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On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.. what ?O_O
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On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.The code and bnet stuff was basically in beta when they released fully back in August.
Must have been pressured by higher up executives like Morhaime to release early when it should have been announced later like at Blizzcon just gone and released for 20th anniversary next month.
If they had released 2v2 ladder off the bat without the bugs and bad lag we could have gotten a year or two out of it, there is no way a playerbase to support that anymore although 3v3 ladder may work depending on whether koreans use it or stick to custom lobbies.
My theory is that they saw all of these third party ventures (OpenBW, Shield Battery, ASL, on top of the existing fish, ICCup, MCALauncher, etc.) and thought to themselves, "we can get some money from this," or "we can't let them take away what little control we have left." As such, the release date being pushed forward from a quite obvious one becomes a no-brainer. If another year had passed, then projects like Shield Battery and OpenBW could have been at a stage where a Remaster release would have been too little too late. Instead they opted for too broken too soon.
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On February 11 2018 04:14 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.The code and bnet stuff was basically in beta when they released fully back in August.
Must have been pressured by higher up executives like Morhaime to release early when it should have been announced later like at Blizzcon just gone and released for 20th anniversary next month.
If they had released 2v2 ladder off the bat without the bugs and bad lag we could have gotten a year or two out of it, there is no way a playerbase to support that anymore although 3v3 ladder may work depending on whether koreans use it or stick to custom lobbies. My theory is that they saw all of these third party ventures (OpenBW, Shield Battery, ASL, on top of the existing fish, ICCup, MCALauncher, etc.) and thought to themselves, "we can get some money from this," or "we can't let them take away what little control we have left." As such, the release date being pushed forward from a quite obvious one becomes a no-brainer. If another year had passed, then projects like Shield Battery and OpenBW could have been at a stage where a Remaster release would have been too little too late. Instead they opted for too broken too soon.
Yep. It's all about control. Sucks
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On February 11 2018 04:14 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2018 07:46 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Best thing about remastered was the graphics and blizz didn't even do them, they were outsourced to some Chinese studio.The code and bnet stuff was basically in beta when they released fully back in August.
Must have been pressured by higher up executives like Morhaime to release early when it should have been announced later like at Blizzcon just gone and released for 20th anniversary next month.
If they had released 2v2 ladder off the bat without the bugs and bad lag we could have gotten a year or two out of it, there is no way a playerbase to support that anymore although 3v3 ladder may work depending on whether koreans use it or stick to custom lobbies. My theory is that they saw all of these third party ventures (OpenBW, Shield Battery, ASL, on top of the existing fish, ICCup, MCALauncher, etc.) and thought to themselves, "we can get some money from this," or "we can't let them take away what little control we have left." As such, the release date being pushed forward from a quite obvious one becomes a no-brainer. If another year had passed, then projects like Shield Battery and OpenBW could have been at a stage where a Remaster release would have been too little too late. Instead they opted for too broken too soon.
ah, dude no way. Blizzard has nothing to gain from a stymie of the SC:BW scene. It's a niche scene that generated a lot of intellectual capital for the company. all sorts of things are possible of course, but Blizzard has not much to gain and nothing to lose by supporting the game.
admittedly the third-party ventures were interesting, but i don't see how remastered necessarily confines them. if anything a devout character could easily persuade Blizzard to increase marketing. they can't release remastered without supporting it. various conspiracies exist regarding Blizzard and its monetizing and market capitalizing behavior, but to be frank i think the appearance of ruthlessness is owing more to competence questions than actual market maneuvering. i came back here a few weeks ago to see if i could reintegrate with the community if there was one. that still hasn't worked out, although several old poker friends are playing including hevad and allegedly rekrul (dunno if there are any sources for this). presumably a variety of streamers are still up and about on bw although it's markedly less lucrative maybe than sequels. anyway, reintegrating is going somewhat slow but i don't think it's related to Blizzard's role in the enterprise. remastered is pretty hands-off, which we like, and it's available on the launcher--which is theoretically good. i could imagine a few players from other games like hearth and WoW blazing it to enjoy some SC:BW on occasion.
the $15 price tag is pretty dubious and i sort of lol'd when i paid it myself. off-handedly this is probably the best monetizing the game will ever see. i think the TL community what's left of it regarding this--and including myself obvious should jump at the opportunity that there's. since it's official it's the best one.
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TLADT24920 Posts
ASL5 being announced after my blog was interesting. Thanks for all the comments. I'm honestly not sure what Blizzard's intentions are. Part of me honestly believes that they are just really bad at trying to appease the community and really do mean no harm while another part believes RM was more about control of the scene. Seeing as the scene has been steadily increasing, it makes sense for them to try and get some control. Easier way to exert themselves if they released RM as a favour to the community but why "fight" with Afreeca over ASL5? Like, if this is meant for the community, they must certainly realize
Ninazerg, it's ok to vent a bit. I think it's understandable. I was just writing my own thoughts because I was pretty disappointed with Blizzard's approach to RM, especially with the recent ASL news.
Gecko, yes, I focused heavily on the KR community. The foreign scene has seen much more benefits in comparison but TL coverage has always been heavy on the KR tournaments and scene and personally, I'm much more interested in seeing the best of the best in ASL compared to some foreign tournaments (they have their own charms though, no doubt). Yes, having a united server is great but the biggest problem is blizz listening to the feedback.
Sure, the dev team seems to be fine too but they don't control blizzard overall and the bug ridden release really negatively affected the game imo. To me, being able to provide feedback to the devs of shieldbattery and know for a fact that it'll be considered, worked into SB if its reasonable etc... is great. I've tried and played a decent amount of games on SB, including a 4-5 hour BGH session once. SB worked like a charm. Even ex-KR pros intotherainbow and ggaemo liked the latency and were surprised at how good it was compared to fish (something along those lines). I think if the RM announcement was delayed another year, SB would've been out there and have gained a following and I know that the devs would've delivered!
Also, on the note of players returning, Ret and Draco (was mentioned in another thread) kinda quit the game already. I'm sure there were a host of other playres that have also went back to inactivity. We do get more tournaments, yes, but are there really that many more new challengers or is it the same people with a bit more?
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As long as you guys keep filling their wallets they won't change. Waiting for another small company to come along that releases something just as good for RTS.
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I couldn't agree more here. Blizzard made things worse for sure. After all the issues with SCR I just went back to sc2. It's like blizzard wants complete control of every scene that involves any of their games but somehow they don't know what to do once they have control and they always seem to make things worse .
They pretty relied on the community to design the game we wanted yet blizzard didn't execute properly.
I honestly wonder if it's possible to file a class action lawsuit vs them. They pretty much lied to us, took our money and failed to deliver.
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I've never been that into the Korean scene so I can't comment on things there, but as far as the game goes:
Brood War is an old game, so as far as drawing in new players, Remastered needed to be a perfect launch. But that was far from the case. Even today, we still don't have 2v2/3v3/4v4 matchmaking, we still have laggy games that are somehow worse than the iCCup days of old, we still don't have profiles that work consistently, and we still don't have any kind of league system. The catch 22 that we're in now for the league system is that you need enough players to actually fill up the leagues, but since most of the players have left, there's hardly an incentive to do it. The development team is still toying with the network code like they're messing with a game that's in beta, as opposed to a game that's been out for 6 months. The first couple weeks of Remastered were extremely fun seeing all the streamers play it and improve at it while seeing a ton of old players come back, and I honestly believe more people would have stayed if there weren't so many freaking bugs in the game.
The lack of tournaments with money in them is pretty rough too. That's not to diminish all the work that is currently being done with all the active foreigner tournaments, as they do a good job and it's not up to them to pump money into the scene. The launch event was obviously a huge success in terms of viewers. The Italian tournament was the same weekend as BlizzCon, so while it didn't draw great numbers, it's hard to blame them. I'm not sure about the ZOTAC tournament. But the Holiday Bash was again a great success. I had hoped that the numbers would help get some more events started but that hasn't been the case. I'm also a little sad that Blizzard themselves, who subsidize SC2 tournaments heavily, haven't at least thrown a little money BW's way for a foreigner tournament or two. Furthermore I was hoping that TL would get in on it (more than the TL Opens), given that it's the game that started it all for them, but unfortunately that didn't happen.
It still amazes me every time I hop on and do some play/obs with friends that all these bugs are still in the game. We're all from the US with good internet and sometimes we can't even play with each other. If you're new to StarCraft in general, why in the world would you ever want to play this when you can go to SC2 and have a good time bug-free?
Maybe in 2036 they can try again with StarCraft: Remastered: Remastered and get it right that time.
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SCR seemed to have helped foreign scene more than korea scene now tho, since theres centralized bnet for foreign playerbase
but Korea hasn't been too good. SCR hit right when PUBG was releasing, and issues with SCR turned a lot of people away at worst time. PUBG was always going to take people away, but the SCR being well below expectations hurt streaming scene a lot. Team battles were unplayable for while, there was bug daily, ect.
you can't really underestimate power of the whole team battle being unplayable+bad custom games/ect. The lower end streamres can't really distribute the viewers anymore since theres no real collab/team battle scenarios and that lead to a lot of difficulty
A lot of streamers, noting this, took this opportunity to pull out and swap to variety gaming/pubg. Its sad really. Pros have come out and said SCR wasn't great, and Terror and Sea publicly denounced it as well, which was pretty big since they were 2 biggest BW streamers. Hell, even FlaSh, who keeps his mouth shut usually, spoke negatively of the SCR experience.
With the whole ASL being delayed/ATB being cancled, Korea scene isn't taking SCR too well. Its just accepted that SCR just killed momentum and scene really other than the beginning few weeks of surging post SCR release
Add this on top of that: Its been 6 months, and issues promised during tease hasn't been released yet. Theres no tiers, no 2v2 matchmaking, very lacking profile customization, ect. Feels like playing early-beta even now.
People say expectations should be lessened since blizzard is working on an old game, but I disagree. If you are marketing a remastered product, even if the game is untouched, other areas should be up to modern standards.
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Me hating Blizzard since the shutdown of nostalrius and now my hatred continues.
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On February 12 2018 21:03 CrymeaTerran wrote: Me hating Blizzard since the shutdown of nostalrius and now my hatred continues.
There are actually some valid parallells to be drawn there. The community makes a beloved project, Blizzard feels threatened and implements their own version with all the control that comes with it.
Both Nostalrius and BW's sustained popularity proved that hey, maybe smashing a shiny "add feature" button indefinitely isn't necessarily how you make a good game. Maybe having a giant committee always changing the game to justify their paychecks doesn't automatically equal a better game.
Maybe a big part of what people love most about your games isn't due to the infinite wisdom of corporate Blizzard, but thanks to lucky accidents and an active community that actually gets time to figure the game out before the next patch invalidates the entire meta.
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On February 12 2018 23:38 Jae Zedong wrote: Maybe a big part of what people love most about your games isn't due to the infinite wisdom of corporate Blizzard, but thanks to lucky accidents and an active community that actually gets time to figure the game out before the next patch invalidates the entire meta.
I think they just had a lot of genuine talent there that has since left the company. The visionaries that made the old Blizzard games can't just be replicated by a change of strategy. That in itself is nothing to be upset about, but they shouldn't "remake" their old IPs and try to seize control of the communities that sprung up around them. My only problem with SC2 is that they used the name Starcraft. It would be an OK but forgettable game otherwise; I think people who always defend Blizzard and say "BW elitists" can't understand this.
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Once again, it seems big interventions can hurt more than they help.
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I'd say it was a big net positive for the foreigner scene, and neutral to slight negative for the Koreans.
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Did not buy SC2, did not buy Remastered. Last time I bought a Blizzard product was in high school when I needed a new D2e cdkey. Did buy StarCraft vanilla when it was $75 though (my brothers and I split it three ways, as we were children).
Unfortunately, the amount of people who pay attention and make purchasing decisions based on whether or not they like a company's behaviour is many magnitudes smaller than the amount of people who are just barely aware anything is going on. There's a "substantial" number of loud people who make a fuss and talk and get angry, but not a lot of people who follow through in the way they act.
I think it's neat to see your perspective on the post KeSPA scene though. Everything post KeSPA for me feels like a shadow of the glory days, with only a few shining moments that at all excite me. Your perspective is as though you were getting to live through the 1998-2002 years, where every little bit higher the game climbs is amazing. I think you're exactly the right person to have been writing about BW these last few years.
Most of the joy of SC has been sucked out for me, even if I could run the newer patch on my machine. I can't really manage the cognitive dissonance. I don't enjoy even indirectly supporting all the bullshit. It's amazing that people used to complain so fervently about KeSPA and their possessiveness over their players, but ffs at least they ran a business and people could play professionally for years, and new people could aspire to it. SC is so doomed lol, it's brightest future is some illegal Russian servers running 1.16 and a few hundred people continuing to play. Unless Open BW is somehow actually realised, and who knows what that will look like.
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On February 14 2018 00:22 Chef wrote: SC is so doomed lol, it's brightest future is some illegal Russian servers running 1.16 and a few hundred people continuing to play. Unless Open BW is somehow actually realised, and who knows what that will look like. I just wanted to add to this - the recent matchmaking algorithm change (location over MMR) has made laddering through matchmaking worse than ICCup lobby, by a landslide. Not that it was that much better in the past, but at least it was more consistent. Now, I play for 1-4 points per game (since you don't play RM, I'll give context: it's Elo based from 1500 with the standard game points being like 15 or 20 I think?), grinding against the equivalent of D- scrubs, an experience that's not pleasurable for either of us. Should I slip once, I would lose like 40 or 50 points. Then when a person who is actually on par or better than me, the game becomes much harder in contrast to the rest of the playing field and I again lose a disproportionate amount, simply because I ground through more noobs than they did so I have more 1-4 point increments in my MMR which means even though they were an A level Zerg, we are roughly the same MMR, or they were a B- Protoss but they are 100-200 MMR below me.
In other words, the system now is like a region-locked ICCup and you're forced to be a noobstomper with an artificially inflated record. I can't remember the name(s) of the people that did this (I guess that's justice), but there were more than a few people who would have B rank, a record of 126-5, and all of their games being +10 points from a D-/D scrub. I would love going into those games on a low rank account and win like 250 points, setting them back 25 wins. Now, the tables have turned, where playing ladder FORCES me into the same position these stompers were in (I guess that's karma). If Sziky lived a walking distance from my house and decided to make a smurf account to blow off some steam, I would get paired with him multiple times in a row and lose 40+ points per game, and there would be nothing I can do. This has happened to me multiple times in the past week, with the following back-to-back games in a series: 5-0 vs. some D+ ish Terran (who switched mains to Protoss as a result), 1-0-2 (disconnects despite my internet being perfectly fine, thanks Blizzard) vs. some BM Protoss who is 2000+ MMR, 0-3 vs. some Korean-speaking Zerg, 0-3 vs. Stryker and then another 0-1 against him yesterday, because he must live so close to me that if we are both queuing we will ALWAYS be paired up. It's not fun or fair for anyone involved.
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TLADT24920 Posts
I don't think any new companies will come along and create a better RTS than BW, that's the sad truth but I'm fine with it too as long as Blizzard starts to realize that fans matter. Things like a class action lawsuit won't work because most people aren't that interested and wouldn't want to commit that much money to it either. You'll run out of money before you even go far considering how deep Blizzard's pockets are.
jinjin, interesting stuff regarding Terror, Sea and Flash. I agree with the KR scene bit. I feel like it really hurt the scene when it was supposed to help it. Sure, it helped unite the foreign scene and helped a bit too but we also lost 3rd party apps that did one hell of a good job which is also really sad to see.
Starlightsun, to be fair, we've had the old Blizzard devs say that they just went wacky and put whatever they wanted into the game. Basically, threw things at a wall and saw what got stuck then rolled with it. BW was a lucky accident, a good accident but it wasn't some grand design. Still, credit where its due. The same with the older games, Diablo and Warcraft were and are still a blast to play and the devs will get credit for it too.
Chef, I wasn't around during the KeSPA days so for me, this current scene is equivalent to what the KeSPA scene was for you like you noted. I've often thought back on the KeSPA scene and realized what I missed. It's pretty rough watching older vods, both OSL/MSL and PL, without thinking that I missed one really good thing. Doesn't help that BW's history is so deep that imo, no other game can touch it with a 10 foot pole. Still, that's all gone and there's not much we can do. At best, if we can manage a tournament and a team league, like ASL and ATB, we can revive some of those feelings and ensure that some form of competition exists. Thanks for the compliment ^^
At this point, I'm hoping that with ASL5 back on track, that was the last hiccup we had and Afreeca will at least keep running ASL with no issues moving forward. Maybe ATB will make a comeback if Afreeca lowers the prizepool, who knows but I'm going to remain hopeful for now.
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I honestly wonder if it's possible to file a class action lawsuit vs them. They pretty much lied to us, took our money and failed to deliver.
If I understand you correctly, you are talking about a tort claim for consumer fraud or misrepresentation?
I'd love to hear - just for curiosity's sake, a legally-literate (or at least semi-literate) analysis of this. I'm not familiar enough with the facts of what was promised and what delivered to think about it...
Things like a class action lawsuit won't work because most people aren't that interested and wouldn't want to commit that much money to it either.
Class-actions often work like this: a representative plaintiff is named, and a public advertisement is made to collect as many additional names as possible to be added to the statement of claim. There is a process obviously for vetting legitimate claimants. Then the additional names added have no responsibilities or liabilities - so anyone who bought the game would basically be given a free, no strings invitation to win a lawsuit. They don't ever need to come to court. They don't need to give affidavits. Nothing. Just wait for a result.That's why these things are possible - you don't need to organize thousands of people, you just need their names.
As for putting up money... class-action suits are often done pro-bono by class-action firms that take a percentage of the winnings if you win (and charge you nothing if you lose). The challenge can be to persuade them to take on your case - they have to believe they have a shot at winning if they take on the risk, obviously.
* For what it's worth, thelawdictionary.org, which I wouldn't quote to the judge, defines consumer fraud as Lieing to a customer telling them a product does something it doesn't. It can also be overcharging or hiding charges.
Whereas misrepresentation is essentially just a mistake (less serious, but potentially still tortious).
****Full disclosure... I've never even played SCR, and I'm a very casual BW player.
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On February 17 2018 08:40 Baneour wrote:Show nested quote +I honestly wonder if it's possible to file a class action lawsuit vs them. They pretty much lied to us, took our money and failed to deliver. If I understand you correctly, you are talking about a tort claim for consumer fraud or misrepresentation? I'd love to hear - just for curiosity's sake, a legally-literate (or at least semi-literate) analysis of this. I'm not familiar enough with the facts of what was promised and what delivered to think about it... Show nested quote +Things like a class action lawsuit won't work because most people aren't that interested and wouldn't want to commit that much money to it either. Class-actions often work like this: a representative plaintiff is named, and a public advertisement is made to collect as many additional names as possible to be added to the statement of claim. There is a process obviously for vetting legitimate claimants. Then the additional names added have no responsibilities or liabilities - so anyone who bought the game would basically be given a free, no strings invitation to win a lawsuit. They don't ever need to come to court. They don't need to give affidavits. Nothing. Just wait for a result.That's why these things are possible - you don't need to organize thousands of people, you just need their names. As for putting up money... class-action suits are often done pro-bono by class-action firms that take a percentage of the winnings if you win (and charge you nothing if you lose). The challenge can be to persuade them to take on your case - they have to believe they have a shot at winning if they take on the risk, obviously. * For what it's worth, thelawdictionary.org, which I wouldn't quote to the judge, defines consumer fraud as Lieing to a customer telling them a product does something it doesn't. It can also be overcharging or hiding charges.Whereas misrepresentation is essentially just a mistake (less serious, but potentially still tortious). ****Full disclosure... I've never even played SCR, and I'm a very casual BW player.
It's probably possible to do this, but who would? It doesn't make sense and could never behoove you or benefit you. It simply isn't an economically viable or salient course of action. In short, it's gotta be a mistake to reproach Blizzard for what amounts to essentially a public service available to anyone with a very small sum of money. It's not a mistake, at all, and is a fine business decision for Blizzard, I suppose.
The only aspect that damages you is that for instance there are more than 100,000 people on the ladder. For those who played BW competitively, you would recognize that there were the same 10 or 20 names that appeared for around 5 years toward end of the game.
For instance, IdrA, Incontrol, Day9, Artosis, Tasteless, NonY, Nero, lastgosu, Frozen, Nyoken, G5, and so on were the only really competitive contenders in the United States. So, for instance if you were to place yourself among United States citizens at this point the only people who could be ahead of you are those people: Incontrol, Day9, Artosis, Tasteless, NonY, Yosh, LzGamer, Nero, lastgosu, Frozen, Nyoken, G5, Saddles, Froz, Rekrul, Whear, Fayth, Testie, Lefnaij, Symphony, HuK, stalife, IdrA
But since those people haven't appeared and it seems that none of them are playing other than the first 4, you should be in the top 10: Artosis, Tasteless, Incontrol, Day[9] and "you"
Thus anyone who installed the game and had an APM of roughly 200 would probably be close to top 10 for the United States East and West. This omits Koreans, and there seem to be around 40,000 South Koreans on either of the two US servers. This is pretty suspicious and suggests that there's a major fraud being committed by Blizzard--although it is I suppose possible that SC:R is in fact this popular in S. Korea.
On the other hand, other than Drone and TT1, and a few others, there really are no names that I recognize. And obviously to anyone familiar with the United States BW Scene from we already know who should be playing. There aren't going to be a bunch of new players from the years 2009-2018.
So, yeah, it's obviously fraud committed by Blizzard against our favorite game, and this isn't good. But, it doesn't seem to anyone's advantage to press the issue.
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