"Updated Jan 18, 2022: It's now officially confirmed!
Last year, Microsoft completed its purchase of ZeniMax, which included blockbuster studios like Bethesda, id Software, Machine Games, Arkane, and many more. Microsoft is aggressively seeking to expand its first-party IP operations as it looks to bolster the quality of its first-party games lineup, with its Netflix-like Xbox Game Pass service requiring content like never before. And now, it looks like we may have information on the next big deal about to drop for the Xbox platform."
Microsoft will look at the classic games division or whatever and see that its not profitable, and slowly shut it down.
Thats just how I feel though. SC doesn't make them money, why keep it around. But its just speculation, I have no hopes of anything better from Microsoft tho, the same or much worse.
On January 18 2022 23:06 Ikirouta wrote: I feel like this is extremely shit news.
Microsoft will look at the classic games division or whatever and see that its not profitable, and slowly shut it down.
Thats just how I feel though. SC doesn't make them money, why keep it around. But its just speculation, I have no hopes of anything better from Microsoft tho, the same or much worse.
It's already been shut down, they can't really shut it down anymore than it already has been.
Well I don't think any of the SC community particularly enjoyed the lack of care or attention from Blizzard. I'm more of an optimist and don't really buy into the 'better the devil you know' thinking, so I'm treating it as good news Hopefully at very worst the status quo will remain and it's basically a change in ownership name.
Microsoft is obviously not some true to the bone video game company but most of their efforts in that space have been good. They're also indirect owners of Relic Entertainment which publishes the AoE games.
This can mean a lot of great things: actual support for the old titles, new titles in the SC franchise - with a decent possibility of them not being idiotic cash-grabs.
Being stoked for this. Best news since SC:R was announced. The Activision cancer is now through. All rejoice.
On January 18 2022 23:06 Ikirouta wrote: I feel like this is extremely shit news.
Microsoft will look at the classic games division or whatever and see that its not profitable, and slowly shut it down.
Thats just how I feel though. SC doesn't make them money, why keep it around. But its just speculation, I have no hopes of anything better from Microsoft tho, the same or much worse.
It's already been shut down, they can't really shut it down anymore than it already has been.
Yeah I'm not optimistic but looking at it from the angle of "we have hit rock bottom, can only go up from here" then hopefully it's good news.
On January 18 2022 23:06 Ikirouta wrote: I feel like this is extremely shit news.
Microsoft will look at the classic games division or whatever and see that its not profitable, and slowly shut it down.
Thats just how I feel though. SC doesn't make them money, why keep it around. But its just speculation, I have no hopes of anything better from Microsoft tho, the same or much worse.
It's already been shut down, they can't really shut it down anymore than it already has been.
They can close the servers. Also afaik only the SC:R team got shut down, not the entire Classic games division? Or am I wrong about this?
This move is not really a win-now move, that's why there are no executive changes that come with it. This is Microsoft starting early in their pursue of dominance for the metaverse craze that will dominate the games industry in 5-10 years. They got destroyed by Amazon and Google 15 years ago with cloud, so they don't want to be in that spot ever again.
From the perspective of Starcraft they'll probably invest in the games somehow (maybe even try a SCIII at some point) but I seriously doubt it's even a blimp in the overall plan for them, the focus is for sure somewhere else.
Either way, for this community it's still incredible news in the medium to long term.
On January 19 2022 00:28 oxKnu wrote: This move is not really a win-now move, that's why there are no executive changes that come with it. This is Microsoft starting early in their pursue of dominance for the metaverse craze that will dominate the games industry in 5-10 years. They got destroyed by Amazon and Google 15 years ago with cloud, so they don't want to be in that spot ever again.
From the perspective of Starcraft they'll probably invest in the games somehow (maybe even try a SCIII at some point) but I seriously doubt it's even a blimp in the overall plan for them, the focus is for sure somewhere else.
Either way, for this community it's still incredible news in the medium to long term.
On January 19 2022 00:28 oxKnu wrote: This move is not really a win-now move, that's why there are no executive changes that come with it. This is Microsoft starting early in their pursue of dominance for the metaverse craze that will dominate the games industry in 5-10 years. They got destroyed by Amazon and Google 15 years ago with cloud, so they don't want to be in that spot ever again.
From the perspective of Starcraft they'll probably invest in the games somehow (maybe even try a SCIII at some point) but I seriously doubt it's even a blimp in the overall plan for them, the focus is for sure somewhere else.
Either way, for this community it's still incredible news in the medium to long term.
I mean not like it can get any worse than it is atm.
Given that Microsoft is literally the last AAA RTS publisher thats active (Halo Wars 2, AoE 4) I think this is only a good thing for a possible Warcraft 4/Starcraft 3.
As for BW/SC2, at the very least they won't intervene to actively harm the scene like Blizzard has done in the past so thats a plus. Given that they have put a lot of money into backwards compatibility/keeping old games alive, I can't see them shutting down servers any time soon either. Whether they will keep funding SC2 the way Blizzard has is a question mark for sure, but BW should be fine at the very least.
Should also be noted that MS generally isn't as anti fanstuff as say Nintendo. There is a dude bringing back OG Xbox Live without MS shutting him down and there is a fan Halo game being made atm that they said is OK for them. So I doubt they'd do anything against ShieldBattery/private servers should the official servers become hacker infested nightmares.
On January 19 2022 00:28 oxKnu wrote: This move is not really a win-now move, that's why there are no executive changes that come with it. This is Microsoft starting early in their pursue of dominance for the metaverse craze that will dominate the games industry in 5-10 years. They got destroyed by Amazon and Google 15 years ago with cloud, so they don't want to be in that spot ever again.
From the perspective of Starcraft they'll probably invest in the games somehow (maybe even try a SCIII at some point) but I seriously doubt it's even a blimp in the overall plan for them, the focus is for sure somewhere else.
Either way, for this community it's still incredible news in the medium to long term.
On January 18 2022 23:26 oxKnu wrote: This is amazing news.
Microsoft is obviously not some true to the bone video game company but most of their efforts in that space have been good. They're also indirect owners of Relic Entertainment which publishes the AoE games.
This can mean a lot of great things: actual support for the old titles, new titles in the SC franchise - with a decent possibility of them not being idiotic cash-grabs.
Being stoked for this. Best news since SC:R was announced. The Activision cancer is now through. All rejoice.
their support for AOE2 scene is exactly what came to my mind at first
hopefully this is going to be something positive for the BW/WC3 scenes too.
On January 19 2022 00:28 oxKnu wrote: This move is not really a win-now move, that's why there are no executive changes that come with it. This is Microsoft starting early in their pursue of dominance for the metaverse craze that will dominate the games industry in 5-10 years. They got destroyed by Amazon and Google 15 years ago with cloud, so they don't want to be in that spot ever again.
From the perspective of Starcraft they'll probably invest in the games somehow (maybe even try a SCIII at some point) but I seriously doubt it's even a blimp in the overall plan for them, the focus is for sure somewhere else.
Either way, for this community it's still incredible news in the medium to long term.
It's not really that interesting tbh, it's just the latest meaningless buzzword that the tech industry has latched onto as a way to generate press buzz without needing to actually deliver anything. If somebody throws that term around a lot you can basically assume either you should hide your wallet or they have zero clue what they are talking about.
Just saw this and a lot of people seem to hype it up because of AoE2R/4? Idk, Microsoft has been a garbage company for a long time, Activision as well for 2 decades now and the last good game Blizzard released was arguably WC3 (imho). Since Activision only releases shit I'm not interested in and I also haven't bought a blizzard game since D3 vanilla, I suppose it can't really get worse for me personally.
On January 19 2022 00:28 oxKnu wrote: This move is not really a win-now move, that's why there are no executive changes that come with it. This is Microsoft starting early in their pursue of dominance for the metaverse craze that will dominate the games industry in 5-10 years. They got destroyed by Amazon and Google 15 years ago with cloud, so they don't want to be in that spot ever again.
From the perspective of Starcraft they'll probably invest in the games somehow (maybe even try a SCIII at some point) but I seriously doubt it's even a blimp in the overall plan for them, the focus is for sure somewhere else.
Either way, for this community it's still incredible news in the medium to long term.
It's not really that interesting tbh, it's just the latest meaningless buzzword that the tech industry has latched onto as a way to generate press buzz without needing to actually deliver anything. If somebody throws that term around a lot you can basically assume either you should hide your wallet or they have zero clue what they are talking about.
Lmao, Activison now focusing on making more Call of duties ? This reminds me about some stupid documentary about Ceos of Blizzard, Activison and co. meeting at some multibillion conferences of how they milk the cows. Activisons do they really think that people will keep buying worse version of remakes of their crown the la crown ? I even heard some starcraft players changing to to call of duty because it is more exciting xd
On January 19 2022 05:19 Miragee wrote: Just saw this and a lot of people seem to hype it up because of AoE2R/4? Idk, Microsoft has been a garbage company for a long time, Activision as well for 2 decades now and the last good game Blizzard released was arguably WC3 (imho). Since Activision only releases shit I'm not interested in and I also haven't bought a blizzard game since D3 vanilla, I suppose it can't really get worse for me personally.
On January 19 2022 00:28 oxKnu wrote: This move is not really a win-now move, that's why there are no executive changes that come with it. This is Microsoft starting early in their pursue of dominance for the metaverse craze that will dominate the games industry in 5-10 years. They got destroyed by Amazon and Google 15 years ago with cloud, so they don't want to be in that spot ever again.
From the perspective of Starcraft they'll probably invest in the games somehow (maybe even try a SCIII at some point) but I seriously doubt it's even a blimp in the overall plan for them, the focus is for sure somewhere else.
Either way, for this community it's still incredible news in the medium to long term.
It's not really that interesting tbh, it's just the latest meaningless buzzword that the tech industry has latched onto as a way to generate press buzz without needing to actually deliver anything. If somebody throws that term around a lot you can basically assume either you should hide your wallet or they have zero clue what they are talking about.
Just like NFTs...
ya i'd count wow vanilla in the good games for sure though
I feel like they aren't super concerned with shutting down unprofitable ventures, re: BW specifically if anything this is good because MS has been big on keeping as many OG Xbox games as they can working in emulated versions over the past while.
Hey Microsoft Dont drop the ball now.You finally having in your hands a good RTS way better looking and more playable than your 2022 AOE IV. Funny enough it was made in 1998.All you need is put a team to remake all features.A better battle net. 2x2 3x4 4v4 matchmaking.Better servers.( you already owning azure so..) Make content to buy. Skins. MInerals colors.I want my minerals to be purple.More console skins. If you want to make a full remake im not really sure about that. I saw your most recent product. AOE IV . Lets say SC still looking better. Thanks!
On January 18 2022 23:06 Ikirouta wrote: I feel like this is extremely shit news.
Microsoft will look at the classic games division or whatever and see that its not profitable, and slowly shut it down.
Thats just how I feel though. SC doesn't make them money, why keep it around. But its just speculation, I have no hopes of anything better from Microsoft tho, the same or much worse.
It's already been shut down, they can't really shut it down anymore than it already has been.
They can close the servers. Also afaik only the SC:R team got shut down, not the entire Classic games division? Or am I wrong about this?
Unless they also shut down the tens of thousands of Koreans who play the game it's going to accomplish very little. People would just move to shieldbattery or (more likely) some new Korean platform. I think the worst thing they could do is to release a new balance patch and break the community.
Also I'm pretty sure the entire classic games team was disbanded after WC3R.
Overall at this point literally ANYTHING happening to Actiblizz is good for BW. There's like 1 dev currently operating on it right now lol so I welcome this.
Would be nice if Afreeca didn’t have to pay broadcasting fees for SC1 or 2 anymore. Other then that, there definitely is a bit that can be worrisome in this trade.
guess that doesn't matter too much when you're shitting money, let's see if this gets past the regulators tho.. i'm anxiously awaiting to wide walk as a zealot in VR world!!
On January 19 2022 09:50 Essbee wrote: I think they can finally solve BW's balance by only allowing you to pick protoss i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶x̶b̶o̶x̶.̶
I feel good about it since Microsoft resurrected AoE2/AoE3 & helped to make AoE4. They have some "liking" for RTS. I think it can't get any worse than what we have now (only shutting down the servers is worse).
3 threads discussing the acquisition and im still struggling to see how the fuck they came up with a $70b valuation for this dogshit company. like seriously...what the fuck happened there?
On January 19 2022 17:42 evilfatsh1t wrote: 3 threads discussing the acquisition and im still struggling to see how the fuck they came up with a $70b valuation for this dogshit company. like seriously...what the fuck happened there?
They have well paid people figuring that one out, don't worry about it.
On January 18 2022 23:06 Ikirouta wrote: I feel like this is extremely shit news.
Microsoft will look at the classic games division or whatever and see that its not profitable, and slowly shut it down.
Thats just how I feel though. SC doesn't make them money, why keep it around. But its just speculation, I have no hopes of anything better from Microsoft tho, the same or much worse.
It's already been shut down, they can't really shut it down anymore than it already has been.
They can close the servers. Also afaik only the SC:R team got shut down, not the entire Classic games division? Or am I wrong about this?
They wont close the severs lol. Game is still pretty damn active more active than most games.
On January 19 2022 17:37 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: $68.7 billion is $69 billion rounded up... NOT 70 like the title says... I love razersuke but u fucked that one up BIG TIME!
The first headline I read quoted 70B, something like this:
How are we defining better or worse? What are concrete things that MS is speculated to do or not do with respect to SC? It would be more helpful to spell out the implications concretely.
I am quite ignorant about this topic myself. But using my own common sense, I'd say all signs point to little or no change in terms of future investments by MS into SC (e.g., providing prize pools for old or new events, preventing or fixing bugs/glitches, updating ladder map pool in time, advertising SC to increase player base, implementing new balancing patches, developing SC3 or another SC1 expansion, etc.).
This game simply does not offer much return on investments from a corporate point of view. There are business and competitive pressures, which have dramatically increased during the pandemic period, guiding the decisions of corporations such as MS. The needs, expectations and demands of a small consumer base such as ours are in many ways irrelevant, unimportant and unprofitable from a corporate point of view. Microsoft is no different in my opinion. Add to that the fact that the small player base of SC has continued to play the game for many years now with little or no expectations from Blizzard/Activision. The game has been, is and will continue to be "good enough" from the perspective of past and current owners of SC. Investing more corporate resources and time into enhancing the experience of the game constitutes diminishing returns and I dare say it would do nothing to increase the player base and company revenues in any significant way. This is precisely why it has not been done before.
This is partly because even if SC had all the fancy updates/changes that the current small player base demands or desires, the game as a whole would still not have much mass appeal to attract more players and generate more revenue. It is a very old game. It is a very difficult and frustrating game to play, especially compared to the playability and short learning curve of popular games today. It has problems at the software level, both for playing and making maps. And the list goes on.
I don't know. It seems to me that a very strong current of impractical, idealistic, and naive thinking characterizes the SC community or gamers.
On January 20 2022 02:44 ox.tQ wrote: How are we defining better or worse? What are concrete things that MS is speculated to do or not do with respect to SC? It would be more helpful to spell out the implications concretely.
I am quite ignorant about this topic myself. But using my own common sense, I'd say all signs point to little or no change in terms of future investments by MS into SC (e.g., providing prize pools for old or new events, preventing or fixing bugs/glitches, updating ladder map pool in time, advertising SC to increase player base, implementing new balancing patches, developing SC3 or another SC1 expansion, etc.).
This game simply does not offer much return on investments from a corporate point of view. There are business and competitive pressures, which have dramatically increased during the pandemic period, guiding the decisions of corporations such as MS. The needs, expectations and demands of a small consumer base such as ours are in many ways irrelevant, unimportant and unprofitable from a corporate point of view. Microsoft is no different in my opinion. Add to that the fact that the small player base of SC has continued to play the game for many years now with little or no expectations from Blizzard/Activision. The game has been, is and will continue to be "good enough" from the perspective of past and current owners of SC. Investing more corporate resources and time into enhancing the experience of the game constitutes diminishing returns and I dare say it would do nothing to increase the player base and company revenues in any significant way. This is precisely why it has not been done before.
This is partly because even if SC had all the fancy updates/changes that the current small player base demands or desires, the game as a whole would still not have much mass appeal to attract more players and generate more revenue. It is a very old game. It is a very difficult and frustrating game to play, especially compared to the playability and short learning curve of popular games today. It has problems at the software level, both for playing and making maps. And the list goes on.
I don't know. It seems to me that a very strong current of impractical, idealistic, and naive thinking characterizes the SC community or gamers.
Let me help you with a quote that might clear the picture for you:
Some people are like clouds. When they go away, it's a brighter day.
The perfect description of what this acquisition is all about.
I'm personally not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, things weren't going to get any worse, but you also knew what you got. With Microsoft, it's hard to see what they'll do. I have a hard time believing that they'll shut down the servers or make things worse, but as mentioned, I also have a hard time seeing them roll out new updates or features for MP etc... It's possible that the plan is to make SCIII down the line, but that would be extremely difficult to attempt imo. Guess we'll have to wait and see what this means.
i've spent the entire day trying to figure out if this is good or bad news. i guess it.. uh.. can't get any worse than it is now? it's a good thing? maybe? if there's a starcraft 3, that'll be years from now. so until then the big question is whether or not they'll assign a team to either starcraft game
if they overhaul sc2 multiplayer i'd give it a shot, but for now i am sticking to brood war.
On January 19 2022 17:42 evilfatsh1t wrote: 3 threads discussing the acquisition and im still struggling to see how the fuck they came up with a $70b valuation for this dogshit company. like seriously...what the fuck happened there?
COD/Candy Crush/WoW are cash cows. Candy crush generated like $1b revenue a year for the past 2 years.
I wouldn't put any hopes in this suddenly meaning we're going to get SC3. Even if it were to happen, it would be 5-6 years away. Remember the deal isn't even closed yet, and unless they've managed to run a very tight ship up until now, no one's even started working on SC3 before the acquisition.
This acquisition isn't going to mean that your favourite game title is suddenly going to get massive updates, and everything is now blue skyes. The reason people think this is a good thing is mainly to do with the recent controversier surrounding Activison-Blizzard, and their rather bonkers business decisions in regards to their recent releases, all which are likely to be cleaned up a great deal under Microsoft, who cares a lot more about their image as a company.
For us end-users, I'm not going to say things like W3:R couldn't have been an equal failure under Microsoft, but things like actively fucking over their old userbase is a lot less likely to have happened.
On January 20 2022 20:01 art_of_turtle wrote: A sure fire way to kill a game and community is to make it pay to play, like adding it to their Microsoft game pass for $9.99 a month.
Your away that game pass isn't the only way to play right? Some people want to buy individual games for $50-60. Some people want to pay $9.99 a month to play any of 100+ games.
Microsoft, since Nadella's tenure has greatly changed in their community approach as opposed to the very closed-in and proprietary Microsoft way of the 90s. They are part of open source now, and they do have open source projects and initiatives that they actively support.
And it's a software company at its core. They have FAR more resources than Activision, Blizzard ever had or could ever dream of having at any point in the past. This is the company that represents the nr.1 operating system target for the vast majority of the video game developers out there.
In essence what this means: If they want to do something, they fucking sure as hell have all the tools to do it.
And from a reputation perspective, this is a giant that is fighting with Apple, Tesla and co in the stock market, they can't afford debacles and the moronic chaos that Activision Blizzard was. That alone is a clear win in itself.
Now for BW, this probably won't mean much in the short term, however I do feel they'll make a positive decision for this game in the future. Unfortunately I don't think it'll be any of the very rosey and optimistic things mentioned in this thread but it could be one of these few:
1. Fully open-sourcing the BW codebase. They'll want to keep their Starcraft franchise rights and so on but open sourcing the code and basically giving it away is entirely possible. From there on, the sky is the limit. Plenty of talented developers that would love to tinker with it (and advance it).
2. Greatly improving the infrastructure behind this game. Blizzard was cheaping out on keeping the user data on GCP for Remastered and judging by how poor any of that stuff is being represented in-game it probably can be improved by a migration to Azure (which MS owns).
3. Adopting everything BW into a consolidated team paid by Microsoft. They have all the RTS games at this point, so if they want to keep working on the game they can have the best paid team working on it. And from the AoE2 perspective, they have a far better idea on how to manage that kind of game than Activision ever did.
All in all, I'm very optimistic about any of this really. At the very core, I am close to 100% sure that there is hardly any way that this acquisition is not a great move forward for Starcraft.
On January 19 2022 17:42 evilfatsh1t wrote: 3 threads discussing the acquisition and im still struggling to see how the fuck they came up with a $70b valuation for this dogshit company. like seriously...what the fuck happened there?
My guess is that is the calculated cost to buy shares at a price that at least 50% of shareholders will be willing to part their shares for. That's how it generally works. But I still don't how how that would be $69billion. That seems to be greatly overvalued.
Well you don't invest for current value, you invest for what it might be worth down the line. A buy-out is also generally much higher than the current marked value of the company, and it's almost always seen as hitting the jackpot for the shareholders.
As someone else said, there are very smart people doing these calculations. We don't have the skill nor the information they have...
It basically means that Microsoft thinks that buying Activision now is a profitable investment. Meaning they can easily cover the costs of the investment in the long run. (and here I don't think it has to be a long-term investment anyways, because of the other points I've made throughout the thread).
Microsoft will be valuated at around 3 trillion dollars in a couple of years I think, so this is peanuts.
On January 20 2022 23:09 oxKnu wrote: They are part of open source now, and they do have open source projects and initiatives that they actively support.
Underestimate of the year. Microsoft not only supports open source project, they are the world largest Open Source company.
On January 20 2022 20:01 art_of_turtle wrote: A sure fire way to kill a game and community is to make it pay to play, like adding it to their Microsoft game pass for $9.99 a month.
Your away that game pass isn't the only way to play right? Some people want to buy individual games for $50-60. Some people want to pay $9.99 a month to play any of 100+ games.
Both can co-exist.
Did not know that. As long as I don't have to pay for this game again I guess it could be neutral.
On January 20 2022 20:01 art_of_turtle wrote: A sure fire way to kill a game and community is to make it pay to play, like adding it to their Microsoft game pass for $9.99 a month.
Your away that game pass isn't the only way to play right? Some people want to buy individual games for $50-60. Some people want to pay $9.99 a month to play any of 100+ games.
Both can co-exist.
Did not know that. As long as I don't have to pay for this game again I guess it could be neutral.
lol when remastered came out i remember people on the bnet forums pmuch rioting over having to pay for the game again.
"i bought this game in 1997, why should i have to pay for it again? fuck you blizzard" "i got this game at a flea market in 2007, paywalling ladder is bullshit"
but my absolute favorite was "i've pirated this game for twenty years. why the fuck do i have to pay for it now?"
To everyone who said things can't get worse, I disagree with such reasoning. My experience tells me it can always get worse, independently of how bad the current situation is. As far as I'm concerned this could be the beginning of a complete shutdown. Microsoft only cares about profits. I'll just wait and see what happens, I have distrust. Having cancer doesn't prevent getting AIDS.
On January 20 2022 23:09 oxKnu wrote: Microsoft, since Nadella's tenure has greatly changed in their community approach as opposed to the very closed-in and proprietary Microsoft way of the 90s. They are part of open source now, and they do have open source projects and initiatives that they actively support.
And it's a software company at its core. They have FAR more resources than Activision, Blizzard ever had or could ever dream of having at any point in the past. This is the company that represents the nr.1 operating system target for the vast majority of the video game developers out there.
In essence what this means: If they want to do something, they fucking sure as hell have all the tools to do it.
And from a reputation perspective, this is a giant that is fighting with Apple, Tesla and co in the stock market, they can't afford debacles and the moronic chaos that Activision Blizzard was. That alone is a clear win in itself.
Now for BW, this probably won't mean much in the short term, however I do feel they'll make a positive decision for this game in the future. Unfortunately I don't think it'll be any of the very rosey and optimistic things mentioned in this thread but it could be one of these few:
1. Fully open-sourcing the BW codebase. They'll want to keep their Starcraft franchise rights and so on but open sourcing the code and basically giving it away is entirely possible. From there on, the sky is the limit. Plenty of talented developers that would love to tinker with it (and advance it).
2. Greatly improving the infrastructure behind this game. Blizzard was cheaping out on keeping the user data on GCP for Remastered and judging by how poor any of that stuff is being represented in-game it probably can be improved by a migration to Azure (which MS owns).
3. Adopting everything BW into a consolidated team paid by Microsoft. They have all the RTS games at this point, so if they want to keep working on the game they can have the best paid team working on it. And from the AoE2 perspective, they have a far better idea on how to manage that kind of game than Activision ever did.
All in all, I'm very optimistic about any of this really. At the very core, I am close to 100% sure that there is hardly any way that this acquisition is not a great move forward for Starcraft.
It is generally extremely hard to open source old codebases, as they tend to contain a lot of proprietary code that you do not have the licenses to release. SC:R has not only this problem, but also contains a *ton* of modern shared Blizzard code now, for things like talking to their services, reporting telemetry, handling netcode, graphics, etc. It's extremely unlikely they're going to want to open source the code that runs e.g. Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, so I think it's extremely unlikely they want to open source SC:R at all. Pretty much a pipe dream considering how much work it would be to do in the first place.
There are already ways of integrating with the game if you desire to do so, ShieldBattery does it. It's not as easy as reading a codebase but it also keeps the riffraff from finding the low hanging exploits (e.g. hacks). If anything, open sourcing tends to make a lot of these things *harder*, because companies often do so with licenses that are more restrictive than what is allowed via reverse engineering, and it becomes very hard to argue that you haven't used their source code (or derivative material of it) in development.
As far as #2 (moving to Azure), if you think this would make a positive difference you really have no idea what you're talking about tbh. Their choice of cloud platform has extremely little to do with any of the negative aspects you're talking about, this is just tech fanboy-ism without real understanding.
If you want to be optimistic, sure, be optimistic. I honestly think at this point nobody can have any clue whether this will be a good, bad, or neutral thing for BW. I can't imagine that "what are we going to do with SC:R?" was a front-of-mind question when considering this acquisition given that Blizzard has approximately 1 developer shared between SC2, WC3:R, and SC:R at this point. Let's just avoid giving people hope for stuff that is clearly not going to happen, and also avoid clamoring for Microsoft to do things that actually harms the community's current efforts and BW's long-term vitality.
On January 20 2022 23:09 oxKnu wrote: Microsoft, since Nadella's tenure has greatly changed in their community approach as opposed to the very closed-in and proprietary Microsoft way of the 90s. They are part of open source now, and they do have open source projects and initiatives that they actively support.
And it's a software company at its core. They have FAR more resources than Activision, Blizzard ever had or could ever dream of having at any point in the past. This is the company that represents the nr.1 operating system target for the vast majority of the video game developers out there.
In essence what this means: If they want to do something, they fucking sure as hell have all the tools to do it.
And from a reputation perspective, this is a giant that is fighting with Apple, Tesla and co in the stock market, they can't afford debacles and the moronic chaos that Activision Blizzard was. That alone is a clear win in itself.
Now for BW, this probably won't mean much in the short term, however I do feel they'll make a positive decision for this game in the future. Unfortunately I don't think it'll be any of the very rosey and optimistic things mentioned in this thread but it could be one of these few:
1. Fully open-sourcing the BW codebase. They'll want to keep their Starcraft franchise rights and so on but open sourcing the code and basically giving it away is entirely possible. From there on, the sky is the limit. Plenty of talented developers that would love to tinker with it (and advance it).
2. Greatly improving the infrastructure behind this game. Blizzard was cheaping out on keeping the user data on GCP for Remastered and judging by how poor any of that stuff is being represented in-game it probably can be improved by a migration to Azure (which MS owns).
3. Adopting everything BW into a consolidated team paid by Microsoft. They have all the RTS games at this point, so if they want to keep working on the game they can have the best paid team working on it. And from the AoE2 perspective, they have a far better idea on how to manage that kind of game than Activision ever did.
All in all, I'm very optimistic about any of this really. At the very core, I am close to 100% sure that there is hardly any way that this acquisition is not a great move forward for Starcraft.
Let's just avoid giving people hope for stuff that is clearly not going to happen, and also avoid clamoring for Microsoft to do things that actually harms the community's current efforts and BW's long-term vitality.
Clearly not going to happen? So it seems like you do have a very tangible idea on what Microsoft wants to do with the Blizzard IPs. Please do share that with the people here, like you can probably see everyone is on their toes waiting for the details...
Your work with Shield Battery has been amazing, however proper development from the publisher (ofc given that it's not at the sub-standard of Activsion that we've been accustomed to since Remastered launch) is vastly superior to the SB approach.
I don't expect you to agree but the statements that I've quoted here are ridiculous at best, not even calling them speculative is worth it.
On January 20 2022 23:09 oxKnu wrote: Microsoft, since Nadella's tenure has greatly changed in their community approach as opposed to the very closed-in and proprietary Microsoft way of the 90s. They are part of open source now, and they do have open source projects and initiatives that they actively support.
And it's a software company at its core. They have FAR more resources than Activision, Blizzard ever had or could ever dream of having at any point in the past. This is the company that represents the nr.1 operating system target for the vast majority of the video game developers out there.
In essence what this means: If they want to do something, they fucking sure as hell have all the tools to do it.
And from a reputation perspective, this is a giant that is fighting with Apple, Tesla and co in the stock market, they can't afford debacles and the moronic chaos that Activision Blizzard was. That alone is a clear win in itself.
Now for BW, this probably won't mean much in the short term, however I do feel they'll make a positive decision for this game in the future. Unfortunately I don't think it'll be any of the very rosey and optimistic things mentioned in this thread but it could be one of these few:
1. Fully open-sourcing the BW codebase. They'll want to keep their Starcraft franchise rights and so on but open sourcing the code and basically giving it away is entirely possible. From there on, the sky is the limit. Plenty of talented developers that would love to tinker with it (and advance it).
2. Greatly improving the infrastructure behind this game. Blizzard was cheaping out on keeping the user data on GCP for Remastered and judging by how poor any of that stuff is being represented in-game it probably can be improved by a migration to Azure (which MS owns).
3. Adopting everything BW into a consolidated team paid by Microsoft. They have all the RTS games at this point, so if they want to keep working on the game they can have the best paid team working on it. And from the AoE2 perspective, they have a far better idea on how to manage that kind of game than Activision ever did.
All in all, I'm very optimistic about any of this really. At the very core, I am close to 100% sure that there is hardly any way that this acquisition is not a great move forward for Starcraft.
Let's just avoid giving people hope for stuff that is clearly not going to happen, and also avoid clamoring for Microsoft to do things that actually harms the community's current efforts and BW's long-term vitality.
Clearly not going to happen? So it seems like you do have a very tangible idea on what Microsoft wants to do with the Blizzard IPs. Please do share that with the people here, like you can probably see everyone is on their toes waiting for the details...
Your work with Shield Battery has been amazing, however proper development from the publisher (ofc given that it's not at the sub-standard of Activsion that we've been accustomed to since Remastered launch) is vastly superior to the SB approach.
In the part of my post that you snipped out I told you exactly why it was extremely unlikely that they would open source the code. If you don't like that reasoning because it doesn't coincide with what you'd like to happen, I'm not really sure what to tell you, it is very much the reality of the situation.
I don't expect you to agree but the statements that I've quoted here are ridiculous at best, not even calling them speculative is worth it.
I honestly have no idea what this sentence is even trying to say (the only thing you quoted was a part of my post?) so I'm not sure how you would like me to respond to it.
The Microsoft earnings call was today and there was a lot of talk about the metaverse. Higher-ups implying that it might be the next big wave of the Internet going forward.
In line with what I was expecting and I think work on something big might start as soon as Q2 even.
Unfortunately, I don't think anything related to SC, unless they try to spin Heroes of The Storm somehow for that medium. If I had to bet, I would go with WoW.
On January 19 2022 17:37 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: $68.7 billion is $69 billion rounded up... NOT 70 like the title says... I love razersuke but u fucked that one up BIG TIME!
The first headline I read quoted 70B, something like this:
On January 21 2022 16:50 Headgehog wrote: Lets hope SC3 is going to be a reality, and we'll control the game by voice/mic or maybe VR set, other than mouse & keyboard, imagine giving orders/actions with a voice in SC3, and how the APM will be calculated then
Hello and if I would also like to be an S rank, what am I supposed to do concretely? I would also like to participate in the contest, because I also really like games. One of my friends told me that I can easily find the clothes for the tournament on this web platform, is it true?
On August 14 2022 22:02 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: How can MS make it better when they delibaretely make Windows worse with every release?
I expect SC 3 by 2030 optimized for dumbphones.
There are a few options left to run it worse than Blizz and ActiBlizz.
Shutting down ladder for example.
Maybe just the final push every1 needs to get to ShieldBattery.
They won't make it better dude, wheres the money in it. It's gonna be something like xbox exclusives and maybe they'll pair the xbox monthly sub with WoW or something so you can play it on your xbox lol. Get all the blizztards hooked on the xbox store.
On August 14 2022 22:02 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: How can MS make it better when they delibaretely make Windows worse with every release?
I do find it hilarious how Windows is somehow worse with every release, yet no one is installing old versions of windows. If every version is worse, why aren't you using W98?
You could say every new version of windows is worse AT release, which is definitively true, but they are very good at fixing up their problems over time
On August 14 2022 22:02 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: How can MS make it better when they delibaretely make Windows worse with every release?
I do find it hilarious how Windows is somehow worse with every release, yet no one is installing old versions of windows. If every version is worse, why aren't you using W98?
Ever heard of security breaches that don't get fixed anymore because microsoft doesn't support those old operating systems anymore? To me that sounds like a pretty strong reason to move on regardless of whether the new release is better or worse... And yes, the new windows versions do improve on some aspects everytime. I think the point is that they also make a significant portion of features worse than in the previous iteration...
On August 14 2022 22:02 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: How can MS make it better when they delibaretely make Windows worse with every release?
I do find it hilarious how Windows is somehow worse with every release, yet no one is installing old versions of windows. If every version is worse, why aren't you using W98?
Ever heard of security breaches that don't get fixed anymore because microsoft doesn't support those old operating systems anymore? To me that sounds like a pretty strong reason to move on regardless of whether the new release is better or worse... And yes, the new windows versions do improve on some aspects everytime. I think the point is that they also make a significant portion of features worse than in the previous iteration...
I'm not sure there is a single feature in win10 that is worse than win98. Security is just one of many, many things that have improved over time. Does anyone even remember how fucked up drivers were back then? If anyone still has some kind of nostalgia for earlier windows versions, I implore you to install it and see how well you fare. They were good for their times, but by modern standards they're absolute shitboxes
Win11 sure have some things that are worse than 10, but it's also still early. I recon in half a year's time I'll probably make the switch and never look back, like literally every other release
On August 14 2022 22:02 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: How can MS make it better when they delibaretely make Windows worse with every release?
I do find it hilarious how Windows is somehow worse with every release, yet no one is installing old versions of windows. If every version is worse, why aren't you using W98?
You could say every new version of windows is worse AT release, which is definitively true, but they are very good at fixing up their problems over time
Cuz old versions are incompatible with newer version of Windows... I requested 7 to be reinstalled on my PC and got 10 instead and I hate it... Just cuz it has some better specs that does not mean it's a lean machine like the older versions and don't even get me started on the bloatware and bullshitware that wants me sign in every MS BS service there is... I hate it.
On August 14 2022 22:02 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: How can MS make it better when they delibaretely make Windows worse with every release?
I expect SC 3 by 2030 optimized for dumbphones.
There are a few options left to run it worse than Blizz and ActiBlizz.
Shutting down ladder for example.
Maybe just the final push every1 needs to get to ShieldBattery.
They won't make it better dude, wheres the money in it. It's gonna be something like xbox exclusives and maybe they'll pair the xbox monthly sub with WoW or something so you can play it on your xbox lol. Get all the blizztards hooked on the xbox store.
Oh I forgot about the box... Not a box guy here... Ur right!
I'm also forced into using win10, and it keeps bugging me to install windows 11 every time i boot up which is incredibly annoying. I wanted windows 7 installed, that was a great OS, but they couldn't sell me that on this pc.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.redd.it/4c9g4ofm6ic81.jpg)
Hopefully at very worst the status quo will remain and it's basically a change in ownership name.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/QCcAzj0.png)
![[image loading]](https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2022/01/Denali_1920x1080_07.jpg)
