Warcraft 3 Not Until 2002

Thomas M Hughes writes "Blizzard said a few weeks ago that Warcraft 3 won't be ready in 2001. While Blizzard has never been good at meeting its release deadlines, usually its a good idea. They tend to put out decent games the first time and not have as many huge fixes, just small tweaks. " They've put the announcement in the FAQ.

Fixing after it's published

[SilentChris]

"They tend to put out decent games the first time and not have as many huge fixes, just small tweaks."

Have to disagree with that. Normally, with games like WarCraft and StarCraft, Blizzard has been pretty good updating frequently after the release with small fixes.

But the Diablo series has had it's share of problems, the first with the hacking of the file on the local hard drive to boost your stats (which Blizzard never really fixed), and the second with being published clearly when the servers weren't ready to handle the load. Most disturbing is that many of these companies promising "massively-multiplayer RPGs" create 200,000 CDs for launch and then get surprised when more than half these users end up on their servers. It's a real problem, as countless editorials in gaming mags demonstrate.

If you're going to sell 200,000 CD's, make sure your servers can handle 200,000 users. If you're waiting to release a game "until it's done", make sure it's actually done when you release it.

Re:Starcraft?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the people who'll do Starcraft II are busy working on Warcraft 3 right now. Blizzard has implied quite often that they plan to make a sequel for Starcraft.

Re:Good games, crappy patches.

[snilloc]

FYI: Hellfire wasn't released by Blizzard.

Re:Fixing after it's published

[Niomosy]

I have to disagree. Diablo 2 has been out for quite some time and only in recent times did we see any significant work being done on boosting the realms with many realms not getting much of a boost until just before the expansion was released. That's why we had so many people from Asia and Europe playing on USEast and USWest - the performance was so awful on Asia and Europe realms that they just came here.

Even worse, D2 realms were completely awful for some time after the game was released. Then we had hacking problems, duping problems, etc. on the realms.

The D2 games are a prime example of Blizzard rushing. In D2 we had Barbarians' weapon mastery counting twice, bonuses not counting on bows and Corpse Explosion for the Nercomancer scaling up with monster HP (which would be nice now :P ). Fend was completely awful (and still is since it attacks at only range 1 even with a 5 range weapon), duel wielding for Barbarians didn't do a damn thing for Whirlwind.... the list goes on.

THIS is Blizzard quality? Then they rushed the expansion out to meet their deadling of first-half-2001 and, as soon as you went to play on the reamlms, were welcomed to 1.07 and 1.08.

We still have problems. A slapdash 50% physical resist with rather pathetic skills to compensate in some cases (the Druid... and good luck with getting the elemental spells to hit since most of the big spells hit an area randomly).

Blizzard may be okay at times but they've let some very large problems go for too long. There are some serious problems that Blizzard could be putting out fixes for now and worrying about firewall being too powerful later (like some bugs used to kill other players, particularly devestating in hardcore)

Warcraft 3 doesn't look that good anyway

[Agrippa]

I've been to the past 3 E3s and seen Warcraft 3 at each one. First time, it looked pretty badass. Losta units, full 3d. Second time, it looked ok. Less units, still 3d. 3d wasn't as big a deal anymore, since basically every development RTS was going 3d. Last E3, it looked pretty bad. Even less units, smaller maps, and the gameplay was pretty horrible. To picture the gameplay, take Warcraft 1, make it 3d and really pretty, and then reduce the amount of units on the screen to about 4, and throw in some super unit that destroys everything and never loses health.

Ensemble Studios' Age of Mythology looks about 50x better then War3. Empire Earth, created by Rick Goodman, lead producer of Age of Empires (tm)(c)(sm), looks better then War3 as well. By 2002, War3 will be old hat. Hell, its old hat now. I'm not holding my breath for it and I don't suggest you do either.

.agrippa.