On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: I find there is much truth in what tec27 is saying, and that indeed, full autonomy would be the best option for us. However, I also don't know what the road to that would be; or if it is feasible at all -- and on the other hand, a middle-of-the-road solution of having community members in active positions within the Classic Games team seems a lot less far-fetched and actually doable sooner rather than later.
I think in an ideal world we would have 1 central (and autonomous...) place for everyone who wanted to play BW. If we were to try building this on our own, this would mean a fragmentation of the playerbase (which Remastered is doing for the past 2 years for some unbelievably, mind-bogglingly, incomprehensibly stupid reason with it's multi-server approach, too...).
And then also there's still a TON of features left to build in SC:R... But ShieldBattery has even more features missing, no? So if we were to mass migrate to ShieldBattery, sponsor it's development, how many years would it be before it's a full-fledged solution? And how many years would it be for us to consolidate the playerbase over there?
On the other hand, if we start a class-action lawsuit against Blizzard, and get them to "hire" the old Iccup and Fish admins as ladder admins, force a couple of changes and appoint tec27 as a community consultant-overseer for the team, SC:R could be in a close-to-ideal place in about... a year I feel like.
Implementing the Iccup 2v2 system (provisionally, until in however many years they figure out 2v2 matchmaking) shouldn't take too long, greying out the servers and only leaving Korean and USWEST or whatever would solve the gateway consolidation issue, in not an elegant, but nonetheless working manner. Restore the starlog.gg API, fix the cursor bug, the dynamic TR mess, the graphics being ugly, the stupidly slow menus, and we pretty much have a functional server...
Should mostly be doable in a year with proper leadership I think.
Do you really think, Blizzard would ever give any voluntary coder of the community access to the actual source code of SC:R? In my opinion, the main purpose of this whole remastered disaster was to get back total control of the whole e-sports side of BW and getting as much cost covered with the initial release sales of SC:R. Blizzard probably cut the development team as much as possible after the release to save as much money as possible but can still pretend to work on the game (at this speed we might have all the features we had before remastered came out in another 20 years).
The best we can hope for I think, would be for Blizzard to announce the stop of all development for SC:R, so that the community can reverse-engineer the current state of the game and develop its own fixes/tools like it was done in the past without having to worry about new official patches which kill the 3rd party tools.
In my eyes the major things that were done in the past decade by blizzard are as follow:
-> Blizzard found out they can't get money from KeSPA from all the tournaments that were organized, also ICCUP, PGtour, Garena, and everyone else can't be forced to pay -> Blizzard changed ToS for SC2 accordingly and made the game available only in the cloud (no p2p) -> Blizzard hired community experts (if they can be named so) to manage the SC2 eco-system --> The new ToS ensure that money go to Blizzard and the hired community managers will drive the game /if not - the community pillars who organize events need to pay Blizzard (or at least need to go through them) -> Blizzard Remastered BW in order to make their new ToS work in BW.. and left few developers to work on it -> Blizzard sacked the community managers on whom the SC2 was and the new BW ecosystem would be dependant
I'm angry because: - If Blizzard could see a little bit ahead of their noses they'd spend a fraction of the money given as salaries and additional spendings from their 'community experts' to the people who really make this community great and ensure continuity of all the SC community efforts - tournaments, rankings, leagues, and etc.
We do what we do because we love this game, not because they give us money. And we are angry because we got cheated by the company that we have trusted blindly for so many years.
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: On the other hand, if we start a class-action lawsuit against Blizzard.
Does anyone actually think there is a remote chance a class-action lawsuit is even feasible let alone affordable?
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: Should mostly be doable in a year with proper leadership I think.
Project manager in me says with what resourcing, who says what is priority, and what leadership?
I wonder: Isn't it a fraud - to promise features on release and have nothing to show 2+ years later?
Uhhh...no. Promises are not legally binding.
Looks like a false advertisement to me? Idk how it is in the US but in Bulgaria if you enter a promotion or a campaign that is misleading you can sue them.
Here’s what needs to happen, the blizzard servers have to be abandoned and mass migration to a private server has to happen if anyone wants change. Blizzard has shown they do not care and that this is not a priority for them. The sales for SC:R have probably grinded to a halt for them. No new money for them, no reason to provide charity for a game that isn’t a cash cow for them. It’s simple business, SC:R will not get the support it needs because the money is simply not there and the money that has been put into it has only caused more issues than we could of ever imagined, think about how much time the devs spent on that last patch only to have it turn into a disaster. It’s up to the community to develop some new server or switch back to iccup. Until then we’re at blizzards mercy, I will say that at least the 1v1 ladder works on SC:R, everything else tho is not in good shape
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: On the other hand, if we start a class-action lawsuit against Blizzard.
Does anyone actually think there is a remote chance a class-action lawsuit is even feasible let alone affordable?
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: Should mostly be doable in a year with proper leadership I think.
Project manager in me says with what resourcing, who says what is priority, and what leadership?
I wonder: Isn't it a fraud - to promise features on release and have nothing to show 2+ years later?
Uhhh...no. Promises are not legally binding.
Looks like a false advertisement to me? Idk how it is in the US but in Bulgaria if you enter a promotion or a campaign that is misleading you can sue them.
Yeah, you can sue in Hungary as well based on false advertisement.
To be honest a private run server scare me a bit because of how people might get an unfair treatment. Atleast with Blizzard its a product you've paid money for, they have a responsibility and can't ban you on a whim or a feeling. If a admin in a free server does that, what consequence is there? None. Does as he pleases.
I widely agree with Cryoc, and might add another reason Blizzard did this was to get the franchise under their Iron glove to have an executive control over rights again. This is why I was not excited when scr was announced and did not buy into that hype.
For people who have no hung out during the 2012-2017 era, amazing progress in from 3rd parties where made and developed with community effort, which at this point is safe to say had at the time way more manpower, will and dedication, even with less tools than a fully operating multinational corporation as Blizzard. there was soul into it.
iCCup as well gave way more support and interest in things like 2x2, cheaters, bm people, etc. etc.
A good analogy would be Blizzard taking your favourite toy, giving it a good shoeshine, and letting you use it again. But its now once again there toy, and don' t complain if its broken or not as we promised you to be, and don' t make any modifications either. no one will listen.
We have the opportunity to go back to 1.16 aka b4 SC:R and start using MCA launcher and all the other 3rd party tools again when ever we decide to, right? I mean, these things never went away, we just stopped using them in favor of SC:R. What would we lose by doing so? Some polished grafics and the matchmaking. Matchmaking is a loss, sure. Grafics? Not really.
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: On the other hand, if we start a class-action lawsuit against Blizzard.
Does anyone actually think there is a remote chance a class-action lawsuit is even feasible let alone affordable?
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: Should mostly be doable in a year with proper leadership I think.
Project manager in me says with what resourcing, who says what is priority, and what leadership?
I wonder: Isn't it a fraud - to promise features on release and have nothing to show 2+ years later?
I'm curious on this. I hear this a lot, but does anyone have the SOURCE of the exact promises? All I ever see are better remastered graphics and "matchmaking" but not "Team Matchmaking". In which, they did that.
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: On the other hand, if we start a class-action lawsuit against Blizzard.
Does anyone actually think there is a remote chance a class-action lawsuit is even feasible let alone affordable?
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: Should mostly be doable in a year with proper leadership I think.
Project manager in me says with what resourcing, who says what is priority, and what leadership?
I wonder: Isn't it a fraud - to promise features on release and have nothing to show 2+ years later?
I'm curious on this. I hear this a lot, but does anyone have the SOURCE of the exact promises? All I ever see are better remastered graphics and "matchmaking" but not "Team Matchmaking". In which, they did that.
Does anyone have a source for promised 2v2 MM?
it was mentioned in the developer update #3 which was almost 2 years ago
it's also telling that the developer updates have stopped completely and were reduced to the occasional forum post
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: On the other hand, if we start a class-action lawsuit against Blizzard.
Does anyone actually think there is a remote chance a class-action lawsuit is even feasible let alone affordable?
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: Should mostly be doable in a year with proper leadership I think.
Project manager in me says with what resourcing, who says what is priority, and what leadership?
I wonder: Isn't it a fraud - to promise features on release and have nothing to show 2+ years later?
I'm curious on this. I hear this a lot, but does anyone have the SOURCE of the exact promises? All I ever see are better remastered graphics and "matchmaking" but not "Team Matchmaking". In which, they did that.
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: On the other hand, if we start a class-action lawsuit against Blizzard.
Does anyone actually think there is a remote chance a class-action lawsuit is even feasible let alone affordable?
On December 11 2019 06:17 fazek42 wrote: Should mostly be doable in a year with proper leadership I think.
Project manager in me says with what resourcing, who says what is priority, and what leadership?
I wonder: Isn't it a fraud - to promise features on release and have nothing to show 2+ years later?
I'm curious on this. I hear this a lot, but does anyone have the SOURCE of the exact promises? All I ever see are better remastered graphics and "matchmaking" but not "Team Matchmaking". In which, they did that.
it was mentioned in the developer update #3 which was almost 2 years ago
it's also telling that the developer updates have stopped completely and were reduced to the occasional forum post
Not really advertising so I doubt a case could be made for false adverts. It is a promise that's been broken though.
They posted screenshots of the renewed battle.net interface which contained 2v2 3v3 4v4 tabs. They took them down after release though... But those were the screenshots they advertised SC:R with pre-release.
that is the screenshot that blizzard teased in july of 2017 for SC:R. very deceptive for them to imply "2v2" was a specific game mode, hinting that team matchmaking would be available on launch
On December 13 2019 10:48 castleeMg wrote: that is the screenshot that blizzard teased in july of 2017 for SC:R. very deceptive for them to imply "2v2" was a specific game mode, hinting that team matchmaking would be available on launch
I find it strange because New HBR is 2 player map and you can't play 2v2... Maybe they didn't have TOP vs BOTTOM mode and it turned out to be like that or who knows.
On December 13 2019 10:48 castleeMg wrote: that is the screenshot that blizzard teased in july of 2017 for SC:R. very deceptive for them to imply "2v2" was a specific game mode, hinting that team matchmaking would be available on launch
I find it strange because New HBR is 2 player map and you can't play 2v2... Maybe they didn't have TOP vs BOTTOM mode and it turned out to be like that or who knows.
I’m guessing that screenshot was made by some digital marketing team at blizzard that knows nothing about the games or maps.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://imgur.com/Y8dCGqc)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/5Yln5Pt.jpg)
