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Players and community members of Starcraft: Brood War Remastered; It is time to renounce our developer: Activision Blizzard.
Indeed, this is an act most pointless and melodramatic, yet it must be done. There is no value or worth to this gesture, nor is there in the pretence that our ‘passion’ for Brood War these last two decades has ever meant anything more than unreciprocated unpaid labor for an uncaring, amoral institution, shackled to the whims of its shareholders.
I, of course, do not presume to speak for all of you, a community exists not as a single entity but as a number of individuals, but I hope you all understand the need for this to be said.
We were owed nothing had nothing changed. Yet, this developer, absent for more than a decade ( safe for a bugfix somewhere in 2009; balance gratefully left alone since 2001) suddenly returned; brimming with the confidence of IP ownership like they’d never left.
All was well until the date of 26-03-2017 when the 1.18.0 PTR was released, dirtying our minds with hope yet subsequently worrying us with sub-par coding and unmet promises.
After the release of Starcraft: Remastered a mere 5 months later - all of a sudden we were owed something. For all this to be more than a cruel $15,00 jape, we had to see all this to completion.
Passion reared its ugly head, and Activision Blizzard was ready to collect, was it not?
First, let’s get the silly formalities out of the way:
As one of the unelected vocal community figures of Starcraft: Brood War, I demand the following of Activision Blizzard:
A return to active development of Starcraft: Remastered, in order for at least the following functionality to be added:
- A comprehensive multiplayer tutorial and a reworking of the AI build orders in order to have an in-game way for new and returning players to have a basis for what to expect in multiplayer.
- An expanded list of ladders for multiple modes, including various team modes and FFA.
- 21st century networking technology, so players no longer have to manually port forward when hosting games.
- Either implementation of a large amount of functionality provided by launchers and plugins that had become the standard of play for many years (including Low Latency) or allowing for said launchers and plugins to function with Starcraft: Remastered.
- Allowing Third-Party servers to function with Starcraft: Remastered, as they’ve been the backbone of Starcraft: Brood War for years and are the only reason there is still an active player base. Right now, Starcraft: Remastered is sidestepping these long established communities; consisting of the few remaining leaders that have dedicated years to the survival of the game, to great detriment of the scene.
- Continued functional support, in perpetuity, of one of the founding games that made esports and Blizzard Entertainment what it is today.
If these demands are not met, then it is with a grave heart that we must formally renounce Activision Blizzard as the developer of Starcraft: Brood War Remastered and subsequently Starcraft: Brood War.
Right then, job done.
Sadly Remastered will remain in the hands of a skeleton maintenance crew that will never achieve these goals. I will add that I do not envy these people, and I have the deepest sympathy for them.
Our passion for this project is, I’m sure, appreciated. But there is nothing to be done. A company like Activision Blizzard simply cannot dedicate resources to a project that has such a small margin for profit; why fleecing us for a few bucks to buy the game again barely made a dent in its economic viability I’m sure. The dogma will stand.
As always, it will come down to us passionate members of the community to maintain - a now broken and inferior - platform like we’ve done for two decades now.
Indeed, Blizzard Activision provided us with an opportunity to revive the scene. The hype was to be harvested by us - the active community - and our failure to do so proves the unviability of our scene.
To make a finer point of it: sending new players into a competitive matchmaking system - into a game known throughout the gaming world as one of the hardest and most competitive esports - arguably the first; without nary a whiff of an in-game tutorial or any sort of context of present day competition, is utterly disgusting. To think that even a community as dedicated as ours could hope to do anything about that is laughable.
Indifference is what we received, by a company that no longer believes in sustainability, rather stripmining the abundant and everlasting consumer base that is ‘the gamer’.
We obviously are the anomaly here, one hardly monetizable. And so we are nary a blip on any middle manager’s radar.
So be it. It’s been grand, Activision Blizzard, to see you swoop in with indifferent arrogance and claim this community and this title as your own. Legally? Sure, of course. But damn you to the depths of the stock market for warping our ‘passion’ into something you think you earned. Again, marketing speak, soulless drivel and happy use of exclamation marks that hide empty eyes.
We give as much of a shit about all this bullshit as you do. So let’s drop the pretence that you are going to deliver anything but the bare minimum - as to still rally some easily swayed consumers who were born after Blizzard Entertainment faded as a household name that existed as a synonym of quality and sustainability, and worthy of respect.
This anger is not about broken promises or unmet lofty goals set for a 15 dollar nostalgia hit (which doesn’t work when the people in question never stopped playing. You can reminisce with rose tinted glasses about a game you played 30 minutes ago, so please stuff that angle).
It is raging in complete bafflement over the lost potential that Activision Blizzard seems to be dancing around.
Embracing, with minor incentive, the Brood War community. Helping build streamers and communities that have been waiting for the return of their developer - that many of us still revered up to this point, even if Blizzard hasn’t existed for many years; Brood war could stand the test of time and remain one of the cornerstones of esports for years to come.
Activision Blizzard has repeatedly shot itself in the foot, missing major developments in competitive gaming for years. There is a complete lack of understanding of their own games and what they are capable of.
These idiotic shareholder spasms result in the loss of DOTA, and then get admitted to with World of Warcraft Classic - dumpstering any value of development presented by their last half a decade of expansions. Overwatch, slowly collapsing under its own weight as esports was brute forced, while still balancing for the casual audience.
Now, even with the higher stakes, potentially reviving the RTS experiment that was Warcraft III, that through its community birthed the MOBA genre, the corporate indifference boldly and brazenly smiles at the hapless passion a fan still dares to have.
All Reforged has done is cement the need for a resistance - even if it only projects our own woe.
It needs to be protracted, for the concept ‘gamer’ as a consumer comes in the wave of a generation and has no memory.
Money was made, and that is all there is. Even without changes, the legacy of Blizzard Entertainment will still take quite a few years to rot, plenty of time to convince yet another generation that the baseline shells of games they produce now are the standard. To aid in maintaining the farce of esports as nothing more than a protracted marketing tool and not an actual sports industry that relies on competitively viable games.
What value could a multi-generational competitive scene possibly have? With a game that requires a minute fraction of maintenance cost and development time to keep it current, with actual professional gamers and community figures active and working today. With the precedent of being an active televised esport for almost 20 years? But I’m sure South-Korea doesn’t count.
Activision Blizzard, you are the owner. You represent the people that made this game, but they are long gone; except for the skeleton crew that has toiled away at these pretty cardboard shells put over your once great achievements.
If this game is a sport, then perhaps one day we can recognise that it now belongs to the players and that you are beholden to us, not the other way around.
Until that day, we will deny you - those of us with the true passion, the emotion that is not simply written off as goodwill.
And yes, this is perhaps screaming to an empty stage. This is energy and anger wasted. But it is for our own sanity that we need to shout sometimes.
There are worse things happening in the world and even with this company, but let this be one fewer cause for anxiety. Let this be a release to all of us who chose to care about something so trivial. How dare we, give a shit about this insignificant game.
Perhaps, because more than a decade and a half ago I was indeed passionate; I dared see esports as a new step into the future and Starcraft would be the first of the evergreen games. Perfection in balance between the mechanical and strategical; under the wing of the legendary Blizzard Entertainment.
But like everything come 2020, all we are left with is cynicism with regards to our betters, our benefactors, our masters.
So now our pitiful resistance begins, as the droplet falls upon the stone. Brood War is ours, forevermore, and it will take more than the bare minimum before we accept your ownership again. This all means as much to us, as little as it does to you.
- Grethsc
 
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Maybe they'll put the remastered skeleton crew to work on reforged.To get it half functional.
First i have heard of this latest blizz con.
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Made me laugh while taking a s*hit and I'm very grateful for that xD
P.s. A little correction, Private servers (Fish) was integrated into Bnet at first but soon after Fish died so it closed up permanently
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On February 01 2020 22:28 AntiHack wrote:
Made me laugh while taking a s*hit and I'm very grateful for that xD
P.s. A little correction, Private servers (Fish) was integrated into Bnet at first but soon after Fish died so it closed up permanently
Well, at least one of us was doing something productive thanks to this.
But yeah, there have been some third party things in the past, - B.net wasn't much more than a IRC client with delusions of grandeur. But I don't see any of that happening with ActiBlizz. Ownership and IP before survivability and viability.
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Northern Ireland24782 Posts
ActiBlizz seems to hate doing sensible, achievable things with its existing properties, for some reason.
They also hate the community and modders attempting to do these things themselves, so we’re shit out of luck with some things.
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United States10107 Posts
I gave up on Blizzard and subsequently uninstalled battlenet and all my games. they wont get my support until they start shaping up. Makes me sad, I love starcraft, but god is there product a heaping pile of shit
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I renounce thee, Satan!
No, but seriously fuck you Blizzard. I will always hate blizzard after that IP fiasco.
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Bisutopia19223 Posts
What makes me sad is I had a very qualified resume and applied to work as a developer on their team and didn't even get a response. I wonder how many other long time contributors to the scene were passed over for in house guys that don't have a passion for the game. Seeing the items you listed, even as a skeleton crew motivated developers would have done a better job working with the community to get as much done as possible.
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I idolized Blizzard for a long time, I wrote my college admission essays about my first time entering World of Warcraft's Undercity, and I wrote another about StarCraft 2.
It makes me feel fucking miserable that they seem to be run wholesale by a pack of scumbags now.
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I don't often post anymore, but Fuck Blizzard is a statement I can wholeheartedly get behind. The disrespectful way in which they treat their IP would be one thing, but it contrasts so damn heavily with how great the company once was.
See y'all in a year or two you sacks of cash.
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I have stopped bying Ubisoft game years ago for reasons really similar to this.
Today i am doing the same thing with Blizzard. I will still play the games i have because i own them but will not give more money to them. I am very glad i still have millions of gold in WoW so i could buy the two latests HS expension with it (meaning no € was spent).
Last one is so crappy and so turned towards bying pack that it was the final nail in the coffin...
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Northern Ireland24782 Posts
On February 02 2020 09:06 BisuDagger wrote:
What makes me sad is I had a very qualified resume and applied to work as a developer on their team and didn't even get a response. I wonder how many other long time contributors to the scene were passed over for in house guys that don't have a passion for the game. Seeing the items you listed, even as a skeleton crew motivated developers would have done a better job working with the community to get as much done as possible.
They were aware of your fandom and didn’t want hidden Easter Eggs of Bisu’s glorious face all over the campaign.
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Northern Ireland24782 Posts
On February 02 2020 12:26 Djzapz wrote:
I don't often post anymore, but Fuck Blizzard is a statement I can wholeheartedly get behind. The disrespectful way in which they treat their IP would be one thing, but it contrasts so damn heavily with how great the company once was.
See y'all in a year or two you sacks of cash.
I wouldn’t mind nearly as much if it was competent greed, but incompetent greed is even more irksome.
These people get paid good money to make terrible decisions like destroy a company’s reputation for gain that isn’t even beneficial in the short-term, never mind afterwards.
In this case competent greed would be making a really good product, but milking the fans. So I dunno a 60 dollar feature complete release with gated skins or something.
Which tbh I’d buy. I have limited gaming time and I’d rather play one of my all-time favourite games in said time. Instead it’s 30 dollars, missing most of the features that interested me and isn’t getting my monies.
Outside of other bad mistakes I think it was a grievous mistake indeed to try pulling this with an older game. This particular fan base naturally skews older, back to a time where games were feature complete upon release, were very attached to the game in particular and first-hand remember Blizzard’s standard of polish in their heyday.
Hence the visceral reaction against it. Pull bullshit with the yearly CoD game day, it’s a demographic that is more used to such practices, has a huge user base and there’s always the next annual release.
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On February 02 2020 22:02 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2020 12:26 Djzapz wrote:
I don't often post anymore, but Fuck Blizzard is a statement I can wholeheartedly get behind. The disrespectful way in which they treat their IP would be one thing, but it contrasts so damn heavily with how great the company once was.
See y'all in a year or two you sacks of cash. I wouldn’t mind nearly as much if it was competent greed, but incompetent greed is even more irksome. These people get paid good money to make terrible decisions like destroy a company’s reputation for gain that isn’t even beneficial in the short-term, never mind afterwards. In this case competent greed would be making a really good product, but milking the fans. So I dunno a 60 dollar feature complete release with gated skins or something. Which tbh I’d buy. I have limited gaming time and I’d rather play one of my all-time favourite games in said time. Instead it’s 30 dollars, missing most of the features that interested me and isn’t getting my monies. Outside of other bad mistakes I think it was a grievous mistake indeed to try pulling this with an older game. This particular fan base naturally skews older, back to a time where games were feature complete upon release, were very attached to the game in particular and first-hand remember Blizzard’s standard of polish in their heyday. Hence the visceral reaction against it. Pull bullshit with the yearly CoD game day, it’s a demographic that is more used to such practices, has a huge user base and there’s always the next annual release.
Incompetent greed is forgivable, it's people begging on facebook groups, idiots opening shitty restaurants, it's trying to pay for shit in exposure. I would add that Blizzard is not only showing incompetent greed, but specifically incompetent greed with IP's that people care about immensely. That's what makes it particularly cynical and horrible. It's one thing to make your own mess, it's a whole other thing to take somebody else's good work and to make a mess out of it.
I always worry that the fans won't have the good sense to punish Blizzard for years of anti-consumer practices which only seem to be ramping up recently. The fandom behind the huge franchises is very strong, I myself struggle with the notion of not buying Diablo 4 when it comes out because the Diablo franchise was such a big part of my childhood. But this time I sure as hell won't preorder it.
I don't understand Activision's reasoning, honestly. Blizzard was a profitable company with a cult following. Activision mostly has cheap content mills with no soul. Why couldn't they coexist? Seems to me like there was probably a lot of money in keeping Blizzard's good name and all the positive associations it used to have.
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I still have hope for Diablo 4.
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All this grandstanding is meaningless without any sort of action plan. Anyone can make demands. It takes effort to make them appealing and viable, which is what you failed to do. This is just one long, wordy whine thread 
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The first few sentences made this thread a bit of a struggle to read; it seems to be colored, as if the brush got dropped into a bucket of heavy emotions and was not restored before the process of painting. I think it's understandable to anyone who can relate to the feeling of deep passion.
This also seems to be a way of looking at a problem and then, of communicating what's seen, that does not support the purpose of doing it. From a bit further away, it looks like trying to hit a solution to the problem at hand, but simultaneously, doing it in a way that damages the medium required for the solution.
Kind of like a patrol boat that, in order to negate the threat of being ignored by its host ship, launches so many SOS flares and messages of distress, that it actually makes it harder for its host ship to take care of it. Ironically, it's rather safe to assume this course of action increases, rather than neutralizes, the very threat it aims to negate.
However, there seems to be more to it. That's just kind of like putting it all on the small patrol boat, a niche community of die-hard fans, as if the focus should be on how it should communicate when it sees more signs towards being ignored.
Personally, I don't know. However, I'm merely stating what, when looking more broadly, appears as a simple fact to me - this thread is full of pretense. I would assume that, for someone non-involved, a single glance gives off a vibe of conflict, with accusations, blame and whining.
I'm not saying that's fair or not fair. I'm saying that's probably how most people would view it. Most people would just not read it after first few sentences, or even just the first; and when it comes to anybody involved, but looking at it from the perspective of the host ship, quite certainly after the first I'd say.
However, I'd say that it also seems really hard to see how the overall view presented in this thread is fair.
For one:
After the release of Starcraft: Remastered a mere 5 months later - all of a sudden we were owed something.
I'm not stating that as a fact but this idea, that we were owed something, looks sketchy to me. I don't think it's reasonable to state we were owed anything.
Starcraft: Remastered happened. I think that's AMAZING. That is absolutely, completely and utterly, AMAZING. It was dead, partically offline, nothing, there was no brood war, even the niche community was mostly dead, there was nothing. And then it came back. That is, still, so, so, so much better.
To argue otherwise, is to part ways with reason because the simple fact is, there's more and there's better Starcraft: Brood War that way. While, yes, it would be amazing if it could go further still, to be overly sad about it seems kinda off, not really in line with reason; it looks a bit melodramatic, to be honest.
The alternative, is to appreciate the fact that it returned at least to some degree, at least for some time. Which, as far as I'm concerned, that's how I see it. To be able to play the game again, to watch streams, to see tournaments again, that's just great.
It appears like the issue is, to some degree, with lighting up big expectations. In the company of passion, expectations like to part ways with reason. This sets the stage for major disappointment and the resulting attitudes that often take the form of blaming and pretenses.
However, the issue may be with the expectations, rather than an entity that did not meet the expectations. If the expectations do not touch the ground, there was no way to meet with them in the first place; and so the issue may be, in part, with those who choose to hold the expectations.
Let's look at it like this, there's a crew which operates a large ship; sailing the ocean of opportunities and threats, it manages and feeds a number of boats which bring it resources. Given that the ocean presents the reality of constant adaptation, with the need to hold onto clear priorities, the boats are fed and managed largely based on first, what resources they bring in return for the costs they require, and second, how non-problematic is it to manage and cooperate with them.
If that is the case, then you can imagine that there are four very general categories of boats, more or less:
1) brings lots of resources for the cost / non-problematic to cooperate with,
2) brings lots of resources for the cost / problematic to cooperate with,
3) doesn't bring a lot of resources for the cost / non-problematic to cooperate with,
4) doesn't bring a lot of resources for the cost / problematic to cooperate with.
Blizz = host ship, we're the boat. Where's the Starcraft: Brood War on this map? Which direction on this scale, is a thread such as this one likely to add to, upwards or downwards?
You could sketch it many different ways, with more, or less categories. It doesn't matter. The general idea is that there's some kind of a position that can be improved or worsened, depending on the actions and choices of the community. I don't know to what degree there are elements missing, or things that would impinge on the accuracy of this way of describing this theme.
However, it does appear to me that this way of looking at problems, and of issuing communication about them, can make a community look like a really whiny, negative, pretentious, entitled, upset-no-matter-what kind of a bunch.
That would generally create the type of impression, should somebody see some opportunity on the horizon, to conclude "Ya, decent buck, wouldn't hurt actually but it's the starcraft folks, big entitled number #1 e-sport whiners, they're gonna whine about it even if it works because it doesn't satisfy their only-not interstellar passion program or whatever, I'd rather not deal with PR'ing and managing all that shit, fuck that".
To me it looks like it's pushing starcraft community towards the "problematic to cooperate with", if it's already not fairly deep in that category. I'm not saying it's fair or not fair. I'm just stating it as what appears to be a reasonable assumption to me.
While I'm making these statements, first, that's just my opinion, second, I don't mean it to be critical but rather, informational.
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TLADT24920 Posts
On February 02 2020 04:45 FlaShFTW wrote:
I gave up on Blizzard and subsequently uninstalled battlenet and all my games. they wont get my support until they start shaping up. Makes me sad, I love starcraft, but god is there product a heaping pile of shit
I knew that you were trying to dodge me, but never would I have imagined that you would go to this extreme to do it, dang...
On February 03 2020 13:59 coffeesession wrote:... For one: Show nested quote +After the release of Starcraft: Remastered a mere 5 months later - all of a sudden we were owed something. I'm not stating that as a fact but this idea, that we were owed something, looks sketchy to me. I don't think it's reasonable to state we were owed anything. Starcraft: Remastered happened. I think that's AMAZING. That is absolutely, completely and utterly, AMAZING. It was dead, partically offline, nothing, there was no brood war, even the niche community was mostly dead, there was nothing. And then it came back. That is, still, so, so, so much better. To argue otherwise, is to part ways with reason because the simple fact is, there's more and there's better Starcraft: Brood War that way. While, yes, it would be amazing if it could go further still, to be overly sad about it seems kinda off, not really in line with reason; it looks a bit melodramatic, to be honest. The alternative, is to appreciate the fact that it returned at least to some degree, at least for some time. Which, as far as I'm concerned, that's how I see it. To be able to play the game again, to watch streams, to see tournaments again, that's just great. It appears like the issue is, to some degree, with lighting up big expectations. In the company of passion, expectations like to part ways with reason. This sets the stage for major disappointment and the resulting attitudes that often take the form of blaming and pretenses. ...
No, he's right. We were owed something. We were owed a working product and it wasn't working at launch. That's a fact that can't be debated unless one has lost control of their faculties. We were promised certain things and Blizzard didn't deliver. There's no reason to sugarcoat it either. When Blizzard first updated the game to 1.18 or w/e, there was a lot of issues too and it even affected ASL3 because the players were forced to play BW on a new patch that had problems with remembering inputs etc... Only after enough of an outcry did the players move back to 1.16.1 but one group got affected by this.
And no it wasn't dead, far from it. We had a very passionate foreign community that kept the game going. Infact, the forums were probably livelier than now. ICCup would still see 300-400 players on good days and you could find games as well. There were also lots of online tournaments going on. For instance, we ran 20 TLCs for 5+ months straight and then the TLS:championship afterwards. There was competition for those who liked it and for those who were casual, there was enough of a draw in other things like DRTL etc... Maybe it wasn't your cup of tea but I take issue with the idea that BW was dead and it was RM that revived it.
Ex: https://tl.net/forum/brood-war/500841-tlc-in-numbers
Yes, these weren't offline but do tell me, how many offline tournaments are we seeing nowadays not run by Rus? Nada, zip, zero, nothing... The Korean scene was also rebuilding itself quite well. We were having bigger and better offline tournaments than years prior. SSL held the flag for years and grew to be so prestigious that even OGN picked it up for 2 seasons then eventually ASL took over and carried the torch moving forward with some really large prize pools, not to mention all the online tournaments like BCTV, Cabbage, LoveTV that ran simultaneously.
Ex: https://tl.net/forum/brood-war/520795-sonics-legacy-ssls-lasting-impact
This idea that RM revived BW becomes even sillier when you consider that it actually really damaged the Korean scene. Tell me, what got revived? Where's the large crowds that are still playing the game? You could argue we got several older players to come back and I'm sure we got more players since fish closed down and b.net servers are working again, but a lot of players that came back left with some of them stating that there wasn't enough tournaments for them to actually play the game again. Wait, what? But I thought BW was saved by RM? We have several online tournaments which again is great, but ?????
KR scene info: https://tl.net/blogs/531010-starcraft-rm-weve-lost-more-than-we-gained?page=2#29
Now, if Blizzard actually did their job right and made it so that RM worked well with most features on day 1, then I could agree with you that RM was a great idea. That RM really helped revive the game since there was a TON of interest when we revealed the news that RM was in the works. Stuff was even trending on facebook and we got a lot of views on TL. People would've stuck around and we could've built up the community. More people, more games etc... But we all know that's not what happened. What happened was that Blizzard saw an opportunity to grab control of the scene and released the game with new bugs, problems with loading menus, the chat bug which made communication impossible, no team MM, really blotchy SD graphics and other issues that escape me. The threads are still here on TL and are proof of this. The same thing is now happening to the WCIII community. Like starcraft, they are taking a beating. Infact, it sounds like it's worse because Blizzard actually tried to balance the game and messed things up with some aspects. In our cases, at least balance was left intact even though there were some blizzard devs who wanted to actually touch it...
This may sound harsh, but this myth that RM revived BW had to be dispelled. If you have any questions, ask away. This old man still remembers some things from half a decade ago when BW was on the rise again.
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Northern Ireland24782 Posts
^
Seems pretty accurate, least from what I’ve read.
The Remaster brought in new players who didn’t stick around en masse, but affected what the community was already using in negative ways.
With Reforged it’s the same but on crack.
Personally it’d be nice if everything was under one roof (mostly) so the players were largely under the same architecture, but with some flexibility when required for the community’s needs factored in. For veterans navigating all this stuff is probably second nature, for new folks it can be a little bit of a time sink.
They’ve singularly failed in that regard.
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On February 03 2020 16:33 BigFan wrote:
The same thing is now happening to the WCIII community. Like starcraft, they are taking a beating. Infact, it sounds like it's worse because Blizzard actually tried to balance the game and messed things up with some aspects. In our cases, at least balance was left intact even though there were some blizzard devs who wanted to actually touch it...
Just a small correction.
Major issues WC3 community is facing is not balance but due to the cluster fuck we got into which is:
- Those who wanted reforged got into a bait-and-switch. What was advertised and they saw and bought was completely different.
- Those who did not care for reforged project, were forced to upgrade and download 30GB of contents that they cannot use without paying
Those who did not care for reforged got their installation directory reset from zero thus losing all downloaded maps and if you were a modder, anything you were working on was lost in the process
- Those who did not care for reforged, just like SC RM, got downgraded graphics, but not just graphics, they lost friend list of classic bnet if they did not have them in the bnet app, they lost the ladder which they had. Heck they had automated tournaments before SC2 was even announced and we lost that.
- A lot of custom games are now banned because they use 3rd party IPs like Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Lord of the rings... etc
- Censorship is on stupid level that you cannot use the word "booty" in game lobby even though a classic blizzard map of 1v1 called "booty bay".
- campaign is bugged that sometimes you get insta lose once you try it
- custom campaigns (which is different than custom games) were also lost in the process
And the list goes on.
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Greth always telling it like it is. Spot on.
It’s because of ActBliz recent shit tempo I’ve finally given them the kick and moved on to other things.
You’ll find me enjoying VR and soon HomeWorld 3. See you fellow old men out there in the gaming universe.
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Hope for d4 I have not. Quality releases I've seen not. Remember release of d3 I do. Blizzard becoming better and better since 2013 it has not.
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United States10107 Posts
On February 03 2020 16:33 BigFan wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2020 04:45 FlaShFTW wrote:
I gave up on Blizzard and subsequently uninstalled battlenet and all my games. they wont get my support until they start shaping up. Makes me sad, I love starcraft, but god is there product a heaping pile of shit I knew that you were trying to dodge me, but never would I have imagined that you would go to this extreme to do it, dang...
I would make an exception to come back just to kick your ass.
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As an SC2 player, I'm just happy my game is where it's at. I'd love to play some Remastered from time to time, but it's still laggy and a chore to deal with. Especially that strange "new old" bnet makes me angry. WC3 looks even worse. Such a shame, I won't buy it after what I've seen. They're trying their hardest to ruin their reputation.
Remember when you could download custom maps on fan sites and share them with your friends? Warcraft 3 was one of the three played games at our LAN events, BW and CS1.6 being the other ones.
I'm just baffled by the choice to force the shitty remaster on classic players.
Wanna know how it's done correctly? Take a look at the AOE2 Definitive Edition.
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On February 03 2020 09:00 Jealous wrote:All this grandstanding is meaningless without any sort of action plan. Anyone can make demands. It takes effort to make them appealing and viable, which is what you failed to do. This is just one long, wordy whine thread
Well, one could argue the futility of an action plan when there has been irreparable damage done and no hope for proper developer support in the future.
The list of demands is already pissing in the wind, as the whole point of the post was to point out that none of these demands will ever be fulfilled, as corporate interest has already moved away - and we as the community have no legal way of forcing the developer to do anything. And a lot of people are brainwashed enough to accept that.
It is important that more people stop thinking of this as a silly game and instead think of it as an industry, and as livelihoods being adversely affected.
Therefore, we need to mount an official protest, and official resistance - as alien as it might seem to some. This needs to be the beginning of a union, or a similar pressure-group. To many Americans or right wing thinkers this is of course beyond farcical, which is equally as sad.
In order for anything to begin, the developer must officially be renounced as being a bad actor, as a malicious organisation that is damaging the scene. We've know this for a while, but it now needs to be an official stance from organisations and personalities involved. But many won't do that, as cutting ties with Blizzard is practically suicide now that RM has once more tethered the community to the umbilical.
On February 03 2020 13:59 coffeesession wrote:
The first few sentences made this thread a bit of a struggle to read; it seems to be colored, as if the brush got dropped into a bucket of heavy emotions and was not restored before the process of painting. I think it's understandable to anyone who can relate to the feeling of deep passion.
I was more going for tired cynicism rather than bleary eyed sadness; simmering rage rather than 'deep passion' - a term I profusely mock in the article itself.
On February 03 2020 13:59 coffeesession wrote:
Boats
You misunderstand. This is not a shot across the bough. This is a final communication until amends can be made. The conflict has been going on long enough. There is no need for debate or damage control or even reconciliation.
The important thing here is the claim that 'the game' - rather the industry that Starcraft has become now belongs equally - if not more - to the community than it does Activision Blizzard. They have the right to distribute the software, but they cannot lay claim to the framework that exists around it. They have now actively tried to sink the ship by their greed and willful incompetence. That, if anything, is a false flag operation - perhaps could even be considered an act of privateering.
Bigfan did a better job than I ever could at answering the rest.
Finally - your defense of a large multi-national corporation. Which is something I find ideologically disturbing.
The basis for quarterly gains influencing a scene that has existed for more than two decades is rampantly idiotic. This is - potentially (if you allow me a moment to be overly optimistic) creating the first generation of evergreen esports. To move away from 'games' and entering the domain of actual digital sports as a generational project.
The amount of investment required from a billion dollar corporation to give the community exactly what it needs and wants is INSIGNIFICANT - Even if the paltry crumbs it would need won't immediately result in direct profit - which currently is the ONLY THING that drives ANY decision at Activision Blizzard.
Many of the problems that RM is facing were SOLVED through third party plugins. And opening the project up to the community again would harvest this passion we speak of as bonafide goodwill labor - as despite the horrendous relationship with the developer - people don't give a rats fucking ass about what the suits at Activision Blizzard want; they'll fix the game out of spite.
As for entitlement - again, this is a word that has lost all meaning in online discussion, especially on places like reddit.
No, this is not entitlement, and I will not allow this to also bring up 'the toxic community'. This is a long extended debate that has now grown cold and sour as the conversation has been one-way for many years now. Demands can only remain civil for so long if all that is received is cold damage-control ridden marketing speak and requests of remaining patient, ignoring the fact that the audience is not in fact 12 years old and has a pretty good grasp on the reality of the situation. Yet here we are, Activision Blizzard acting like game development and corporate motivation is something arcane and wondrous that nobody can fathom.
If we are entitled - demanding a product be restored to the functional state it was in before we were charged money for it (even the graphical improvement can be debated, but let us not digress) - then Activision Blizzard is being patronizing and disingenuous; perhaps (when we are throwing around terms like 'toxic community' it would be fair to include) even guilty of racketeering, which apparently is something you could eventually form a lawsuit over. (Perhaps more for Warcraft Reforged rather than BW, but hey, lets take out the punt-gun for this one shall we?)
Why not look to Occams Razor. If a long loyal community - existing for 2 decades - suddenly becomes riotous and filled with rage - perhaps there is something to it? Perhaps we shouldn't leap to the defense of billion dollar corporation that has a factual history of turning to shit most of what it has produced in the last decade, never really truly delivering on anything they've promised and being responsible for some of the largest PR fuckups in living memory?
Maybe people have a point? But no - let it be entitlement and toxicity when finally people start to snap.
This post is about the end of the one-way dialogue. As we know that these demands will not be met. They will ignore us until we go away - except we've been here longer than they have, and we will continue to do so. The founders of Blizzard are gone, the creators of Starcraft are gone. The community is the rightful heir, the scene they abandoned, is the rightful heir.
And the fact that this is deemed impossible by those with no connection to the history, is the problem here. This is the fight for a precedent - only it has happened plenty of times with other scenes and games. It is Activision Blizzard's corporate inability that even makes this an issue.
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On February 05 2020 00:12 Greth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2020 09:00 Jealous wrote:All this grandstanding is meaningless without any sort of action plan. Anyone can make demands. It takes effort to make them appealing and viable, which is what you failed to do. This is just one long, wordy whine thread Well, one could argue the futility of an action plan when there has been irreparable damage done and no hope for proper developer support in the future. [...] It is important that more people stop thinking of this as a silly game and instead think of it as an industry, and as livelihoods being adversely affected. [...] [...]Demands can only remain civil for so long if all that is received is cold damage-control ridden marketing speak and requests of remaining patient, ignoring the fact that the audience is not in fact 12 years old and has a pretty good grasp on the reality of the situation.
What. I'm really not trying to flame you, but that is just delusional for so many reasons. We, as consumers of the company, have one simple choice: not to buy any Blizzard or Activision product, maybe to try to legally get refunds for bad products. You also have to option to phrase that claim towards other potential buyers and to refute their ill informed claim we'd be "a toxic community" with rational arguments. This is all the options you have, every other attempt described seems unrealistic at best - partially because you simplify cyber sports to just sports, or because you gently sweep away any legal claims a full armed industry has over their intellectual property.
I'm with you when you make a case against the idiocy that is Blizzard nowadays, but if you want to improve the situation you should invest into trying to actually make do with what you have. If you don't, you will just be another case of people described in Chill's signature.
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i recall Grubby having the perfect solution.
"Play while its fun. When you get bored play something else."
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Northern Ireland24782 Posts
On February 05 2020 05:04 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i recall Grubby having the perfect solution.
"Play while its fun. When you get bored play something else."
Which would be a good rule of thumb if the issue was players were bored of Warcraft 3, a pretty terrible one for this specific situation though.
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I would love seeing Blizzard open source SC:R. A lot could be fixed then. By the community for the community.
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On February 05 2020 05:04 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i recall Grubby having the perfect solution.
"Play while its fun. When you get bored play something else."
That's honestly a pretty ridiculous thing to say. If the rules of hockey were somehow suddenly changed by some authority and it made the game boring to play and watch, people wouldn't just quietly move on to other things without making a fuss. People are attached to the game and that's understandable. They would grieve the loss of the game they've invested time and emotion into.
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TLADT24920 Posts
On February 05 2020 05:04 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i recall Grubby having the perfect solution.
"Play while its fun. When you get bored play something else."
It's like you didn't read the blog and posted this lol. This has nothing to do with being boring...
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On February 05 2020 01:09 GeckoXp wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2020 00:12 Greth wrote:On February 03 2020 09:00 Jealous wrote:All this grandstanding is meaningless without any sort of action plan. Anyone can make demands. It takes effort to make them appealing and viable, which is what you failed to do. This is just one long, wordy whine thread Well, one could argue the futility of an action plan when there has been irreparable damage done and no hope for proper developer support in the future. [...] It is important that more people stop thinking of this as a silly game and instead think of it as an industry, and as livelihoods being adversely affected. [...] [...]Demands can only remain civil for so long if all that is received is cold damage-control ridden marketing speak and requests of remaining patient, ignoring the fact that the audience is not in fact 12 years old and has a pretty good grasp on the reality of the situation. What. I'm really not trying to flame you, but that is just delusional for so many reasons. We, as consumers of the company, have one simple choice: not to buy any Blizzard or Activision product, maybe to try to legally get refunds for bad products. You also have to option to phrase that claim towards other potential buyers and to refute their ill informed claim we'd be "a toxic community" with rational arguments. This is all the options you have, every other attempt described seems unrealistic at best - partially because you simplify cyber sports to just sports, or because you gently sweep away any legal claims a full armed industry has over their intellectual property. I'm with you when you make a case against the idiocy that is Blizzard nowadays, but if you want to improve the situation you should invest into trying to actually make do with what you have. If you don't, you will just be another case of people described in Chill's signature.
I'm fully aware of the dichotomy here, and yes, it might come off as yet another toxic rant on the internet.
'I want you to fix the game while you listen to me berate you.'
But that's not the point. The point of my post here is that it's the end of the conversation - or the community's (as far as I am allowed to represent it as a singular voice) monologue against an uncaring corporation that has supplanted the once revered developer.
There is no need for us to ask, nor demand. We are owed. Blizzard Activision is the owner, irrefutably so - and I have no issue with it remaining the distributor of the product.
But I dare imply that they have no ownership over the sport it created, nor the community that has grown into a professional scene, that provides people with income.
This is something the esports and professional gaming industry has to take a long and hard look at. To provide a careful framework for a potential precedent where a community can lay claim on a scene and force a developer to heel.
Yes, a very alien concept. Yet this is what the concept of unions are built around. - A flawed idea in the eyes of many - especially in the USA. So perhaps we have to approach this carefully.
I have not laid out plans - perhaps in a follow up article. This one was simply to plant a flag and draw a line.
It is inconceivable that a developer can come in after almost 2 decades and lay claim upon something they have had no corporate interest in for decades - simply on the basis of owning the IP (which nobody is refuting. They own and distribute. But again, that is a very limit control yet in every discussion it is seen as the ultimate argumentation, it never enters into that discussion of control of property. This is about obligation of maintenance and upholding of viability.)
This is why I mentioned racketeering - an overblown charge perhaps, but something akin to it is happening here. This is a wilful reduction of the product against payment. This is damaging the scene, and arguably losing people money. (Their fault for being involved in gaemz lolz riht?). But this won't even be considered because esports is just entertainment industry.
Even discussing competitive viability of games is looked at through the toxic and entitled lens - the fact that any monetised tournament of Hearthstone is not fundamentally branded as a gambling event with the amount of randomness etc...
Also the ability of developers to make a game simply cease to exist without releasing server software to allow a scene to continue is horrendous. Something Activision Blizzard is now fully capable of doing if they decide to end Battle.net support for Brood War in a few years. There are plenty of precedents in the past of other companies doing so - and Activision was one of the first to kill private servers back with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
So I disagree with saying that 'there are only so many options' as they are all dictated by a corporate reality. It is time for the gaming world - especially the esports world - to start thinking for itself, and start the foundation for precedents against the developer.
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I have reported a guy named "pusydestroyer" on Europe that is almost 24/7 on bnet en channel like 2 months ago for his bad nickname. Blizzard haven't done anything. Seems like even the Report functionality is a failure. and that is something very small but shows how blizzard actually cares for starcraft remastered.
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On February 07 2020 19:27 ffswowsucks wrote:
I have reported a guy named "pusydestroyer" on Europe that is almost 24/7 on bnet en channel like 2 months ago for his bad nickname. Blizzard haven't done anything. Seems like even the Report functionality is a failure. and that is something very small but shows how blizzard actually cares for starcraft remastered.
Why you snitchin'
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Northern Ireland24782 Posts
On February 07 2020 21:58 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2020 19:27 ffswowsucks wrote:
I have reported a guy named "pusydestroyer" on Europe that is almost 24/7 on bnet en channel like 2 months ago for his bad nickname. Blizzard haven't done anything. Seems like even the Report functionality is a failure. and that is something very small but shows how blizzard actually cares for starcraft remastered. Why you snitchin'
Lookin some stitches.
To be fair perhaps this individual is wanting to convey that he is a general destroyer of noobs who is also unfortunately covered in puss.
Or he’s a WC3 human player and loathes destroyers as any sensible person would.
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I, for a fact, know individuals with a LOT worse nicknames active on RM and they've been fine for months.
All this means is RM isn't as popular in China.
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EPT
