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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

#151

Post by etiam »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #27

> Blizzard [...] has asked GOG to remove its non-remastered, DRM-free $15 bundle of those games from its store on December 13. > GOG [...] suddenly finds itself with a new policy to figure out. So GOG is putting the Warcraft I & II Bundle on sale (discount code "MakeWarcraftLiveForever" for $2 off) and is letting folks know that if they buy it before December 13, they will keep access to it after the delisting, compl…

They've worked a fair bit at it already and if they intend to keep maintaining it indefinitely without possibility for further sales it could be nice to actually get money for it at this point. Also, I'm not sure what they might be obligated to pass to the copyright holder per copy? Maybe it's not a proportion of the sales price in this case?

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

#152

Post by concordDance »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #104
0dayz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it started waaay before that. * The sexual misconduct most likely happened way before it came out publicly as all the sleezebags stayed until it was public * real id debacle * Diablo 3 * shutting down blizzard north, despite working on d3 * spending 10 years on trying to make starcraft 2, when the rts genre was in a major slump * x years on the project titan, only to get cancelled * spent years trying to create…

Starcraft 2 murdered RTS genre, it was and is so good, that nothing comes close. I have no idea why you put it on the list. Activision Blizzard was 2008. Shutting Blizzard North was 2005. So indeed it seems it was rotting before official Vivaldi-Activision merger. I think, just like with Starcraft, you misread the situation with "hype of the genre was gone" about moba. I think Blizzard was very good at creating extre…

Supcom, AoE2, Zero-K and BAR are all superior along different axes to SC2. RTS is a very wide category.

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

#154

Post by torlok »

mproud wrote: post #145

That being said, Diablo II: Resurrected is fantastic.

So is StarCraft. I can't comprehend why the predecessor to their cash cow gets the "looks like it was upscaled with AI by an intern" treatment. The Warcraft II animations are objectively way worse in the remastered version.

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

#155

Post by invalidOrTaken »

0dayz wrote: post #112
Etherlord87 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starcraft 2 murdered RTS genre, it was and is so good, that nothing comes close. I have no idea why you put it on the list. Activision Blizzard was 2008. Shutting Blizzard North was 2005. So indeed it seems it was rotting before official Vivaldi-Activision merger. I think, just like with Starcraft, you misread the situation with "hype of the genre was gone" about moba. I think Blizzard was very good at creating extre…

The problem was the timing, Starcraft 2 mechanics wise is fine even if they made some really whimsical balance changes that plagued the esport scene until it was almost pulled off life support (similar to how Overwatch couldn't balance itself to the point where the developers gave up). If like HotS and Diablo 3 it came out much earlier it would've kept the RTS genre most likely alive (only revived interest in AoE 2 s…

The goofy thing about all this is that HotS is really good if you judge it on its own merits. I played DotA for a long time, switched to HotS, and never looked back.

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

#156

Post by izzydata »

smolder wrote: post #31
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…

Blizzard started down the path to failure when they merged with Activision, though I'm not sure they would have lasted much longer outside of that. It's apparent to me the only way "make quality stuff" survives as a strategy long term is to stay private like Valve. Public ownership ruins companies. They grow into inefficient messes and lose any edge they had while alienating their customers in the interest of short t…

At least when it comes to artistic endeavors like video games it makes sense to be small. I find that the more you turn art into a massive assembly line the less passionate the product becomes. If the goal is quality art than massive growth is not the way.

Unfortunately the expectation for modern games is this near infinite scope which requires several years to complete and way too much money. If your game is required to be this large then you either need a huge team or decades of time from a small time.

So I believe that the larger the game the more likely it is going to be devoid of passion and artistic value. I'd prefer game studios to split up into many smaller studios and make more smaller games.

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

#157

Post by unethical_ban »

Gud wrote: post #77
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…

Frankly, as an avid AoE 2(now DE) player, I wish they hadn’t. AoE2 is slowly losing its uniqueness with each update. The new matchmaking sucks, can no longer select which map to play on ranked, pathing is broken in new ways. Don’t get me wrong, the new civilisations are nice, just kind of hoped they wouldn’t have done a total revamp.

DE?

I didn't know AoE2 was getting content updates or balancing. I thought it was the same game, locked in. I notice aoe4 has seasons and rebalancing... Not sure how to feel about it.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

Aachen wrote: post #83
lrem wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a very long time “hard copies” were just a physical precache of the download. What you actually paid for was the online store code inside the box. I’ve stopped buying boxes after the second one like this.

The software I bought on CD/DVD was never like that unless you mean needing to contact some activation server. As far as I know, things like the Switch game cartridges are also real (presumably with a similar asterisk). The only annoying things are these installers nowadays you download for e.g. Chrome or, a bit longer ago, Flash, not so much the things sold as copy to own (resellable) I wouldn't discourage people fr…

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by Gud »

unethical_ban wrote: post #157
Gud wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, as an avid AoE 2(now DE) player, I wish they hadn’t. AoE2 is slowly losing its uniqueness with each update. The new matchmaking sucks, can no longer select which map to play on ranked, pathing is broken in new ways. Don’t get me wrong, the new civilisations are nice, just kind of hoped they wouldn’t have done a total revamp.

DE? I didn't know AoE2 was getting content updates or balancing. I thought it was the same game, locked in. I notice aoe4 has seasons and rebalancing... Not sure how to feel about it.

Some of the new civs are amazing. Two of my favourite civs are Lithuanians and Romans.

I can also tell you, since there is a whole new generation of gamers out there who have practiced countless hours of various games, the game play and what is a n00b has dramatically changed. Plus us old timers are really good as well.

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

#160

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

packetlost wrote: post #147
raxxorraxor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience as an employee really. Want to work for a healthy company? Join a private one. It is of course no guarantee and there are exceptions as well, but there certainly seems to be a trend.

I wonder why this is? Fiduciary duty of the executive leadership? Regulation compliance requirements?

IMO, Goodhart's Law[1] "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes" or "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" is a big part of it. As soon as stock price is the primary target it ceases to be a good measure of the actual value of the company, management will try to game the stock price at the expense of the underlying value.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

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