Warcraft III: Reforged - now with lowest user metacritic score of all time

[hoothoot]

Fuck blizzard

 

[alighieri]

Uh. Lots of people in this thread seem to be talking about this game in the context of some Great Cultural And Moral Decline Of Gaming, but this isn't some misguided creative effort by radicals. It's just a failed cashgrab, the likes of which have existed since the beginning of video games.

More like since the beginning of humanity. But it’s not just Blizzard.
You made me think for a bit so I deem you responsible for the wall of text that follows.

Spoiler

I'm Russian, but a major part of my cultural code is formed by American (or Anglosphere, to be more precise) media. I have great memories of entertainment that pleased and inspired me. Games and movies and music and literature. But lately I got a bit too many disappointments from entertainment sources that I got accustomed to during my childhood, teens and early adulthood.

So, what about games I liked before?
Everything Blizzard is raped by Chinese Actards. HoMM went extinct. Fallout and TES are shat upon by Bethesda. Total War series can’t be seriously played anymore without total conversion mods, like Europa Barbarorum. Civs after 4 are wankery. Paradox is shovelware. “Classic RPG revival” is meh incarnate. nuThief is a disgrace.
The only game series I still care about is Dominions and it’s made by basically two people.
I try to find new games I could like, but almost all of them are disappointing somehow. Darkest Dungeon doesn’t allow me to speed things up or skip animations. Same goes for Cultist Sim. Anno, Foundation and Dawn of Man are uninspired samefaggotry. Frostpunk, a game with a map area of 10 square meters, lagged and crashed on me. Void Bastards are forgettable (had to actually google the name), just like Borderlands. Subnautica fell apart after something like 6 hours of gameplay. Battle Brothers is a tactics without terrain. Disco Elysium is a zoomer logorrhea.
Pathologic remake is okay, but it’s Russian and a remake. AoE is a remake. Into the Breach is but a puzzle, even though it’s nice.
The latest games I did enjoy are KSP, Factorio and Rimworld. Note the similarity: they’re sandboxes, electronic lego grindfests I play as I like, without plot or characters or anything resembling art that's not introduced by me or fellow players. And they’re made by microcompanies not representative of gaming industry as a whole.
I’ve also liked The Witness and it’s also plotless.

My disappointment is not limited to games.
Among movies, again, only occasionally am I able to find anything that would interest me that was filmed during last several years. The Vice, The Wife, The Martian, Bohemian Rhapsody... The decline is much more prevalent. Superhero movies are strait out of chinese clonefarm. Lion King remake got blacked with nigger Simba. Star Trek is dumbed down. The last Star Wars movies were made 37 years ago (even though I like Mr Plinkett’s fanfics). I can easily watch old movies, some of which were made long before I was born, dozens of them, just not modern ones.
Then I turn to the music and turn it off, because the majority of musicians and singers I like are either dead or nameless synthwave-electro-trance-step composers or single-shot youtube remixers or sing in opera or called Lizzy Hale.
Books... Suffice it to say that most books I read are more than 30 years old. I’ve recently began reading The Wealth of Nations (which I bought in Latvia for mere 4 euros, in a discount corner with Plato and Shakespear, because obviously it’s a barbaric country that has no interest in classic literature).

In most parts of service sector of economy I turn to I see decline.
Software? Even fucking Win10 is an abortion. Spying, internet shop in an Office interface and no customization of the Start button are the things I just begin to fuel my rage with. And to think that those bloody hindu MS shillers even tried to force me to move to Win10 from my prestigious Win7!
Politics? American city upon a hill? After recent wars it looks more like a High Castle. And all I’ve heard from American mass media for the last several years was nigger faggotry, sjw drama and stupid memes. All I see in their economy is an endless debt multiplication and prestige-based income redistribution, iPhone style. Sad! During Cold war they used to have quality cultural propaganda.
EU is more like SU mk2. I remember a bit of mk1, just enough to see where it all goes. At least they still write good music, keep good books and make decent consumer goods.

I reread all of the above. It really wasn't my intention to sound like a salty old boomer. Because, firstly, I’m a millenial. Secondly, I manage to live an okayish life in top 10% or 15% income strata of my country. And, lastly, I manage to entertain myself with new knowledge, work and media almost every day.

I simply counted a bit and came to a conclusion that most media I consider good was made long time ago. And gaming, yes, in my opinion is in decline. Just like a major part of western cultural medium.
And when I see that goddamn Blizzard, that used to make quality shit, makes common shit, it reinforces this conclusion and I become disappointed and rant in the internetz.

tl;dr I rant indeed.

Maybe gaming didn't change but you have changed

 

[Danikas]

Nothing is sad anymore. After a while you just go numb and become indifferent. This is actually good. We need to hit rock bottom if there's to be any chance of an improvement.

Where you are now you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like
Only after disaster can we be resurrected
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything
Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart

 

[Average Manatee]

Apparently people are creating holocaust maps in response to blizzard's EULA claiming ownership of user created content

Why don't they just make maps denying the holocaust? Blizzard would then be guilty of the European hate speech laws.

 

[J1M]

Uh. Lots of people in this thread seem to be talking about this game in the context of some Great Cultural And Moral Decline Of Gaming, but this isn't some misguided creative effort by radicals. It's just a failed cashgrab, the likes of which have existed since the beginning of video games.

If that was true, they wouldn't have spent money on alternative female skins for characters and talked about rewriting cut-scenes to give women more speaking lines.

 

[Alienman]

Welcome to gaming in The Current Year™ where you have to pirate games that you already legally own.

Yeah, it's frustrating. Had to fuck around in Command & Conquer 3 to be able to downgrade from patch 9 to release version using some kind of cd-crack, since the latest patch fudge up the campaign in favor of mulitplayer. It would probably be easier to just download the 1.0 release already cracked and ready to go. Why pay to play the legit version if it's such a hassle? And since it's an old EA game, they won't do shit to help or fix their damn game. They just keep selling the broken game on Steam, and the funniest thing - they have now increased the price by 5 euro. I looked at Kane's Wrath a day ago, it was 10 bucks, today it's 15. Check the price for SimCity 4 on Steam for a mild chock.

 

[BING XI LAO]

This is what soyim deserve at this point, if they're this easily parted with their money what do you expect?

 

[Space Satan]

I like how Blizzard slowly turns intonew BioWare. And fans try to defend them appealing to some old glories, while they fuck up year after year, release after release

 

[Hobo Elf]

So my friend just got this add

Spoiler

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I never heard of this happening before. Talk about sinking lower and lower into desperation to fleece your customers if this is some new shit they are pulling off.

 

[Nirvash]

Interesting, you can actually get the "whole" game even if you put in only the roc cd key.

Man, those td/arena/survivor from like 15 years ago, holy shit the nostalgia, maybe is cuz of custom maps but everything looks also the same as before?

But i can't find the good old dota classic 3.7.

 

[H-K]

Anybody uploaded the patch that adds widescreen out there yet?

I think so, not the patch since it was never released but older clients are linked in this pastebin that was posted on /v/. I haven't tried it myself since I already have 1.30.1 installed and avoided the forced update since I haven't played in a while.

 

[Average Manatee]

Didn't widescreen just stretch things out in WC3? Or was there an update that changes it so it uses a different viewport?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Didn't widescreen just stretch things out in WC3? Or was there an update that changes it so it uses a different viewport?

There was. And now it's gone forever.

[EDIT] Ayy links to teh patches. Thanks.

 

[Norfleet]

there is no rock bottom

There is always more, and it is always worse.

 

[Wilian]

Anybody uploaded the patch that adds widescreen out there yet?

Theoretically I could share the client with it patched in. If I knew how. And it was legal.

 

[Olinser]

Oh look, they released a patch that fixed some of the big bugs.

See, its crap like this that pisses people off and has led to the level of backlash.

Fans can deal with some stuff slipping through or niche bugs not being discovered for a while.

But stupid shit like the basic audio callout for a completed unit not playing if your camera is off screen? Chat not scrolling properly with posts? People's names not being attached to freaking messages? Starting locations not being obscured?

That tells you that you didn't test the released version AT ALL. And when they were discovered and they actually decided to fix them, they got fixed.

Pure lazy greed to have fans test it so they could fix it later.

It's just pathetic.

 

[Olinser]

So just finished the original campaign on Hard. I had actually played through the game last year so its pretty fresh in mind.

God DAMN they nerfed Twilight of the Gods into the ground. I don't know if it was intentional or bugged, but it was ludicrously easy. Beat it this time without even losing the Human base.

Air waves were nonexistent, there was only 1 the entire mission. Heroes were nonexistent - Dread Lords and Pit Lords were removed completely, only 2 liches showed up the entire time. Even at max size waves seem to be smaller than they used to get, no more than a handful of aboms/doomguards with some support and 6-8 meat wagons. They used to get a LOT bigger.

Coupled with Ancient Protectors doing piercing instead of siege damage and the increased threshold for High upkeep and the mission was just EASY. I was never under real threat at any point and didn't lose a hero the whole mission. No variety necessary, just archer spam with 4-6 bears as frontline with heroes backed by line of APs and you're honestly never even threatened.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can't not lose the human base if you are playing normally (i.e. no pot of invul + goblin mine + treant spam) because Archimonde comes with the army at one point. So, yeah, something's definitely borked.

 

[Olinser]

You can't not lose the human base if you are playing normally (i.e. no pot of invul + goblin mine + treant spam) because Archimonde comes with the army at one point. So, yeah, something's definitely borked.

He spawned at 45 sec left with the end of mission trigger. And no, I didn't exploit it. Just built ancient protectors inside the walls and bear frontline with archer spam.

 

[Grimlorn]

Uh. Lots of people in this thread seem to be talking about this game in the context of some Great Cultural And Moral Decline Of Gaming, but this isn't some misguided creative effort by radicals. It's just a failed cashgrab, the likes of which have existed since the beginning of video games.

It seems obvious that they hired incompetent radicals that couldn't design a game to save their life and put them in charge of the cash grab remaster. Sure you could look at it as a failed cash grab, but why did it fail, especially compared to Starcraft? Seems obvious to every one because it's been happening over and over for years now. Incompetent people either get hired due to nepotism or identity politics, and they're more obsessed with politics than game design and we've been getting shit game after shit game. It appears to happen to every bloated corporation in general, they get huge and then take on a bunch of incompetent people that begin screwing everything up at the company.

 

[Lacrymas]

We haven't gotten a good AAA game in like 15 years, so there are other factors to take into consideration. As for why this is shit, like I said they either underestimated the time required (which I'm willing to believe and am 99% sure that's what happened) or overestimated the Asian studio (I'm less willing to blame them because they are the only ones who did their job). It's not about diversity hires, they've been out of touch for a decade, and I suspect their only truly profitable game is Hearthstone because it's impossible to screw that up.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

We haven't gotten a good AAA game in like 15 years

...Wut? I’ll give you that they’ve certainly decreased in frequency, but that’s a silly thing to say. Unless you mean AAA RTS?

Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

 

[Olinser]

We haven't gotten a good AAA game in like 15 years

...Wut? I’ll give you that they’ve certainly decreased in frequency, but that’s a silly thing to say. Unless you mean AAA RTS?

Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

Even within RTS it isn't true. Starcraft 2 may have had flaws in glaring places like story, but it was definitely a AAA game.

 

[luj1]

Small studios were able to produce better games on average than large AAA studios, though.

 

[Lacrymas]

Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

None of these are ...great, though. At least uncompromisingly good. I haven't played Prey, but Dishonored 1 and 2 suffer from story issues and badly balanced playstyles (I applaud their level design though, truly great), Alien Isolation also doesn't have a compelling narrative and I found it rather boring tbh, the Arkham games are severely overrated, the X-Coms are but a pale imitation of the originals and they introduced the silly cover mechanics that plague us still. Dishonored 1 and 2 are the best of these.

Starcraft 2's only upside is the gameplay (some would even say it's a downgrade from SC:BW), everything else from story, to aesthetics, to expansions is ...not stimulating. The campaign-wide upgrades were a nice touch and it gives a sense of progression to an RTS campaign which have only ever relied on unlocking units and buildings as you go further into it.

I honestly can't think of an AAA game in the past 15 years that is genuinely, uncompromisingly worth it. EDIT: Guild Wars, it came out in 2005.