Patch 1.30.2 PTR Update

[EredarArbeiterYU]

There are so many reasons for why there is no need nor possiblity for WC4.



3rd reason...Wcr has nothing to offer gameplay wise that wc3 already doesnt have or custom maps for it dont. All of what can be done are pretty much tweaks to wc3 itself.

All of custom mapde content would be lost if wc4 came out and judging by how sc2 does in this regard.....customs scene would die.

Are you serious? Well by that logic Company of Heroes 2 would have never happened cuz we had CoH1 (with all it's mod scene that is far superior then the modding capabilities in CoH2), or all the Battlefield tittles (I will skip mentioning CoD cuz those are unique shit lol) or all the Total War titles or Dawn of War 2 etc...

I think you simply lack the imagination and vision to see what a potential Warcraft IV could bring new or simply better to the table.

And you mention CS:GO which is a one of few sequels to original Counter Strike lol, while League of Legends and DotA 2 are literately sequels (not even sequels, more like standalone remasters) to the already existing DotA from Warcraft 3 No one ever said "Yo why bother making CS/LoL/DotA2 when people already got the current game to play? :O".

Just as Blizzard made a big leap from Wc2 to Wc3, I am sure they could make a big leap from Wc3 to Wc4. Not to mention the MONEYYYYY they would make from the first RTS game in the Warcraft universe since 2003!!

2nd reason is story? Lol that is not an obstacle at all! Just as they made the movie Warcraft and adjusted the story to fit the movie, they can sure as fuck adjust the story to fit an RTS game

1st reason is also lolz since Blizzard doesn't care about an "eternal game", eternal games don't make MONEYYYY, but new products do. :]


Imagine if Bethesda said "Oh well some fans are making a mod about Hammerfell, guess we shouldn't make TES6 based in Hammerfell since they got it covered. :c"

 

[Kacpa2]

Are you serious? Well by that logic Company of Heroes 2 would have never happened cuz we had CoH1 (with all it's mod scene that is far superior then the modding capabilities in CoH2), or all the Battlefield tittles (I will skip mentioning CoD cuz those are unique shit lol) or all the Total War titles or Dawn of War 2 etc...

I think you simply lack the imagination and vision to see what a potential Warcraft IV could bring new or simply better to the table.

And you mention CS:GO which is a one of few sequels to original Counter Strike lol, while League of Legends and DotA 2 are literately sequels (not even sequels, more like standalone remasters) to the already existing DotA from Warcraft 3 No one ever said "Yo why bother making CS/LoL/DotA2 when people already got the current game to play? :O".

Just as Blizzard made a big leap from Wc2 to Wc3, I am sure they could make a big leap from Wc3 to Wc4. Not to mention the MONEYYYYY they would make from the first RTS game in the Warcraft universe since 2003!!

2nd reason is story? Lol that is not an obstacle at all! Just as they made the movie Warcraft and adjusted the story to fit the movie, they can sure as fuck adjust the story to fit an RTS game

1st reason is also lolz since Blizzard doesn't care about an "eternal game", eternal games don't make MONEYYYY, but new products do. :]


Imagine if Bethesda said "Oh well some fans are making a mod about Hammerfell, guess we shouldn't make TES6 based in Hammerfell since they got it covered. :c"

Yes but it IS the final one atleast from Valve. Now its going to be expanded forever unless game dies, which also means no sequel anyway. Also you twist it with not too good analogy. Its not like with CoH games, plus their modding scenes are also marginal, its not even compareable. Moba side of it is covered by HoTS, whatever else is shown to have failed in Starcraft 2 which also sold rather poorly in comparison to other games. Which is another reason. Battlefield games dont have a MMO game that stolen the story canon from it and twisted it and bloated to such degree that original game lost any continouity in sea of retcons and new story elements, not to mention several times when there were nostalgia baiting moments and rehashes of Roc, TFT and elements of it. TBC, Wotlk, WoD and Legion all did that, BFA does that again but with Vanilla WoW as a theme, premise and setup ofcourse with its own story bits and other alterations but it calls back to Vanilla clearly. Aside of all that Battlefield doesnt have ANY modding scene cuz of how EA is openly hostile to modders, last games that had it were all on old engine, we have tools for frostbite now but its still getting out nothing, games are inclosed and newer ones dont even have community server support.

Also there is no big leap to be had. Selecting more than 12 units isnt a thing that matters.....nor anything else....there is seriously nothing that wc4 could bring. TFT has naval combat and you have TOUSANDs of altered melee maps that have more races and tactics and their new balance.

It wont earn as much as you would think it would(wow isnt as strong as it used to.... you think that RTS would do more? Casual playerbase will just go for heroes of the storm. Modding capability? Look at Starcraft 2, its too convoluted for people to get in without very specific almost ground up game dev mindset which ultimately turned Sc2's arcade into wasteland with 5 maps played over and over from which all are pretty much recreations of wc3 maps. There is almost no content made by community for it, sc2mapster and Sc2 assets side of hive have very few models and skins in comparison to WC3. Especially since its completely incompatibile both technologicly with old assets nor artisticly cuz of Sc2's artstyle.

Community made assets and maps are prime reason to why there cant be Wc4 on several levels, cuz of incompatibilty, abandonment of them by any potential new fanbase, very bleak chances of any transfers of them using new editor(which for 100% would be just galaxy editor). They fill in whatever Wc4 could attempt to give, new races, spells or tactics......everything literally EVERYTHING it could give was and is done by US for WC3. Stracraft 1 got a remaster cuz it looked terribly on high res monitors and had issues on new systems and aside of all that was painfully archaic in many ways which wc3 perfected(and which were downported to it together with BNET ui). It had low quality audio that had lots of issues(only music was of good quality) and on top of that it has 2 sprite based visuals which just are bound to look terrible once resolution gets high. And it comes from times when 800x600 was "high" definition.(highest being 1024x768 in 4:3). Warcraft 3 has perfectly high quality audio and sound effects, full 3D graphics that dont suffer from issues sprites did suffer from. Only issue it really has are some bugs with lighting(which causes "blackout bug" on bigger maps cuz of limitation of light sources per tile) and to small extend blockiness of some models(which i will remedy with my remakes in coming months).

WC4 isnt needed and cant be released. What we may need are remasters of older games like Diablo, Warcraft 1 and 2 and so on. These suffer from same and even more issues than Sc1, with even worse audio quality, archaic and painful controls and other issues. Wc3 has none of these problems.

 

[Lizreu]

Now that the custom hosting has been shut down, I've been seeing something even more disturbing.

There's literal, purposeful bot spam in the game list.

Spoiler

These are all, quite literally, the same lobby, hosted on the same bot. 5 Footmen Frenzy lobbies (all linked to the same bot), just on this page (there's more above and below), same with Hero Push.

I don't know if this is how it was before this whole debaucle, but aren't these just purposefully trying to destroy the game list? This is just mean. Especially if this is some kind of form of "retaliation" or "protest", I am severely disappointed. Just let the people play the fucking game without bots, if that is what you wanted to show. Don't make this matter worse. This is just giving Blizzard even more reason to remove bot hosting.

I've also noticed some "Fake" lobbies out there. They just hang your game if you try to join, and you have to restart WC3 to get out of it. What the fuck, people? Why is everyone being so petty about this? It's disgusting.

EDIT: More evidence. Website is courtesy of TriggerHappy.




What the actual hell? Does anyone even seriously think this is helping anyone?

 

[Civil]

I've also noticed some "Fake" lobbies out there. They just hang your game if you try to join, and you have to restart WC3 to get out of it. What the fuck, people? Why is everyone being so petty about this? It's disgusting.

Though this makes me laugh, I will explain it to you regardless. Currently hosting requires port forwading. These 'fake lobbies' are people trying to host but not knowing they have to port forward/didn't port forward properly. This was the reality of the game before bots came along. (And yes, I know this is one of the ways they have improved hosting in this patch. But the system is still lacking crucial features, see my previous posts)

As for the autohosts, the page is refreshing, and because there is so few games up since we took all the other hosts down, they are appearing again. It's not a retaliation or protest, there are just so little bots online that they are filling the list.

 

[Lizreu]

Though this makes me laugh, I will explain it to you regardless. Currently hosting requires port forwading. These 'fake lobbies' are people trying to host but not knowing they have to port forward/didn't port forward properly. This was the reality of the game before bots came along. (And yes, I know this is one of the ways they have improved hosting in this patch. But the system is still lacking crucial features, see my previous posts)

As for the autohosts, the page is refreshing, and because there is so few games up since we took all the other hosts down, they are appearing again. It's not a retaliation or protest, there are just so little bots online that they are filling the list.

The "fake lobby" is quite literally that - a fake lobby, on a bot. STUPID_BOT - [FAKE] ...

For the lobby spam. How come this is only happening on these 3 bots? All other bots are well-behaved, they each only post a single lobby to the game list. You can check on TH's website. 8 lobbies from the same bot? And the huge, 4-digit number next to it? Give me a break, it's clearly reposting the game like every other minute, at the very least. Even if this isn't a protest, this is clearly abuse of the WC3 protocol.

 

[h3rmit]

I don't know if this is how it was before this whole debaucle, but aren't these just purposefully trying to destroy the game list? This is just mean. Especially if this is some kind of form of "retaliation" or "protest", I am severely disappointed. Just let the people play the fucking game without bots, if that is what you wanted to show. Don't make this matter worse. This is just giving Blizzard even more reason to remove bot hosting.

This thing has existed for a long time, but only now it is visible.

You are wrong, these communities do not participate in any protest, this is their normal way of hosting games. They have disagreed with the protest and continued hosting games the same way they used to.

I agree that this is disgusting and it shows an example of how hostbots can be abused, as well as the great lack of filtering and search options in the custom games list.

 

[Lizreu]

This thing has existed for a long time, but only now it is visible.

You are wrong, these communities do not participate in any protest, this is their normal way of hosting games. They have disagreed with the protest and continued hosting games the same way they used to.

I agree that this is disgusting and it shows an example of how hostbots can be abused, as well as the great lack of filtering and search options in the custom games list.

Thanks for elaborating. I'll re-iterate on my previous post that this is clear and blatant abuse of the way the WC3 Game Protocol works and should not be allowed. If anything, it just gives Blizzard more reasons to ban host bots.

 

[Civil]

Thanks for elaborating. I'll re-iterate on my previous post that this is clear and blatant abuse of the way the WC3 Game Protocol works and should not be allowed. If anything, it just gives Blizzard more reasons to ban host bots.

Or they could just fix the terrible refresh/games list system that produced this in the first place.

 

[TriggerHappy]

There's literal, purposeful bot spam in the game list.

What the actual hell? Does anyone even seriously think this is helping anyone?

Those bots have been abusing the custom game list long before the PTR went live.

 

[Jouven]

I'm not sorry to keep going, but if gproxy worked... well... it had a filter feature by game name... =) (I didn't mention it earlier because I never use this feature, since I only play one map with a fixed gn)
I'm surprised¿ none mentioned the mapcfg and the HCL system, those will be lost too, this will mess some maps that have "modes" that can't be set in-game
And after doing a fast check, the advanced options aren't remembered... =S

By the way check the EULA (LAST REVISED June 1, 2018), basically any third party software is a no-no
Blizzard End User License Agreement Blizzard Legal

 

[DracoL1ch]

What if someone would create proper filters system by name, or even by user's local map, especially since each bot directly says WHAT THE HELL IT JUST HOSTED in game name? Suuure, ghost bots are the problem

 

[kantarion]

Now that the custom hosting has been shut down, I've been seeing something even more disturbing.

There's literal, purposeful bot spam in the game list.

Spoiler

These are all, quite literally, the same lobby, hosted on the same bot. 5 Footmen Frenzy lobbies (all linked to the same bot), just on this page (there's more above and below), same with Hero Push.

I don't know if this is how it was before this whole debaucle, but aren't these just purposefully trying to destroy the game list? This is just mean. Especially if this is some kind of form of "retaliation" or "protest", I am severely disappointed. Just let the people play the fucking game without bots, if that is what you wanted to show. Don't make this matter worse. This is just giving Blizzard even more reason to remove bot hosting.

I've also noticed some "Fake" lobbies out there. They just hang your game if you try to join, and you have to restart WC3 to get out of it. What the fuck, people? Why is everyone being so petty about this? It's disgusting.

EDIT: More evidence. Website is courtesy of TriggerHappy.
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What the actual hell? Does anyone even seriously think this is helping anyone?

This is exactly what will happen if you ban bots, if you only allow private individual hosts custom games. You will have many individuals creating same custom game in wc3 that is kinda not alive as we all want to be, where you cant collect so much players in a normal period of time.Wait time is huge,people usually cant wait for 20-40 min and then cancel. Then the process repeats . What you showed is either some kind of revenge of bot services to show you what hostings by individuals effect will produce,or either is faked by you. Its hard to tell. This never happen before on same bot simultaniosly ,NEVER. When 1 game has started,bot creates another 1, never 5 games in same time .

 

[Lord_Earthfire]

This is exactly what will happen if you ban bots, if you only allow private individual hosts custom games. You will have many individuals creating same custom game in wc3 that is kinda not alive as we all want to be, where you cant collect so much players in a normal period of time.Wait time is huge,people usually cant wait for 20-40 min and then cancel. Then the process repeats . What you showed is either some kind of revenge of bot services to show you what hostings by individuals effect will produce,or either is faked by you. Its hard to tell. This never happen before on same bot simultaniosly ,NEVER. When 1 game has started,bot creates another 1, never 5 games in same time .

This argument is on so many positions wrong.
Hostbots created most of the lobby times for other games in the first place by having unmodderated hosts just running automatically. Players that saw the playercount decrease and other playing on Garena at the time hostbots emerged more or less agreed that host bots are what caused this issues in the first place, pushing games hosted by real people out of the game list. Hostbots are among the main reason why the playernumbers become that low and now people complain that these get the axe! I see the current developement a good riddance. Hosting worked before without bots, only bottlenecked by port forwarding, and with the ability to everyone to host games i still believe this will be the case.

What you see in the screenshots is why hostbots became so common. They undermined every honest attempt to host yourself.

What blizzard needs to do now is put the nail in the coffin of the bots: a dedicated game search with high functionality. a ban for all bots and included QOL changes to make bots completely obsolete.

I really really hope that this is only the beginning of changes. And what i want to see it proper communication about that by Blizzard.

 

[Rui]

For me, game list pollution is only a problem when browsing. Which I rarely do. I log in WC3 only when there's some game in the MakeMeHost list that I want to play. Or when I was already logged in and sitting in some channel, like one of the BFME clans, waiting for the bot to host a new game and announce it in the channel. In these cases, I know the lobby name, and I just type it directly.

Situations like the one @Sir Moriarty is illustrating are easily fixed by having some vigilance: every other day, make an inspection on the game lists and ban those wTc and EFL hostbots and any others that are purposely abusing. Yes, it takes some manual labor. Why is everyone against it nowadays? Is it better to ban an otherwise excellent feature (and killing awesome maps like @Zymoran's "Warlock" in the process, which heavily depend on fair latency)?

 

[opium911]

I don't understand this negative parade against hosting bots in the modding community.
It seems like a personal vendetta against host bots without even having tried them.

On Blizzard's forums, you can see 80% of people are in favor of the use of a good reliable hosting bot.
Not all hosting bots are good, I agree with you.

Have you guys every used a good hosting bot service?
Have you ever played on a good hosting bot service such as "Ent"?
I doubt anyone in their right mind would be against it.

There should be a way to have both hosting bots and private hosted games co-exist.
The user would have a way to filter "Host Bot" games out of the list if they bother you so much.

If it's all about "YAY! I can finally host!", I guarantee you even if you host one of your games and people are getting sub-par latency in that game, who is going to stay in your game? The game will be unplayable.

I take it on my self, I play Dota regularly on the hosting bot "Ent".
This game requires instant reaction speed based on its dynamics.
You know what is my latency when I play on this bot? 11ms! = 1/10th of a second.

Based on "Sir Moriarty" tests, yes the games are still hosted on the host's computer and therefore we do get affected by the quality of the host's internet connection.
So I don't understand how some of you guys agree to go back to the stone age where we would be getting latency ranging between 60ms to 700ms ; 700ms = 7 seconds to see the reaction of your mouse click on the screen.

I can go and on about it but Blizzard is so far behind in terms of what they can offer to the community compared to the free service we are getting from a good reliable auto host bot.

Let's not talk about game moderation that will never be done by Blizzard.
Can Blizzard guarantee human volunteers to check on game replays to spot game offenders such as what they do in a good reliable hosting bot community? No.

 

[Lord_Earthfire]

It seems like a personal vendetta against host bots without even having tried them.

Fallacy ad homine. I honestly believe most have used them and use them, either because their provider shut the doors at IPV4, which makes hosting with port forwarding impossible (like in my case). Is it probably that many mappers have a good amount of years on their back and see the flood of hosted games noone joins that are polluting the list.

Heck, if we remove the auto hosted "[ENT]Footmen Frenzy #67" and "[CCS] Custom heroes survival" lobbies and would use only on demand hosted games like MMH does, there wouldn't be this anger against host bots that are drowing any opportunity for fringe maps or beta test to even show up in the game list.

But you cannit guarantee thus without banning bots outrught, so there we have it.

I doubt anyone in their right mind would be against it.

I would call the opposite. Neither a dev nor someone who has the ability to host at will would want third party sites dominating everything. We had it because we needed to. These reasons are gone

Can Blizzard guarantee human volunteers to check on game replays to spot game offenders such as what they do in a good reliable hosting bot community? No.

Valve did it with CS: GO, for example. This is completely possible. But, on the other hand, the solution is more to enhance the internal anti-cheat detection, honestly.

So I don't understand how some of you guys agree to go back to the stone age where we would be getting latency ranging between 60ms to 700ms ; 700ms = 7 seconds to see the reaction of your mouse click on the screen.

Let me tell you, that was the golden age of wc3, where you had to make your own lobbies. You used gproxy, autorefresher and/or your own banlists to manage your lobbies. This were the times fringe maps found players, simply because the player/lobby ratio is lower (until hostbots came, they were a good reason for the end of that...).
And the latency issue is simply BS. Having played WC3 for years, over garena, battlenet or other, this issue was very low expressed. Heck, just add a latancy counter on lobbies (garena had that before they thrown wc3 games out of their portfolio) amd this issue will be non-existent.

 

[A Void]

I'm glad that hosting bots are going to be removed, permanently. I miss the old days where people actually hosted their own maps, the lobby was full of life... of course there were issues with port forwarding but that's going to get fixed too.

Relying on third party websites to host your own map is absurd but it was necessary.


We have all waited for Battle.Net 2.0 and it's one step closer. Can't wait! =)

 

[Lizreu]

I know I personally won't miss ENT or MMH all that much, even though I used them on a daily basis.

Yes, things like !kick or !swap or !mute were nice, but ultimately, they can (and should) be re-implemented natively in the client.

If Blizzard addresses the issues that I pointed out previously in this thread (latency, lack of utility commands), then the only remaining argument for bots will be competitive (and general) auto-hosting, which has been a topic of high contention over the years. Another one is global ban lists, which is... eh at best. It's not hard to circumvent an account or IP ban nowadays.

Let's look at this from another perspective, however. Someone here pointed out that any kinds of third-party tool are strictly forbidden by the Blizzard EULA. Whether you like it or not, Blizzard can ban your CD Keys for using any external tools - GProxy, GHost, etc. etc. It is just a matter of them not excercising their right to do so yet, because these things were keeping the game alive, if barely.

Now that they are updating the game, why would they continue to allow third-party tools? Like I've stated previously, this is likely a decision not entirely made by the Classic team alone, as these things usually go. I work in an enterprise setting. I know how these things usually get done. You are told by some high manager to do this thing, and you have to do it, even if you think it is inane. Furthermore, it is very unlikely for them to contradict their own EULA, as it could possibly set a dangerous precedent for the future.

Only other route I can think of, is official, dedicated, host bot software that is supported and developed by Blizzard and behaves nicely in the game. However, that is highly unlikely, because it would require additional development time. They may not be able to just use GHost++ or whatever due to licesing issues as well.

Perhaps, a long-term solution to bot hosting can be found as well, and could be allowed in the future, but that would require some kind of open API specifically for bot games, with restrictions built in. In their current form, host bots just abuse the game protocol too much, and tie Blizzard's hands behind their back when it comes to updating the protocol.

 

[DracoL1ch]

Abuse the game? Thats a strange way to say "keeping it alive"
Without ghost bots there would be valley of death shortly after 2010+. Ignorant plebs never understand.
Make a note that those who actually kept the community, the people from going into other games, are FOR bots. And those who did nothing but forum wars or small niche maps with 10 players/month are against bots.

 

[YourArthas]

Well, I mean there is no point in defending Blizzard's fault they won't pay you for it, that bot removal move and turning the system to sc2's(kinda) was just a bad move.

 

[DracoL1ch]

Well, I mean there is no point in defending Blizzard's fault they won't pay you for it, that bot removal move and turning the system to sc2's(kinda) was just a bad move.

no, its not sc2 system either. It's removing one already existing and working option and POSSIBLE introduce another one LATER, but not now.

 

[pick-a-chew]

no, its not sc2 system either. It's removing one already existing and working option and POSSIBLE introduce another one LATER, but not now.

Nothing wrong with progressive changes. In fact it is entirely unreasonable to expect Blizzard to magically replace user bots with a brand spanking new hosting system that replicates all bot functionality within 1 patch. It has already been shown from 1.29 and 1.30 that the Warcraft 3 community doesn't care about giving feedback on the PTR, so it is wise on their part to work towards their goal of bot replacement patch by patch.

 

[DracoL1ch]

Nothing wrong with progressive changes. In fact it is entirely unreasonable to expect Blizzard to magically replace user bots with a brand spanking new hosting system that replicates all bot functionality within 1 patch. It has already been shown from 1.29 and 1.30 that the Warcraft 3 community doesn't care about giving feedback on the PTR, so it is wise on their part to work towards their goal of bot replacement patch by patch.

Are you working on microsoft? Because thats how they've killed skype recently.
And no, blizzard will never replace ghost bots functionality, simply because each map is unique. Some needs votekick, some don't. Some needs these stats, some need other stats to be tracked. Some have to have leaver-punishment, some don't. You can't see things right before your nose and yet claim something big like that. History knows no case when universal solution become good for audience, whenever audience had a chance to chose - it chose more appropritte one, not official one.

 

[Death Adder]

no, its not sc2 system either. It's removing one already existing and working option and POSSIBLE introduce another one LATER, but not now.

Nothing wrong with progressive changes. In fact it is entirely unreasonable to expect Blizzard to magically replace user bots with a brand spanking new hosting system that replicates all bot functionality within 1 patch. It has already been shown from 1.29 and 1.30 that the Warcraft 3 community doesn't care about giving feedback on the PTR, so it is wise on their part to work towards their goal of bot replacement patch by patch.

Right, but then why did they have to remove bots before they had the replacement ready? I think that's the key point.

Even if you're against bots (I'm not entierly sure what to think about it to be honest), removing bots and then MAYBE get a proper replacement at some unknown time in the future isn't a good thing for anyone...


They didn't need to remove bots to allow players to host games without port forwarding, they could've done improvements over time and then remove bots at a later time when there was a replacement in place already.

Several maps just won't even be possible to play at all because of ping etc.



With that said, since it's on the PTR, I guess it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be on live for sure? After doing some testing or whatever on the PTR and they feel like it would be too soon to remove bots then maybe they would wait? I'm not sure how the PTR to live thing works.


Either way, another huge deal here is the 0 communication. Nobody knows what or why they're doing whatever they're doing, or what the next step is either for that matter.

 

[DracoL1ch]

With that said, since it's on the PTR, I guess it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be on live for sure? After doing some testing or whatever on the PTR and they feel like it would be too soon to remove bots then maybe they would wait? I'm not sure how the PTR to live thing works.

they'd rather push untested build into production rather than rollback some of changes on their own, dont you recall their patches before? Thats being written in the stone now. And they're sure they are on the right side.

 

[pick-a-chew]

Are you working on microsoft? Because thats how they've killed skype recently.
And no, blizzard will never replace ghost bots functionality, simply because each map is unique. Some needs votekick, some don't. Some needs these stats, some need other stats to be tracked. Some have to have leaver-punishment, some don't. You can't see things right before your nose and yet claim something big like that. History knows no case when universal solution become good for audience, whenever audience had a chance to chose - it chose more appropritte one, not official one.

Communities that have stat tracking are the only victims of this patch. It sucks, yes, but it's a small part of the community worth sacrificing. I came back to Warcraft 3 over a year ago and haven't even seen these mythical stat tracking bots, presumably because they belong to tiny groups of people who play the same map over and over again. It's totally worth sacrificing that to allow all players and all mapmakers to host with ease.

 

[Jouven]

It has already been shown from 1.29 and 1.30 that the Warcraft 3 community doesn't care about giving feedback on the PTR

It has already been shown from 1.30 that Blizzard doesn't care about Warcraft 3 to the point of leaving it in an unplayable state <-- FTFY, nice guilt trip you could try working in PR

so it is wise on their part to work towards their goal of bot replacement patch by patch

I've seen this pattern a lot in this thread, users doing ass-pulling, they need to explain/invent Blizzard motivations, how they work, their plans... when they probably know nothing about, it's a bit painful to witness

Communities that have stat tracking are the only victims of this patch. It sucks, yes, but it's a small part of the community worth sacrificing. I came back to Warcraft 3 over a year ago and haven't even seen these mythical stat tracking bots, presumably because they belong to tiny groups of people who play the same map over and over again. It's totally worth sacrificing that to allow all players and all mapmakers to host with ease.

Nice straw man, bot = "stat tracking", I wonder what will be next

 

[DracoL1ch]

Communities that have stat tracking are the only victims of this patch. It sucks, yes, but it's a small part of the community worth sacrificing. I came back to Warcraft 3 over a year ago and haven't even seen these mythical stat tracking bots, presumably because they belong to tiny groups of people who play the same map over and over again. It's totally worth sacrificing that to allow all players and all mapmakers to host with ease.

I'd rather sacrifice your account, so what? Like, permaban you because you arent any good member of community either, so it definitly worth the sacrifice just for sake of nothing. So what?
Its all up to blizz. And they are blind.

 

[pick-a-chew]

I've seen this pattern a lot in this thread, users doing ass-pulling, they need to explain/invent Blizzard motivations, how they work, their plans... when they probably know nothing about, it's a bit painful to witness

Ah yes, Blizzard, small indie company that doesn't know what it's doing, so we make things up to understand. Nice meme. It's definitely a bunch of monkeys in an office that have no clue at all what Warcraft 3 even is. They definitely haven't expanded their classics team (many of the new members which aren't embedded in several Warcraft 3 bot communities). Yup. Totally out of touch. I also had to be a genius to do this ass-pulling as well as spend 30 hours rereading the patch notes to understand the intentions.

Nice straw man, bot = "stat tracking", I wonder what will be next

Just goes to show how obscure the only valid argument for bots is. I may yet enjoy it when a bunch of close-knit groups go through their death throes as they realize they wont be able to track if they're the best player for some no-name map they play religiously on an hourly basis.

 

[DracoL1ch]

half-assed sarcasm + inability to create competitive maps => blizzard fan. Totally fits.

 

[Jouven]

Ah yes, Blizzard, small indie company that doesn't know what it's doing, so we make things up to understand. Nice meme.

Another straw man, you haven't addressed if you know or not what Blizzard is going to do, don't forget to bring proof/facts

Just goes to show how obscure the only valid argument for bots is. I may yet enjoy it when a bunch of close-knit groups go through their death throes as they realize they wont be able to track if they're the best player for some no-name map they play religiously on an hourly basis.

Another straw man, stat tracking="the only argument for bots"

half-assed sarcasm + inability to create competitive maps => blizzard fan. Totally fits.

+ inability to address arguments

 

[disruptive_]

I also want to take part on this cheap psychology fiesta:
In general, i'm pretty sure Blizzard don't care too much about your complains people. Atleast right now.
They want to regain much needed control on this "not-so-dead" game and its modding scene. They kind of neglected it for a decade as of now. Control first. Then we make people happy and listen them more carefully. Their way of course, but this is obvious.

I doubt this is a "blind" or "clueless". This is strictly a rational approach. Maybe too rational. Maybe blind on regards of the interests of the community, but what if we start describing this "community" first and their interests? You don't even know what you want or to expect. "No limits" is too vague. Maybe a singular person knows what he/she wants, but not an entire community. In the end you all want to cope with your ΔFosB problem, and everything can do the trick.
Another approach would be suing/bluffing people/third parties, but that is very costly (and almost impossible), so what about killing the third parties with the game engine itself. Easy life.

About the wc3 modding scene: they merged the World Editor with vJass (remember the poll? it was a very informal way to decide something very important for people that do codding), they contacted and hired the author of WEX, updates are now kind of mandatory. Now you got this.
They are brushing off any third party, inflirtrators, and any possibility of lost control. It doesn't matter if such services were good, bad, w/e, or if a version is good/bad/buggy. Control first (1.30 update), happines second (bug fixing, after 2 subsecquent PTR and new versions).

Just as they did with Netease China (search that), there is a chance that they will confer licenses of different nature to, at this point, "official" third parties to do some outsourcing on the new issues they will have to deal with. What's the difference? Blizzard can now get a bite.

I think the next step would be increasing the value out of their WC3 license, because it can surely improve (WoW also works, but i'm expecting a more direct and agressive approach, on competitive WC3, a youtube page, streaming, and doing something value producing out of the custom maps like on Starcraft II) so there would a lot of companies that would want to make deals with them.
I know they've contacted (several months previous their entire 2018 update "campaign") and now have a very romantic relation with the HIVE. The HIVE should be understanded as a non-lucrative distributor of mostly Blizzard content.

 

[Death Adder]

I came back to Warcraft 3 over a year ago and haven't even seen these mythical stat tracking bots, presumably because they belong to tiny groups of people who play the same map over and over again. It's totally worth sacrificing that to allow all players and all mapmakers to host with ease.

I may yet enjoy it when a bunch of close-knit groups go through their death throes as they realize they wont be able to track if they're the best player for some no-name map they play religiously on an hourly basis.

I don't really play any custom maps with stat tracking, but isn't there a lot of dota games with stats?... You know it's only the most played warcraft 3 map on any server...

But I guess a lot or maybe most of those dota games are being played on some other servers than bnet. I'm not entierly sure since I don't play wc3 dota. So it's probably a small minority of the players who have legit copies of the game.

Which honestly might be another reason for this change. Without the bots you won't be able to play with players from those other servers through bnet. But I do wonder, maybe it would even have a reverse effect? Considering that there's already more players on those other servers (at least in russia, china, and SEA, not sure about EU or NA.), one might even have to jump onto eurobattle or something to play whatever game you want instead of logging on your bnet acc.


And that brings up another issue, how is blizzard actually planning to monetize wc3? (Assuming they do plan to.) Only thing I can think of is to make some HD/remaster version like with SC1.

Honestly I would be very skeptical about blizzards intentions if it weren't for that the classic team has been trying to improve the world editor and work with the community to some extent. (Although it has been very silent recently...)

 

[NVS]

Just goes to show how obscure the only valid argument for bots is. I may yet enjoy it when a bunch of close-knit groups go through their death throes as they realize they wont be able to track if they're the best player for some no-name map they play religiously on an hourly basis.

If you think this is a bots versus no bots issue, you're sorely mistaken. The fact of the matter is that the bots filled a void in regards to features that self-hosting lacks. Yes, you may not see a need for such features. Yes, you may never utilize such features yourself. But many, many players do and have over the years. The rise of Defense of the Ancients would probably not have been possible without the improved feature set provided by the bots that allowed competition to foster and grow.

Now, bots do bring negatives. They flood the games list, some more so than others (as is made quite obvious by intentionally designed/configured offenders mentioned in previous posts in this thread). To some, the fact that a community can moderate itself is a hindrance; to others, a boon. It all depends if one considers the use of such features as an abuse or not. Personally, I feel an organization such as ENT could do more to prevent game ruining, trolling, flaming, and the like. The fact that we have very little measures to address such behavior in the existing self-hosting environment is a shame. But I guess, for some, that it is fun to live in the Wild West.

As far as positives, there are many. The majority of these could effectively be construed as community building features. And yes, there are numerous communities that exist today and have existed over the years that have utilized them. You'd be surprised at how large some of these communities have grown around their "no-name map". Yes, I already mentioned DotA. That I would have to mention any others shows that you do not have a firm grasp of what encompasses the Warcraft III community.

But the wrong attitude to take at this juncture is one where we find it acceptable to literally throw any part of the existing Warcraft III ecosystem under the bus. Sacrificing any part of the Warcraft III community is a bad move. But, apparently, you think that is fine. I'm glad you're not making the decisions for Blizzard. I only hope that they can come to the same conclusion that I have. The real issue, as I see it, is one of features. Where self-hosting is sorely lacking, and no viable alternative to the bots has been announced to the general public. Any lapse in functionality which would cause part of the existing community to wither, and potentially shrink or die, is absolutely a failure on Blizzard's part. If they are seriously considering a move such as this, shame on them.

 

[DracoL1ch]

I doubt this is a "blind" or "clueless". This is strictly a rational approach. Maybe too rational. Maybe blind on regards of the interests of the community, but what if we start describing this "community" first and their interests? You don't even know what you want or to expect. "No limits" is too vague. Maybe a singular person knows what he/she wants, but not an entire community. In the end you all want to cope with your ΔFosB problem, and everything can do the trick.

Community just want to play liek it used to play for years. There are reason they're at wc3 and not moved into any other games (there are a lot of to chose). Blizz dont wanna bargain, they put it straight - erase bots and maybe they will give something in return later. But thats exactly how you kill your community. Just like I said 2 years ago.

 

[disruptive_]

Just like I said 2 years ago

It seems that you had that fear for too much time, and it seems that the "community" will simply not die, what ever that is.

I'm on theorycraft mode right now, so don't take the following as serious:
For me is key that the first update anounce were all "features" (new natives, new colors, new shit, new possibilities; basically they unleashed the fireworks) and now the updates are becoming destructive/problematic or atleast ambigous for everyone. I really seems like that they know what they're doing, like they're playing with our patience and tolerance, but as you pointed out, maybe they know that in the end they can get away with it.

 

[DracoL1ch]

sure it didn't die, its just splitted for 2 years and Im happy with my 1.26 memehack as well, thanks.

 

[Chaosy]

I'd rather sacrifice your account, so what? Like, permaban you because you arent any good member of community either, so it definitly worth the sacrifice just for sake of nothing. So what?
Its all up to blizz. And they are blind.

Cannot compute

 

[Jouven]

I'm on theorycraft mode right now

TBH I don't think they are onto anything. In my mental simulations a good? idea would have been leave the old client as "legacy", stop supporting it and release a proper remaster integrated with "bnet2" with all the new features/stuff. Another idea could have been monetize the bot business like some companies did in the past, since users that aren't tech savvy may want to pay the price for this service, using a web interface like lunaghost did?, maybe they will do this in the future, I don't know.
But right now in my mind Blizzard killing (or adapting what's relatively easy to adapt) the legacy equals to: we can't do better than what the community has done so let's erase/forbid it and try to run forward, maybe add some kind of monetization? (here I'm ass-pulling too)
Maybe? their intentions are good, but the way they are doing it and the communication can't be worse, so I can only expect the worst
Actions speak louder than intentions

Is there any text/link/something that states their roadmap/plans?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Truth be told, I have never used bots and thus I don't really know what they are all about. Due to this, I don't really think I'm in a position to comment whether this is a good or a bad change.

On a more theoretical level, though... On one hand, Warcraft 3 is Blizzard's intellectual property, so they have every right on the planet to do whatever they want with it and I can understand that they might not want third party sites interfering with their game, but on the other hand...

If it is true that bots were used by a decent chunk of the game's remaining playerbase and helped keep Warcraft 3 alive, killing them without even a word of explanation as to why such a decision was made and what it entails for the future of the game, is nothing short of a d*ck move on Blizzard's part.

But then again, in the recent years, I have personally grown quite baffled by Blizzard's communication policies, not just in Warcraft 3, but across most of their games, so I can't really say that I'm surprised that they've just ninja-ed an apparently quite big and controversial change like this one instead of having it be accompanied by, for instance, a well written forum post containing their reasoning and plans.

And that lack of a proper communication is to me the biggest mistake they've made.

Of course, there will always be people who will go "but muh bots" and reject any kind of discussion with Blizzard that doesn't end with them backing off completely, but I think that at least some pro-bots guys would be willing to accept this change if Blizzard was more transparent as to why it was made and what they are going to do to remedy the concerns that these players might have.

However, in order for this to work, they'd have to talk to "us" now, not hope that people will cling to the thought that "PERHAPS they will give us SOMETHING at SOME POINT" long enough to not be alienated.

---

That said, I have no idea why they've chosen to do it this way and I do hope that there's a resonable (i.e. other than that they simply don't care) explanation for it, but for the time being I can sympathize with those who feel they have been wronged by Blizzard, because... well, even to someone who has never used bots, such as myself, the way they've handled this does feel like a bit of a kick in the nuts.

 

[pick-a-chew]

inability to create competitive maps

I delight in the irony.

It's suicidal for a bot supporter to point that out. Here, the Hive, where Warcraft 3 modding is paramount, and you have members claiming bots are great for the game. Yet everything about bots antagonizes any kind of map development. Who would ever bother trying to contend with a custom games list spammed to the brim with shit? Your only chances of "creating competitive maps" is to take advantage of bots yourselves, that's how hostile it is. The riddance of bots is a godsend for the Hive.

+ inability to address arguments

I couldn't address you even if i whacked you in the face with all these imaginary straws you keep pulling out of your ass.

The rise of Defense of the Ancients would probably not have been possible without the improved feature set provided by the bots that allowed competition to foster and grow.

I always find this argument odd. I played Dota 1 back when PlayDota (was that it?) was still a thing. That was before bots, where people would host games manually and submit replays on a website, and that was also when dota was insanely popular.

As far as positives, there are many. The majority of these could effectively be construed as community building features. And yes, there are numerous communities that exist today and have existed over the years that have utilized them. You'd be surprised at how large some of these communities have grown around their "no-name map". Yes, I already mentioned DotA. That I would have to mention any others shows that you do not have a firm grasp of what encompasses the Warcraft III community.

How vague. You talk about the Warcraft III community like it is minuscule and that these "numerous communities" are ubiquitous when they are in fact not. I am not convinced DotA is even a good argument. It was a giant in its time, and now is played only for nostalgia or by people who can't afford a computer that runs DotA 2.

But the wrong attitude to take at this juncture is one where we find it acceptable to literally throw any part of the existing Warcraft III ecosystem under the bus. Sacrificing any part of the Warcraft III community is a bad move. But, apparently, you think that is fine. I'm glad you're not making the decisions for Blizzard. I only hope that they can come to the same conclusion that I have. The real issue, as I see it, is one of features. Where self-hosting is sorely lacking, and no viable alternative to the bots has been announced to the general public. Any lapse in functionality which would cause part of the existing community to wither, and potentially shrink or die, is absolutely a failure on Blizzard's part. If they are seriously considering a move such as this, shame on them.

Oh please. Warcraft 3 is a nexus of different players and communities, it is inevitable with any big change that some part of the player base will be adversely affected. I didn't mean to come off as sounding evil or ruthless, but what people want is Blizzard to accommodate them, and it's just incredibly unlikely they will meet demands.

 

[Jouven]

I couldn't address you even if i whacked you in the face with all these imaginary straws you keep pulling out of your ass.

Another straw man, you are misunderstanding me, here Straw man - Wikipedia

 

[Napoqe]

I read some posts for and against hostbots, and I say congratulations. These arguments can lead to a patch revision when they launch and I have learned some functions that bots can do. However if they remove I will not stop playing Warcraft 3. But the protests have valid arguments.
But for me, bots need regulation, that absolute freedom always takes with them bad intentional actions.

 

[DracoL1ch]

Sigh, yet another brave blizzard knight with no understanding what works and what not. So pity.
Without solid reasons there are no way downgrade can be good. I can understand closing memehack, in the end. But ghost bots? No reasons to. Just the idea that they can bring their own solution.. Maybe. Or let it rot for years, just like it was 2008-2016.

 

[pick-a-chew]

Another straw man, you are misunderstanding me, here Straw man - Wikipedia

Ah yes, the Socrates wannabe. Despite knowing so much about forming logical arguments and putting people in their place, they instead incessantly quote people saying "straw man" and then hide behind Wikipedia links.

Without solid reasons there are no way downgrade can be good.

I understand it very clearly Draco. It is a downgrade for you, irrefutably, and it will greatly disrupt your two dota communities. But for the common player its an undeniable upgrade. So much so that it is likely they will look past the casualties. Your only legitimate defense is to present Blizzard the size and activity of your community with actual facts, and reiterate how this is thanks to bots, rather than shielding yourself with anecdotes.

Could you imagine that? If ENT and MMH, instead of shutting down their bots for 2 days, actually bothered to make a case for themselves by collating bot statistics and presenting it to Blizzard? What a world that'd be.

 

[Anders458]

The fact of the matter is that the bots filled a void in regards to features that self-hosting lacks.

They did at the time of course. But that does not really relevant to why Blizzard shouldn't fill the same void natively now. Blizzard has not even announced the specific features they are going to be releasing. They have however said that they are going to fill that same void that motivated the creation of bots in the first place.

The real issue, as I see it, is one of features. Where self-hosting is sorely lacking, and no viable alternative to the bots has been announced to the general public.

I agree. But it is not unreasonable to assume the appropriate bot features are going to be re-implemented eventually in their replacement system. Then communities have to worry less about the administrative and technical nonsense that comes with running bots. They can focus on event planning, developing their own game statistics etc...

Suppose they do manage to fully replace the relevant bot features with whatever system they are developing. Blizzard can natively do anything they want beyond that. If they are interested in advanced long-term features (which it seems they are), getting their infrastructure under control is an obvious prerequisite.

So features are important of course, but if you grant that they have intentions to provide a legitimate alternative, what is the big issue?

 

[DracoL1ch]

Oh sure. When somebody puts a gun on you, u should collaborate. Silent sheep.
And who are the "normal player" is? So far I could only notice couple blizz fans and nobody else. Loud majority is on fire, wheres your "normal players" are tho? In those 1k online realms have now?

 

[Chaosy]

If bots are what keeps your game alive, then game is dead anyway.

 

[A Void]

Abuse the game? Thats a strange way to say "keeping it alive"
Without ghost bots there would be valley of death shortly after 2010+. Ignorant plebs never understand.
Make a note that those who actually kept the community, the people from going into other games, are FOR bots. And those who did nothing but forum wars or small niche maps with 10 players/month are against bots.

What's so difficult to understand? As a community we are dependent on third party hosting services, don't you hear how stupid that sounds? Hosting should be part of normal client again, I don't want to keep waiting in lines on some third party website just to host maps that are approved by them.

Instead of being rude and toxic you could actually provide real arguments with facts.

 

[DracoL1ch]

Real argument - it works, it developed actively, developers didn't ditch their child, give it to anyone for free, it doesn't need any fix, the only thing which needs fixing is bnet games filter. So what? If you can't see why bots are good for community there are nothing to talk about with you.