Educate yourself. Blizzard had Blizzcon sessions and blogs on exactly what it took to make Classic/TBCC and how many rows of data got reused from TBC.
For starters read these:
As well as:
Where they specifically say: “we need to convert over 750,000 rows of data from the format we used around 2007 to the format we use today”
Purhaps you should try doing some research before you spout off hot garbage.
… 10 Characters
I agree with this.
Classic really should have been something to be a bridge to get them over the hump while they work on WoW2. IMO, part of the reason the current expansion are so bad is that Ion is a better raid designer that a lead designer, but also because the base game is almost 20 years old if you count the original development time. If they create WoW2, they can design a game with all these systems they seem to love and have them work organically with an engine that was designed for it. Right now, they’re constantly trying to tack on stuff to a system that’s not designed with that in mind, so it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Basically, end retail with the next expansion. Use the Classic servers to get you over the hump for a few years. Make WoW2.
Blizzard would never make any money from this, because enthusiasts would give niches exactly what they want, and the generalist could never compete.
You realize this is 100% not the case right?
They took the content of Classic and implemented it in the Modern platform. They took the systems of Classic and implemented them on the Modern platform. Classic is 80% Modern, with the veneer of Classic, which is why we had the modern macro/addon system. Which is why we have the modern framing system. Which is why you often see your server name in the mail.
They basically made a UI and combat/casting engine that adapted Modern to replicate Vanilla.
It’s literally the opposite of spaghetti code. All the bugs and failures to replicate Vanilla are a failure of the conversion, not the fact that they’re dealing with old code.
Will never happen. In the history of games, very few companies have ever released their proprietary Intellectual Property to open source. They just moth ball it.
Also, if they released the game code it exposes the game to potential hacking. Part of what keeps WoW safe (well safer anyways) is that hackers do not have access to the backend code to analyze.
Finally, Blizzard will not do this because it would potentially reduce the overall quality of WoW. Open Source would mean anyone could make their own modified version with no guarantee of stability or security.
It is the same reason why Microsoft and Apple do not open source their software.
The problem with “Make WoW2” is that it would be made by the same people who make WoW 1.
Retail’s failings are not technological. They’re not limited by the capabilities of an old engine, or stuck in an impossible position. They literally squished all stats, have made all content relevant to levelling, have allowed people to flip their own stats back to same as friends in older content.
The problem with Retail WoW is the choices made in design by the current team. And the current team would be the one making a WoW 2.
Until we see Retail actually recover its spirit, maybe in 10.0, any attempt o make WoW 2 would result in them making 11.0.
This is my fear as well. Blizzard needs to scrap the entire team in charge of content, lore, and design or any attempt at WoW 2 would just be an updated, prettier version of retail.
Oh so that’s why there aren’t bots in game.
Private server developers have produced more complete anti-cheat code than Blizzard has ever been able to do on retail.
I would start with step one: Return Ion Hazzikostas to Lead Encounter Designer.
Ever since he became Assistant Game Designer in MoP, raids have maintained their extremely high quality and vibrancy… and everything else in the game has been left by the wayside or retuned to be a support structure for the raids and Mythic+.
The current WoW team does raiding very well, but their twin desires to have excellent raiding, while having casuals experience all content, means that raids are undertuned for the hardcore players, and there’s no other real content that isn’t related to raiding or occasional cosmetics.
There’s no interesting lore events, no epic quest chains that don’t result in raiding power increases and just exist for their own purpose. There are no other real systems in the game except what supports raiding. Even PVP hasn’t seen new maps in years, or fundamentally new match styles in years.
Ion isn’t the entire time, but he is the leader and if people want their ideas to be implemented, they have to appeal to the leader. So when the leader is obsessed with raiding and thinks all players are laser focused on raiding, that’s what people develop.
Bots and hacks are two different catagories of issues.
Bots are just glorifed macros running on the client end to simulate a players inputs.
Hacks are finding ways to manipulate the game code to your benefit. Such as giving yourself perma-buffs, or unlimted health. All of which have happened in WoW when more of the game run client-side. This is why Blizzard moved more and more of the game code server-side.
Private Servers aren’t attacked on the same scale and sophistication, because they don’t have the same levels of money attached. The difference in the quality of the bots being fought is significant.
I’m sorry but those last two points are so silly. Bots hack the client and the way that they hack client is not even remotely sophisticated, Blizzard just doesn’t care. They are paying customers.
In terms of how the system sees the bots, some of them are very sophisicated, and play just like a real player. Private servers don’t care if they’re overzealous and ban a few legitimate player farmers. Blizzard is far more gunshy about that because of community backlash and onflow quitting. Humans are far better at intuitively detecting bots, than computers are at heuristically detecting them.
That said, the Boost Bots are definitely identifiable and could be easily stopped by either changing the boost to level 30, or removing it entirely, but Blizzard wants that money.
Bots DO NOT hack the client. They run within the confines of what Blizzard has exposed via the API, this is why the sophisticated bots are so hard to detect. They are not manipulating the client. They are external programs designed to read (GET) and send (POST) commands to the API, and Blizard cannot go outside the confines of the client to detect them as that violates privacy laws.
And that is as far as I will discuss this, as going into more details would cross a line.
The company they got to do WC3 reforged, obviously.
Activision needs to shut down the Classic project. They mismanaged it. The very first day they announced it at Blizzcon, I was a mixture of excited but also grounded by the fact that Activision would be the company doing it. Turns out that feeling of apprehension wasn’t misguided.
DreamHaven is the answer…that is if that’s the kind of work they are doing over there.
That’s why I also said Ion needs to either step back down to raid designer, or he needs to be let go. BFA and Shadowlands are probably the two worst WoW expansion ever, and he’s been the lead designer on both.
As for the team, I don’t believe that they hire incompetent people. I think they’re laboring under certain restriction imposed by upper management. I’m pretty sure the actual people coding the game and designing the art don’t care about Daily User Engagement, but they still have to do their jobs with that in mind. All I’m saying is that if you have WoW2, you can possibly build the game with that in mind.
Even if you don’t believe any of that, the base engine is still 20 years old. It’s time to both rebuild the engine from scratch for a more modern game and audience.