If LemonSky studio did the HD models/textures/etc, the campaign reworks were scrapped, the voice acting scrapped, and basically even the “4+ hours of cutscenes” scrapped, the new “mini” UI scrapped (or was it? where is it?), a toggle-able mode for Classic/HD scrapped, etc etc…
With ALL of that, my question is, what exactly did the BLIZZARD team do?
A Balance patch and some crappy menu that looks like some knock-off Chinese company made it?
What’s the deal, Blizz? What happened to all these promises? Why a whole year of silence? You conveniently didn’t touch upon that at the panel, acting like we just spoke a week before? So what have you been working on for 2 whole years (last Blizzcon you stated you were working on this for a year already)? And why did I pay $40 for what will essentially be an HD mod when I’ve already had one installed from moddb?
They might have faced problems mid development and realized their timeframe was too restrictive - the solution to a problem like that however is delaying the release to get out a finished product not scrap 70% of the promised content…
Rigging? Programming? Sounds like you threw those words in there to sound apologetic. And animation/UI alone does not account for 2 years of work. BattleNet integration certainly would be more difficult, but that remains the fact that it’s the tech team doing that, and that doesn’t justify the half-scrapped product we’re getting.
I have been wondering this myself. Ladder isn’t even only delayed, they were dodging questions on how it would even work. It’s still in the design phase for all we know, and it might also mean MMR won’t even be a thing until it’s implemented. I wonder what’s gonna get cut next. Achievements is my bet.
I also found it bizarre that they talked about an editor upgrade that made it so RPG maps don’t need dummy units to complete quests anymore. Uh, okay. What about saving/loading? A thing that’s handy for MANY maps across multiple genres (for stat tracking, for instance)? I think that would’ve been a whole lot bigger than saving a very niche genre of maps an insignificant amount of development time. It might not even be that hard for the Classic team to do either, just figure out how to port or emulate SC2’s bank system in Warcraft 3’s engine. FFERPG uses .bat files for saving and loading, and I’m probably one of only four people that even plays that map. I’m sure people that are getting paid more than $5 per month can figure out how to do it better.
It is messed up. The right decision would have been to port WC3 mechanics into the HOTS engine(HOTS engine is based on SC2 engine), that would have been a way to improve what the Galaxy Engine can do while also making some money out of it. WC3 would have got better netcode (no waiting for opponent lag boxes in 8+ player games), support for 16+ players, bigger maps, better shading engine, Dx11 support, and so much more.
The original maps could have easily been ported over with code that could convert wc3 galaxy into sc2 galaxy. This also would have allowed for wc3 custom games to live on inside of sc2.
There could have been additional galaxy editor modes. An original wc3 mode that is heavily simplified, and a sc2 mode that exposes more complicated triggers and whatnot.
Instead reforged is a really cheap job trying to get an old engine working on modern hardware. The fault for this is all upper management, not the team who worked on it. Upper management don’t know the capabilities of their own IPs, it is really sad.
Blizzcon 2018 demo client already could handle HD models, had new graphics and had a comparable quality overall.
It is like they have forgotten about it for a year, remembered a week before blizzcon and have just put something together ASAP.
They are in a such rush, they even had no time to import ud and ne models and promise to add them tomorrow!
Blaming community for not remaking campaign cutscenes is hilarious, as if it is not obvious that they just don’t have the time and haven’t done anything beyond 2018 demo.
2018 demo had a potential. Now there is none. It will be released in cut, unfinished and unpolished state.
You got a good point, there’s people who made the HD models and gave them to us for free, having to pay for them just to be “official Blizzard” seems ridiculous.
Wait wait wait! No updated campaign missions??? Are you sure ? Because if that’s the case it’s the right time that I don’t even buy it to begin with, the last thing I want is a 40 euros reskin
