World of StarCraft Mod Gets C&D From Blizzard

eldavojohn writes "If you've been following the team who created World of StarCraft (an amazing mod of StarCraft II to be more like World of Warcraft), their YouTube video of what they've done so far has already resulted in a cease and desist from Activision/Blizzard. Evidently when you are given tools to make custom mods to games you should be careful about making something too good. The author of the mod is hopeful that it's just a trademark problem with the name of his mod, but few reasons for the C&D were given." In other StarCraft news, reader glwtta recommends an article about how a Berkeley team won the world's first StarCraft AI competition with code that can beat even pro-level human players.

Comments

They better...

[Pojut]

They better be making a "World of Starcraft" game, otherwise this just reeks of asshattery.

Re:They better...

[AndrewGOO9]

They'll get to it, eventually I'm sure. Blizzard: Your children will love the sequels you grew up waiting for.

Re:They better...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We don't have to care: We made World of Warcraft.

Hugs and Kisses, Blizzard.

Re:They better...

[trollertron3000]

That's the rumor that's been out there for a little while. They're working on a new MMO code named Titan. Some have speculated is it's World of Starcraft.

Re:They better...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Blizzard just exposed what Project Titan is.

Re:They better...

[TheCRAIGGERS]

You would be saying the same thing if somebody got a C&D after making a Lost Vikings mod for SC2.

Titan may or may not be World of Starcraft, but you won't find much info in their lawyer's kneejerk reactions. Somebody stepped on one of their trademarks, and even had the nerve to garner a following- that's all we know.

Re:They better...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still prefer the The World of World of Warcraft.

Re:They better...

[idontgno]

I've said this before, and I'll say it now.

"Nuclear launch detected" will mean so much more when it's blaring out of loudspeakers in the city or camp your character is in RIGHT NOW.

Re:They better...

[mcgrew]

It's Blizzard. Don't you expect asshattery from them? Or any other game company, for that matter... that's the biggest reason I pretty much stopped gaming.

Re:They better...

[R0ll0tomasi]

the rumor out there now is that "Titan" having been the working title of the unannounced Halo MMO might be just that by Blizzard. MMOFPS as a next generation MMO?

Re:They better...

[R0ll0tomasi]

the rumor/story i have heard recently on a vid podcast related to WoW is that "Titan" is actually the Halo MMO which they are developing b/c that name "titan" was the working internal title of the Halo MMO that never saw the light of day..

Re:They better...

[Thansal]

Titan is not World of Starcraft.

Titan is an MMO, however it is a new IP, so not SC, WC, etc. IIRC, it is a MMOFPS, but I will not swear to that one, as I don't remember.

Basically:
It's the worst kept secret in the gaming industry currently.

Re:They better...

[Anonymous Coward]

Titan is an MMO, however it is a new IP, so not SC, WC, etc. IIRC, it is a MMOFPS, but I will not swear to that one, as I don't remember.

Basically:

Basically? IP, SC, WC, IIRC, MMOFPS? Basically? Basically you're a dork.

Re:They better...

[Kitkoan]

They'll get to it, eventually I'm sure. Blizzard: Your children will love the sequels you grew up waiting for.

Too late, that tag line is already for Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:They better...

[trollertron3000]

Yeah they've said that before but I'm a little skeptical. I'm hoping it's sci-fi based either way but we'll see. I don't expect anything that outlandish. They're known more for their great execution than ground breaking features.

Re:They better...

[Kitkoan]

Where did you hear that Titan was going to be any of those you listed? According to this article, Titan is only known as being Blizzards next-gen MMO that is due to launch at the end of 2014. Now the whole Starcraft 2 trilogy is due to be finished and released in the beginning of 2013, a year and three quarters before Titan is released. This is around the same time span as World of Warcraft was released after Warcraft 3 (if you ignore a few months, due to it being pushed back.) Sounds like this will be like what Blizzard did with World of Warcraft. Release the game, give it around 2 years for the public to have a good grasp of the worlds lore, then release MMO set a little further beyond the last game, profit (wouldn't want to release it too soon or it could hurt the RTS's sale, and not too late that it's foggy for people to remember the lore). This time it looks like it will be Starcraft to use this formula.

Re:They better...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ghost?

Re:They better...

[Kitkoan]

Highly doubtful. There is the World of Warcraft mod for Starcraft 2. And it seems like its still available for Starcraft 2, Blizzard doesn't seem to mind about it being made.

Re:They better...

[AndrewGOO9]

Coincidentally, Starcraft: Ghost has the same one as well. :)

Re:They better...

[muindaur]

This will make more people suspicious that their MMOFPS in development codenamed "Titan" IS a Starcraft MMO. One other reason comes to mind: "Crud! Someone coule make something good, and prove it's possible to do a SC MMO. WE MUST STOP THEM!"

Re:They better...

[Kitkoan]

No, at least Starcraft: Ghost was officially put down.

Re:They better...

[muindaur]

Funny thing...

My brother and I dug out our tennis rackets, and there is a public court that's seldom used. I'm really starting to phase out video games(too many gimicks, too little story, too many quick to beat games.) The basement has a good sized tablle with a really bright light above it(shop quality long tube FL), and I plan to work on fletching with that. Once I get another job is when we start hitting the shooting range and getting our pistol permits.

So yeah, I'm finding a lot more interesting things to do that make me feel more accomplished. Also, learning fletching could make me side cash eventually selling at SCA events.

I just need to clean out my parents basement(my mom kept junk because she didn't want to hear it from my grandma for getting rid of something that could be worth money some day) to get that table back(my old lego table.)

Re:They better...

[ocdscouter]

Thank you for bringing the this matter to our attention. The appropriate information has been forwarded to our legal department.

Have a Nice Day.

Re:They better...

[Anonymous Coward]

I spend a lot of time modding Bethesda games (Oblivion, FO3, FNV). They provide tools, there's a big community, and they don't fuck with it. In fact, they (and Valve, who controls the DRM) have been extremely cooperative with the modding community, going so far as to work with modders to implement things that the DRM would normally preclude like the script extender.

What I'm getting at it is, not all game companies are created equal when it comes to asshattery.

Re:They better...

[kiddygrinder]

blizzard have publicly stated they are working on a new mmo which is new ip, i don't remember where or which but it's not my job to educate so try google

Re:They better...

[Anonymous Coward]

They better be making a "World of Starcraft" game, otherwise this just reeks of asshattery.

What they've done is create a FPS-style MMO which uses the SCII engine to render the graphics. There's a pretty big difference between making a mod for a game, and using the rendering engine to create an entirely new game.

Re:They better...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard has stated many times that Titan will be a new IP, so its not going to be based on any of their previous universes (Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo). Try doing some research before you blabber on like an idiot.

Re:They better...

[Canazza]

http://www.blizzardnewmmo.com/

Re:They better...

[TheCRAIGGERS]

There is any number of projects like this I could point to. But they, like the one you pointed to, aren't popular enough to garner their attention.

The mod this article was written about made the complete rounds yesterday- it was posted on every gaming blog known to man, slashdot, and likely made the rounds on the social networks too. Blizzard would have to have been blind to not notice it.

Companies don't take action against projects that aren't popular; it's not worth their time / money. Much better to let their competitors waste their resources before they squash them.

Re:They better...

[mr_gorkajuice]

Supposedly, "new IP" means "an IP that is new", as opposed to "old IP which is a different old IP than the old IP that some subset of people would consider an obvious candidate". Besides, in terms of IP, Ghost = SC.

Re:They better...

[JackOfAllGeeks]

create an entirely new game.

At least initially, Blizzard was pretty explicit in their hope that users would do exactly that.

Re:They better...

[daemonhunter]

http://www.blizzardnewmmo.com/

The scary part of this all?
From the link:

This MMO targets to a broader audience than WoW.

What does that even LOOK like?

I miss Blizzard.

[seebs]

I remember back when Blizzard was an awesome company with great customer service. Well, that, and when the gamers buying their games were the "customers" they were so great to.

That Activision merger seems to have totally killed the company we used to know. Not that this is totally surprising, mind you, but it's sad. I would guess that this was a matter of the Blizzard company officials not being paranoid enough to check the fine print in their merger deal. Either that, or they were ready to cash out.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Pojut]

I'm sure the Activision merger had a lot to do with it, but I think the rampant success of World of Warcraft has inflated their ego. The way they released Starcraft II content leading up to its release was done with a tone of "Feast your eyes on yon game! We, Blizzard, have made it, and therefore it is good!"

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The fact that the adoring masses largely lapped it up didn't exactly do much to dissuade them from that approach...

The annoying thing about Blizzard is that they are currently in the "Obnoxiously prideful" stage; but that doesn't become the "Hubristic" stage unless they fuck up somehow....

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[AndrewGOO9]

"Feast your eyes on yon game! We, Blizzard, have made it, and therefore it is good!"

By Blizzard, I think you mean Valve. :)

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you read the EULAs surrounding Stacraft 2 map editor, you'll notice that ANYTHING you make becomes property of Blizzard. This jackassery was not unexpected.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[seebs]

I don't think so. I was a WoW player for about 5 years, and they were great about dealing with the community and addressing concerns until a couple of months after the merger. After that, they started doing stupid things about privacy and security on a pretty epic scale; see, for instance, the "Real ID" fiasco.

And before everyone jumps in with "they backed down!"...

1. They said in an interview shortly later that they weren't doing that "for the time being". In English, "won't X for the time being" means "will X, but not yet".
2. In fact, the new forums did display your real name on the screen when you logged in. Just your name, not anyone else's (yet), but... Plain text over the open internet? That's real smart.
3. They still (last I heard) haven't added any capacity for aliases or handles to the "Real ID" thing.
4. They still use your login name as your key for inviting people, making it much easier to crack accounts than it used to be.
5. All of this directly contradicts statements Blizzard had made about privacy or security prior to the merger.

Net result, I went ahead and wrote to privacy@ and told them to delete all my personal information, because I no longer feel I have justified confidence that they will not, at some unspecified future date, decide to show real names to anyone and everyone. Went from 3 active subscriptions to no chance of ever buying from them again. Very, very, slick relationship management, there.

I used to know at least a dozen people who played WoW. Now, no one I know who has any kind of security or law background, or even a basic IT background, plays.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[chispito]

"Feast your eyes on yon game! We, Blizzard, have made it, and therefore it is good!"

By Blizzard, I think you mean Valve. :)

You mean the same Valve that has done more than any other company to promote user generated content?

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[MrLint]

The merger with Activision befuddled me. Blizzard was on top of the video game world, it didn't seem like they needed anyone else. It just reeks of a top level buyout cashgrab

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[quanticle]

I remember back when Blizzard was an awesome company with great customer service. Well, that, and when the gamers buying their games were the "customers" they were so great to.

What timeline were you living in? Blizzard has been known to be quite hostile to modders and independent developers for some time now. Just look at the original map editor for Starcraft. Look at what they did to bnetd. Heck, I'm surprised to no end that the makers of bwapi have been allowed to continue with the project, given that the project relies on hacking the Starcraft client via DLL injection.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[thesandtiger]

As opposed to every other company in the history of the universe who was releasing something that was highly anticipated. Why, I remember when Apple was launching the iPhone, Jobs came out on stage was like, "Uh, well, it's OK I guess, if you care about phones or something, but, you know, its no big deal or anything." Ditto for Microsoft launching pretty much anything - I know I was feeling kind of bad for them when they had their "I'm a PC, and I think my mom doesn't really love me" marketing campaign around the launch of Windows 7.

Remember back in the day, when Blizzard was properly humble? Hell, I still remember the marketing materials that came out for Diablo II, which were basically a suicide note from the development team in which they talked about their various failings in life.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to a late lunch at Subway, who has as their motto "Probably better than eating from a garbage bin."

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[brkello]

They want the guy to change the name of his mod and suddenly the golden fairy that made love to you in your sleep is your evil step father that gets drunk and beats you. Over react much?

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

I hate to break this to you, but your real name is absolutely not a secret. Not even your SSN is a secret, if you think about what 'secret' means. Both of these are a matter of public record, and are absolutely trivial to discover about you by anyone and everyone with whom you trade data bits. If you think you have 'privacy' online, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

In short, if you're in public, expect to be in public. And it goes without saying that the internet is 'in public'.

I know this isn't a popular idea, but I just thought I'd chime in here because you've illustrated a decently bad example of your thesis. By way of saying that Blizzard is less of the company they used to be, you're simply illustrating that they are coming to grips with the realities of the online world. It isn't the wild west any more, and Blizzard is reflecting that. You're not, but that's scarcely their fault.

I'll sum up by offering that you could easily find better examples...

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Meeni]

This is an obviously abusive contract. I don't know the status in the US, but in the European union, an illegal clause in a contract is not enforceable.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it's possible to find our name doesn't mean we shouldn't make it as hard as possible. I'm sure someone who is really determined to find my name and who knows a bit about IT can find me. That doesn't mean every psycho I 'kill' on WoW can find me in order to beat me up in real life, and I'm glad about that.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

Know this: They are not alone. By 'tomorrow' the whole notion of anonymity online will be gone from any and all mainstream places. You'll still be able to create unique and disposable handles on some sites, but the vast majority will be tied to, say, your Facebook account, and will proudly display your real name.

I did not fail to comprehend what Blizzard was planning to do. You, on the other hand, have failed to realize the impact of the popularity of things like Facebook's API.

And I'd like to pre-stipulate that Facebook may or may not win out. It could well be some other service entirely that manages your identity online. That's not relevant. SOMETHING will unify you amongst any and all main stream media sources online. Count on it.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

See my other reply, but you're a dinosaur in terms of the emerging internet. Change is happening all around you, and you're failing to adapt.

As am I, to be sure, but still the point remains.

Further, how many WoW players actually COULD beat you up? Also, with identity attached, would it be easier or more difficult to get law enforcement to rectify such behavior?

If society is structured around identity, most of the gaps you're fretting about would go away. It's only when we're assumed to be concealed that we set ourselves up for exposure.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[MasaMuneCyrus]

An illegal clause in a EULA makes the EULA void in the US. However, do you really want to go against Blizzards lawyers in court, who would like nothing more than to rip you to pieces, bankrupt you, and destroy your reputation? Even if you win, it could take years to get your legal fees paid.

'Tis the unfortunate reality of the modern consumer-corporate relationship in the USA. Even though the vast majority of EULAs are illegal, few, if any, have been tested in court because of the resources and time required to challenge them.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same valve that buys up user-generated content (of bedroom 'studios')...... and claims it's all by Valve

see: counter-strike, day of defeat, alien swarm, portal, DoTA... pretty much anything that isn't Half-Life or Team Fortress.

and their rabid gullible fanboys gobble it up like nothing including the whole 'source engine is made from scratch' lie.

It's unfortunate too many deny the acts of 'valvesimmilation'.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[afidel]

Nah, Blizzard South's attitude towards the customer was always about as bad as it is now, it was only Blizzard North that had that warm fuzzy feeling, at least for me.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[EvanED]

And this is a problem... why?

BTW, I can't speak to the others, but Portal was developed by the team while they were at Valve. Portal's a far, far cry from Narbacular Drop. That was definitely not a case of Valve buying an existing program and rebranding it.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly why I don't understand it. They're basically sending a C&D letter against property they own the rights to. Why would anyone expect them to do that?

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Kitkoan]

No, I think they mean the Valve that made Half-life episodes with the explanation that by doing it that why they could make smaller games faster, then proceeded to make 2 episodes of a trilogy and then stopped making them but will happily keep selling you the episodes that they don't seem interested in finishing.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Lehk228]

you could do it pro-se. assignment of copyright requires very specific things, a clause in a EULA does not qualify, and so you would win as long as you spend a few hours studying the procedures you need to properly raise the defense / accuse them of copyright infringement.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! I'm going to have to call a few of the Apple fanbois over to read this because you clearly have taken fanboi-ism to the next level with your obvious inability to take any criticism of the game that is your whole life's purpose!

In fact, it sounds SO extreme that we may even need to invent a new word for it - "fanboi" isn't a big enough word!

Incidentally, World Of Warcraft was crap, but that's just my opinion. It was filled with racial abuse spouting attention-seeking teenagers and any sense of a realistic universe was quickly dispelled when all of the early missions consisted of waiting for someone in front of you to finish killing off some NPC whereupon he stood up again so you could kill him.

I lasted a month's trial subscription, then went off and played Fallout 3 on my own which had a hundred times more immersion than WoW. But again, that's just my opinion.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[icebraining]

the vast majority will be tied to, say, your Facebook account

Uh, why wouldn't you be able to create a fake profile for Facebook?

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

That gap is readily being fixed in other places, though. Gmail, for example, ties it to a real phone number. So while this may not be your actual name, it is still certainly identifiable to 'you' with little genuine effort. So you'd still want to adapt - if for no other reason than the day that Facebook changes this as well. (And if you've been on it lately, they're 'encouraging' you to supply a phone number already. It's a tiny, tiny thing to flip that over to 'requiring'.)

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[icebraining]

Gmail, for example, ties it to a real phone number.

Yeah, I've been reading about it. Is it for new users only? Google has never asked me my phone number.

So you'd still want to adapt - if for no other reason than the day that Facebook changes this as well. (And if you've been on it lately, they're 'encouraging' you to supply a phone number already. It's a tiny, tiny thing to flip that over to 'requiring'.)

Thankfully, I can get a SIM card for $5 (sometimes free) without giving any information to my cellphone provider.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

Yeah it could be new.

You can get that SIM today, and for a short while in the future. I can't imagine that this either will last forever.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

But someone only knowing one of my many, many aliases wouldn't have any chance of finding out about my private information. Being anonymous when playing such a game feels me feel safer not just for myself but the people I care about. While I might tell someone my real contact information if it's asked, that's a bit different from it being readily available to some mentally ill person who might live close enough to show up on my door with some nasty pointed item.

Posting as AC because I avoid creating accounts like plague. (Yeah, it took most of my IRL friends to convince me about the WoW one.)

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Hatta]

That Activision merger seems to have totally killed the company we used to know.

FWIW, the bnetd debacle predates the Activision merger.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[daid303]

Blizzard was an ass towards everyone not playing their games as they intended it long before that. Bnetd being the well know example of that one. Glider being another. But there are more examples out there.

Blizzard is quite simple to follow. They make wonderful games, they take their time to make them. They'll make a shitload of money with them. But if you are a tinkerer, then stay away from them. They simply do not tolerate tinkering out of the sandbox.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[chispito]

And this is a problem... why?

BTW, I can't speak to the others, but Portal was developed by the team while they were at Valve. Portal's a far, far cry from Narbacular Drop. That was definitely not a case of Valve buying an existing program and rebranding it.

It's not a problem. It was probably the modders' dream come true.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[arun84h]

Narbacular Drop and Portal were developed by the same team. They were just Valve employees when they made the former.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[geekoid]

hahaha, no.

They will manage a 'profile' or profiles I give them. They may or may not be accurate.

According to Facebook, after graduating from high school in 1982, I went to mars university and graduated in 1911 with a degree in temporal physics.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[geekoid]

So you have a whacky idea, and then use exactly no logic to support it.

And of course, you also fail to supply any rational reason as to why that would be a bad thing, anyways.

You have built yourself a nice mental trap. Enjoy your delusions.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[geekoid]

Not true. There have been many, many cases where piece of a contract was shut down by the court, but the remaining contract stayed valid.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[sabt-pestnu]

Your name is public information. Your SSN is intended not to be, but given the number of people/places that require it, it's out there, associated with your name.

The association between you and your Blizzard account (and what that account is, which characters are yours, etc) is not public information by default. Blizzard was intending to make it become so. You might do better to have researched the debate first.

> It isn't the wild west any more, and Blizzard is reflecting that.

Not everyone has surrendered all their privacy to Facebook yet. There are still a few of us wildcats out there...

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Hildebrandyr]

I'm sure the Activision merger had a lot to do with it, but I think the rampant success of World of Warcraft has inflated their ego. The way they released Starcraft II content leading up to its release was done with a tone of "Feast your eyes on yon game! We, Blizzard, have made it, and therefore it is good!"

Indeed, ever since the merger, the dev posts on the forums have shown how full Blizzard is of themselves now. Responses by the dev team to complaints by wow players have acted as if it's not Blizzard's fault, it's the players fault for understanding why they changed aspects of the game. I love the healer changes they made, but the attitude of the devs about the changes to the game have caused me to cancel my subscription

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to know at least a dozen people who played WoW. Now, no one I know who has any kind of security or law background, or even a basic IT background, plays.

Really? 90% of the IT people I know play. The difference is I don't assume personal anecdotes represent the majority. If you don't want people to have your login, don't give it to them. If you don't want people to know your real name, don't add them as Real ID friends. I don't see what's so hard about this.

Also, the changeover to using a Battle.net (email address) login was YEARS before the merger. It was just optional for like a year to ease people into it.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[mattack2]

You mean the latter (at least according to the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_drop).

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're sending a C&D against the promotional videos that appropriated one of their trademarks and skirts another. Seems pretty clear cut really.

Mind you it's still kind of idiotic considering how it's free advertisement for SC2, but corporations over a certain size don't have any concept of rationality anymore.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[EvanED]

(Reading "latter" for "former")

I know that; I was responding to my parent, who apparently didn't. His claim was that Valve buys user-generated content, and that Portal is an example of that. It is not.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if that's true then did they just send themselves the C&D?

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Joe Tie.]

It's really annoying. I've tended to just make throwaway gmail accounts for this and that. And I can get why they'd want to limit that. But it's not like I went nuts with it or anything. I think I have like three alts. And they told me I'd used my phone number too many times and wasn't allowed to make any more with it. It was a tad on the creepy side. I've always been a bit of a google fanboy. But it kind of reminded me of all the talk of what might happen when google was too powerful for too long. It's a bit worrisome, even for me.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[seebs]

No, you're just clueless.

Your real name isn't a secret, but the connection between your real name and a particular online identity should be.

Yes, we all know you don't get perfect privacy. Here's the thing. I play City of Heroes now. I have a global handle. The people I meet in game have global handles. We friend each other through those, and we have all the functionality that "Real ID" supposedly offers -- but no one had to give out real names or login information. And that means that the shy people, and the people who are genuinely and legitimately afraid of being identified, can use the in-game tools to have friends.

I'm well aware that there are times when real names are needed, and that there are times when privacy gets broken.

Your approach is roughly equivalent to the assertion that, since people break into computers successfully at least some of the time, all server software should be configured to prompt the user to reset the password immediately on a third failed login attempt, on the grounds that the idea that you can be perfectly secure is ridiculous. That we can't have perfect security doesn't mean we should abandon every hint of security. That we can't have perfect privacy likewise doesn't mean we should abandon every hint of privacy.

The realities of the online world are what we choose to make them be. Me, I'm playing an MMO where I can be friends with people without us having to feel safe exchanging real names. They're getting my $30 a month now (I have two accounts).

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[seebs]

When did I assume that personal anecdotes represent the majority? Hint: I didn't. I just provided an anecdote.

The change to using an email address as a login was years ago -- but back then, Blizzard's security people were still involved, so they told people to use a special address only for battle.net and not use that address anywhere else or give it to anyone. Now, it's Activision's security people, and they require you to give it to people to get access to the functionality.

I think you miss a couple of key points about the Real ID thing. See, the actual functionality is really a big deal -- the ability to track a single person across ten or twenty characters is huge, especially because WoW's friend lists are really tiny and most people play alts. So that's a hugely desireable piece of functionality even with people you don't want to trade real names with. Furthermore, even with people who know my real name, who says I want to use real names to talk to them? No one in real life calls me by my legal name. My friends all call me "seebs".

Also, what if I don't mind sharing my real name, but a friend of mine does for some reason? Then I can't use that system to keep in touch with them.

But... As CoH demonstrates, there's no fundamental technical reason for which "friend across multiple characters" needs to be tied to "real name". The real name thing is just there for marketing reasons, and is contrary to what the players want. Back before the merger, Blizzard's announced plans for this were full of privacy settings and choices about what to disclose and to whom you'd want it disclosed. Those all went away, though a few of them eventually came back. (Not before some kid's sister got harassing phone calls because someone who knew her brother saw her name in the "friends of friends" listing. Had no idea who she was, but saw an identifiable girl's name, did some searching and looking things up, and started spamming the in-game channels with her name and number.)

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[seebs]

Abusive behavior is massively asymmetrical; there's no reason for you to know who did the abusing, so the "real name" isn't actually attached. Instead, all you know is that some kid somewhere has a grudge. You don't know which of the kids it is, so you can't look up the name. Similarly, I don't know how many WoW players could beat me up, but I'm sure at least some of them could find some way to harass me enough to cause me a serious amount of trouble.

For an example, I don't think some random support rep at MSI is likely to be able to beat me up, but he sure did manage to create a lot of hassle by filling out fake loan applications in my name. (This was retaliation for me not just letting them stiff me on a rebate.)

And I don't agree with your pessimism here. Part of adapting to a bad environment is learning to avoid it. It is not at all obvious that privacy is going to go away completely, and I suspect that after a few high-profile cases, it'll make something of a comeback.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[kiddygrinder]

fuck i know i hate it when bedroom developers get paid for doing what they love you dirty fucking troll

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[nosferatu1001]

Only when a severability clause is included, in general. Otherwise the agreement is, in principal, invalid.

Of course pretty much every contract I have ever seen includes this as boilerplate.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

According to Facebook, after graduating from high school in 1982, I went to mars university and graduated in 1911 with a degree in temporal physics.

If you have even two friends with accurate data, your deception is largely moot.

Not that it would matter with WoW anyway. You could lie to them, too, if you were so inclined. So long as that lie was still 'you', though, it wouldn't change a thing.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

Privacy and security are not equivalent. I imagine the online privacy complainers as similar to a hot girl wearing clear plastic clothes. She doesn't want them to see her goodies, but fails to realize that her say-so is no longer sufficient the moment she leaves her home. She has options (wearing opaque clothes) but will never, ever, ever adapt to them so long as she can cry to the powers that be for redress. Yet ultimately, she's the one in the park with a transparent top.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

Okay, but examine the impact of our two positions, were either of us wrong:

If you're wrong, people get burned by expecting something that doesn't exist.

If I'm wrong, people are making better choices when they didn't genuinely need to do so.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[BobMcD]

It's a prediction based on my observations. And, to be fair, I believe the motivations are emotional rather than logical, so you're probably on to something there. Anyway, just bookmark this post and refer back to it in a few years. We'll see who was right and who had his panties in a bunch.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[bckrispi]

They needed to shut down Glider. Yes, you could use it just to tinker, but you could also use it to cheat.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[daid303]

Oh, yes. I agree that gamewise shutting down glider is better. But if it was really in their right to do so.

Search for a program called "OpenKore" which is a bot for another MMO, which is open source and does development trough sourceforge. They have never been shut down.

Re:I miss Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes because nice huggable friendly companies ignore copyright and trademark and abuse and invest hundreds of millions to build brands other people can ruin right?
Fucking grow up kid.

When you see something like this...

[ducomputergeek]

...a smart company with plenty of resources like Blizzard/Activation should be saying: "Hey, you guys want a job?"

Re:When you see something like this...

[Pojut]

Who do you think they are...Valve? :p

Re:When you see something like this...

[cdrudge]

And another company now as, or at least wants to talk. (bottom of page of the 2nd link)

Re:When you see something like this...

[locallyunscene]

In unrelated news Valve has put out an offer to an unnamed independent team to help work on an upcoming also unnamed SciFi Action MMORPG...

Re:When you see something like this...

[Yvan256]

World of Portal 4 Dead?

Re:When you see something like this...

[Elbart]

World of Portal 4 Dead?

- Episode 3 - The Freeman" C'mon Gabe, get in motion. :(

Re:When you see something like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, that sounds like an awesome game.

Re:When you see something like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad WoW clones are a dime a dozen. The only thing that makes this one even worth mentioning is its association with Starcraft. Most of the people that Valve has hired have done significantly more than that...

Re:When you see something like this...

[Shikaku]

World of Portal 4 Dead: smash zombies up using only gravity and well placed portals, and sell their remains for profit.

Sounds like something Valve and Blizzard would make.

Re:When you see something like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

That game. Give it to me. NOW!

Re:When you see something like this...

[geekoid]

World of Portal 4 Dead Fortress.

Re:When you see something like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Portal 4 Dead Life

Re:When you see something like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally agree - they hired the machinima guys from Illegal Danish and the new cutscenes are AMAZING!

Blizzard would be stepping on their collective peckers to *NOT* hire these guys!

Re:When you see something like this...

[docwatson223]

...a smart company with plenty of resources like Blizzard/Activation should be saying: "Hey, you guys want a job?"

Totally agree - they hired the Machinima gurus from Illegal Danish and the new cutscenes are *AMAZING*!!! Hire these guys and they'd have an instant hit. Blizz needs to stop cutting off thier body parts for hard cash.

Re:When you see something like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Riot Games (maker of League of Legends) is talking with him about a job. Given LOL's origins from DOTA, an extremely popular Warcraft 3 map, it seems like they are honoring their roots!

Re:When you see something like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Potal For Half-Dead Episode III

Re:When you see something like this...

[magus_melchior]

And whaddaya know, Riot Games wants him aboard.

I don't know what legal counsel Blizzard has, but they've clearly told Blizzard since the days of Battle.net that if they don't "protect their intellectual property", they'll lose it. Their attitude towards the modding community is predicated on this legal argument.

What good is the damn internet?

[countertrolling]

If people can just come along and knock your shit down?

Re:What good is the damn internet?

[AndrewGOO9]

Because it's given everyone a voice to say just about whatever they want and people have chosen to use that voice to routinely demonstrate their ignorance, disregard any sort of concrete evidence and regularly illustrate a lack of respect to some degree of their fellow human beings. But hey, that's the internet. /Ta-da

Re:What good is the damn internet?

[trollertron3000]

To complain and insult people.

Re:What good is the damn internet?

[masterwit]

If people can just come along and knock your shit down?

Do not despair...here is a nice song that will be stuck in your head now...

I get knocked down but I get up again
You're never going to keep me down
I get knocked down but I get up again
You're never going to keep me down...

I'm not saying it is right... but just because something isn't always seen as correct and is bombarded from many angles does not make it pointless or even wrong. I understand your sentiment and I will say the principles of the internet will always allow scumbags, intellectuals, lolcats, 8 year old girls on youtube, vast indices of knowledge, crazy scientology nuts, people with an agenda to sue, people who create works for the common good, Carlos Mencia fansites, Newegg.com, and much more.

The lack of rules helps to promote those to prosper and stifles potential also... perhaps just a few more turns until we leave Anarchy and a new "government" is applied - I just hope it is one embracing free speech and not that of despotism. You have a point but cheer up sir!

Re:What good is the damn internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is absolute bullshit, you fucking twat.

Music Videos

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else hate gameplay videos that feature loud and repetitive (and bad) music that doesn't go with the video at all? Note to creators: your idea of the best genre ever isn't necessarily everybody elses.

Re:Music Videos

[magnusrex1280]

Yes, sometimes it's obnoxious, sometimes people pick music that doesn't fit with the visuals. But your second point, while true, has no bearing on anything. No one makes music (or visuals, or whatever) choices based on what other people might possibly like, unless you're producing something meant to be bought by other people. Then you'd cater to those preferences. If you're making an internet video like this, you're going to pick the music you like, and you're not going to give a shit if other people like your personal taste.

Re:Music Videos

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they were probably already running afoul of any number of things by doing what they were doing, could they not have just recycled some music from Starcraft or even Warcraft?

ummm

[nomadic]

So they were given essentially permission to modify a single game, World of Warcraft, and extrapolated that they thus had permission to incorporate whatever other games Blizzard has? And it's uncool of Blizzard to say "hey, wait a minute!"?

Re:ummm

[magnusrex1280]

It's Starcraft II that they modified - to play like World of Warcraft.

Re:ummm

[Marc_Hawke]

You got that backwards. It's a mod of StarCraft, and it doesn't incorporate ANYTHING from World of Warcraft except the title. (Although I'm pretty sure "World of X" is pretty generic in and of itself.)

Other than the title, this is just a copy of any of a million 3rd person RPGs. I haven't done more than watch the Youtube trailer, so I don't know what the mod-team was promising to do and if any of that would cause problems, but changing the UI and the camera angle on the game doesn't seem to warrant any 'death by lawsuit' threats....unless, as other have surmised, they happen to have a 3rd person RPG in the StarCraft universe planned.

Re:ummm

[Pojut]

Nope. They took the tools included with every copy of Starcraft II and used it to make a World of Warcraft-style.

A better analogy would be: they were given a bunch of Legos, then were smacked for putting them together to make the Lego logo.

Re:ummm

[Patch86]

No. Read TFS, if not TFA.

It was a mod for Starcraft 2. They were making a mod of Starcraft 2 with serious RPG elements (all of which is perfectly reasonable, given the tools that are available) and named their mod "World of Starfcraft" (for obvious reasons).

If the cease and desist is just because their mod name was too close to that of an official Blizzard product, I'm sure this will be a non-story and the mod will continue with a more original name. If the C&D was just because Blizzard don't want RPG elements to be used in a mod for their strategy game, that is some serious arse-hattery,

Re:ummm

[nomadic]

Ahhhhh....alright. TFA actually did not say that. In that case then yeah, Blizzard's probably in the wrong.

Re:ummm

[muffen]

From TFA: Update: Activision Blizzard has sent a cease and desist notice to YouTube in order to remove the videos showing off the mod. According to various sources, Blizzard's intention is not to stop the project itself, but to protect their properties names, whether they plan to work on a "World of Starcraft" game in the future is anyone's best guess.

Re:ummm

[PitaBred]

Given Blizzard, we can't really tell which it is though, and their past actions give equal probability to either.

Re:ummm

[jayme0227]

There are several custom mods that have RPG elements. Check out SC2mapster.com for a list.

Re:ummm

[magnusrex1280]

It's in the first sentence of the Slashdot summary.

Re:ummm

[nomadic]

I don't generally read those too closely, since they're usually wrong.

Re:ummm

[ildon]

Don't be coy, they stole assets from WoW in the process. That's not Kosher in modding.

Re:ummm

[ildon]

Oh wait, looking at the video instead of the screenshot, those are sc2 icons. MY BAD

Re:ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's common knowledge that the protoss campaign for SC2 is a "unite the tribes"/politics game and that the zerg campaign for SC2 is an RPG where you play as the zerg chick. I don't have references at the moment. I assume that this guys mod, being an RPG, is probably too close (conceptually) to Blizzards 3rd SC2 campaign.

Re:ummm

[ToasterMonkey]

If the cease and desist is just because their mod name was too close to that of an official Blizzard product, I'm sure this will be a non-story and the mod will continue with a more original name. If the C&D was just because Blizzard don't want RPG elements to be used in a mod for their strategy game, that is some serious arse-hattery,

I'll one up that, if the cease and desist is not because of incredibly obvious trademark infringement, monkeys will fly out of my ass.

You guys are hilarious... "if"...

Re:ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also noted in the first line of the second paragraph of the article... You really aren't that good at this reading thing are you?

Re:ummm

[nomadic]

"It's also noted in the first line of the second paragraph of the article... "

The first line of the second paragraph of the article is "Ryan's email to us:"

SOmthing I have come to expect:

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Blizzard will make the UI changes available in the options menu of the inevitable expansion without crediting the people they obviously got the idea from. If questioned about this, they will claim that the team stole the idea to make StarCraft more like WoW from them.

Sometimes, I hate how cynical I am. Then I surf to /.

Re:SOmthing I have come to expect:

[Steeltoe]

I hate C&D as much as anyone here, but where did the original idea come from? World of Warcraft, by Blizzard, of course. Then from that, it was Everquest. Then various MUDs and MOOs.

The _idea_ is clearly not protected by anyone's laws (IANAL, usual disclaimers etc.), but the name "World of Starcraft" is obviously Blizzard's trademark.

However, if the C&D is not clear about what is the eact violation so that the authors can rectify it, I think Blizzard should be hammered down, maybe even lose that exact name. Such behaviour should not be tolerated anymore.

As for the Starcraft AI...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The AI article was quite interesting, on all the various techniques that they had to use to avoid hardcoding exploitable behaviors and use heuristics to obtain desireable emergent behaviors. Fascinating stuff.

Disappointingly, though, the punch line boiled down to "We discovered a tactic that is functionally unbeatable if you have superhuman micro and aren't handicapped by starcraft's(sorry fans) frankly shitty interface". Much of the most interesting AI work was them allowing their team to survive long enough to build the unbeatable mutalisk swarm, along with a little bit to build a threat heat map and a target value map to guide the swarm as it picked the enemy apart.

Essentially, mutalisks' virtues were "balanced" by the fact that their range sucks and they tend to clump, which makes them easy meat for AoE AA attacks. It turns out, if your micro is inhumanly fast, you can break and reform the mutalisk clump fast enough to avoid most AoE attacks while still achieving concentrated fire on high value targets.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Myji Humoz]

Actually, mass mutalisk use in competitive starcraft became popular only after clumping techniques were created. Without clumping, it was far too easy to pick apart mutalisks as they flew in one by one to start attacking. With a clump and the nearly continuous movement, a stack of mutalisks can dance in and out of range of enemy units and snipe targets at the edge of defenses.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[chemicaldave]

Having programmed an AI for that same competition, I can assure you that nobody should be surprised an AI can beat a human.

You can find a list of the rules to the competition here. One thing to notice is that there are some glitches that are permitted. Having an AI that can control and make decisions for each individual unit almost at the same time (not really at the same time, the AI still has to go through steps and issue commands sequentially, but it's so fast it might as well be same time) means the AI has a HUUUGE leg up on even the best Starcraft pros whose actions per minute only range in the few hundreds.

All you need to beat a human is to program in strategies that just need the speed of an AI to execute

And if you want to watch some good micro-managment, on that website you can view the final matches between AIs in each tournament here.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[guruevi]

It's called the Magic Box trick and high-level SC2 players use it as well. It's basically spreading your muta's far enough out that they can all attack without taking splash damage. If you just move-hold the muta's can take care of plenty of Thors.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

True; but things like Valkyries and whatever the Zerg AoE aircraft is were introduced in Brood War as a counter. Apparently, with the APS provided by an AI interacting through an API, you can even outrun those.

Since the competition was AI vs. AI, and the Berkeley guys cleaned up, they obviously deserve kudos; but it is arguably a weakness of Starcraft's design that such a lot of it revolves around high-speed micro. The AIs just make that more blatant.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Locke2005]

Worse than that, the AI's would be tremendously frustrating to play against. Wouldn't this kill the regular game if players never know whether they are playing against another human being or an AI? Is there a way of knowing whether or not your opponent is using the API? AI vs. AI would be fun, but human vs. AI would suck.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Derekloffin]

Makes me think the next contest should put a cap on AI command input speed, particularly if it is property that could be easily altered. It would make it a lot more like a chess AI problem, then just a raw speed problem.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[chemicaldave]

Worse than that, the AI's would be tremendously frustrating to play against. Wouldn't this kill the regular game if players never know whether they are playing against another human being or an AI? Is there a way of knowing whether or not your opponent is using the API? AI vs. AI would be fun, but human vs. AI would suck.

The mods required to inject the AI code into the game prevent you from playing through battle.net

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[chemicaldave]

Makes me think the next contest should put a cap on AI command input speed, particularly if it is property that could be easily altered. It would make it a lot more like a chess AI problem, then just a raw speed problem.

If you do that then the best algorithms will perform as badly as the worse ones. Unless you're talking about human vs AI, then I could see that being plausible. But how else should you level the playing field? Should the AI only be able to command what is on screen as opposed to all units at once?

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[BCGlorfindel]

Having programmed an AI for that same competition, I can assure you that nobody should be surprised an AI can beat a human.

Turns out the AI didn't and can't. From a different article on the tournament:
The showcase game of the competition was a bot versus human match. In the exhibition match, =DoGo=, a World Cyber Games 2001 competitor played against the top ranking bot of the competition. The result was an exciting man versus machine match highlighting the state of the art in real-time strategy game AI.

While the expert player was capable of defeating the top performing bots in the competition, the results are quite encouraging. Read on for complete results.

Even the original article noted that the AI 'victory' against their human pro was the result of the human player artificially altering their play to build only a single unit they wanted to test out(Goliaths).

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[EvanED]

True; but things like Valkyries and whatever the Zerg AoE aircraft is were introduced in Brood War as a counter.

The thing about Valkyries though... is that they were almost never used in high-level play. Relatively early mutas (lair right into spire right into mutas) came out in most ZvTs, but I can think of two Korean games in two or three years of watching quite a few where you got to see Valkyries. (I'm sure there were plenty more, but they were not common.) Generally the counter was just the usual M&M plus turrets.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Myji Humoz]

Starcraft micro is nearly useless without solid or good macro. Most people notice the flashy micro in the gameplay without really understanding the macrolevel strategy of what builds to use against a certain player, where and how to move the army, and so forth. The zerg aoe unit and the valkyries are almost never used, as they're bad.

The AI proved good versus other AIs, but it would get slaughtered versus human top level players due to the strategic inflexibility. (humans won't let you sit and build units for 15 minutes before harassing)

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Lehk228]

not always but you will find yourself on the wrong end of a battlenet ban if you do run them.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Lehk228]

would be an interesting subset of an AI competition, an AI soldier competition where you wrote a script that ran per unit and could talk to other units but each unit could only see what was on the screen when centered on that unit. assigning scripts would be done by the constructor buildings so not every unit of the same type would have to run the same script.

talking to other units would be silent if on screen together but would have to be in public chat if trying to talk to an off-screen unit

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Anonymous Coward]

The competition hasn't even happened yet! The article is about the development AI beating the local human expert for the first time. It is intended for use in AI vs AI competition in the near future.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although with practice the humans would inevitably discover major weak points, in an exaggerated version of the way frequent opponents do normally, I don't think this AI was as weak as you portray.

Its "outer loop" is doing the things a good player would do. It uses a low-value unit to try to annoy workers early. No top player would accept a gas steal, but some might over-compensate, getting distracted from their own build schedule. It scouts, and reacts to what it can see. That means if you have an obvious strategy (e.g. early air) it will know very soon what it is and try to counter. It tries to expand into apparently safe areas, meaning if you're slow it will out-build you. It uses the additional resources to replace lost attackers or increase their numbers automatically, meaning if you forget to build for a moment it will out-gun you.

I think many human players, including some top level ones, would happen to pick a strategy it can balance well, and then inevitably being human they would make mistakes, and since Overmind is not human it would punish them hard. They describe how their "pet" top player had a good strategy against the Mutalisks, but he screwed up some micro, momentarily leaving a defensive gap. Some opponents might notice the gap only when he began closing it. But Overmind of course immediately slipped through the gap, trashing his economy and thereby ensuring his eventual defeat. Being human he knew the loss of economy could ruin him, and attacked flat out but it was too late.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[JohnnyBGod]

Spoiler: it won against the #1 in Spain, who's also #16 in Europe. Go read the article. It's a great read.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Myji Humoz]

Spoiler: Korean programers wipe the floor with "internationals"

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[hsk17]

The article is misleading. Please don't go around saying "AI beats top progamers at Starcraft". For one, the player they mention, Oriol, was not a progamer. The article does not say so either, but articles quoting the article seem to. They say

Oriol is very good—one-time World Cyber Games competitor, number 1 in Spain, top 16 in Europe

There seems to be confusion about the name of the player. The player that the UCSC article refers to, =DoGo=, indeed participated in WCG 2001 finals for Spain, but his name was Antonio Crespo Gomez.

Who knows what the context really was? Maybe the developers asked him to try a specific build order in order to see how the computer would respond. Maybe he did legitimately lose one game... out of a hundred, the only reason being he was forced to only use his mouse.

In any case, the biggest complaint I have is that he was a good player back in 2001. That was before the invention of mutalisk micro, the macro-oriented plays led by iloveoov, the micro-oriented strategies pursued by Boxer -- basically, before people figured out how to really play the game. The AI researchers undoubtedly utilized a lot of modern strategies. Also, no matter how good someone used to be, it's hard to be as good ten years down the line, even with crammed practice. I'd bet anyone that no computer in the next couple decades would beat actual progamers of today (by which I mean an A-team member of a progaming team in Korea, in a best-of-five).

Don't take this post as bashing the research -- I think it's amazing what they've been able to do. Just don't compare it to Deep Blue vs. Kasparov, because it's closer to Deep Blue vs. Middle School Chess Team Captain.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Dopefish_1]

Turns out the AI didn't and can't. From a different article on the tournament:
The showcase game of the competition was a bot versus human match. In the exhibition match, =DoGo=, a World Cyber Games 2001 competitor played against the top ranking bot of the competition. The result was an exciting man versus machine match highlighting the state of the art in real-time strategy game AI.

It's also worth noting that this =DoGo= isn't really the top-tier player the article makes him out to be. WCG wasn't a huge deal back in 2001, and =DoGo= went 1-5 in his group then. I'm not sure how much he's played recently either.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately, you are mistaken on many accounts, and I'll take the chance to educate you with what little I know (I am by no means an expert, I just have been following the professional scene for many years).

The top professional scene (the only one that really matters/ed) is the Korean professional Starcraft scene.

Tech to Valkyrie is not generally the proper response to Muta. Too slow, too much time to build, no proper transition to it. Very rarely built.
But you need to understand the economies of the game, muta harassment etc and the evolution of the metagame to truly understand it.
Zerg has no aircraft that deals area of effect damage btw. The Devourers are good for taking down carriers and battleships (big strong single units), not against muta.
You never see them in top ZvZ air battles for example.

The AI beat a decent player of the european Starcraft scene.
But that same player would _not_ be able to hold his ground against the likes of Jaedong or Flash.
Not only that, the difference in skill is in orders of magnitude. Completely different level.

In addition to that, if the AI always goes with the same build orders to transition to mass muta as a midgame or endgame strategy,
it _will_ get hard countered by top professional Korean players.
That's why scouting and faking and hiding the tech is such a vital part of Starcraft.

High speed micro is not all there is to Starcraft. The macro and economics generally play a much larger role.
If you cannot deal with all the subtleties of scouting, opening, early game, proper transition to midgame, etc you will never be able to setup the economy that can possibly support your micro intensive, mass Muta micro.

I would like to see this same AI play against a Flash or a Jaedong and win a good percentage of battles, only then will I be impressed by its results.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Rakishi]

Most comments on this note the player is not particularly great as far as Starcraft players are concerned, nowhere near an actual pro-gamer, and the only tournament mentioned is from 2001. So at best a good (but not great) player who's 10 years out of practice and behind on current strategies of playing. Also, the article only mentions that the AI won one test game against the player. Not even an actual game since it seems testing Goliaths was the real point of that game.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get back to us when they can start beating B-level players consistently on ICCUP. That's the point AIs will be competitive with professional-level gamers;actually, not even the best though, just practice partner level.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you haven't seen Fantasy's Valkonic build that often.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[EvanED]

I'll admit that I haven't, and I suppose I should have said that my perspective was from a period roughly mid 2008 to 2010 (I think I got into it shortly after the big July vs Best series, and haven't watched much in the last year), so if the Valkyrie was used before I started or after I stopped, that would skew my statement.

The other thing that would do it is that I didn't watch all that much Proleague, rather just the individual leagues, and I don't remember quite how much Fantasy was represented there. He wasn't one of the players that I really liked watching (though if I knew about his Valkonic build, maybe that would have changed :-)), and so would have only usually watched if either he was playing another player I did like (which would mean probably not zerg) or if it was pretty late in the tournament.

So neither the leagues nor the games nor the players of the games I watched were really fairly chosen, so there could easily have been some systematic bias I was unaware of that took me away from games with Valkyries.

(And if you're wondering, the two games that I do remember were Flash vs Effort on Match Point where they restarted, and Calm vs Upmagic on Outsider. The last one I thought was awesome at the time except for Upmagic losing, but in retrospect has been majorly tainted by Upmagic's involvement in the match rigging scandal.)

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantasy was notorious for making a Valk+MnM build against Zerg as a crutch to versus his inability to handle a mech TvZ, which was his weakest match-up. He was and is quite good, A to A+ level player; and it showed especially in ProLeague, where he is one of the three legs of the BBF SKT T1 line. However, he always got knocked out by the Dong or the God Bonjwa in individual leagues; but he has produced some epic games while doing so.

Also, Zs rely on Mutas even in Air to Air warfare, Devourers (damn you SC2 for making me think Corruptors) were used as support units to make every Glaive Wurm hit from Mutas pack a harder punch instead of being the primary DPS since they were simply too expensive. They were insanely good against extremely late-game BCs and Carriers though.

You by any chance go by the moniker of evanthebouncy? ;)

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[EvanED]

He was and is quite good, A to A+ level player; and it showed especially in ProLeague, where he is one of the three legs of the BBF SKT T1 line. However, he always got knocked out by the Dong or the God Bonjwa in individual leagues; but he has produced some epic games while doing so.

That was sort of my impression, which is why I brought up the individual leagues vs Proleague in my last post.

Don't get me wrong; I didn't have any particular dislike for Fantasy (unlike a couple of the youtube commentators :-p), I just never picked up a particular like for him like I did for a few other players. (Stork, Flash for a while (he's kind of gotten too good), good Bisu, and a couple others.)

Also, Zs rely on Mutas even in Air to Air warfare, Devourers (damn you SC2 for making me think Corruptors) were used as support units to make every Glaive Wurm hit from Mutas pack a harder punch instead of being the primary DPS since they were simply too expensive. They were insanely good against extremely late-game BCs and Carriers though.

One of my favorite games (and one of the fairly early ones I watched) illustrates this pretty well: Stork vs GGPlay, a game where they mined out Andromeda. (It's close to an hour and a half long.) Stork was wreaking havoc with his Carriers for a while, but GGPlay got out his devourers and just started destroying them.

You by any chance go by the moniker of evanthebouncy? ;)

Nope, sorry. I'm EvanED basically everywhere.

Re:As for the Starcraft AI...

[BCGlorfindel]

The AI beat a decent player of the european Starcraft scene.
But that same player would _not_ be able to hold his ground against the likes of Jaedong or Flash.

Even with that you are overselling the AI. It's victory against the human player was part of their test cases, specifically testing vs. Goliaths. Plainly that means the human had to allow the AI to survive long enough to face higher tier units. The match the human 'lost' was with both hands behind his back and similar to heralding a chess AI that can beat top humans who never move their queen.

You can actually watch the matches on youtube here. You can see the match is heavily one sided from very early on. And your right as well about the huge gap there still is from this player that won quite handily to where top Korean players are.

Really, what does anyone expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's old news that Blizzard are litigious arseholes who target their own fanbase, they were at it even before the merger with Activision, which is pretty much downhill in the same way that a cliff is.

This is just a trademark dispute, nothing else

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing at all to do with how good the mod is. Any RTS or MMO mod or game with "____craft" in the name gets a C&D from Blizzard. I got one like 12 years ago for a mod for the original Starcraft. This goes even further, using the entire word "Starcraft" as well as using "World of." If they just change the name they will be perfectly fine.

Re:This is just a trademark dispute, nothing else

[Pojut]

I'm totally going to make a game called "World of Craft". Let's see them waste money on crochet and needlepoint!

Re:This is just a trademark dispute, nothing else

[pugugly]

Depends - Which is worse - being C&D'd by Blizzard, or by Kirby?

Though I hate to admit it - Imagine a MMORPG based on that - {G};

Pug

Re:This is just a trademark dispute, nothing else

[msclrhd]

World of KirbyCraft?

Re:This is just a trademark dispute, nothing else

[Anonymous Coward]

"Years of Yarncraft" is the epic MMO in the Sluggyverse

Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

If you create content for big corporations for free, you deserve no less than a legal shafting. I mean seriously, how blind do you have to be not to see how creative fans get treated? Every other month there's some corporation threatening another fan project. When will people get it? If you so much as think about touching IP from big corporations, you will get burned. Ignore them or face the consequences.

Re:Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, fuck you. You're angry and are ignoring logic because some guy got a C&D. Get over yourself.

What if Blizzard has a MMO in mind and they want to name it that? It's far easier to just tell them to fuck off for using THEIR trademark, so they can rapidly change it and continue working on the game, than wait a few years until the name is established and causes even more trouble (You'd probably be the first to go "OMG THEY LET IT RUN FOR A FEW YEARS AND THEN SUED, BAHHHH!!!").

They're doing the right thing.

Re:Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

You're angry and are ignoring logic because some guy got a C&D. Get over yourself.

I'm not angry, not at the modders nor at Blizzard. It's more of a head-shaking "what a waste of time, when the outcome was so predictable" kind of attitude.

People are eager to create free content for corporations that are equally eager to attack their customers for it. If anything I'm weary of most people's inability to learn.

Note from lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Please make game crappier. We don't wish to have our company name associated with anything of quality."

Coming soon, Blizzard sues Disney

[WillAffleckUW]

For having Worlds of Warriors in iCarly, one of the best mocking of WoW that I've seen.

Le sigh. In the old days we used to mock each others games by having mock characters - and we liked it.

Re:Coming soon, Blizzard sues Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

iCarly is a nickelodeon/schnieder's bakery production.

Disney has Hannah Montana, Zack & Cody

GET IT RIGHT NERD!

Move along, nothing to see here

[LastGunslinger]

This has nothing to do with the content of the mod, only the name. Blizzard supports the modding community to an extent few, if any, other gaming companies do. If he changes the name, I'm certain that Blizzard would have no problem with what he is doing. The mod has the potential to be high quality, and if it became popular, Blizzard would have to deal with issues if they are indeed planning on releasing a World of StarCraft.

Wait...

[Locke2005]

Blizzard is suing people for a mod that makes one of Blizzard's games, Starcraft 2, more like another one of Blizzard's games, World of Warcraft? How exactly is Blizzard harmed by this; is it causing Blizzard to lose game sales to themselves?

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard is suing people for a mod that makes one of Blizzard's games, Starcraft 2, more like another one of Blizzard's games, World of Warcraft? How exactly is Blizzard harmed by this; is it causing Blizzard to lose game sales to themselves?

Your description of the cyclical nature of this controversy evokes an image of Blizzard with their own head up their own ass.

Re:Wait...

[DdJ]

Blizzard is suing people for a mod that makes one of Blizzard's games, Starcraft 2, more like another one of Blizzard's games, World of Warcraft? How exactly is Blizzard harmed by this; is it causing Blizzard to lose game sales to themselves?

Well, yes. Remember that StarCraft 2 is something you purchase once and then are finished spending money on, while World of Warcraft requires a monthly subscription.

Re:Wait...

[bckrispi]

Well, yes. Remember that StarCraft 2 is something you purchase three times and then are finished spending money on, while World of Warcraft requires a monthly subscription.

FTFY. :)

Geez, is everyone a baby?

[Anonymous Coward]

Following the link, no copy of the C&D letter. So we have no idea WTF is going, just the incoherent ramblings of a developer who is whining about not allowed to have anything good. Apparently he e-mailed the tech support department for clarification....

It could be as simple as the legal department scouring the web for the name "Starcraft" - not even knowing there is a tool out there to build mods.

Bottom line, we know nothing at this point. No need to pucker up.

Re:Geez, is everyone a baby?

[commodore64_love]

I agree with Anonymous Coward.

(and the earth cracks open beneath my feet). Personally I'd ignore the Cease-and-Desist since I'm not doing anything wrong. The Company provided the modding program, thereby giving me permission to do whatever I please with it. They cannot later retract that permission as it would violate consumer laws (I paid; they disabled the product; I was ripped-off).

Re:Geez, is everyone a baby?

[AK Marc]

Yeah, but you are wrong. If Disney sold a coloring book, you couldn't take that, color Mickey, and then make 10,000 prints of that and sell them as "World of Mickey" without some trademark issues, even if no copyright issues exist. And without seeing the license for the modding program, you aren't qualified to assert that you did get "permission to do whatever you please." So, have you actually read the license, or are you making up things you think best support your point without regard to the truth?

Re:Geez, is everyone a baby?

[Kenoli]

Starcraft 2 map/mod makers mainly focus on stirring up a bunch of bullshit drama in order to gain visibility. This seems to often take the form of them using words or phrases that are explicitly not allowed and then bitching when they inevitably get shut down by blizzard.
Thanks to the current implementation of the custom map system on battle.net, gameplay and other such minor details are secondary concerns.

Re:Geez, is everyone a baby?

[snowraver1]

He's not selling anything. Also, Blizzard itself would facilitate any transfer to other players, as designed, through battle.net. It would be like if Disney sold you a coloring book and said that anyone with a coloring book can copy their coloring (using a Disney approved photocopier) to give to their friends. But then this guy comes along with a Mickey coloring that is better than the real Mickey, so Disney is all in a huffy, and they are all like "I'm taking my photocopier and going home".

Re:Geez, is everyone a baby?

[Anonymous Coward]

they offer modding tools and i dont think any self-respecting modder would try to sell their mod for money, so this is a poor comparison

Code beating human ain't a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem in the RTS genre is that there's *way* too much emphasis put on micro-management. When I write *way*, I really mean **wwaayy** or something like that (jokes welcome).

The fact that so much emphasis is put on micro-management instead of strategy leaves the door to a great many hacks/cheats and also make it easy to write AI beating even top-notch players.

Bring us RTS where the 'S' means something. A lot of people would love it.

Btw, I was highly ranked on Case's ladder at Warcraft II but not in the top 10. Yet my rank was due to me outsmarting my opponents using real strategies. In Warcraft III it became much harder if not impossible (besides a few cheap builds that get rendered useless by the next anti-imba-patch anyway and that anyway aren't "strategies").

So yup, please, bring back the 'S' in RTS...

Re:Code beating human ain't a surprise...

[Pojut]

Agreed. I'm not worth crap with a mouse in an RTS, but if I have someone who has pin-point accuracy sitting at the screen following my commands, we win almost every single time.

That's what they make turn-based strategy games for, as far as I'm concerned :)

Re:Code beating human ain't a surprise...

[Draek]

Play better RTSs.

I'd suggest Achtung Panzer, though if it proves too complex for you I guess you could try the original Supreme Commander and its expansion too, they're the closest there is to a mainstream Wargame.

It's been long known that the C&C-derived subgenre of RTSs of which the *craft series are a part of is little but the RTS equivalent of "run and gun" FPSs, except without the explosions and the shiny graphics to compensate for its stupidity, so you have nobody to blame but yourself if you went with Starcraft 2 hoping for actual strategy.

Re:Code beating human ain't a surprise...

[Cederic]

As I mentioned in a reply to Anonymous Cowpat above, StarCraft was initially released at the time of SupCom's ancestral inspiration: Total Annihilation.

TA was the macro scale 'This is war' with maps it took minutes to traverse while StarCraft was the C&C-alike with story and fixed objectives.

The market largely followed StarCraft, as it was perceived as the more successful game, leaving a generation of frustrated TA fans begging for more of the same (and SupCom was about 20 single-player campaign missions short of delivering).

I haven't given Achtung Panzer a go, will look out for that one on Steam (not there yet, but most Paradox titles eventually make it - and I have 7 queued up to play already so no rush..)

Your memory betrays you

[orthancstone]

This is the same company that stomped on people over Starcraft LAN tools long before Activision got in the picture.

Wrong link.

[chemicaldave]

That was the wrong link to the result. For a better summary go here.

Here we go again...

[kamelkev]

So apparently they already had his demo yanked off of youtube, and the above linked youtube video is just a repost - so they are taking it fairly seriously.

I am always amazed on how little forsight is put into legal decisions like this one.

Why don't they just hire the guy, and let him run with it. He clearly has the skillset they are looking for - he made the entire app, demo and produced a bulk of materials by himself. Sounds like he deserves at least an interview with them...

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if you read this:

http://pixelatedgeek.com/2011/01/world-of-starcraft-update-bad-news/

Riot Games just offered this guy a job!

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, Riot Games (League of Legends) just made the fellow an offer.

Re:Here we go again...

[brirus]

From a business perspective, it's so much more prudent to give the money to lawyers and own the kid's ass in court (then steal his work later).

Remember: Corporations = Zerg. any money going to Blizzard is, in the long run, used against the human race.

I demand the Streisand Effect!

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! I hadn't even heard of this, but my copy of SC2 has been unused since about 3 days after launch...
I would totally play WoS - I demand the Streisand Effect be implemented and someone point me to a working copy!

must.play.now.

What C&D?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have looked through this and see no mention of a C&D for the mod. Blizzard-Activision have only filed DMCAs with Yahoo for the video. Judging from the fact no copyright appears to have been broken it is likely a lawyer somewhere has not properly researched that the video was a mod.

Re:obvious AI would win...

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Yep, but that's not exclusive to Blixxard. Almost every 'real time strategy' game is really a 'real time tactics' game. Also, the speed at which units appear is mind bending for 'real time' - it's really an 'accelerated-time tactics' game, where there's no time to give real strategic thought to the game, not the style of control necessary for strategic activities. About the only thing which even comes close to a true strategy game is Supreme Commander 1 (not 2) - and that's still accelerated-time.

The mod I want to see is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...World of Netcraft! Gives actual confirmation on which enemies are dying.

Diablo 3

[uigrad_2000]

I remember when www.diablo3.com was bought by Blizzard.

The guy that owned it was a huge diablo 2 fan, and he built the blog to track all news about an upcoming sequel. Blizzard didn't want to announce any plans yet for their upcoming game, but they wanted to announce that they were going to start working on a "new game". Since the guy was such a fan, he sold them the site, and honored their request to not announce that Blizzard was going to make an announcement about announcing a game. Really, I am not making this up.

Around that same time, Blizzard trademarked a ton of other names, to hide which game they were going to announce. I could swear that "World of Starcraft" was one of them.

My guess is that WoS is already in pre-production over at Blizzard. When they saw the trailer for this mod, they freaked out. Not using a trademark means that they will lose it, yet they don't want to give any spoilers for what their next project may be.

Re:Diablo 3

[Tim C]

Not using a trademark doesn't lose it, but not defending it when someone else uses it can.

Well, duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone's name is public record. HOWEVER, the relationship between your full name and your aliases is NOT. This is the problem with the RealID login.

Re:Well, duh!

[BobMcD]

True. But this is going away, so you may as well deal with it in the near-term as opposed to getting hurt by the transition.

Re:Well, duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's going away BECAUSE OF SHIT LIKE REALID!

Seriously, it's not a foregone conclusion. If it doesn't go over well, then it doesn't happen. So what the poster was saying before you joined this thread was exactly what he should do given that he's against the premise. And in this case, the controversy was great enough that Blizzard backed out of the whole RealID thing, at least, for the time being. The crushing might of the inevitable? No, it was a victory for privacy advocates.

I'm not sure why this is hard to figure out.

Re:Well, duh!

[BobMcD]

Your sequence of events is out of order. It has gone away in some small places of the net. This will spread.

RealID was/is a reflection of that, rather than the implementation of it.

Those 'privacy advocates' may have won that particular battle, but they're doomed to lose the war because they're simply not capable of adapting, they have no power, and there are many, many, many more that do not care one whit.

I'm suggesting people concerned by RealID educate themselves and take steps to minimize the impact of this oncoming change.

Re:Well, duh!

[geekoid]

You lack the ability to tell the difference between the large network and it's protocols, and individual companies.

Re:Well, duh!

[BobMcD]

It's a community. All of those are made up of individuals. This is not new.

Re:obvious AI would win...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hearts of Iron

really?

[Wingfat]

someone wasted their time on that. I want to sue blizzard for the hours i used up trying to get that lame game to work in the first place. once i got in to play, it was the clunkiest pile of poop ever. I really hope they had been spending their good time and money on Diablo 3 then, because playing Star Craft II, it makes me want to stab my eyes out and go back 10 years to when that type of game was relevant.

I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised...

[natet]

by the number of idiots who have posted comments on this story. 1. Blizzard has to defend their trademarks or lose them, so of course someone creating a game called "World of Starcraft" is going to get a C&D. 2. People seem to get the idea that fans of something should be able to do whatever they want with that thing. Fanfic can be interesting, but non-canonical, and a creator may feel that his/her baby was violated by it. I feel it is entirely up to the copyright owner as to whether or not they allow such things, and so it is completely up to Blizzard whether or not they let you muck around in their world. If someone steps over the line of what they will allow, here comes a C&D.

It's sad that these guys have put so much work into their mod for naught, but Blizzard acted as soon as they knew, so you can't really blame them.

Blizzard the retard

[McTickles]

Great going Blizzard:
- Failure to have stable WoW servers even if you make a gazillion/minute from the franchise
- Disabling SC2 LAN play and just overall making it necessary to connect to your servers to play
- Taking down SC2 servers the day WoW Cataclysm comes out because you need the extra servers to make sure WoW players can get on. (I dread to think
what will happen the day you day you release Diablo 3, will you take down WoW and SC2 for the Diablo3 release then?), YOU ARE INCREDIBLY RICH FFS, cant afford extra servers wtf?
- Now this...

Oh well I am not interested in Blizzard anymore, I played way too much WoW even though Warcraft is a franchise I care only mildly about.

The only Blizzard game that I might be remotely interested in nowadays is Diablo 3, presuming they didn't ruin it completely with WoW-style cartoon stylings.
And even then Torchlights seems to be overall alot better than what i've see of Diablo 3 so far.

Oh yeah also Blizzard = Vivendi/Universal, the greediest people on earth

WoSC had better be in the works...

[phreakincool]

Or I'll have C & D their asses "with a nuclear launch detected". Shit! "They'll never know what hit 'em!"

Not a C&D

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard sendt a DMCA-takedown for the video, NOT a C&D to the actual project. Big difference.

Make something original like Counter Strike

[nhat11]

The mod is impressive but the modders have more talent than to make spin off from one of blizzards games. Make something original. For example, why you think leagues of legends and counter striker were so popular? Also the mod is a map. The graphics engine and the models are part of the map maker.

Ckeck this

[luk3Z]

If you play any computer game you should check this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKBRG_QgEAM Enjoy!

Explain to a non-player

[fishbowl]

The article doesn't bother to explain to a non-SCII player what is so special about the mod.
I've played WoW, but not SCII, so I can't tell from the video what's "mod" and what's stock.

Re:Explain to a non-player

[mr_gorkajuice]

Have you played Warcraft? Apparently, World of Starcraft is to Starcraft what World of Warcraft is to Warcraft (clever, huh?)
In case you haven't - it's a completely different game in a completely different genre.
The original Warcraft is a realtime strategy game, where you control an army of either orcs or humans, and need to destroy the opposing force through a combination of resource management (macro) and direct control of your trained army units (micro). Warcraft 2 and 3 are sequels.
World of Warcraft is, as you probably know, an MMORPG, set in the world of Warcraft (now you know how they came up with the name too)
Starcraft is Warcraft in a sci-fi setting.

What about IC Cup?

[Supurcell]

IC Cup is just like Bnetd. They even have a download for the full starcraft game on their website. There are tons of people on it at all hours and Blizzard hasn't shut them down.

Roboflash?!

[SpaghettiPattern]

Is it just me or is the 4th robot shooting by flashing his metallic phallus? See for yourself at 0:17.

Re:obvious AI would win...

[Cederic]

SupCom was fairly weak compared to its venerable ancestor Total Annihilation.

I still find myself bewildered by the love for Starcraft ahead of TA. One had a great story, very high production values, superb game balance and strong multiplayer, but the other had automation of the economic micromanagement and supported some serious hard edged wars of attrition if you weren't nimble enough to win quick.

Maybe there just wasn't room for both at the pro level; for whatever reason Starcraft went global and TA remains unrecognised as the greatest RTS in gaming history.

For gameplay and fun factor the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes series have easily matched it - but they're clearly more tactical in scale/scope.

However, for serious strategy, I always end up going for the 'Total War' series (and their clones - I picked up King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame on a Steam cheap deal the other week and that's another turn based strategic with pausable real-time battles. Having fun with it, and they've added enough nice features that you don't get in the Total War games that it's not a direct clone or rip-off.)

A gaming company needs to work with the guys behind Spring to re-release a professional production quality version of TA designed for modern computers. Better AI, better graphics, same macro-scale carnage where your army has to claw its way through the wreckage of the last fight just to reach the enemy.

Can we fix the & thing?

[AP31R0N]

Slashdot,

You've been at this for years. Can you fix that bug, please?

This is nothing but trouble

[magus_melchior]

... for both Blizzard and the modding community. The reason is, this guy made this mod using tools Blizzard made available to all StarCraft II users. He didn't hack the game or add libraries.

If Blizzard's legal counsel decides to issue a C&D on the project itself (to my knowledge they've only griped at Google/Youtube so far), that will have a chilling effect on the modders, which is probably smaller than it would be had not Blizzard insisted on taking ownership of any mods made with their tools in the EULA. Furthermore, the modder who was targeted this time can probably prove in court (unless Activision Blizzard tries to starve him by stalling the court) that he didn't in fact violate the EULA and that Blizzard, should it take him to court, is acting arbitrarily. That could have consequences for Blizzard or the modders that wouldn't be good for anyone-- the EULA could be scuppered, or edited to include a "Blizzard can do anything it wants to your projects including shutting it down and banning it from the Internet" clause.

The best course of action is for Blizzard to back the fuck down. They're already going to lose this talented artist to Riot Games, and going after him may cause other artists and modders to avoid Blizzard like the plague.

http://www.worldofstarcraft.proboards.com/index.cg

[dragmar]

The author, Ryan Winzen, agrees that Blizzard "...have every right to do what they did"

He posted this on his forum at http://www.worldofstarcraft.proboards.com/

know there's a lot of questions as to what has gone on with it.
A brief history of what happened in case you're not fully aware... I posted that youtube video about a week ago, and after the 4th day it started to go viral. I was periodically checking it to view comments when I noticed the hits were going up at about 10,000 an hour... Once it got up to about 150k views with over 300 supportive comments, Activision pulled it. I was really confused seeing as how there were many other World of Starcraft projects attempted and youtubed, and furthermore confused by the copyright issue. Everything inside of Blizzard's editor is copyrighted material so I thought as long as things were being produced within SC2 it was fair game regardless of title. Kid logic I suppose. The Deputy General Council from Blizzard contacted me last night to discuss the details of the "World of Starcraft" project. We talked for a while and apparently some people from Blizz were concerned I was developing the game somehow outside of SC2. Anyways I explained the details of the project to him and made it clear this mod was to be developed within SC2. After that was clear he obviously wanted the name to be changed... I'm trying to work with him to get the name Starcraft Universe (Currently in holding by Mille25) or Starcraft Chronicles. I am fully respectful of Blizzard's Intellectual property, and they DO in fact own a copyright on "World of Starcraft" and have EVERY RIGHT to do what they did. If I want to continue this project I'm at the mercy of Blizzard's good graces since they OWN it all. Anyways yesterday I was contacted by Riot games in Los Angeles for a potential position in game design. I'm not special though I will have to go through the application process and testing like everyone else, and this is not a 100% guaranteed thing, and I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do at the moment. There's a lot going on outside of what I've even mentioned here. Literally overnight I've grown from a nobody to a guy that half a million people want to design a mod. I've had professional composers contact me, dozens upon dozens of game designers and programmers and organizers. Many professionals seeking a fun hobby project even though there is NO MONEY TO BE MADE. ( At this time premium maps is still just a concept ) Finally I want to say how GRATEFUL I am to SC2MAPSTER.COM and everyone in it and all my friends there. From the Tutorials to the amazing help I've recieved in the IRC over the last four months. That place is amazing. I could have never made the transition I have from the wc3 editor to sc2 edit without that place, and regardless of what happens to me I will stamp sc2mapster on everything I can from here moving forward. Mille25 and I are going to discuss the possible fusion of his Starcraft Universe project today with mine, and we'll see what happens. But regardless I know that an instanced based Starcraft MMO will happen somewhay, somehow, eventually - within Starcraft II. Thankyou: Shawn, Onetwo, Progammer, Proziac, Lillianna, Xaragoth, Sumo, Sixen, JmanV, Helral, Slaydon, SCMapper, A1Win, Skizot, Vjeux, DarkRevenant, Dogmai, Fockewulf, HeyRevolver, Mindful, Skittles, rrowland, Phaos... and all the other names I may be drawing a blank on at this time... If you've ever helped me with the editor, I truly truly appriciate the time. There's a lot of people there who I know are more technically and creative talented than I am.. Cordially, Ryan Winzen Read more: http://www.worldofstarcraft.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=visit&action=display&thread=70#ixzz1BbMsbZkg