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Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

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Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#51

Post by 946789987649 »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #36

It used to be exciting when a Blizzard release was coming out. Now it's just scary and a bit depressing when they announce something. I was excited all the way up through Overwatch 1, then the WC3 remaster and Overwatch 2 were awful. If they only messed up new releases it wouldnt be so bad; it's the incessant fiddling and worsening of what was good. Even of games that weren't meant to be "live service" games. I alrea…

Even World of Warcraft which used to be seamless in terms of issues, has had increasingly more and more obvious bugs. A sad state from the "Blizzard polish" of yesteryear.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#52

Post by bilekas »

Blizzard seem to be burning a lot of bridges and goodwill they've built up over the years. It's incredible what GoG is trying to do, for a profit of course but all the same.

The idea of not being able to purchase older titles in a legitimate way only encourages piracy, yet if it will squeeze an extra few pennies out for shareholders, it seems like the right move.

The games industry really seems to be turning into the snake that eats itself. I'm just grateful for the indie scene still being a thing.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#53

Post by seba_dos1 »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #36

It used to be exciting when a Blizzard release was coming out. Now it's just scary and a bit depressing when they announce something. I was excited all the way up through Overwatch 1, then the WC3 remaster and Overwatch 2 were awful. If they only messed up new releases it wouldnt be so bad; it's the incessant fiddling and worsening of what was good. Even of games that weren't meant to be "live service" games. I alrea…

Even for someone who only really played Hearthstone for a while many years ago but tries to stay somewhat current with the industry, my perception of Blizzard has indeed massively changed somewhere after Overwatch. Most of their moves I was reading about since were rather baffling, which was very unlike how I perceived Blizzard before.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#54

Post by pjmlp »

hulitu wrote: post #30
llmthrow102 wrote: post #14

They've also now launched the Warcraft 3 "remaster" twice, and it's still in a worse state than it was 20 years ago. First they did less than half the job, cut budget, and launched missing major features from the original project, with only some terrible new models to show that look decent up close, but bad from the overhead RTS view. Then they did a relaunch where they did lazy AI upscaling of old models and icons t…

> Really terrible treatment of one of the best game series of all time, and being part of Microsoft hasn't helped. It would have been nice if Warcraft 3 got the same treatment as AoE2 or AoM. Oh, Microsoft, the destroyers of GUIs. I tried AoE 3 on Steam (demo). It was a total disaster. Downloading was slow and then the game: At the first start would not let me build barracks (no suitable place found). At the second s…

> Microsoft, the destroyers of GUIs.

In the past I would have complained, but as someone that has foolished invested into UWP and WinRT siren song, I can't but fully agree.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#55

Post by thayne »

bilekas wrote: post #52

Blizzard seem to be burning a lot of bridges and goodwill they've built up over the years. It's incredible what GoG is trying to do, for a profit of course but all the same. The idea of not being able to purchase older titles in a legitimate way only encourages piracy, yet if it will squeeze an extra few pennies out for shareholders, it seems like the right move. The games industry really seems to be turning into the…

> The idea of not being able to purchase older titles in a legitimate way only encourages piracy

The solution is to dramatically decrease the length of copyright, so that old games (or other software) can be obtained legally (and modified) even if the original maker no longer sells it.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#56

Post by TeMPOraL »

cocacola1 wrote: post #28
maeil wrote: post #9

Interesting how GOG is willing to take such a hard stand of this and fight Blizzard on it, when they immediately pulled the Taiwanese horror game Devotion for political reasons [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horr...

> But shortly after release, Chinese players found a poster hanging in the apartment that serves as the games’ setting that said “Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron”. > Almost 10,000 negative reviews soon flooded the game’s review page. The developer, Red Candle Games, posted an apology saying it was “purely an accident” that the poster was left in the game. 10,000 negative reviews is wild for something so banal. I can…

> 10,000 negative reviews is wild for something so banal. I can't imagine defending a politician over what might be the mildest insult ever conceived.

Imagine the poster unironically showed Trump dressed up to resemble Abraham Lincoln, and praised him as the great leader of USA. Or some such.

Imagine what would happen in the reviews then.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#57

Post by izacus »

maeil wrote: post #9

Interesting how GOG is willing to take such a hard stand of this and fight Blizzard on it, when they immediately pulled the Taiwanese horror game Devotion for political reasons [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horr...

It's more interesting how y'all always find ways to tear into everyone that makes a stand - no true scotsman style while giving a pass to much worse actors.

Companies like Activision, Ubisoft, EA and Microsoft can do outright horrible things and you'll be sitting by quitely, but god forbid someone like GoG shows up with an idea to fix something and you tear into them just because they didn't solve all the worlds political problems at once.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#58

Post by thayne »

cocacola1 wrote: post #28
maeil wrote: post #9

Interesting how GOG is willing to take such a hard stand of this and fight Blizzard on it, when they immediately pulled the Taiwanese horror game Devotion for political reasons [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horr...

> But shortly after release, Chinese players found a poster hanging in the apartment that serves as the games’ setting that said “Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron”. > Almost 10,000 negative reviews soon flooded the game’s review page. The developer, Red Candle Games, posted an apology saying it was “purely an accident” that the poster was left in the game. 10,000 negative reviews is wild for something so banal. I can…

I'm doubtful most of those reviews were real.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#59

Post by Dalewyn »

pjmlp wrote: post #54
hulitu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really terrible treatment of one of the best game series of all time, and being part of Microsoft hasn't helped. It would have been nice if Warcraft 3 got the same treatment as AoE2 or AoM. Oh, Microsoft, the destroyers of GUIs. I tried AoE 3 on Steam (demo). It was a total disaster. Downloading was slow and then the game: At the first start would not let me build barracks (no suitable place found). At the second s…

> Microsoft, the destroyers of GUIs. In the past I would have complained, but as someone that has foolished invested into UWP and WinRT siren song, I can't but fully agree.

Never bet against Win32.

Re: Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

#60

Post by izacus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #33
danielskogly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tales of Monkey Island is not part of the GOG Preservation Program as far as I can tell[0]. This policy update is for games part of the program. https://www.gog.com/en/game/tales_of_monkey_island

They have another policy specifying that they maintain the games they sell. They don't sell as-is, they warrant that the game will run appropriately. But we know they don't honor that policy. What would you conclude?

Why the heck do you think it's the stores job to employ developers to maintain games for you forever?

How do you think that actually works out? For games that are sold for usually less than 15 bucks?

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