Blizzard Open Source Idea

Community General Discussion
21

What consideration would blizzard be giving in exchange for the copyrights?

22

Imagine the cost to fly people out to Blizzard’s headquarters, set them up with a hotel for 6 months, and dedicated multiple employees to train them on how to use the WoW editor tool and design a new battleground.
Compared with just making it themselves.

23

Clearly someone has never modded Skyrim. Or Oblivion. Or Morrowind. Jarring clashing textures on every surface because fan projects only change a limited set of assets, and every modder’s work looks different.

24

Then you clearly haven’t thought about this long enough.

From top to bottom issues I see:

  1. Compatibility issues.
  2. Code issues.
  3. Security issues.
  4. Copyright issues.
  5. License issues.
  6. International law issues.
  7. Regional issues.

I’m simply listing the categorical issues, as each one of these have about 3-4 different sub categories from both minor to MAJOR issues. The easiest of them being licensing since there’s a fair few ways of doing that part as a freelancer 
 but you’d still have to multiply that by the international law issues, regional issues, and the copyright issues. Because yes, each one of these categories do also create combined sub-categorical issues.

Let’s just keep it as simple as this: someone designs a shoulder piece with a very explicit skull on it. Now that has to be censored in China. That will impact what license is reasonable for this, which in turn impacts the type of international laws that could apply (for an example of the artist is from China, Europe, or the US - each one would impact this differently).

And that’s just the most barebone element of “I made a 3D model and now I’m involved with potential legal disputes internationally on a global scale between countries and international companies.”

Is this doable? Yes, if this is built from the grounds up. See Valve with most of their games as an example of this. But to see the issues with this even when the system works relatively well and is well-established
 see Valve with most of their games and each one of 'em having been involved with greater and lesser scandals over the years.

In the example I provided, it might just be as simple as “Blizzard retains the permission of modifying artists’ content” but at that point
 you are in a position where now Blizzard has to do more work to approve it and get it into a position where it can be used. Meaning that this system didn’t benefit 'em effectively at all.

25

Why is any of this happening? WC3 had a map making tool and the players invented the MOBA genre.

Which blizzard didn’t capitalize on because THEY DONT HIRE PVP DEVELOPERS.

If they hired one friggen person who had an eye for pvp, theyd have WoW and League of Legends. And they STILL havent learned from their mistakes.

6 years between a B A T T L E G R O U N D map.

26

Don’t get me wrong I’m as mad about that as any other PvPer, but there’s a massive difference between making a custom map for a game that released with a free to use publicly available map editor tool designed for player use and ways to share and play those maps with others online in a game mode where a bad map would at worst mean you wasted 30 minutes of your time, vs a private most likely NDA-protected internal development tool meant for game devs for a MMORPG where a bad map could at worst literally ruin an entire PvP season of the game for millions of players.

27

Youre right. We couldnt do in 2025 what we did in 2002.