Blizzard should’ve just shut down. It’s lived long enough to see itself become a monster.
Blizzard died when it was acquired by Activision.
To a lesser extent it died when they shut down Blizzard North
Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
101–110 of 303 posts
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#102Just background in case you don't know: Turtle WoW tried to turn Classic World of Warcraft into a Roguelike, but in doing so wound up creating a bunch of new mechanics, and a gameplay loop that was quite unique even relative to other Roguelikes. So my position on this is; two things can be true at the same time: - Turtle WoW violated Blizzard's copyright, tried to charge money for some services, and Blizzard are well…
Why not just buy it then? It reminds me of Valve’s treatment of Black Mesa, which made the community love the company even more. It’d be hilariously easy for Blizzard to spend some money on the thing and just buy the devs out, fans love you for it and it builds good will with a fanbase. Corporations can’t see past the legal aspect of things I guess.
Because they're arrogant, and have critical stakeholders. The fact that someone else took their assets and made a better game runs counter to the story that they're the best in the business.
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many hit games originated as mods. If the Turtle WoW team really are on to something, they should pursue it as an independent game.
How is that supposed to work when the main product is nostalgia? It's a mod for people who think the first-party expansions aren't true to the core of the original game - how could an independent game with completely new IP ever have the same draw? You really can't compare this to something like DotA, where the original engine and IP was basically set dressing for the new game built within it. People were primarily i…
if the main product is nostalgia then it’s a derived work and you don’t get to claim moral superiority.
if they created genuinely novel mechanics that can stand on their own then they should do that.
Like you said, DOTA2 was a 1:1 mechanical clone but built from scratch without relying on Blizzard IP. League of Legends was a spiritual sequel with new IP.
Almost all fan projects that get shut down are 99% derived IP and 1% original. That will never fly. Nor should it.
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#104I don't even remember the name of the server or software, but even back when WoW was contemporary I had a lot more fun playing on free servers with extended XP, even though pretty often bosses would be buggy or not quite the same as in the real game. It was so much more playable and casual compared to the early WoW (or worse, EverQuest which came before). It's a shame game companies can't find a way to embrace or eve…
Their business model is to lock you into a monthslong or yearslong grind, unfortunately.
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#105Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like every large public corporation inevitably turns into a rent seeking parasite. How do we build a system that has more calves and fewer blizzards? How do we incentivize that?
You gotta give capitalist first principles and ideals and policies the boot. When you can use money to buy anything and earn money without practical limits, gaining access to more and more capital at any and all costs, even at the cost of everybody else's life and freedom and rights, is the natural result.
Valve is very much a capitalist company though. Gabe Newell is a billionaire, he owns six yachts, and Valve practically invented the concept of the loot box. So if the question is "how do we get more Valves and fewer Blizzards," it doesn't seem clear to me how giving capitalism the boot helps.
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyonix Rocket League was a sequel to Super Sonic Rocket Powered Battle Cars which was a totally new game but born from the studio building VehicleMod for Unreal Tournament.
We are talking about hit games. Mods previously made by people who released a hit game are out of scope.
We're talking about hit games created specifically as a sequel to a hit mod of another game, and communication to the community of the hit mod that this is where the developers are going, and that they should move to the standalone game if they want to thank the developers for all that unpaid work they did on the mod over the years.
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#108Just background in case you don't know: Turtle WoW tried to turn Classic World of Warcraft into a Roguelike, but in doing so wound up creating a bunch of new mechanics, and a gameplay loop that was quite unique even relative to other Roguelikes. So my position on this is; two things can be true at the same time: - Turtle WoW violated Blizzard's copyright, tried to charge money for some services, and Blizzard are well…
Turtle WoW was also porting their fork to Unreal Engine 5 [1] but that got cancelled ~6 months ago due to a Blizzard lawsuit. For anyone unfamiliar with WoW, private servers have been a thing for most of WoW's history. It's unclear to me where the source code came from. I've heard different stories (eg from Chinese servers) and also that it was a greenfield development reverse-engineered from the client. All of this…
If it turns out the private server code was a greenfield reverse engineered effort - do you still think that's a copyright violation? Why?
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#109Just background in case you don't know: Turtle WoW tried to turn Classic World of Warcraft into a Roguelike, but in doing so wound up creating a bunch of new mechanics, and a gameplay loop that was quite unique even relative to other Roguelikes. So my position on this is; two things can be true at the same time: - Turtle WoW violated Blizzard's copyright, tried to charge money for some services, and Blizzard are well…
Turtle WoW was also porting their fork to Unreal Engine 5 [1] but that got cancelled ~6 months ago due to a Blizzard lawsuit. For anyone unfamiliar with WoW, private servers have been a thing for most of WoW's history. It's unclear to me where the source code came from. I've heard different stories (eg from Chinese servers) and also that it was a greenfield development reverse-engineered from the client. All of this…
Implementing a WoW classic server is actually fairly easy. The game client comes with the entire engine, art, music, and quest content. The server is basically a fancy IRC server, taking client events and rebroadcasting them to other clients.
Even many of the events are implied, like how regular attacks continue at a fixed frequency once started, so other clients only need to know when the player started attacking and whether they are still in range, and player run speed is a constant so a player running in a straight line doesn't generate additional events.
I even suspect the dice rolls are coming from a shared RNG that each client maintains independently, but haven't researched it.
This is how WoW classic was playable over a 33K modem.
Re: Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just buy it then? It reminds me of Valve’s treatment of Black Mesa, which made the community love the company even more. It’d be hilariously easy for Blizzard to spend some money on the thing and just buy the devs out, fans love you for it and it builds good will with a fanbase. Corporations can’t see past the legal aspect of things I guess.
Because they're arrogant, and have critical stakeholders. The fact that someone else took their assets and made a better game runs counter to the story that they're the best in the business.
Arrogant yes but don't forget greedy. Call of Duty is absolutely destroyed brand. Unplayable solely by ridiculous amount of battle passes and stupid fantasy skins.