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Patrick Wyatt, co-founder of ArenaNet, COO of the company developing TERA, and one of the early programmers at Blizzard wrote a great post (first of a series) on the early days of Blizzard and the development of Warcraft I. There's a lot of cool tidbits on the inspiration and design of Warcraft I, the origin of the name "Blizzard", and the old guard at Blizzard (he worked on WCI, WCII, and Diablo I). He also discusses why pre-SC2 Blizzard RTS games had limited unit selection, including this key quote about Warcraft I:
"we decided to allow players to select only four units at a time based on the idea that users would be required to pay attention to their tactical deployments rather than simply gathering a mob and sending them into the fray all at once."
One could argue that he and the early team at Blizzard are the origin of the debate on this now controversial topic. While the consensus was that single unit selection a la Dune was too limited, the team settled on limited selection even though Patrick had coded for unlimited selection at first. It's interesting to note that the first game to have unlimited selection was the original Command and Conquer (he notes that he may write a post on the consequences of this decision).
Finally, there are some details on the key people at early Blizzard, including current CEO Mike Morhaime, who wrote the original modem code for multiplayer in WCI.
http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-making-of-warcraft-part-1
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Super interesting post.
People saying that unit selection in BW was capped to 12 only for technical reasons and not by design can shut their mouth now.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
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Thanks for sharing this is sure to be quite interesting.
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On July 26 2012 13:26 trifecta wrote:
"we decided to allow players to select only four units at a time based on the idea that users would be required to pay attention to their tactical deployments rather than simply gathering a mob and sending them into the fray all at once."
Hah! see I told you guys [edit: that it was a design decision not a limitation] but you wouldn't listen! now I have proof!
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That was really interesting, can't wait for the next part
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On July 26 2012 13:38 endy wrote:
Super interesting post.
People saying that unit selection in BW was capped to 12 only for technical reasons and not by design can shut their mouth now.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
Of course it was a decision on the design team. Aoe 2 had a huge unit selection range and was in the same era. Very interesting read though.
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On July 26 2012 14:18 Infernal_dream wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2012 13:38 endy wrote:
Super interesting post.
People saying that unit selection in BW was capped to 12 only for technical reasons and not by design can shut their mouth now.
Thanks a lot for sharing. Of course it was a decision on the design team. Aoe 2 had a huge unit selection range and was in the same era. Very interesting read though.
It seemed obvious to me as well, but I also heard countless times that unlimited selection had not been implemented in BW because of technical limitations...
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Nice, thanks for providing the link for this!
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I've honestly been waiting for the transition to Starcraft 2 for a long time, simply because I want to see the KeSPA pros elevate the game to a new level.
But now that it's happening, more and more I am thinking, "why does this game have to die...?"
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Awesome read! I can't wait for the next parts.
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This is hilarious. The typical argument about unit selection being a technical limitation and having nothing to do with gameplay proven to be a lie.
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On July 27 2012 07:46 Grend wrote:
This is hilarious. The typical argument about unit selection being a technical limitation and having nothing to do with gameplay proven to be a lie.
Oh god, this. QED. Game set match. Checkmate, the dominos have fallen like a house of cards.
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THANK fucking god for this. I want to go back a few years in time and RAM this down the throats of the people who were saying that 12-unit groups were 'outdated'.
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too bad the greatness is not as prevalent in its sequel 
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It's interesting how they knew the pit falls of unlimited selection so long ago, yet that message seems to have been lost in the current generation of rts games.
On July 26 2012 14:18 Infernal_dream wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2012 13:38 endy wrote:
Super interesting post.
People saying that unit selection in BW was capped to 12 only for technical reasons and not by design can shut their mouth now.
Thanks a lot for sharing. Of course it was a decision on the design team. Aoe 2 had a huge unit selection range and was in the same era. Very interesting read though.
Actually, AOE 1 was released closer to SC1 and it had a 24 or 25 unit selection cap (depending on how you select the units). Numerous other rts games I've played have had caps as well such as Empire Earth and Rise of Nations. Newer games always had larger selection limits.
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I guess this article also proves that we may as well treat Blizzard as a completely different company to Blizzard of 10 years ago.
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On July 27 2012 16:51 sluggaslamoo wrote:
I guess this article also proves that we may as well treat Blizzard as a completely different company to Blizzard of 10 years ago.
This couldn't be any more accurate. Blizzard have undoubtedly gone backwards in terms of quality/innovation as the years have gone by. I could give many examples but the two that stick out the most (which were executed far better in the past) are the absolute attrocity that was D3 and how BNet 2.0 was allowed to exist in comparison to what was offered in WC3/SC:BW.
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On July 27 2012 16:51 sluggaslamoo wrote:
I guess this article also proves that we may as well treat Blizzard as a completely different company to Blizzard of 10 years ago.
Yup. They are on the stock exchange now. Gotta make dem $$$ now right?
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EPT
