All of the typical reasons and excuses the community gives for the team not taking the time to upgrade the replay files and replay system are now null and void with the latest team coming back and working on all aspects of the game.
We have a couple of things the community has been asking for which are for sure still higher priority - so it would be completely reasonable for them to work on other things first. This isn’t a gripe about ordering or resource allocation in any way.
The simple and easy thing Blizzard can do now is announce the Replay system will be worked on in the future.
Just GIVE US A SIGN that you actually care about this game more than just selling copies of pretty graphics and nostalgia. The community, comp scene, builder scene, custom game scene, all of it could be positively impacted by replays becoming an actually useful and interesting source of information.
Oh! And btw Blizzard it would stop your neverending cycle of breaking the entire replay system every single time you release even a minor patch… which I’ll never understand how that became acceptable. This “break every patch” problem became extreme now that they are changing universal balance values in armor - this means literally every replay is completely busted even if you use community tools to change the version bits.
I know I’m a pretty small minority on these forums but my bet is there are a lot of people who would welcome a better replay system not just because they could watch replays more and easier - but also the rich suite of tools and community guides and learning that could come from ACTUALLY being able to analyze games with software!!!
I’ve already personally created such tools and know exactly what it would take to get this replay file format into something usable for builders - please just give us something