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Does anyone else remember the good 'ol days of SC:BW’s amazing Use-Map-Settings aka UMS community? Better yet, how about the custom games system in a game released over a decade ago? It was basically a lobby where players could join/create ANY map they wanted and play it with others who would join. It was a community-run, community-enforced popularity system which meant that the popular maps trending at the time would have the most game lobbies created for other players to join, yet it did not neglect the more niche or newer maps always allowing them to get popular if the community would take to it at the time. It was so refreshing always having this nice rotation of maps and through natural selection the more refined (or plain fun) ones would appear and when the community got tired of those, different, fresh maps would appear while the people who still wanted to play older maps could because they had the freedom to. Then, seeing some older maps re-emerge in an updated or reworked version was cool. The system WORKED and it was GREAT, there was the simple incentive to map-making of your map being SEEN and PLAYED by others.
So amazing was the StarCraft 1 map making community. Many websites/forums/blogs entirely dedicated to UMS maps (or at least a section for it) with tutorials, reviews, and archives, all for map-making.: StarEdit, scmaps, StarCraft.org, trickznstuff (my personal website :D), Campaign Creations, BlizzForums, Creep Colony, “UMS Maps”, SCLegacy, and countless others. What known StarCraft 2 websites for custom maps do we have now? If you did not have the pleasure to know what it was then, the UMS scene was vibrant, alive, and bustling. Although it was not the main feature of StarCraft, many considered it to be, myself included, and I appreciated the real sense of community brought on by the UMS portion of StarCraft 1. People were always in different channels offering help or play testing or just talking about ideas, improvements, discoveries, techniques, and everything in between. &Z was my hangout for the longer part of my years, where were you? StarEdit was so awesome, the idea that we could make our own maps with skillsets ranging from beginner to expert and play maps designed by others. Will people like it? Will it be popular? How can I improve it? Will I make a sequel? Will spin-offs be made? And every so often there were new discoveries with the editor and external sources were made: colored text, quick triggers, disabled buildings/doodads, pictures on the minimap!
So varied and creative were the UMS maps created. If you ask any ex-UMS player what his or her favorite map was, all their answers would be different, THAT is how many different, quality, maps came out from the scene: Zone Control, Turret Defense, Cat and Mouse, Tag, Horror, Sims, War/Diplomacy, RPGs, Micro, Survival, Madness/Arena maps, Crash/Troll maps, Tug of Wars, Movie maps, Drawing, Obstacle courses, Betrayal/Mystery, I had even seen card game maps! It was mind-boggling how awesome and varied the maps could get just using StarEdit. You name it, it was done, seen, and played – never buried under a handful of maps that the system would tell us was “popular”. Many cool maps and ideas came from the StarCraft 1 map-making scene; now that was a true breeding ground for creativity. You know where the skeleton for DotA, HoN, LoL, etc. came from? It came from Aeon of Strife, a StarCraft 1 user-made map that has now spawned an entire new genre of gaming. Ever played a Tower Defense game? Yeah, those were StarCraft 1 maps. I remember playing all these maps and even interacting with some of the map creators since typing in "/w name" worked. In retrospect, it's just so cool to know the influences the StarCraft 1 UMS scene has had on gaming in such a big way today because of how big a part of my life it was.
It breaks my heart to see what the StarCraft 2 system is in its current incarnation that has produced a nearly non-existent community with a stale assembly of maps; even if it's changed by HotS, it seems all too late. I won't go into everything that's wrong with StarCraft 2's current map system since it’s blaringly obvious to everyone that is not Blizzard, but I shed a tear for you StarCraft 1 map scene. I will never forget the memories and years of happiness you gave me. Thanks for everything.
~ I miss you ~
- KckKryptonite
 
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What do you think of the arcade business Blizzard is implementing?
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Both SC1 and WC3 had amazing map makers and communities. I would say almost without doubt that the majority of both communities for the first 4-5 years of their popularity were just people who liked playing UMS and hardly played 1:1 at all. That an chatcrafters lol.
It is actually so frustrating that SC2 mangled the map commujnity this badly. I was not expecting SC2 to surpass SC1 in terms of the core 1:1 strategy game, but I FULLY expected the UMS section of the game to be incredible and worth the price of the game by itself. After seeing those demos at blizzcons of the power of the editor, the imagination of the whole mapping community went wild just waiting for the chance. Blizzard really fucked up to let something like that go. If anything increases the longevity of a game for the casual player, it is the UMS section. Now people just click 'find match' until they get bored and never really talk to anyone. The other fun aspect of UMS was that often you were a team vs a computer, so you could have silly conversations during the game. But if there is no variety, you will get quickly bored of the "most popular" UMS style of the SC2 system.
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So sad. So sad. I've said whats in the blog to my friends so many times in sadness. Hundreds and hundreds of hours enjoying bw UMS, in sc2 all we get is the same crappy unit spam stuff. So sad.
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United States5162 Posts
Yup, it disappoints me too. I played BW for two years without ever playing a competitive 1v1.
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On July 08 2012 00:57 Myles wrote:
Yup, it disappoints me too. I played BW for two years without ever playing a competitive 1v1.
yeah I've always felt it was lacking. WC3 had some really nice custom maps as well that were fun to play but nothing compares to some of the old BW UMS maps I used to play. I miss em.
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I'm with you... I played UMS rather religiously in the early-mid 2000's. I have a thumbdrive sitting around somewhere with originals of many of the classics, many with map creation dates as early as 1998. It's really sad to see how undeveloped everything went for the custom community, and how it turned off a lot of creative people (I think Rodrigo most notably) to keep producing maps.
I feel like the new patch will revive, or at least spark some life into everything. I played nearly every day on the server for a HotS beta key, and there were some surprisingly good maps. I just now discovered Bomberbot and Magecraft because of the beta, and there are quite a few other games with a lot of potential floating around (this game Crush Company is a side-scroller shooter akin to the old Double Dragon games that requires dodging of missiles and jump-shooting and novel concepts like that).
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I was young in those days. In 2000 I knew about wc1, wc2, and sc. I had played all three with my brothers and dad. But I didn't really play online. It wasn't until probably around 2003 or 2004 that I started playing online. First I played wc2. Paintball was amazing, and even with the limited editor there were still some pretty fun maps to play. Then after probably a year or that, I started playing sc online. For some reason I couldn't get BW working on bnet, so I played vanilla, and I played the shit out of that. So I probably played that anlother year or two, and then I managed to get access to a computer that could play wc3 and had TFT. Also, I'd mention sicne I was so bad/thought it was boring, I almost literally never played anything other than custom/UMS maps. WC3 was my life for several years. Pretty much the only game I ever played. My brother played guild wars, WoW, but I just kept playing wc3. There were so many maps which were so fun, it was an inexaustable supply of entertainment. I did so many all nighters sneaking down into the basement and playing until the wee hours of the morning. But now, wc3 is riddled with host bots, which are a mixed blessing: certain maps are always being hosted, but the clans with the host bots pretty much control what gets played. It's kinda sad to see.
Since I stopped playing wc3, I've gone back to both sc:bw, wc3 and even wc2 on the server.ru custom server. Such nostalgia it brings back. But the communities aren't as thriving as they used to be.
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On July 07 2012 21:01 kckkryptonite wrote:You name it, it was done, seen, and played – never buried under a handful of maps that the system would tell us was “popular”.
Which social media guy was it to make artificial popularity contests out of the starcraft map editor?? So laggy.
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On July 07 2012 22:37 Chef wrote:
Both SC1 and WC3 had amazing map makers and communities. I would say almost without doubt that the majority of both communities for the first 4-5 years of their popularity were just people who liked playing UMS and hardly played 1:1 at all. That an chatcrafters lol.
It is actually so frustrating that SC2 mangled the map commujnity this badly. I was not expecting SC2 to surpass SC1 in terms of the core 1:1 strategy game, but I FULLY expected the UMS section of the game to be incredible and worth the price of the game by itself. After seeing those demos at blizzcons of the power of the editor, the imagination of the whole mapping community went wild just waiting for the chance. Blizzard really fucked up to let something like that go. If anything increases the longevity of a game for the casual player, it is the UMS section. Now people just click 'find match' until they get bored and never really talk to anyone. The other fun aspect of UMS was that often you were a team vs a computer, so you could have silly conversations during the game. But if there is no variety, you will get quickly bored of the "most popular" UMS style of the SC2 system.
Yes. I find myself just laddering more in SC2 and getting burnt out rather than customs, even though that is what I lived for in SC1, because the system was so robust; never knew how good I had it back then I guess.
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On July 08 2012 00:57 Myles wrote:
Yup, it disappoints me too. I played BW for two years without ever playing a competitive 1v1.
Same here. Bunker wars and sunken defense were so awesome!
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688 Posts
one of the reasons why SC2 is not more popular.
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I played 5 years of BW before playing a competitive 1v1  started with defenses and massers, moved up to zombie maps (and started my own zombie clan :D ) then discovered the drug that is Temple Siege and got addicted to that for years. I still play it sometimes. Now I've started iCCup, and when I get bored with that I can repeat the cycle with SC2
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dcvE6.png)
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