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

arstechnica.com

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

#141

Post by red-iron-pine »

jack_pp wrote: post #29
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #11

If you only read the headline, GOG is still selling both games until December 13th. Now, I have to weigh the calculus: do I buy the games just because, knowing there is basically zero chance I boot them up? What if that was Blizzard's end game -to drive scarcity?

Drive scarcity? I was playing pirated WC3 20 years ago, on pirated battle.net. There's no such thing as scarcity for old games. They will forever be available as long as there are seeders.

yeah but now i have to trust some random magnet link and hope it's not gonna drop some sort of rootkit on me. and yeah okay there are ways around that like using an old laptop or heavily sandbox'd VM.

but now i'm not just snagging a file, i'm creating an entire workflow. i'll just pay for the actual, clean binary

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

#142

Post by red-iron-pine »

_the_inflator wrote: post #85

Classics are for casual gamers who enjoy fixed settings. Redesigns are subscription models that revive a working brand and keep players happy with a constant flood of new features. I understand Blizzard wants to decide what story to tell about its IP. On the other hand, many gaming veterans still want to feel and grasp the before of a remake rather than the after alone. GOG hit a sweet spot for me. It simply fulfills…

never thought i'd support bernie ecclestone in anything, but it's currently just stupid F1 drama bullshit every month. constant noise means i dgaf 99% of the time. bernie was right in his more limited marketing approaches.

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

#143

Post by propoganda »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #61
gambiting wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> that it’s unfathomable that you’d have any loyalty to them. It's unfathomable that anyone anywhere has "loyalty" to any politician. They are just doing a job - what do they need loyalty for? Especially from the electorate.

Look, it may be unfathomable to your alien mind from outer space, but it is what it is. Human beings tend to entangle their sense of self with causes and people they care about, whether it's a politician, a singer, a sportsball player, or a spouse. You need to accept that if you want to understand humans.

Can only say it so many times, I suppose.

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

#144

Post by propoganda »

dartos wrote: post #47
hyperman1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at your username, I have no idea if this is a real comment, a shill for China, a troll, or sarcasm gone of the scales. That's an impressive amount of metagame for a sure-to-be-downmodded comment.

A 9 hour old account too

Gee wiz, that’s got us stumped! What are the implications there fellas??

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

#146

Post by cogman10 »

Majromax wrote: post #128
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…

I hate to just drop a book recommendation, but Jason Schreier's Play Nice covers the history of Blizzard in comprehensive detail. The overall situation was multifacted, but my takeaway is that Blizzard's recent failures come down to two main themes: * World of Warcraft's success gave the company unrealistic expectations of what a successful "normal" game looked like, and * "When it's ready" covers up the sins of a co…

So interestingly you see this sort of thing play out in online media.

- Youtuber X has a runaway successful video/s.

- Seeing the cashflow from that video, they think "Hey, I could probably duplicate this!"

- When that duplication fails, they decide "You know what, maybe I just need to make a lot of videos"

- When that doesn't bring in the expected income and/or leads to burnout they think "You know what, I think I need some outside help to make me see my blindspots".

And, of course, invariably when that outside help comes in, so does the slop. The outside help does not care about quality, they care about getting money in through the door. That often involves hack and slashing all efforts at quality, shilling out endlessly, and some real questionable decisions when it comes to employment.

Now, of course, the creator is still responsible for what their company becomes. But, money is money and a creator/owner is just more likely to like easymode income (for themselves) vs duplicating the efforts of a prior period.

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

#147

Post by packetlost »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #124
smolder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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

#148

Post by throwawaymobule »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #141
jack_pp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drive scarcity? I was playing pirated WC3 20 years ago, on pirated battle.net. There's no such thing as scarcity for old games. They will forever be available as long as there are seeders.

yeah but now i have to trust some random magnet link and hope it's not gonna drop some sort of rootkit on me. and yeah okay there are ways around that like using an old laptop or heavily sandbox'd VM. but now i'm not just snagging a file, i'm creating an entire workflow. i'll just pay for the actual, clean binary

All of gog's offline installers are signed and do a hash check on any external .bin files they ship with.

The impact they've had on bundled malware in pirated copies of their games can not be overstated.

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

#149

Post by Pet_Ant »

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…

> Starcraft 2 murdered RTS genre, it was and is so good, that nothing comes close.

I mean Supreme Commander has an active community despite coming out 3 years earlier, with less hype, and from a company that has long died.

Starcraft 2 had a nice campaign, but it really felt like Starcraft 1.5. Never really elevated the genre. SupCom really did.

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

#150

Post by bloomingkales »

Majromax wrote: post #128
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…

I hate to just drop a book recommendation, but Jason Schreier's Play Nice covers the history of Blizzard in comprehensive detail. The overall situation was multifacted, but my takeaway is that Blizzard's recent failures come down to two main themes: * World of Warcraft's success gave the company unrealistic expectations of what a successful "normal" game looked like, and * "When it's ready" covers up the sins of a co…

My synthesis is that the combination meant that Blizzard projects needed to promise the moon to be greenlit, but then they immediately blew the initial time and money-budgets with the extensive scope.

Going over budget and going over scope can only happen depending on who is measuring. I can spend 6 months developing a part of a game and not consider it a waste of time or out of scope. I’m of the mind that this was the natural state of Blizzard prior to Activision.

I mean, they are fundamentally making things that roughly sound like this - we are all going to sit around on a server and pretend to have a giant adventure

Ridiculous, the very concept is out of scope lol. You simply can’t have the wrong minded people involved in this process, certainly not the wrong project managers. You can’t even have the wrong parent company for a pursuit like this.

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