Return back the classic game

General Discussion
21

You overestimate this. Yes, there are people playing older versions of the game. It’s well known. But despite what you want to believe, there are plenty of people playing the latest version. In fact, from day one to now, I’ve had shorter waits for vanilla games than I’ve ever had since after the first year or two of Frozen Throne. The custom game list is just as bustling as ever.

I get you hate reforged bla bla bla whatever broken bla bla. but the reality is, after the saltiness finished rearing its ugly head (it largely has), there is no shortage of players on the latest version and the complaining here represents a relatively small percentage of the user base.

In no way am I suggesting that Reforged doesn’t have problems, because it does. But it’s been getting fixes on a weekly basis and missing features should be returning soon. Plenty of people who didn’t refund are either happy with the progress that’s being made, or are still frustrated but optimistic the problems will be addressed.

So do I, but there’s a greater sense of accomplishment for me if I make something and people actually like it and play it and share it. I don’t want to artificially limit the potential people who can play something I create, personally. Even if it doesn’t become popular.

(which isn’t to say you can’t make something in the old versions and it have it still work, it is technically supposed to be completely compatible, but obviously there are some issues still. But the latest version of the game allows up to 24 players/CPUs/etc and there are some other new features and such too.)

22

WEX stopped development because the main author went to work for Blizzard. Instead of making a third party tool to improve World Editor, he now improves World Editor directly.

Magos Model Editor has buggy MDL, MDX and BLP logic. This is because it was a closed source program that used poorly written specifications for those formats. For example it cannot load 1 or 4 bit alpha palleted BLP files correctly. It also does not convert day/night models correctly with the result of a round conversion being a corrupted model.

Now model makers have Retera’s Model Studio which does have all that stuff corrected and is even partly compatible with Reforged.

23

WEX stopped development because the main author went to work for Blizzard.

Yes, have heard about it. Supposedly, Blizzard was planning to add WEX functionality to the standard editor (Which is the main reason why I wanted Reforged at that point). But as you see, it’s not there. And considering blizz still did not even add basic functionality to the game (ladder, tournaments, custom games and custom campaigns), it’s unclear if we’ll ever see standard WE upgraded.

Magos Model Editor has buggy MDL, MDX and BLP logic.

Yet, people kept using it for a decade or so. It may have had it’s flaws, but it was still an awesome tool. And anything it lacked, could be done in other free tools we had. Most, if not all, no longer work now.

4 Likes
24

Well, I do not feel a “sense of accomplishment” making stuff for a game, that is broken, as you admit. Especially considering, that I am more interested in single-player, and as of yet, Reforged did not get Custom Games, or Custom Campaigns implemented. And without those, I do not see a reason to make maps for it…

The point about the population is also very much in question. Look at the forums, reddit, YT, other forums. Some people seem to claim, that everything is alright, while others claim, that they cannot find any players to play with, whereas they could before Reforged. Take in mind also, that Reforged does not allow to choose a particular region to play in, which results in players having massive lags, DCs, etc. There are no penalties for leavers, either. You can guess how nice that is… Considering all of this, are there that many people playing Reforged?

On top of everything, Reforged does not even give you the true classic. The graphics are different, more or less, RoC seems to be completely unavailable, Founding of Durotar campaign unavailable (even though it was before), etc.

Even if blizz did fix Reforged, how many people would return? How many would care? Questionable.

But it’s been getting fixes on a weekly basis and missing features should be returning soon.

Fixes on weekly basis? It had like 3 patches since launch. None of them managed to fix basic stuff, or add basic functionality (mentioned above). Yeah maybe they’ll fix it… In a few years, if we are optimistic.

4 Likes
25

It was added to quite a large extent. For example we have an in built tooltip colourizer as well as vJASS support.

They then went on to improve GUI with better folder structuring (nesting) which was not supported by WEX. There is also a lot planned, but if that ever happens only time will tell.

It also has been as good as completely deprecated by Retera’s Model Studio which does still work, does most of the stuff it used to and much more. It is also completely open source so can be maintained unlike Magos.

They work fine. Sure they are not “single-player” like before, but you can still start single-player custom maps with just a single person in the lobby.

Fast patches imposes complexities on the development process. Especially with large teams in large companies it can be very difficult to get a rapid patching pipeline going. If they can maintain a monthly patch cycle with under a week hot-fix patches if they break something it is fine. It will not mean content comes any slower, just when it does come there will be more of it.

26

There have also been other less publicized hotfix patches which people seem to be not counting.

I won’t judge you or anyone for making singleplayer maps, and I know custom cmapigns did see some use, but for the majority of us, this was and is a multiplayer game, and I think this is how blizzard sees it as well.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I don’t know about whether Durotar was available on ROC or not (it was introduced later), but the entire campaign is supposed to be there. And when I switch to classic mode, the same options seem to be be there (I haven’t played through on Classic mode, and I have the prologue campaign and the first RoC campaign available, so that seems to go against w hat you’re saying), so maybe you’ve found a bug or something.

The graphics don’t really look that different to me other than the modern screen resolution support.

27

Bringing back true Classic clients of Vanilla War3 equals to them admitting failure, they’ll never do this. Blizzard is famous for being high on PRIDE a little too much.

Hell, Reforged clients most likely cost more to maintain then the older clients. its all about Pride.

8 Likes
28

Warcraft 3 was always primarily a single-player game, what with it’s strong-story-driven campaign. Multiplayer was merely an option. Yes, there are many popular custom multiplayer maps. But there are even more custom single-player maps with some fan-fiction stories.

Anyways, onwards…
The campaign is there, but with TFT hero/race balancing. The RoC models (like elven Ballista, or orc catapult) are unavailable. Custom games and campaigns are unavailable either.

Founding of Durotar WAS available. I owned the game, so I know.

As for the graphics - shadows are off, lighting is off, colors are off. Shadows (at least the better ones) seem to be reserved for Reforged graphics, as options show.

29

This was specifically removed because the data they collected indicated very few if anybody still used ROC rules. And it really doesn’t change that much anyway.
I doubt even one person would have had a problem with this outside of the fact that it was never specifically mentioned. But unless it doesn’t affect the enemy and therefore makes things dramatically easier or harder, I don’t see the problem. They could have done something like this anytime during the original game’s lifespan and I doubt anyone would have complained.

Warcraft 3 was always primarily a single-player game,

For you, maybe. I played through all of the campaigns once. After that, I and literally everyone else I knew went online unless they were just playing custom maps alone. You grossly overestimate the extent to which the game was ever treated as singleplayer.

This was a Frozen Throne campaign. Unless Classic Mode excludes all of Frozen Throne, this is a bug and should be reported as such, with appropriate image/video proof.

30

I doubt even one person would have had a problem with this [TFT balancing]

Really now? Why do people complain about this specific thing non-stop here, on reddit, on other WC3 forums? This is also partly why RoC campaign feels dumbed down in terms of difficulty, as well (something, that gets pointed out a lot too).

You yourself may be more into multiplayer, but you severely underestimate the amount of people, that are playing single-player.

This was a Frozen Throne campaign.

Yes, it’s a TFT campaign. The point is, that before Reforged, everyone who owned RoC and TFT, could play this campaign. After Reforged release, we cannot, unless we purchase Reforged.

Though then again, we cannot play real classic anymore, anyways…

1 Like
31

They just had to leave it there and dedicate a server even just for showing hosted games. People would have waited for reforged a couple of years more I guess without refunding.

NASA put a man on the moon with 64kb,
now you need $60 for 30GB wasted space + 600MB RAM and 5-20% of an I7 for running a browser in background to run a bugged game that was running smoothly on a 256MB Pentium 3 almost 20 years before.

Astonishing…

They don’t. At all. Mostly due to bugs in the core game. Partially due to missing updates.

I’d say it was 50/50, great campaign and great multiplayer.

The whole RoC is unavailable.

5 Likes
32

This!!! Sir, you deserve a medal!

1 Like
33

Not that it matters but they had way more than just the flight control computer. Also had entire mainframe systems working the calculations.

34

I know, but that’s some kind of standard sentence among computer scientists to underline the lack of optimization in algorithms, the waste of resources in programs or stuff like that.
With the resources wasted by the browser you could actually run another full game. Sad thing is you cannot even change anything by yourself because of the nasty checks that the game does when starting… -.-

35

Technically the $60 SSD can be used for a lot more than just Warcraft III Reforged. Hence one cannot factor in the entire cost but rather a fraction of it. When one takes a break from Warcraft III Reforged one could even reclaim the space or move it to a cheaper per GB mechanical drive. There are even cheaper SSD options but one wants one with at least DRAM cache or access to similar technology for decent read performance. Both AHCI and NVMe formats would work.

Also the game still would likely work on a P3 if it does not use any unsupported instructions. A modern CPU runs it at 600-800 FPS with classic graphics which is performance in like with what one would expect.

Does it waste any while in game? As far as I am aware it mostly uses resources in the lobbies, which is acceptable.

36

Technically if you don’t need it for anything else, that’s a waste of money.

Checked, it does.
That’s the strange thing. It shouldn’t but it does.
When you start the game it even spawns 2 more processes.
If you terminate them, they respawn and overwrite the game with the empty base menu.
It’s just a mess.
Oh and it would never run on a P3 having to deal with that silly browser code.

2 Likes
37

It takes some time before the browsers reduce the amount of resources they use. When I was playing some longer game and was checking resource usage in task manger the browser only took some mb. While it takes quite much on the beginning and in the lobby.

38

Not that. He doesnt deserve a medal. It’s apples and oranges. Now there are elements of truth in there- It is questionable how other system requirements (aside from disk space) increased so dramatically when the level of detail increase is fairly modest (considering the newest versions of direct X are supposed to perform faster on the same content as DX9, not slower), but that’s a very seperate issue to disk space (mostly).

I actually agree that a non-reforged distribution with the assets excluded (wouldn’t be able to make maps that support it in the editor though) is a good idea, but I’m still honestly stunned that people are talking like 30GB is their entire hard drive/SSD or something. Across three SSDs I have around 1.5TB of storage and I feel like I’m being cheap about it. 30GB is really not much these days.

That being said I accept that if you’re still using a PC that was newish when WC3 originally came out, this is a bigger problem. But how many people really are? This is very likely a question blizzard asked and they very likely conducted hardware surveys to determine what level of hardware to target for optimizing performance.

“64kb put a man on the moon” That 64kb cost many orders of magnitude more than a million times more memory costs today.

1 Like
39

and that compares to… what exactly?

we are talking about optimization, not financial cost of a block of memory.

40

" I don’t own Reforged so don’t force in to me. " what?..that’s all i had to read before i realized you should work on your spelling and what not before complaining.

3 Likes