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Comment by kneebonian | Hacker News Reader

> Blizzard says it will bring “a selection” of its games to Steam, but did not specify which titles beyond Overwatch 2 will make the jump from Battle.net.

Listen unless you allow me to buy the original WC3 or SC1 I really don't care, there has been very little blizzard has built lately that is that good.

Its actually interesting in a way that Blizzard singlehandedly created 3 new generes of gaming because of how flexible their WC3 editor was. A different company a different time.

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It used to be a mecca for talent in gaming. Even activision acquiring it didn’t seem to sqaush that lure. I’ve watched numerous talks from their engineers, and the things they came up with to deal with the sheer difficulty of the problem space is utterly fascinating.

I can’t imagine the best and brightest still wanting to work there, parent companies never understand what made the place special, else they’d replicate it themselves. MS is going to be further nails in the coffin

I'd be curious to see some of these talks, which ones do you think were most interesting?

Moreso text formats, but I highly recommend the entirety of Patrick Wyatt's (major developer on Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft, Guild Wars) `Code of Honor` blog, where he has written war stories of developing Blizzard's earlier hit games. (It's been a while since he last posted there.)

One of the more popular posts:

https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-...

Also, it is easy to draw parallels between David Craddock's `Stay Awhile and Listen` book and Masters of Doom. I tried to quickly whip up the Amazon link, but I'm seeing multiple versions and listings... apparently multivolume? When I first encountered it, it was a single book.

And, past discussions here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=codeofhonor.com

I really liked their talk about network prediction and server side simulation. Also talked about their entity modeling system

https://youtu.be/zrIY0eIyqmI

The gaming industry is an unmitigated disaster, an embarrassment, and a stain on software engineering.

You have your pick! Sexually harass your colleagues into committing suicide (Blizzard) or get farted on by the CEO (Riot).

Warcraft III is no longer officially available in any capacity. if you purchased it and attached it to your Battle.net account, it was replaced with the remastered or reforged or refucked or whatever they called it version, without notice or consent, forever. and it's not even the full version of the rezombified version, it's a gimped version of that, and you have to pay them again to unlock the full version of the replacement product that you never asked for.

when they pulled that bullshit stunt I decided I was done with Blizzard, and it's just been a steady decline ever since.

No idea about WC3 but starcraft 1 and broodwar have been free to download for 5 or 6 years?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-to-download-the-orig...

Doubt the online/network stuff still works but maybe? I think they're still playing SC1 in korea competitively.

You should still be able to play online. Only the new features such as HD graphics and ranked matchmaking are locked behind the SCR purchase.

> Its actually interesting in a way that Blizzard singlehandedly created 3 new generes of gaming because of how flexible their WC3 editor was.

Hmm, what three are you thinking of? Tower defense and MOBA come to mind, but I can't think of the third.

(Also, tower defense maps really started with Starcraft -- the game engine limited what developers could do with those maps, but the concept was there.)

Tree tag :p

There was a map called Aeon of Strife that was like a proto MOBA for StarCraft as well.

Warcraft III map editor just had more tools to really flesh out these concepts

I would accept Diablo 2.

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