Why did Blizzard fail in the making Reforged? This article goes over some behind the scenes during the games development process.
Custom Campaigns? Is finally back. Before now were and are still able play them in normal map form, if they were updated/transformed. Or make use of the Campaign Splitter that was made to split w3n files into w3m/w3x. The Quenching is a mod that can be used with some CCs. Or just use it with the normal campaign.
Player Profiles? Yes, but it seems to mainly be ladder stats, W3C has more extensive ones.
Cross-realm hosting? Yes its finally back again.
Clans? Yes however in a glitchy state. And W3C has both custom made chat-rooms as well as clans.
Ladder? Yes as of 1.33 its out but not working without issues. And W3C still going strong.
Automated Tournaments? Not yet. Some communities have seasonal things going for both ladder and customs but nothing official yet. And should soon be a thing on W3C.
Old BNet Chat System? No and on Europe realm chat do not auto-scroll either, is also in the way of the map description but toggle-able. And no kind of chat log with joins or leaves that we had before or timestamp on messages. W3C has made their chats in this “old school” spirit.
Game Reconnection (GProxy)? No. In case of a player leaving disconnecting or crashing or desyncing that player is unable to rejoin. But it can be determined by looking at different things what the cause was, desyncs will have an UI glitch for the portrait, crashes might have a fatal/unknown error and DCs one can check the replay or logs.
Competitive Customs & Ladders? Not really. However with Community made wc3stats and in the future FLO-host enables this in a number of forms with replay uploading.
Hosting & BNet Commands? Yeah. But they are limited and do not work as they should or you’d wish. For example !ban is just a “long kick” preventing the banned player/user from rejoining that current lobby not all games you host, thus you can’t mange bans and need to black list them yourself. Commands found here. As well as a !stats and zoom via scroll.
Campaign Overhaul to fit in with WoW? No. Five missions were remade and a most were reworked and to some degree, some “new” characters were introduced but not to the scale people wish or expected, for good or ill. However the Reforged version of the Campaigns difficulty among other things was updated more details here. As of patch 1.36.1 this is no longer the case as campaign was reverted back to its 1.32 state.
Improved Cutscenes? Not like we saw during BlizzCon. This was aborted and as it looks now wont be a thing at all. What we had and have now is showcased in DailyWCRF’s Videos.
Reforged(HD) Vs Classic (SD)? Well that is up to you. Reforged has a few things in the campaign that Classic don’t. Aside from that it would depend on preferences and the maps you want to play as some work better in either version or only in one. Most do use classic and some swap between them so by popular vote Classic(SD) would win as for reasons or factors well most of those are personal.
Follow/Join or invite friends to lobbies? If you both are on the same gateway you can right click your friend and “Join Game”. However you have to restart the game to be able to do it again (keep in mind that Blizz-app server and Wc3 Gateway might not fully sync friend list and thus causing problems as well as not being online in Blizz-app). Invites seems to be fully-partly glitched and broken as of this moment(1.32.10).
Are we able to select more than 12 units/buildings? No, unlikely to be added to the base game too. Small possibility to be added into the editor if at all.
When will X be implemented? SoonTM. We do not know at this stage we used to have monthly patches and updates from blizzard but not atm. Some of this can be explained the Bloomberg article. Even though there is a team from Playside Studios out there working on the game again we still do not really have any ETA for things that is not mentioned in PTR or Patch notes.
After Arena Commander was released, while they were testing early stages of flyable ships, they implemented a tiered release process where a small group of hand picked players were given access to release candidate builds before these were pushed to “alpha subscribers.” In practice, this was supposed to help reduce server loads for testing purposes, but in practice it meant we would go months at a time between playable updates, while a select few stared to control outsized influence on the development meta. At times it meant that the game was actually completely broken and unplayable in the public universe for extended periods, while the special test group would go on about how “trust us, it’s not ready yet,” even though the newer build were clearly more stable.
Also, in those early days, it was already obnoxious enough going back and forth with forum power users over shit like accurate G force simulations, control scheme preferences and weapons balancing, and then suddenly most of us were completely cut out of that conversation.
To me, this was a departure for what I signed up for, which was to be an alpha tester. In my mind, the generous sums of money I spent on ships and weapons was supposed to buy me two things - access to real time development of a revolutionary gaming concept, and perhaps a small amount of influence on that development (even if that just meant reporting bugs focused on things I cared about). When they implemented the tiered release system, both of those things were negated. All of use who were not selected for the real alpha test were excluded from the meta, and the real access to the development process, and were instead walled off behind an increasingly tall “community management” fence.
There are tons of RP mods for RPGx which is built on Voyager: Elite Force - the main community is TLO (The Last Outpost) who host the servers and run community events - although my experience with this was a few years ago, so maybe the community has shifted somewhat.
RPGx has a ton of custom maps including full size recreations of starships and random environments.
These could be games that left a lasting impression on you, games that had stellar gameplay mechanics, characters that captivated you, games that you played tons of hours on, etc.
Battlefront & battlefront 2 first and foremost for sure. Classic battles for socializing, space battles for crash fun, single player galactic conquest
Battle for Middle Earth 2. Big improvement over 1 and you could play as anyone, although Men was outrageously overpowered
Unreal Tournament 1999
Starcraft: Broodwar. We were shitty turtle players, but so much fun
Warcraft 3 (mostly dota, twilight’s eve, and TD)
CS 1.6 and CS:S
Mario kart double dash
super smash Bros melee
Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones
Pokemon Emerald
They don’t make games like that anymore, but then again, it is definitely 75% nostalgia and the good times with friends that I had during those years instead of the actual games.
Now we are stuck playing CS2 online getting rolled by kids on shitty comp servers with 100+ ping 1 day per month or so because there is a 7 hour time difference now. Because online games without sweaty, toxic communities are pretty far in between. Miss the days when video games were fun lol
Magic the Gathering: Arena grabbed my attention again after our friend group picked up the cards again. When I dont play modern stuff I’ll boot up my PS2 and play Monster Hunter 2 (DOS) online. Some smart folks brought back a private server for the old PS2 era games. Great Community (MHOLDSCHOOL Discord, also hosts of the Server) and a change of pace.
I’m not really interested in any MMOs these days which all deemphasize player interaction and prioritize content completion. I’m sure it appeals to the widest audience and thus is the easiest way to pay the bills, but it also makes for a braindead experience.
I’m reservedly optimistic given the wow vets involved, but if they do stuff like:
adding fast travel portals instead of reliance on player mages,
random dungeon finder,
random cross-realm interaction at the cost of fostering server communities,
and otherwise make a single player experience where other players might happen to appear,
then It’s not interesting to me. Also, I don’t think being a retail wow clone will be enough to dethrone retail wow.
What I mean is… sometimes people are very loyal to a videogame franchise or a company because they loved a game they released years ago (Silent Hill/Konami with Silent Hill 2, Blizzard/Bethesda with their respective golden eras, some could argue this happens too with Pokémon and Final Fantasy, etc). Ethical/consumer reasons...
I've been thinking a lot about this for the past few years, and have noticed a trend in what games I've found to be actually good.
I noticed three very specific commonalities, and all of them have at least two:
Foreign (Non-American)
Indie
Small studio
Basically all of the good games that I've liked in the past ten years have been at least two of these, and I'm sure if you think about it, the great games you've played have also been this way.
Stop buying big US studio games, their shareholders all require them to maximize their income with really anti-comsumer and predatory designs and practices. You won't have fun, and it'll be expensive.
Go play EDF5 with some friends. It's jank but super fun. 6 is being translated and ported to PC soon.
Raft is great, too.
Talos Principle was fantastic, if not a little melancholy.
And weirdly, Minecraft Java is still good fun. Go check out some of the mod packs like All Of Fabric 6. Host a local server, port forward, play with friends. Literally world-class, free content made by grassroots, passionate developers who do it because they love it.
Valheim was great years ago, and while their development cycle is slow, it's been solid.
But seriously. When somebody refers or suggests a game to you, the first thing you should look at are how they make money, because that is ABSOLUTELY where the industry is at, and has been for a decade now. We used to have centralized talking heads like Total Biscuit who would bring up topics and discussions trying to keep these studios and publishers in their place, but he got taken out too early and now the community is ultra fragmented with no central integrous authority to reference and publishers and studios are out of control with nobody to answer to except investors.
It's like the loss of a union, except it's industry wide.
There are gems out there, but you gotta get past the advertising and learn to smell the bullshit business practices. They don't have to be standard, but remember that gaming has only turned into gambling and Gaming-as-a-Service (GaaS) because credit cards got involved post-purchase as a source of revenue.
Sure, good things come from it, but the trade-offs are entirely insidious and clearly motivating for standardized enshittification. We adults made our own graves by accepting and spending. Sure, even if the money isn't that big of a deal and the content you get might be good, you're voting with your wallet and training a soulless system.
It's ABSOLUTELY a mirror world, just like the media - if you consume, there will be more. Stop buying shit games like Diablo 4. Blizzard can take the hit unfortunately, and if those business practices stopped making as much return as they did, they wouldn't be supportable.
Sure, initial prices would go up, but at least the games wouldn't be ruined with money shops, proprietary currencies, battle passes, and all the other ultra predatory shit that makes them money that ruin gaming.
Reward creators and studios that stick their necks out to make something purely fun, despite their CFO compromising and forcing their developers to implement these practices because otherwise they'd: "be leaving money on the table, and we are a business, after all."
But remember:
Foreign
Indie
Small Studio
These are demographics that are typically more resistant and empowered to make FUN games.
Maybe I am just getting old but I’ve started to spend a lot more time with older games and titles that may be rough around the edges but have some unique ideas and actually take some risks with their game mechanics.
One of these games is Outward which has a lot of walking (quick travel is almost non existent) and serviceable combat system that leaves a lot to be desired. However both of these do give the game some flavor that is missing from many modern games now combine this with interesting “death” mechanic where instead of respawning you’re thrown in to random scenarios related to the area where you died. Another mechanic is backpack which you’ll need to carry any meaningful amount of items and which will limit your movement in battle if you do not drop it with all your items. The way palyer needs to sacrifice health to receive mana is also interesting and how different each mastery tree is is also nice. I do have to admit that I’d like the game a lot more without time limits on quests as they stress really me out.
Another one is Incredible adventures of Van Helsing which is diablo-style ARPG that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It took me awhile to understand the games mechanics which lead to bad time initially but once I understood the power-up system, focus on flat elemental damage bonuses instead of percentage based ones and how silly some skills where with power-up the game got me hooked. The dialogue and story is also pretty good for ARPG and fully voice acted.
Third one is Wurm: Unlimited which is basically special version of MMORPG Wurm: Online where players can host their own servers with their own tweaks and mods. While Wurm Online is substriction based mmorpg with very very slow progression most Wurm Unlimited servers are free to play and have quadruple experience modifiers making the game a lot more enjoyable. The game is basically medival fantasy sandbox where players can terraform the world, build all sorts of structures, hunt, farm and even do pvp on pvp servers. While a lot of the game is just pressing buttons and waiting for action timers to pass there’s a lot of depth in the game and it can get suprisingly immersive. I do however recommend joining to one of the long lasting servers like Sklotopolis instead of playing the game solo on self-hosted server as the experience is a lot better with small community even if you prefer to do things solo as the world will feel a lot more interactive and a lot less empty.
It’s hard to think about a 2nd and 3rd game, but the number 1 game that has influenced my life is WoW. As bad as it is nowadays, and has been for a while I still can’t really imagine not playing this game in some way. I’ve had an active subscription for probably 95% of the time for the last 14 years, and the release of classic only ignited my love for this version of WoW. I even stuck to Era when servers transitioned to TBC because I wanted to play classic so badly I put up with playing on a server that had like 2 guilds total in the beginning.
Though I started playing FF14 a couple months ago, and while some issues are similar to retail it seems a lot more like it has old-school communities. Maybe I’ll get used to the (imo inferior) PvE design, which is the main reason I don’t see it as my new main game yet.
Other than that maybe Portal (1 & 2), H1Z1 or og MW2 I guess, just for how fondly I look back to the time when I played them.
I can count the number of times I've been put into an empty server on one hand. The game has a pretty dedicated playerbase.
That said, I completely agree with the notion that time restrictions don't really make sense right now. The game is far too buggy in it's current state to really make the insurance claim times make sense and the developers seem a little out of touch on that. They have actually tried to increase the wait time several times to massive outcry from the community. I really think they would be better served cutting the grind down a little bit while they iron out the game.
Was thinking about this today, pretty unique time way back in my gaming past. Belonged to a clan that would play things like War Rock (old F2P game), Battlefield 2, early CoD games, etc....
I was in a counter-strike clan for a long time. We were all varying levels of dork. Clan members doubled as mods for our server, and we ran a server with classic rules and kept it tight. Almost always had a full server (12 people) between ourselves and the randos that joined our community. Spent soooo many hours bullshitting about our stupid teenage lives while headshotting each other. We had ventrilo, a old sql forum, and steam.
Everyone is still on steam friends but don’t talk like we used to. None of us play counter-strike anymore after it moved to CS:GO, so we lost that common thread. I’m mainly focused on my WoW guild and community there now.
I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours....
No Denuvo
DRM-free versions (fuck every AAA client, give me the setup files and piss off)
Linux-friendly anti-cheat
If your game has an online component, release the server files so the community can self-host!
Basically, anything that preserves a game well beyond its prime.
Most of the gaming community did, yes. Players want servers that last forever and updates that never stop, and they’ll throw a hissy fit if it costs them a cent more up front than it did 30 years ago. I’m not a fan of it either, but it’s where the industry is right now.
I found a lot of things in this review pretty spot on, and am curious if others feel the same. I do still regularly play one MMO which I love (GW2), but dumped all the others I used to play since I got fed up with their obvious shift to practices he discusses here. While Anet may be guilty of employing some, they are not imho...
They can also be some of the best, most engaging, and longest-lasting forms of entertainment
Emphasis mine. Longest-lasting is the one thing live service games are guaranteed not to be, which he gets to later.
The thing that really truly makes a live service game a live service are the updates.
Games got updates before live services, and games today that aren't live services get updates.
Then the author acknowledges the existence of expansions and patches before live service games but doesn't see this as being at odds with his definition. Expansions certainly didn't take "several years" to release back then, like he said, and they still don't take that long now (they still exist, which he also acknowledges). While the updates that came along with World of WarCraft were large and significant, it also wasn't out of the ordinary for PC games to add content like maps and modes for free, no subscription required, because just like today, new content drops bring players back to check it out.
Magic: The Gathering and Dice Throne get regular updates. These are tabletop games. Are they live services? Of course not. They're selling you a product, not providing you a service. The regular work the developers do on those games are just R&D that any producer goes through to make a product. The "service" of live service games are that they're providing the server for you to play on alongside those updates, but the server code is just a part of the product that they withheld from you in order to make you dependent on them and eventually have to spend money. Live services are not services; they're just bad products, because they didn't give you everything you paid for.
The author then discusses all of the manipulation that comes along with live service design, and I too find that gross, but from my perspective, that's just part of the bad product that they built. Chicken and egg. Customers were perfectly capable of the technical requirements of running a vanilla WoW server, and it was only Blizzard's legal department that stopped them.
I think the industry as a whole should be finding a better way to preserve these games and also to provide some legal avenue for paying customers...to continue playing them even when the publisher has thrown in the towel.
Exactly. This is the problem. These companies won't do this unless somehow forced though, because that dependency on their servers means you have to play the game with the lengthy grind that they dictate so that you stay subscribed longer (even though the house rules on the community server speed up the grind to be more fun), stay online longer through manipulation, and keep getting opportunities to spend money in their cash shop. Even games that aren't monetized like a live service do this nonsense, probably out of some attempt to prevent piracy, but it just ends up just making the game worse along with it. I no longer buy or play games that are dependent on an external server; even this definition has some blurred lines with games like Hitman.
It's okay to make a multiplayer game that people may only play a handful of times before putting down, or a single player game that you play through once that has a deathmatch mode attached to it. Some of the most successful multiplayer games of all time, including ones that are still popular today, started as great single player games with multiplayer attached to it. If it really gets its hooks in people but needs some touching up, put out some patches and expansions for it. It doesn't need to keep getting new content forever, and thinking that a game can or should do that is what leads to all of this nonsense. Give us the servers. Give us LAN. Give us direct IP connections. Give us same-screen multiplayer. Sever the dependency on a server that I can't control, or I'm not buying.
I love it. I do wish they had opened up mods and community servers before launch but the core game plays and looks so good. Most of the missing modes were never core to the game, hopefully they add some of them back after reworking them later (DZ?). It runs even better than GO did on Linux too.
It used to exist, but not so much anymore. I miss heavily community based FPS multiplayer games. With custom servers and so on. I played Counter-Strike: Source last night, what a breath of fresh air!
Same, I played some Day Of Defeat: Source also a while back. I got onto a server, people were talking about random things and seemed to know each other, there was a sense of community, it felt like a local bar.
It’s 3am and I’m chilling and talking with strangers while surfing on CS:S. God, I miss this.
I miss that in newer games. It’s all matchmaking, all competitive and in many ways, modern games like this feels “no fun allowed”.
I’m pretty happy personally that the community server browser no longer looks like it was made in 1996. The new one actually works on my ultrawide monitor, so I can find servers on my own now. In CSGO, I had to have a friend find a server for us and then I’d just join him.
Insurgency Developer New World Interactive Shut Down (insider-gaming.com) angielski
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/10438175
Warcraft III: Reforged Patch Notes - Version 1.36.1 (news.blizzard.com) angielski
Biggest thinga are IMO save/load for online games and also a rollback of the campaign changes from 1.33....
Star Citizen Just Had its Biggest Crowdfunding Day Ever With $3.5 Million in 24 Hours (techraptor.net) angielski
Star Trek: Bridge Commander (2002) (startrek.website) angielski
What were your top favorite video games as a kid? angielski
These could be games that left a lasting impression on you, games that had stellar gameplay mechanics, characters that captivated you, games that you played tons of hours on, etc.
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of November 12th
I definitely didn’t forget to do a new thread yesterday 👀...
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Former WoW devs announce new studio: Fantastic Pixel Castle (twitter.com) angielski
cross-posted from: lemm.ee/post/13613260...
What are some alternative to soulless videogame franchises? angielski
What I mean is… sometimes people are very loyal to a videogame franchise or a company because they loved a game they released years ago (Silent Hill/Konami with Silent Hill 2, Blizzard/Bethesda with their respective golden eras, some could argue this happens too with Pokémon and Final Fantasy, etc). Ethical/consumer reasons...
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Star Engine Tech Demo (Star Citizen 4.0) No Commentary CitizenCon 2953 4K (youtu.be) angielski
Since I haven’t seen anyone post this, I thought I’d share the new Star Engine demo video from Cloud Imperium Games.
Valve is now reversing VAC bans due to AMD drivers in CS2, according to patch notes (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Recently there was a thing where VAC would erroneously flag AMD’s antilag+ feature as cheating, and issue a ban....
Anyone have good memories of (or still belong to) a gaming clan or guild? angielski
Was thinking about this today, pretty unique time way back in my gaming past. Belonged to a clan that would play things like War Rock (old F2P game), Battlefield 2, early CoD games, etc....
What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games? angielski
I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours....
This indie dev (Indie RPG Inkbound) is removing all microtransactions after noting that "player sentiment is trending against" them (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Live Service And The Decline Of Gaming (www.youtube.com) angielski
I found a lot of things in this review pretty spot on, and am curious if others feel the same. I do still regularly play one MMO which I love (GW2), but dumped all the others I used to play since I got fed up with their obvious shift to practices he discusses here. While Anet may be guilty of employing some, they are not imho...
Counter-Strike 2 has a lower rating than any other Valve game, ever (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It (www.macrumors.com) angielski
Discovery Freelancer 5.0 - Fire and Fortune has been released! (feddit.de)
https://feddit.de/pictrs/image/d779abd7-dee2-4a9a-98ab-23e8c664de8a.png...
Counter-Strike 2 Players Express Disappointment as Many of CS:GO's Key Features Disappear (www.ign.com) angielski
What type of game you want to see that doesn't fully exist yet?
Counter Strike 2 is surprisingly awful on Steam Deck right now (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
On how the Threadiverse should work angielski
DRAFT Work in Progress - Updates will be noted in the comments....