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30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

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Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#151

Post by justsomehnguy »

joegibbs wrote: post #145
black3r wrote: post #107

> Development stared in the first months of 1995, and the game was released in North America and Australia on December 9, 1995. This feels absolutely insane for today's standards. And not just in the gaming world. Somehow with all the advancement of libraries, frameworks, coding tools, and even AI these days, development speeds seem so much slower and it seems like too much time is spent on eye candy, monetization an…

Not at all crazy. You could very easily get a game with the same art style, features, number of missions done now in a month but people want much more. QOL features, multiple platforms, high quality graphics - $50 (average game price back then) is $105 now - you can't sell any game for that price nowadays, and a game at WC2 level of features wouldn't be accepted by customers for more than $5. A full price $59.99 game…

> is $105 now - you can't sell any game for that price nowadays

But you don't need to. Just sell it to Steam for a $39.99 or whatever and have much, much more sales than in '95. And as a bonus you would still recieve some sales years after.

Sure, you won't get in Top 100 and wouldn't earn bazillions...

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#152

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #61
jquery wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash was an absolute legend. I do wonder if Brood War's long period without balance patches helped or hurt it as an esport. In modern games, it feels like developers "shake up the meta" on purpose, whereas in brood war, it was up to map designers to ensure balance. This made it easier for long time fans to appreciate tactics... in SC2, I have to be caught up on the latest balance patches to appreciate anything.

It's a huge part of it's longevity. I still watch Brood War tournaments today and it's so cool to go back one, five, ten years and watch a classic game. Compare that to the other game I love, DOTA, it's hard to watch old games because everything is so different. BW really is lightning in a bottle. PS: Flash is coming back very soon apparently.

Brood War has aged like fine-wine. As I mentioned in a parallel comment, the key to Brood War's longevity comes from the map maker. Every detail is carefully considered so that none of the races can get away with a crazy advantage. It's really a special game, and every new season of ASL still feels magical.

I wish medical science would get so much better that Flash could fully heal his wrist injuries. He's spoken at length about how he loves to dedicate himself wholeheartedly to playing, and how he doesn't like to compete if he's not able to give it his all.

You probably already know about it, but in case you or any other reader is unaware there's this great YouTube channel @jinjinBW that translates Korean BW clips into English. It's a huge boon for western fans.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#153

Post by ece »

amatecha wrote: post #79
bfors wrote: post #50

This game lead me down a path that resulted in me becoming a software engineer. Good game.

No doubt. My friend learned how to hex edit because of WC1 -- editing his savegame files haha

I was happy when I could skip the intro movie.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#154

Post by tarsinge »

josh2600 wrote: post #137

I was 7 when Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness dropped. You cannot imagine the lengths we had to go to play this game in our home. We were lucky enough to have two apple computers and so my brother and I would play each other using the battle net technology over appletalk. The thing was, the only appletalk cable in our house was barely long enough to make it between the two bedrooms, so when we wanted to play the cable…

> WCII ToD is absolutely one of the most insane games to ever be birthed unto the world. It was so brain breaking compared to everything else we were playing at the. time. Just a real quantum leap in terms of dopeness.

I was 10 a the time and yes I’m not sure people realize how magical it felt at the time. When I got it in Christmas 96 on a 68k Mac it felt like it really opened a parallel universe compared to other games.

The graphics (looked like a high res SNES game, which at the time was quite unique on PC), the CD quality soundtrack, the booklet concept art, the unit voices and buildings sounds… as a kid discovering Fantasy it had everything.

And the attention to details, like Christmas string lights on building or a snowman when the map was in winter may seem insignificant, but as a kid it was wonderful.

Even my dad who was not into video games but had played tabletop war games in the past and got hooked and spent a few nights on it to complete a solo campaign.

This is by far the retro game I have the most nostalgia for.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#155

Post by kalleboo »

amatecha wrote: post #67

I remember it felt like AGES for the Mac version to come out -- my friends with DOS/Win machines were playing and of course I was out of luck, still clinging to my precious WarCraft 1 in the meantime (apparently the Mac vers came out 8mo later)... I remember visiting a couple friends and playing the game at their house and being so jealous they can just play this amazing game any time. WC2 was such a leap forward and…

None of my PC friends had any kind of networking, but on our Macs we had an AppleTalk (PhoneNet) network between 3 Macs (WC2 ran on a 25 MHz 68040 so my old bedroom Mac would still suffice) making my home the WarCraft II gaming nexus.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#156

Post by taurath »

Fnoord wrote: post #144
ericmcer wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the RTS games are underplayed nowadays. Starcraft 2 is maybe the most active still and has been all but abandoned by Blizzard. A good RTS has an extremely harsh learning curve and is not super monetizable. Someone would have to rethink the genre: make it easier for casual players and figure out how to get the addicting money making patterns in. Otherwise big companies are gonna have no interest. Sucks, I love Sta…

The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate. I cannot comment on it, I have no idea how good it is. AFAIK it is multiplayer only. I played Dune II, Warcraft II, C&C, Red Alert, Starcraft (didn't like, I never understood the hype), Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft III as kid, but... only single player (at various difficulties). That is just how games were generally played in the 90s. I do remember using…

I agree, I think MOBAs superceded the "real time" part of RTS's, while the more turn based Civ/4x, Total War series strategy type games ended up taking a lot of the base building part. Having them both together was just straight up difficult and incredibly intense, like the game itself demanded you be on adderall because your attention cannot wane for a single moment.

The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where there was only going to be one or two interesting interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too early.

Teamfight Tactics and Autochess are interesting newer entries though, allowing time to strategize and adding a lot of randomness to the games, where you can't just play one build. Even then though, as these games get more and more explored, "optimal" strategy gets eventually discovered and the game devs especially in TFT are in a race to try to keep things high variance but also seem fair - its definitely a difficult job!

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#157

Post by PeterStuer »

ericmcer wrote: post #116
Tiktaalik wrote: post #93

This is a really good and I think sadly under played and discussed game. It was very popular in the mid 1990s on release but it seems like it was immediately forgotten about once Starcraft arrived. It's unfortunate because yes it's a simpler and more straight forward game, and not as balanced, but it is very fun and pure. Warcraft 1 is maybe too slow paced and basic to be enjoyable, but Warcraft 2 remains very playab…

All the RTS games are underplayed nowadays. Starcraft 2 is maybe the most active still and has been all but abandoned by Blizzard. A good RTS has an extremely harsh learning curve and is not super monetizable. Someone would have to rethink the genre: make it easier for casual players and figure out how to get the addicting money making patterns in. Otherwise big companies are gonna have no interest. Sucks, I love Sta…

Perhaps a more 'casual' in the RTS genre, but AoE2 is still going very strong.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#158

Post by taurath »

seattle_spring wrote: post #149
Fnoord wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate. I cannot comment on it, I have no idea how good it is. AFAIK it is multiplayer only. I played Dune II, Warcraft II, C&C, Red Alert, Starcraft (didn't like, I never understood the hype), Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft III as kid, but... only single player (at various difficulties). That is just how games were generally played in the 90s. I do remember using…

> The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate This was their claim, but it did not pan out in reality. It flopped on launch, hard . Peak player count since launch has been less than 100, and is currently hovering around 25.

It was really proof that gameplay often takes a back seat to visual identity, ESPECIALLY if the gameplay is extremely derivative, which this was. They had a massive amount of goodwill from fans of the genre, but when they started sharing screenshots it deflated fast - its not a 2025 game, its a 2010 clone of a popular 2005 game. Its nigh impossible to make a spiritual successor to genre defining games in WC3 and SC2 - too many things need to go perfect.

It had a better chance if it could find its own voice, but it ended up feeling like a direct to home video sequel to a popular movie

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#159

Post by mickeyp »

barfoure wrote: post #140
sjoblomj wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Wow, I did not know that. Thanks for sharing! 2. Indeed - I'm happy to hear someone know their Blizzard modding community history. To my knowledge, King Arthur never finished his studies as he got offered a job at Blizzard. He worked at Blizzard from around 2000 to 2020. He's now at Dreamhaven it seems, along with former Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. And indeed - Jorsys is very much inspired by Camsys =) 3. I think…

Here’s a few more: 1) in addition to Kali, people played War2 on MSN Gaming Zone. It was available under the TCP/IP section. 2) before war2bne, you could use a program to change the color of your in game name, and use non-ASCII characters. So people went wild in multiplayer games. 3) I think MPlayer also supported War2? I don’t think anyone played it there. 4) StarCraft modding community was tight knit. Lots of great…

Battle.net's simple system of just downloading maps you didn't have helped a lot.

I remember playing a "Use Map Settings" map where you started out as a lone marine and then had to 'upgrade' your character over time. It felt like a very early prototype of later hero-style games that came to exist in Warcraft 3 and beyond.

Fun times.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#160

Post by GBeastMode »

The only RTS games I could truly enjoy were Warcraft II and III. Other games like StarCraft are too complex for me to fully engage with. I especially liked Warcraft III’s system of taxing large armies - it made battles small-scale and much easier to wrap my head around.
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