. Assuming you can find and fund someone skilled enough with all areas of game engine programming.

Making such a thing will probably end up getting nowhere. Blizzard has dozens of programmers hacking away at Warcraft III at the moment, William being just one of them. These are full time employed programmers receiving competitive wages for the work they do. Good luck getting an open source project with anywhere near that many development resources.