I've been thinking about this for a while now and figured that I should blog my own thoughts on remastered. As some people may know, I lead BW coverage here on TeamLiquid and have for over 2 years now. Since then, I've had my hand in almost everything that has went out and I'd like to think that BW staff have done a pretty decent job keeping up with the ever changing world that BW is in. Keep in mind that these thoughts are mine alone.
When I came back to BW and started playing 1v1 and watching SRTs during the Sonic era, I quickly became a bigger fan of the game than even I anticipated. What was a small incursion into BW, a re-visitation of a game that I spent a long time in the past playing money maps in, became an invasion of a sort haha. Coming from Starcraft II and seeing competitive BW in a brand new light was something else. I was enthralled by the beauty of it all and followed the scene closely since.
From SRT and SSL to KSL, VNSL and now ASL, the scene has gradually grown since. BW even came back to OGN for 2 seasons in 2014/15 and even OGN was surprised by its reception. We've seen group selection ceremonies again, players playing their hearts out on new maps and to top things off, we even got a mini-proleague in ATB. BW was only going up and with the announcement of Starcraft Remastered, it was a time of extreme caution but it also seemed like the dev team and Blizzard as a whole finally understood BW's legacy.
Alas, I personally believe that remastered actually did a lot more harm to the scene than some folks realize. Sure, remastered gave the foreign scene a small boost. We had 2 LANs, more online tourneys running simultaneously than we've had in ages and we've had some new players/viewers who were interested in finally trying out the game or watching ASL. However, the cost was too great, too severe for the korean scene which was slowly building itself.
Since remastered went live, things haven't been as swell as anticipated. Remastered was released in a terrible state. There really can't be enough of an emphasis on this. Bugs, lag, simple commands or profiles not working and on top of that, SD graphics which were something that I love about BW seemed like a mere afterthought for the dev team. It's almost like no one thought that someone out there would like to continue playing with the older graphics but on a ladder or with MM. This doesn't even include some of the new errors that were introduced to a game that worked like a horse in the past. Nowadays, my computer steams if I try to play for even 15 minutes straight. I never had problems with 1.16.1, even when I was running other apps with it. Nevermind that the blizzard launcher is also drain that's honestly terrible and not needed imo.
The foreign base has gotten a bit split up between ICCup and the official servers while the Korean scene lost fish. Sure, they were not the greatest folks from what I hear but still a loss regardless. Some new, old and returning players quit due to the various bugs that were frustrating to deal with. Projects like Shieldbattery went on indefinite hiatus (still being worked on though!) and programs such as mcalauncher and canrep were now pretty useless to use which is ironic because these programs easily outdid what Blizzard was trying to implement by a milestone. How is it that Blizzard still hasn't managed to match or outdo some of this stuff is beyond me.
This doesn't even include the fact that some of the HD graphics such as marines and some of the death animations are totally different from the original and lack the same wow factor. Tanks blow up as if they were nukes, same goes for pylons etc...
Above all though, the biggest loss for the scene imo was our autonomy.
Previous tournaments ran without a hitch but with RM being released, we've lost Afreeca Team Battle which was a huge loss. Add in the fact that Blizzard is making it extremely difficult for Afreeca to run ASL and all of a sudden, things look extremely grim. The most important tournament for the current scene threatened by Blizzard, enough for their CEO to make a plea to the fans to help them out. Whether some find that distasteful is beyond the point here.
From my perspective, the Korean BW scene has taken a huge step back and that's extremely unfortunate. Our main tournament was threatened and it seems like Blizzard still doesn't seem to understand what the fans want or they are pretty terrible at finding ways to help their bottom line as well as make the fans happy. The dev team is trekking on and seem to be trying their best so props to them but close to half a year after the game was released, there are still ongoing issues.
Add in the fact that the Korean scene still hasn't recovered and has been affected quite severely and it's a nightmare. At this point, I keep wondering what'll happen next. In my mind, ATB is gone for good and there's no telling when ASL will be next as well. ASL5 should be starting sooner than later, considering they were accepting map submissions so I guess that's a positive note at least.
In the end, I don't believe that BW will ever die even if Blizzard took away ASL as well. We'll just go back to the old SRT days where there were a lot of smaller online tournaments. Slowly but surely, the scene will build itself up again but at what cost?
Well written! I'm one of those guys who came back with Remastered. For me it meant reviving the old love, as well as seeing other friends coming back to the game as well. However, my personal experience doesn't represent the community as a whole at all. So it's interesting to read about what's been going on and to more understand the deep frustration from those who've been around without the pause I've had.
I guess it's also easier for me as a low-level player to be content with the ladder, since I don't have to face laggy Koreans all the time. Although, I do wonder how severe the lag is at times. Sometimes I can play a game and maybe notice a little lag but nothing serious, just to have my opponent complain about it being unbearable lag. I assume the game runs equal for both in said game, but that we have very different criteria for what is unplayable lag or not?
Not sure where I'm going with this, but I guess the main point is that for me Remastered was the revival I'd always dreamed of. I tried coming back to BW a couple of times, but it was kinda hard when none of the good old friends were there. And then I realize that if I need friends to be here, I can't really complain about other people who need no lag, a certain amount of tournaments etc. in order to want to stay.
It'll be exciting to see how things evolve, though. Hoping for a future - maybe not a bright one, but a future we can build!
I remember watching the announcement of SC:R and just being absolutely a pessimist and killjoy. I said it was bad for Blizzard to have any influence over Fish, because Remastered could not and still cannot exist alongside pirate servers. People owning physical copies of Brood War allows those people to do things without having to go through Blizzard at all. Now, if any big competition occurs, they must go through Blizzard or risk legal repercussions. While Blizzard insisted that they had no intention of killing the Fish server, I have information that the opposite is the case. Because of that, I don't trust them at all.
What I do know is that the rule of US society is "Profits>People". When you take that into consideration, everything makes sense. ASL was doing really well, people were watching StarCraft, and streamers were getting crazy numbers of viewers for playing Brood War in 2016-2017. I believe that Blizzard there together a budget to develop the game from scratch. It's not the original Brood War code, which is why there are all these new bugs and weird things. I can't imagine the dev team being given adequate time to test the product and develop efficient webcode, but this wouldn't be the first time in the modern era of games that a AAA company has rushed an unfinished product to the market. Simply put, Blizzard pulled a half-assed product out of the trash, and said "Buy this." Everyone did, and now the market is saturated, which means Blizzard has made the money, and now is going to slash the budget to the Brood War team. They can't outright pull support for the game, because that would be a huge scandal, and they have to pretend to care about gamers.
Blizzard will absolutely not run a tournament. They probably would if they had any faith in their own game doing well, but a big tournament would only do well in Korea, where getting broadcasting rights would mean sharing profits with a company like OGN, and sharing money means LESS PROFITS!! Rather than dealing with other companies, they would rather cross their arms and say, "Well, you guys can dump your own money into your own tournaments, but we need to get a huge fucking cut of the money for doing nothing, and you have to put our logo on your shit, and also we're not going to work with certain sponsors." The Afreeca CEO is in an impossible situation where he has to get ASL5 going, but can't meet Blizzard's unreasonable demands. Absolutely no one in Korea wants to make a deal with Blizzard, because Blizzard is greedy, and the entities that want to facilitate a tournament want to make money themselves.
Blizzard does not care about this beautiful game, and millions of passionate fans. All they care about is the money, nothing else.
Edit: I wrote all that cynical shit, then I found out ASL5 is happening, lol. I'm a dumbass. Maybe I just needed to vent a little. Nowhere do I say "I hate this", and I wish Blizzard would stop being so fucky about supporting SC:R.
I was pessimistic about SC:R as well. I realized from the start that there was very little reason for Blizzard to put man hours into the game "in general". How would they make money from it?
I know they can take control away from Afreeca or ICCup to a certain degree... but still, how do you make money? Skins would be rather hated by Broodwar fans, meaning if they are forced and you cannot turn them off, people leave SC:R. In a way, ICCup, Afreeca and SC:R are competitors. And Gresham's law can be applied here. Good will drive out bad. Also, please note that even in time of release of SR:R Kor pros were asking Blizzard to fix issues. (Hell, I even got a bug that would not allow a High templar storm if it was "currently moving" for a while).
I am sad that this is the way it went but it was sort of expected since Blizzard has been making questionable decisions for a while now.
I was hyped as fuck about Remastered, I met a lot of old faces from back then again on B.Net. I didn't think a second before buying it. I didn't follow the pro scene after the last Proleague anymore, so I didn't know about what was at stake for the Koreans. And then I logged on for the first time and I was appalled: B.Net was uglier than B.Net 2.0, latency was trash, basic commands wouldn't work anymore, etc. I couldn't help but feel robbed.
I knew SC2 was dying, I mean I called it after I bought the game on release day and was let down maybe even worse than by Remastered lol. I think I played more games of Remastered than I ever did on SC2. Blizzard is just another EA nowadays and they couldn't give a fuck about what we want, as long as they can ride on the fame old Blizzard established with milestones like WC2, SC:BW, D2 or WC3. I never cared about WoW, MMOs just aren't my thing and paid subscription was and still is a no-go. D3 and SC2 were absolute shyte that had not much in common with their predecessors or the things that made them great and long lasting games and the business model behind both (marketplace in D3 and SC2 totaling in cost around like 150€ if bought on the respective release days) just reeked of cashgrab.
Blizzard, the company I revered in my youth and actively promoted to all my friends who cared about gaming, is dead to me and I doubt they can come back from that grave. For all I care they can stay there and rot. Fuck you Blizzard.
I'm in a similar boat to you. I mainly played money and UMS maps. I finally started doing 1v1 games when SC2 came out. With ASL 1 on wards I really got into the Brood War competitive scene. Been loving it ever since.
Shame ASL has had trouble getting tourneys started up. ATB not up and running anymore is a shame. I'd love to see it back.
The foreign base has gotten a bit split up between ICCup and the official servers while the Korean scene lost fish. Sure, they were not the greatest folks from what I hear but still a loss regardless. Some new, old and returning players quit due to the various bugs that were frustrating to deal with.
This part pretty much sums up my thoughts. Remastered could have been great if the release would have not been rushed. There were many known issues already during the beta testing period. Delaying the release date to make the game playable could have been a good idea. Anyways I'm still a fan and I'm waiting for the next ASL.
I personally wasn't too hyped by the release of SCR; my lack of commentary on it is mostly because I couldn't really be drawn back into it in the first place. At best it could serve to be the very same as before, at worst it would bring all of the demerits of Bnet 2.0 back to an old game that the community finally managed to create a workable patch job on top of. Any idea of reviving the scene and making it return to some semblance of former glory was a dead-on-arrival idea; I watched how the community slowly came apart and I saw no sign that that could ever be reversed. As unfortunate as it is, the meager community-driven fandom was really about the peak of what you could expect post-Kespa, and even that showed clear signs of stagnation if not full-out decline.
I have to say that the last time I actually enjoyed watching or playing BW was this game:
That was the last game before the hybrid proleague started and the competitive spirit of BW evaporated (both in individual and team leagues), making everything after it seem half-hearted and unenjoyable. It was trending that way as the shit-flinging contests with Blizzard killed off one team after another (and MBC), but that was really the turning point after which things just straight-up sucked. I can't really say I've consistently enjoyed any BW since then, only occasional bits and pieces in a sea of middling games. That vague, though definitely real, decline is not something Blizzard can possibly fix, but they sure as hell could kill off the tiny excuse for a scene that BW still had.
Well said, thank you for writing this. I remember watching the ASL3 finals and I was literally in tears because it felt like the BW pro scene was finally coming back. I may be overly cynical and negative but I'm really afraid that SC:R is going to kill it for good. Watching ASL4 (the first SC:R tournament), there was just something off about it, something was missing. The finals was sparsely attended, and so many people online were blaming Flash and saying he was ruining the pro scene by being too boring and dominant. I don't think that is true at all... when in the past have people stopped watching BW because a player was too good? In my mind, I think SC:R has had a major dampening effect on people's enthusiasm (except those who are only attracted temporarily to what is shiny and new). I hope I am wrong and that ASL5 will recapture the magic. But as a viewer, I really wish I could swap to the old graphics instead of this 3D stuff where it's hard to even distinguish a marine from a medic.
Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.The code and bnet stuff was basically in beta when they released fully back in August.
Must have been pressured by higher up executives like Morhaime to release early when it should have been announced later like at Blizzcon just gone and released for 20th anniversary next month.
If they had released 2v2 ladder off the bat without the bugs and bad lag we could have gotten a year or two out of it, there is no way a playerbase to support that anymore although 3v3 ladder may work depending on whether koreans use it or stick to custom lobbies.
It is infuriating to see just how careless Blizzard is being with SC:R... I agree that the release of Remastered pretty much hurt the BW scene more than it helped it. I am hoping that Blizzard will stop screwing up so much and really try hard to preserve what's left of the BW scene. And I hope they do this especially for South Korea since SK is the reason why they had so much success with BW in the first place.
DON'T SCREW OVER THE SCENE AND THE COMMUNITY THAT BROUGHT YOU GUYS SO MUCH FAME AND FORTUNE!
Tragic about shieldbattery, I'll give you that. I wasn't going to play Shieldbattery myself though. The official Blizzard release is really gonna bring the greatest quantity of original fans back to the game. I probably would not have returned if there had not been a Blizzard release.
I'm getting a lot out of it so far. It's an opportunity to use programming skills I didn't have in 2001. Maybe you're feeling prematurely panicky. SC:RE could turn out well.
Hopefully we'll get a commercial with the Pyeongchang games. This is the best way to get SC1 / BW players active for a short time. You can't do more than that outside of bounds.
I'm back, anyway.
can't knock the hustle
e: really miss the gambling scene of the earliy millenium. if there were more crypto or legislation reversal we could get something like what LP has going on with Daut.
SCBW was really "dark net financially motivated" is probably the phraseology we'd apply in the modern situation.
This is written from a perspective that focusses on Korea. I stopped following these kind of events with the end of the last OSL and even before mostly just tuned in whenever I had time. Therefore, I don't care much what's going on. Compared to 2005 or some other ancient year, I could still tune in any kind of Afreeca stream and watch if only I wanted to. So, for me personally, nothing really changed much there.
However, when it comes to foreign players, especially old friends and new faces, Remastered did bring a lot of them back or introduced them into a bug-infested server. Point is, whenever such a re-activation wave started (thinking of GIGA Grandslam ladders, TSL 1 Ladder phase, or lastly SCII WoL Beta), half of the "I'm such a huge fan, finally BW is rising bla bla" people would leave anyway. What's surprising is how many of the (re)activated people still stick around for longer than anticipated. Not only that, but the overall positivity towards each other is just mind blowing. I read a ton of positive opinions about ICCup from people that wrote me or fellow colleagues long-ass PMs, in which they either used very personal insults or even threatened with some kind of violence (you know, angry-12-year-nerd shit), stating they'd miss the server. Oh really. Now you don't get any of that shit, regardless of your choices, but always and constantly constructive feedback. A dream. Anyway, you also seem to underestimate the idiocy of the foreign players splitting between ICCup and FISH. Even if Shieldbattery would have been released in a dream state (not throwing accusations), there'd been dozends of people having shit on it for the most ridiculous reasons, some sticking to either FISH or ICCup, with the scene slowly drifting apart, leaving just Koreans with their own thing (obviously + China, but that's another story entirely).
Speaking of ICCup, the server had to die somewhen (due to no tech support with the admins trying to do what they possibly could on their own), with FISH not being a good alternative in many aspects, imo most importantly, because their admins never gave a shit about foreigners and would not have changed their opinion. Unless Shield Battery would have re-united the scene with giantic, uberenormous success, things for active players would have looked dire.
I grant you, Blizzard did their usual shit and they'll probably end up not doing 25% of what they promised, but we have something to work with that has a somewhat united player base and no option / split over various different pirate servers. I have the belief that there'll be enough dedicated fans, who'll help to fix and create new contet - projects like starlogg, RTL, SK-TL, this American league with the name I forgotten, Clash for Char and ZZZero.o are indicators that this is already happening. In contrast to before, I could see this to be true for the most part:
"We're a community of geniuses because we've found how to extract 95% of the feeling of doing something amazing without actually doing anything." -- Chill
This probably reads more like an accusation, when it really isn't. People who played, covered and organised (or simply watched, posted or lurked constantly) between 2010 and 2017 weren't doing things wrong (not that anyone else did either), but it the foreign community as whole started to run dry. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore, therefore I'm really fine with things for the moment and can't really share your opinion on the topic at hand.
Message to Blizzard: Just leave us alone. We've been doing this for years without you guys. And it was fine. Then you come back to "help" and look what happens. If you're going to try to help, then take community feedback. Look at what we want and implement it. Don't just run off on your own thing.
Unfortunately true... Lost a lot of guys that planned to come back but after the crappy state of the game they quit again. Actually i am still having technical trouble with the game (error 6:10) . I never had that problem with any other version of the game (1.16.1 and previous).
For those that wanted to come back with SCR, tell me this much: what actually would have changed about the experience that would make a game you thought wasn’t worth playing before (even if you liked it) suddenly worth playing again? The brief but inevitably temporary boost in player count? Promises of a more efficient match-making system? Just plain shininess? I just don’t see why it wouldn’t really be exactly the same experience.
On February 10 2018 23:49 LegalLord wrote: For those that wanted to come back with SCR, tell me this much: what actually would have changed about the experience that would make a game you thought wasn’t worth playing before (even if you liked it) suddenly worth playing again? The brief but inevitably temporary boost in player count? Promises of a more efficient match-making system? Just plain shininess? I just don’t see why it wouldn’t really be exactly the same experience.
My main reasons were: 1. meeting old bnet/clan friends 2. 16 : 9 resolution support 3. 2on2 matchmaking 4. new graphics
On February 10 2018 23:49 LegalLord wrote: For those that wanted to come back with SCR, tell me this much: what actually would have changed about the experience that would make a game you thought wasn’t worth playing before (even if you liked it) suddenly worth playing again? The brief but inevitably temporary boost in player count? Promises of a more efficient match-making system? Just plain shininess? I just don’t see why it wouldn’t really be exactly the same experience.
I was playing iccup before SCR released, kind of just got it into again by chance and then SCR released. Nothing has really changed, I just want to play BW. SCR MMR is fun and interesting. The release was awfully executed, that we can never get back / fix. The community is still going with new tournaments, and that's mostly what matters.
On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio..
On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.The code and bnet stuff was basically in beta when they released fully back in August.
Must have been pressured by higher up executives like Morhaime to release early when it should have been announced later like at Blizzcon just gone and released for 20th anniversary next month.
If they had released 2v2 ladder off the bat without the bugs and bad lag we could have gotten a year or two out of it, there is no way a playerbase to support that anymore although 3v3 ladder may work depending on whether koreans use it or stick to custom lobbies.
My theory is that they saw all of these third party ventures (OpenBW, Shield Battery, ASL, on top of the existing fish, ICCup, MCALauncher, etc.) and thought to themselves, "we can get some money from this," or "we can't let them take away what little control we have left." As such, the release date being pushed forward from a quite obvious one becomes a no-brainer. If another year had passed, then projects like Shield Battery and OpenBW could have been at a stage where a Remaster release would have been too little too late. Instead they opted for too broken too soon.
On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.The code and bnet stuff was basically in beta when they released fully back in August.
Must have been pressured by higher up executives like Morhaime to release early when it should have been announced later like at Blizzcon just gone and released for 20th anniversary next month.
If they had released 2v2 ladder off the bat without the bugs and bad lag we could have gotten a year or two out of it, there is no way a playerbase to support that anymore although 3v3 ladder may work depending on whether koreans use it or stick to custom lobbies.
My theory is that they saw all of these third party ventures (OpenBW, Shield Battery, ASL, on top of the existing fish, ICCup, MCALauncher, etc.) and thought to themselves, "we can get some money from this," or "we can't let them take away what little control we have left." As such, the release date being pushed forward from a quite obvious one becomes a no-brainer. If another year had passed, then projects like Shield Battery and OpenBW could have been at a stage where a Remaster release would have been too little too late. Instead they opted for too broken too soon.
On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.The code and bnet stuff was basically in beta when they released fully back in August.
Must have been pressured by higher up executives like Morhaime to release early when it should have been announced later like at Blizzcon just gone and released for 20th anniversary next month.
If they had released 2v2 ladder off the bat without the bugs and bad lag we could have gotten a year or two out of it, there is no way a playerbase to support that anymore although 3v3 ladder may work depending on whether koreans use it or stick to custom lobbies.
My theory is that they saw all of these third party ventures (OpenBW, Shield Battery, ASL, on top of the existing fish, ICCup, MCALauncher, etc.) and thought to themselves, "we can get some money from this," or "we can't let them take away what little control we have left." As such, the release date being pushed forward from a quite obvious one becomes a no-brainer. If another year had passed, then projects like Shield Battery and OpenBW could have been at a stage where a Remaster release would have been too little too late. Instead they opted for too broken too soon.
ah, dude no way. Blizzard has nothing to gain from a stymie of the SC:BW scene. It's a niche scene that generated a lot of intellectual capital for the company. all sorts of things are possible of course, but Blizzard has not much to gain and nothing to lose by supporting the game.
admittedly the third-party ventures were interesting, but i don't see how remastered necessarily confines them. if anything a devout character could easily persuade Blizzard to increase marketing. they can't release remastered without supporting it. various conspiracies exist regarding Blizzard and its monetizing and market capitalizing behavior, but to be frank i think the appearance of ruthlessness is owing more to competence questions than actual market maneuvering. i came back here a few weeks ago to see if i could reintegrate with the community if there was one. that still hasn't worked out, although several old poker friends are playing including hevad and allegedly rekrul (dunno if there are any sources for this). presumably a variety of streamers are still up and about on bw although it's markedly less lucrative maybe than sequels. anyway, reintegrating is going somewhat slow but i don't think it's related to Blizzard's role in the enterprise. remastered is pretty hands-off, which we like, and it's available on the launcher--which is theoretically good. i could imagine a few players from other games like hearth and WoW blazing it to enjoy some SC:BW on occasion.
the $15 price tag is pretty dubious and i sort of lol'd when i paid it myself. off-handedly this is probably the best monetizing the game will ever see. i think the TL community what's left of it regarding this--and including myself obvious should jump at the opportunity that there's. since it's official it's the best one.
ASL5 being announced after my blog was interesting. Thanks for all the comments. I'm honestly not sure what Blizzard's intentions are. Part of me honestly believes that they are just really bad at trying to appease the community and really do mean no harm while another part believes RM was more about control of the scene. Seeing as the scene has been steadily increasing, it makes sense for them to try and get some control. Easier way to exert themselves if they released RM as a favour to the community but why "fight" with Afreeca over ASL5? Like, if this is meant for the community, they must certainly realize
Ninazerg, it's ok to vent a bit. I think it's understandable. I was just writing my own thoughts because I was pretty disappointed with Blizzard's approach to RM, especially with the recent ASL news.
Gecko, yes, I focused heavily on the KR community. The foreign scene has seen much more benefits in comparison but TL coverage has always been heavy on the KR tournaments and scene and personally, I'm much more interested in seeing the best of the best in ASL compared to some foreign tournaments (they have their own charms though, no doubt). Yes, having a united server is great but the biggest problem is blizz listening to the feedback.
Sure, the dev team seems to be fine too but they don't control blizzard overall and the bug ridden release really negatively affected the game imo. To me, being able to provide feedback to the devs of shieldbattery and know for a fact that it'll be considered, worked into SB if its reasonable etc... is great. I've tried and played a decent amount of games on SB, including a 4-5 hour BGH session once. SB worked like a charm. Even ex-KR pros intotherainbow and ggaemo liked the latency and were surprised at how good it was compared to fish (something along those lines). I think if the RM announcement was delayed another year, SB would've been out there and have gained a following and I know that the devs would've delivered!
Also, on the note of players returning, Ret and Draco (was mentioned in another thread) kinda quit the game already. I'm sure there were a host of other playres that have also went back to inactivity. We do get more tournaments, yes, but are there really that many more new challengers or is it the same people with a bit more?
As long as you guys keep filling their wallets they won't change. Waiting for another small company to come along that releases something just as good for RTS.
I couldn't agree more here. Blizzard made things worse for sure. After all the issues with SCR I just went back to sc2. It's like blizzard wants complete control of every scene that involves any of their games but somehow they don't know what to do once they have control and they always seem to make things worse .
They pretty relied on the community to design the game we wanted yet blizzard didn't execute properly.
I honestly wonder if it's possible to file a class action lawsuit vs them. They pretty much lied to us, took our money and failed to deliver.
I've never been that into the Korean scene so I can't comment on things there, but as far as the game goes:
Brood War is an old game, so as far as drawing in new players, Remastered needed to be a perfect launch. But that was far from the case. Even today, we still don't have 2v2/3v3/4v4 matchmaking, we still have laggy games that are somehow worse than the iCCup days of old, we still don't have profiles that work consistently, and we still don't have any kind of league system. The catch 22 that we're in now for the league system is that you need enough players to actually fill up the leagues, but since most of the players have left, there's hardly an incentive to do it. The development team is still toying with the network code like they're messing with a game that's in beta, as opposed to a game that's been out for 6 months. The first couple weeks of Remastered were extremely fun seeing all the streamers play it and improve at it while seeing a ton of old players come back, and I honestly believe more people would have stayed if there weren't so many freaking bugs in the game.
The lack of tournaments with money in them is pretty rough too. That's not to diminish all the work that is currently being done with all the active foreigner tournaments, as they do a good job and it's not up to them to pump money into the scene. The launch event was obviously a huge success in terms of viewers. The Italian tournament was the same weekend as BlizzCon, so while it didn't draw great numbers, it's hard to blame them. I'm not sure about the ZOTAC tournament. But the Holiday Bash was again a great success. I had hoped that the numbers would help get some more events started but that hasn't been the case. I'm also a little sad that Blizzard themselves, who subsidize SC2 tournaments heavily, haven't at least thrown a little money BW's way for a foreigner tournament or two. Furthermore I was hoping that TL would get in on it (more than the TL Opens), given that it's the game that started it all for them, but unfortunately that didn't happen.
It still amazes me every time I hop on and do some play/obs with friends that all these bugs are still in the game. We're all from the US with good internet and sometimes we can't even play with each other. If you're new to StarCraft in general, why in the world would you ever want to play this when you can go to SC2 and have a good time bug-free?
Maybe in 2036 they can try again with StarCraft: Remastered: Remastered and get it right that time.
SCR seemed to have helped foreign scene more than korea scene now tho, since theres centralized bnet for foreign playerbase
but Korea hasn't been too good. SCR hit right when PUBG was releasing, and issues with SCR turned a lot of people away at worst time. PUBG was always going to take people away, but the SCR being well below expectations hurt streaming scene a lot. Team battles were unplayable for while, there was bug daily, ect.
you can't really underestimate power of the whole team battle being unplayable+bad custom games/ect. The lower end streamres can't really distribute the viewers anymore since theres no real collab/team battle scenarios and that lead to a lot of difficulty
A lot of streamers, noting this, took this opportunity to pull out and swap to variety gaming/pubg. Its sad really. Pros have come out and said SCR wasn't great, and Terror and Sea publicly denounced it as well, which was pretty big since they were 2 biggest BW streamers. Hell, even FlaSh, who keeps his mouth shut usually, spoke negatively of the SCR experience.
With the whole ASL being delayed/ATB being cancled, Korea scene isn't taking SCR too well. Its just accepted that SCR just killed momentum and scene really other than the beginning few weeks of surging post SCR release
Add this on top of that: Its been 6 months, and issues promised during tease hasn't been released yet. Theres no tiers, no 2v2 matchmaking, very lacking profile customization, ect. Feels like playing early-beta even now.
People say expectations should be lessened since blizzard is working on an old game, but I disagree. If you are marketing a remastered product, even if the game is untouched, other areas should be up to modern standards.
On February 12 2018 21:03 CrymeaTerran wrote: Me hating Blizzard since the shutdown of nostalrius and now my hatred continues.
There are actually some valid parallells to be drawn there. The community makes a beloved project, Blizzard feels threatened and implements their own version with all the control that comes with it.
Both Nostalrius and BW's sustained popularity proved that hey, maybe smashing a shiny "add feature" button indefinitely isn't necessarily how you make a good game. Maybe having a giant committee always changing the game to justify their paychecks doesn't automatically equal a better game.
Maybe a big part of what people love most about your games isn't due to the infinite wisdom of corporate Blizzard, but thanks to lucky accidents and an active community that actually gets time to figure the game out before the next patch invalidates the entire meta.
On February 12 2018 23:38 Jae Zedong wrote: Maybe a big part of what people love most about your games isn't due to the infinite wisdom of corporate Blizzard, but thanks to lucky accidents and an active community that actually gets time to figure the game out before the next patch invalidates the entire meta.
I think they just had a lot of genuine talent there that has since left the company. The visionaries that made the old Blizzard games can't just be replicated by a change of strategy. That in itself is nothing to be upset about, but they shouldn't "remake" their old IPs and try to seize control of the communities that sprung up around them. My only problem with SC2 is that they used the name Starcraft. It would be an OK but forgettable game otherwise; I think people who always defend Blizzard and say "BW elitists" can't understand this.
Did not buy SC2, did not buy Remastered. Last time I bought a Blizzard product was in high school when I needed a new D2e cdkey. Did buy StarCraft vanilla when it was $75 though (my brothers and I split it three ways, as we were children).
Unfortunately, the amount of people who pay attention and make purchasing decisions based on whether or not they like a company's behaviour is many magnitudes smaller than the amount of people who are just barely aware anything is going on. There's a "substantial" number of loud people who make a fuss and talk and get angry, but not a lot of people who follow through in the way they act.
I think it's neat to see your perspective on the post KeSPA scene though. Everything post KeSPA for me feels like a shadow of the glory days, with only a few shining moments that at all excite me. Your perspective is as though you were getting to live through the 1998-2002 years, where every little bit higher the game climbs is amazing. I think you're exactly the right person to have been writing about BW these last few years.
Most of the joy of SC has been sucked out for me, even if I could run the newer patch on my machine. I can't really manage the cognitive dissonance. I don't enjoy even indirectly supporting all the bullshit. It's amazing that people used to complain so fervently about KeSPA and their possessiveness over their players, but ffs at least they ran a business and people could play professionally for years, and new people could aspire to it. SC is so doomed lol, it's brightest future is some illegal Russian servers running 1.16 and a few hundred people continuing to play. Unless Open BW is somehow actually realised, and who knows what that will look like.
On February 14 2018 00:22 Chef wrote: SC is so doomed lol, it's brightest future is some illegal Russian servers running 1.16 and a few hundred people continuing to play. Unless Open BW is somehow actually realised, and who knows what that will look like.
I just wanted to add to this - the recent matchmaking algorithm change (location over MMR) has made laddering through matchmaking worse than ICCup lobby, by a landslide. Not that it was that much better in the past, but at least it was more consistent. Now, I play for 1-4 points per game (since you don't play RM, I'll give context: it's Elo based from 1500 with the standard game points being like 15 or 20 I think?), grinding against the equivalent of D- scrubs, an experience that's not pleasurable for either of us. Should I slip once, I would lose like 40 or 50 points. Then when a person who is actually on par or better than me, the game becomes much harder in contrast to the rest of the playing field and I again lose a disproportionate amount, simply because I ground through more noobs than they did so I have more 1-4 point increments in my MMR which means even though they were an A level Zerg, we are roughly the same MMR, or they were a B- Protoss but they are 100-200 MMR below me.
In other words, the system now is like a region-locked ICCup and you're forced to be a noobstomper with an artificially inflated record. I can't remember the name(s) of the people that did this (I guess that's justice), but there were more than a few people who would have B rank, a record of 126-5, and all of their games being +10 points from a D-/D scrub. I would love going into those games on a low rank account and win like 250 points, setting them back 25 wins. Now, the tables have turned, where playing ladder FORCES me into the same position these stompers were in (I guess that's karma). If Sziky lived a walking distance from my house and decided to make a smurf account to blow off some steam, I would get paired with him multiple times in a row and lose 40+ points per game, and there would be nothing I can do. This has happened to me multiple times in the past week, with the following back-to-back games in a series: 5-0 vs. some D+ ish Terran (who switched mains to Protoss as a result), 1-0-2 (disconnects despite my internet being perfectly fine, thanks Blizzard) vs. some BM Protoss who is 2000+ MMR, 0-3 vs. some Korean-speaking Zerg, 0-3 vs. Stryker and then another 0-1 against him yesterday, because he must live so close to me that if we are both queuing we will ALWAYS be paired up. It's not fun or fair for anyone involved.
On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio..
I don't think any new companies will come along and create a better RTS than BW, that's the sad truth but I'm fine with it too as long as Blizzard starts to realize that fans matter. Things like a class action lawsuit won't work because most people aren't that interested and wouldn't want to commit that much money to it either. You'll run out of money before you even go far considering how deep Blizzard's pockets are.
jinjin, interesting stuff regarding Terror, Sea and Flash. I agree with the KR scene bit. I feel like it really hurt the scene when it was supposed to help it. Sure, it helped unite the foreign scene and helped a bit too but we also lost 3rd party apps that did one hell of a good job which is also really sad to see.
Starlightsun, to be fair, we've had the old Blizzard devs say that they just went wacky and put whatever they wanted into the game. Basically, threw things at a wall and saw what got stuck then rolled with it. BW was a lucky accident, a good accident but it wasn't some grand design. Still, credit where its due. The same with the older games, Diablo and Warcraft were and are still a blast to play and the devs will get credit for it too.
Chef, I wasn't around during the KeSPA days so for me, this current scene is equivalent to what the KeSPA scene was for you like you noted. I've often thought back on the KeSPA scene and realized what I missed. It's pretty rough watching older vods, both OSL/MSL and PL, without thinking that I missed one really good thing. Doesn't help that BW's history is so deep that imo, no other game can touch it with a 10 foot pole. Still, that's all gone and there's not much we can do. At best, if we can manage a tournament and a team league, like ASL and ATB, we can revive some of those feelings and ensure that some form of competition exists. Thanks for the compliment ^^
At this point, I'm hoping that with ASL5 back on track, that was the last hiccup we had and Afreeca will at least keep running ASL with no issues moving forward. Maybe ATB will make a comeback if Afreeca lowers the prizepool, who knows but I'm going to remain hopeful for now.
I honestly wonder if it's possible to file a class action lawsuit vs them. They pretty much lied to us, took our money and failed to deliver.
If I understand you correctly, you are talking about a tort claim for consumer fraud or misrepresentation?
I'd love to hear - just for curiosity's sake, a legally-literate (or at least semi-literate) analysis of this. I'm not familiar enough with the facts of what was promised and what delivered to think about it...
Things like a class action lawsuit won't work because most people aren't that interested and wouldn't want to commit that much money to it either.
Class-actions often work like this: a representative plaintiff is named, and a public advertisement is made to collect as many additional names as possible to be added to the statement of claim. There is a process obviously for vetting legitimate claimants. Then the additional names added have no responsibilities or liabilities - so anyone who bought the game would basically be given a free, no strings invitation to win a lawsuit. They don't ever need to come to court. They don't need to give affidavits. Nothing. Just wait for a result.That's why these things are possible - you don't need to organize thousands of people, you just need their names.
As for putting up money... class-action suits are often done pro-bono by class-action firms that take a percentage of the winnings if you win (and charge you nothing if you lose). The challenge can be to persuade them to take on your case - they have to believe they have a shot at winning if they take on the risk, obviously.
* For what it's worth, thelawdictionary.org, which I wouldn't quote to the judge, defines consumer fraud as Lieing to a customer telling them a product does something it doesn't. It can also be overcharging or hiding charges.
Whereas misrepresentation is essentially just a mistake (less serious, but potentially still tortious).
****Full disclosure... I've never even played SCR, and I'm a very casual BW player.
I honestly wonder if it's possible to file a class action lawsuit vs them. They pretty much lied to us, took our money and failed to deliver.
If I understand you correctly, you are talking about a tort claim for consumer fraud or misrepresentation?
I'd love to hear - just for curiosity's sake, a legally-literate (or at least semi-literate) analysis of this. I'm not familiar enough with the facts of what was promised and what delivered to think about it...
Things like a class action lawsuit won't work because most people aren't that interested and wouldn't want to commit that much money to it either.
Class-actions often work like this: a representative plaintiff is named, and a public advertisement is made to collect as many additional names as possible to be added to the statement of claim. There is a process obviously for vetting legitimate claimants. Then the additional names added have no responsibilities or liabilities - so anyone who bought the game would basically be given a free, no strings invitation to win a lawsuit. They don't ever need to come to court. They don't need to give affidavits. Nothing. Just wait for a result.That's why these things are possible - you don't need to organize thousands of people, you just need their names.
As for putting up money... class-action suits are often done pro-bono by class-action firms that take a percentage of the winnings if you win (and charge you nothing if you lose). The challenge can be to persuade them to take on your case - they have to believe they have a shot at winning if they take on the risk, obviously.
* For what it's worth, thelawdictionary.org, which I wouldn't quote to the judge, defines consumer fraud as Lieing to a customer telling them a product does something it doesn't. It can also be overcharging or hiding charges.
Whereas misrepresentation is essentially just a mistake (less serious, but potentially still tortious).
****Full disclosure... I've never even played SCR, and I'm a very casual BW player.
It's probably possible to do this, but who would? It doesn't make sense and could never behoove you or benefit you. It simply isn't an economically viable or salient course of action. In short, it's gotta be a mistake to reproach Blizzard for what amounts to essentially a public service available to anyone with a very small sum of money. It's not a mistake, at all, and is a fine business decision for Blizzard, I suppose.
The only aspect that damages you is that for instance there are more than 100,000 people on the ladder. For those who played BW competitively, you would recognize that there were the same 10 or 20 names that appeared for around 5 years toward end of the game.
For instance, IdrA, Incontrol, Day9, Artosis, Tasteless, NonY, Nero, lastgosu, Frozen, Nyoken, G5, and so on were the only really competitive contenders in the United States. So, for instance if you were to place yourself among United States citizens at this point the only people who could be ahead of you are those people: Incontrol, Day9, Artosis, Tasteless, NonY, Yosh, LzGamer, Nero, lastgosu, Frozen, Nyoken, G5, Saddles, Froz, Rekrul, Whear, Fayth, Testie, Lefnaij, Symphony, HuK, stalife, IdrA
But since those people haven't appeared and it seems that none of them are playing other than the first 4, you should be in the top 10: Artosis, Tasteless, Incontrol, Day[9] and "you"
Thus anyone who installed the game and had an APM of roughly 200 would probably be close to top 10 for the United States East and West. This omits Koreans, and there seem to be around 40,000 South Koreans on either of the two US servers. This is pretty suspicious and suggests that there's a major fraud being committed by Blizzard--although it is I suppose possible that SC:R is in fact this popular in S. Korea.
On the other hand, other than Drone and TT1, and a few others, there really are no names that I recognize. And obviously to anyone familiar with the United States BW Scene from we already know who should be playing. There aren't going to be a bunch of new players from the years 2009-2018.
So, yeah, it's obviously fraud committed by Blizzard against our favorite game, and this isn't good. But, it doesn't seem to anyone's advantage to press the issue.
As much as it is Blizzard's right to flex their copyright infringement muscles and try to monetize whatever's in their ip, sometimes they should just back off and let the community grow. Alienate the players and Blizzard just killed the goose, winding up with nothing.
Maybe nobody. Maybe a class-action firm. Very probably nobody, but it's an interesting legal question.
The only aspect that damages you is that for instance there are more than 100,000 people on the ladder
I don't see how that is damage at law.
So, yeah, it's obviously fraud committed by Blizzard
I'm dense. I still don't see that it's obviously fraud... ?
For example...
I own a jewelry shop. I see you looking at rings. I know you believe the ring you are interested in is real gold. Ordinarily gold rings cost $100, but I will sell you THIS ring for $80, I tell you. You accept.
That's fraud.
Fraud is a very serious accusation - you are basically saying Blizzard intentionally scammed people out of money. Doing their jobs incompetently is a slightly different matter - you might go to misrepresentation, or even negligence, but it's not clear what duty of care a game company owes to a gaming community... though I would be really interested to hear if someone knew cases/theory on that.
The main question I am wondering though, is what is the legal harm? Even if there is a duty-of-care to gaming communities by game companies, what loss was suffered?
To avoid misrepresentation - I'm not a lawyer, I'm just interested.
Back when I had first heard about plans to release SC2. I was hopeful that my favourite game would be popular so that I could enjoy it with everyone else without having them be put off by how old BW was.
My hopes were crushed after really getting into for a year, SC2 was not what I had hoped it to be.
When I had first heard about plans to release SC:RM, I was hopeful. I was hopeful that my favourite game would be popular so that I could enjoy it with everyone else without having them be put off by how old BW is.
It has not been a year since its release... I haven't even had the time to play BW since more than one year ago, but I just wish that more people would be able to share in the joy of what I experience in playing BW.
I've been way too engaged in my other hobbies over the last year or so to follow BW as devoutly as I used to, but it's always depressing reading how SC:R went and how much Blizzard is letting their BW fans down. (I still follow the forums.)
It's scary, cause with them announcing WoW Vanilla servers to come in the future, I have a feeling this won't be the last time they do this. It's like they can't seem to figure out what people loved about their old games. Or maybe they just don't want to.
BW is my favourite spectator esport; WoW is my favourite game (was). Being a fan of both has been rough since 2010/12.
Ironically after being tired by waiting on ladder queue and seeing no one is joining my game being AFK for long minutes I just google "Starcraft remastered is dead" and stumbled upon your blog. I really dislike current situation of SC they're pushing some minor updates once in a while, ignoring major problems (especially the ones which were absent before on 1.16.1). Population is so low due to devs not executing their promises. Nothing has changed.
And I hate launcher so much: it takes 2-3 min. at start for me to get SC started for first (Compared to 5 sec. before and I'm not playing on potato, it's i5). Menus when transitioning are also kinda laggy.
This game needs more attention and more devs. I'm sure if they were pushing updates every month like WoW this game could get fixed less than year fully!
I still enjoy watching korean BW, but I don't want to play the game anymore. It's too much of an effort to be fun. (Call me a filthy casual, if you want to.) The release of remastered came too soon, lots of features were missing at that time, some still are. They've completely half-assed RM, which is really sad. BW surely would not have been "revived" in foreigner land, but more old players actually would have played more than 10 games if some key features would have been implemented at RM's release. You have to be realistic, though. BW is 21 years old. We're in oldtimer territory now. Basically, BW players are like those dudes who like to meet up with their GTs and Mustangs from the 70s.