Also, 35% of the players are in the Arcade? So, if the main menu player counter is correct, out of the 1m players on average, 350k are playing in the Arcade? That's a lot more than I thought o_o
The 1mil figure is all players on battle.net. That's Hearthstone+Heroes+WoW+D3+SC2.
Fair enough, and yes, one should not halt work while waiting for feature X. Just saying that we WILL get those features, in that it is not longer a question of if, but when. Plenty of things to do in the mean time.
I'm losing track of the numbers here, but A) that sounds like it makes no sense to me (WoW alone has more than a million players) and B) there's no way in hell that 35% of all 'battle.net traffic' goes to the arcade (meaning the rest is split up b etween HS, Heroes, WoW, D3 and SC2 melee). I'm going to assume you're referring to something I'm missing.
Yes you are right to raise alarm Mozared, but I believe you are simply misunderstanding due to context. Tya was simply making the point that is is indeed incorrect to refer to the number that says "number of players on battle.net", seeing as that number is made up of "Hearthstone+Heroes+WoW+D3+SC2". So of the players that load up Starcraft 2, 35 percent of those players are playing the arcade.
How much is this release going to cost? Cause I mean I don't think any Blizzard game is worth $40 any more, let alone $60 or $80 (If you are European).
Considering how badly I and many others were burned on recent Blizzard releases I think they owe us a freebe.
And consider how small the developer community is giving us, even us inactives, free copies of LotV in the hopes we may over come our stigma against Blizzard and start developing again makes a great deal of sense to me. Our entire group is at most worth about $20,000 in actual sales for a single game but we can provide enough content for other people to justify sales when previously they could not.
In fact giving us a well supported beta well before release also makes a great deal of sense to me. If LotV is stand-alone, then I wonder if old games are going to work with it.
I'm losing track of the numbers here, but A) that sounds like it makes no sense to me (WoW alone has more than a million players) and B) there's no way in hell that 35% of all 'battle.net traffic' goes to the arcade (meaning the rest is split up b etween HS, Heroes, WoW, D3 and SC2 melee). I'm going to assume you're referring to something I'm missing.
It's 1mil players that are online right now. While WoW has more than 1mil players, it only counts the ones that are currently online. I said "of all StarCraft 2 traffic", not all battle.net traffic. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
Current games will work with it. The underlying galaxy language is being improved, and also, all maps will be converted to the new CASC archive format with LotV release (Heroes of the Storm, which uses the same engine/editor/etc. is already using CASC, and WoW was recently converted in preparation of Warlords release).
Ah, that seems more reasonable. Does anyone have a number for how many players are active on SC2 per day? I'd assume it's less than WoW/D3/(maybe) Hearthstone.
An updated archive viewer has already been created by the same person who created MPQEditor. With it, we have already extracted and learned much about the new editor, by examining the Storm data files. New data types, new natives. The galaxy language itself was improved. Primary reason I know this is they had to write unit tests for basic functionality (assignment statements and what not).
funny how focke asks for freebee : $ loss x number of mapmakers that ask for it => will never happen
i only ask for numbers...
35% is peanuts as far as numbers go .. i want to know how many people created games with my map (all of them)
"manage published" should allow for these figures to be displayed (with a monthly update or other) .. dev cost : so close to 0 it is sad it has not been done => could happen if we (mapmakers) lobbied better for it
we are not, and so they have no incentive to do so..
but blizz is wrong in this stance, this simple "service" provided would boost the arcade and boost mapmakers
no?
tldr compulsory picture:
in this picture .. we could be the bull but we are not.. (just kids these days are winy robots with no corrones.. i still miss the win/loss ratio... what world will my kids have to rule ...? sad really) .. gotta love droopy though <3
Sorry for the delay on the transcript. Between flying and working and playing Warlords (ADDICTED TO BLIZZARD!!!) I updated the post on our website. It's the whole transcript, I just have to listen thru and edit some of it because some of the words/phrases are hard to hear. I also need to add names. But everything is there in glorious text!
Enjoy! And thanks for creating awesome games. If you want us to check any out, feel free to email us ([email protected]) or hit us up on twitter (@FrozeNerdz)
$40 USD $60 EUROS vs how many map makers again? Not a significant number. As I said before the content that could be provided outweighs the supposed lost sales. Because without content LotV won't have as much to sell the expansion. Blizzard says there is a large amount of activity in the arcade. How many of those are free players? How many of those are people who didn't buy HotS? Remember the last official numbers we had access to showed that Blizzard managed to lose 3/5 of their player base between WoL and HotS. The number of map makers who are around who actually have the knowledge to produce the content our sales will not make any significant dent. Our knowledge on the other hand can make a big dent. Many new map makers have turned away on account of the complexity of the editor.
Now I had claimed that custom mods were 40% of the player base over 2 years ago (that was of WoL players). Blizzard needs to be able to prove to these lost customers that they have content the lost customers will want to play. This will not happen if map development does not occur.
It would be a very smart business decision to have map makers be able to start development on the new editor now so when LotV finally hits between Q1-Q2 of 2015 the new content will at least be ready for preview.
Its not about idealism. Its about smart business. Maybe the departure of Rob Pardo finally jolted them into action. They have also completely revamped their jobs page and it looks like they are very short of coders. Coming clean with the custom mod community can help improve that supply of qualified labor.
I'm personally not going to commit any serious efforts until I see how this attempt pans out, but perhaps others may be motivated to give it another go. Many of the best modders the community had have not ported to SC2 even after 3 years. Free copies may encourage those people to do so.
They have also completely revamped their jobs page and it looks like they are very short of coders. Coming clean with the custom mod community can help improve that supply of qualified labor.
Going to have to disagree with this. Most modders in my experience have no CS or software engineering background, they are either self taught or modding transitions them into software development. Fairly rare I have seen someone with prior software development experience.
The 1mil figure is all players on battle.net. That's Hearthstone+Heroes+WoW+D3+SC2.
@Renee2islga: Go
Fair enough, and yes, one should not halt work while waiting for feature X. Just saying that we WILL get those features, in that it is not longer a question of if, but when. Plenty of things to do in the mean time.
@TyaArcade: Go
I'm losing track of the numbers here, but A) that sounds like it makes no sense to me (WoW alone has more than a million players) and B) there's no way in hell that 35% of all 'battle.net traffic' goes to the arcade (meaning the rest is split up b etween HS, Heroes, WoW, D3 and SC2 melee). I'm going to assume you're referring to something I'm missing.
@Mozared: Go
Yes you are right to raise alarm Mozared, but I believe you are simply misunderstanding due to context. Tya was simply making the point that is is indeed incorrect to refer to the number that says "number of players on battle.net", seeing as that number is made up of "Hearthstone+Heroes+WoW+D3+SC2". So of the players that load up Starcraft 2, 35 percent of those players are playing the arcade.
How much is this release going to cost? Cause I mean I don't think any Blizzard game is worth $40 any more, let alone $60 or $80 (If you are European).
Considering how badly I and many others were burned on recent Blizzard releases I think they owe us a freebe.
And consider how small the developer community is giving us, even us inactives, free copies of LotV in the hopes we may over come our stigma against Blizzard and start developing again makes a great deal of sense to me. Our entire group is at most worth about $20,000 in actual sales for a single game but we can provide enough content for other people to justify sales when previously they could not.
In fact giving us a well supported beta well before release also makes a great deal of sense to me. If LotV is stand-alone, then I wonder if old games are going to work with it.
Also is LotV going to include naval pathing?
It's 1mil players that are online right now. While WoW has more than 1mil players, it only counts the ones that are currently online. I said "of all StarCraft 2 traffic", not all battle.net traffic. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
@FockeWulf: Go
Current games will work with it. The underlying galaxy language is being improved, and also, all maps will be converted to the new CASC archive format with LotV release (Heroes of the Storm, which uses the same engine/editor/etc. is already using CASC, and WoW was recently converted in preparation of Warlords release).
@ArcaneDurandel: Go
And have they provided us with a way to open these archives? As I recall we had to use an old 3rd party software to get into mpq's.
A Blizzard made model viewer and exporter for CASC's similar to the WoW Model Viewer would be very convenient.
Actually the editor has a built-in achieve-browser, but it's not as flexible as the 3rd-party tool though.
Window->Console->Type: 'Browse'
@TyaArcade: Go
Ah, that seems more reasonable. Does anyone have a number for how many players are active on SC2 per day? I'd assume it's less than WoW/D3/(maybe) Hearthstone.
@FockeWulf: Go
An updated archive viewer has already been created by the same person who created MPQEditor. With it, we have already extracted and learned much about the new editor, by examining the Storm data files. New data types, new natives. The galaxy language itself was improved. Primary reason I know this is they had to write unit tests for basic functionality (assignment statements and what not).
Do we have a list of these changes?
@Bibendus: Go
Not an organized one. Just what a few of us have observed while going through storm files with Ladik's CASC Viewer. More on this at 11.
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord
funny how focke asks for freebee : $ loss x number of mapmakers that ask for it => will never happen
i only ask for numbers...
35% is peanuts as far as numbers go .. i want to know how many people created games with my map (all of them)
"manage published" should allow for these figures to be displayed (with a monthly update or other) .. dev cost : so close to 0 it is sad it has not been done => could happen if we (mapmakers) lobbied better for it
we are not, and so they have no incentive to do so..
but blizz is wrong in this stance, this simple "service" provided would boost the arcade and boost mapmakers
no?
tldr compulsory picture:
in this picture .. we could be the bull but we are not.. (just kids these days are winy robots with no corrones.. i still miss the win/loss ratio... what world will my kids have to rule ...? sad really) .. gotta love droopy though <3
Sorry for the delay on the transcript. Between flying and working and playing Warlords (ADDICTED TO BLIZZARD!!!) I updated the post on our website. It's the whole transcript, I just have to listen thru and edit some of it because some of the words/phrases are hard to hear. I also need to add names. But everything is there in glorious text!
Here is the direct link to that article: http://frozenerdz.com/?p=1765
Enjoy! And thanks for creating awesome games. If you want us to check any out, feel free to email us ([email protected]) or hit us up on twitter (@FrozeNerdz)
@houndofbaskerville: Go
$40 USD $60 EUROS vs how many map makers again? Not a significant number. As I said before the content that could be provided outweighs the supposed lost sales. Because without content LotV won't have as much to sell the expansion. Blizzard says there is a large amount of activity in the arcade. How many of those are free players? How many of those are people who didn't buy HotS? Remember the last official numbers we had access to showed that Blizzard managed to lose 3/5 of their player base between WoL and HotS. The number of map makers who are around who actually have the knowledge to produce the content our sales will not make any significant dent. Our knowledge on the other hand can make a big dent. Many new map makers have turned away on account of the complexity of the editor.
Now I had claimed that custom mods were 40% of the player base over 2 years ago (that was of WoL players). Blizzard needs to be able to prove to these lost customers that they have content the lost customers will want to play. This will not happen if map development does not occur.
It would be a very smart business decision to have map makers be able to start development on the new editor now so when LotV finally hits between Q1-Q2 of 2015 the new content will at least be ready for preview.
Its not about idealism. Its about smart business. Maybe the departure of Rob Pardo finally jolted them into action. They have also completely revamped their jobs page and it looks like they are very short of coders. Coming clean with the custom mod community can help improve that supply of qualified labor.
I'm personally not going to commit any serious efforts until I see how this attempt pans out, but perhaps others may be motivated to give it another go. Many of the best modders the community had have not ported to SC2 even after 3 years. Free copies may encourage those people to do so.
Going to have to disagree with this. Most modders in my experience have no CS or software engineering background, they are either self taught or modding transitions them into software development. Fairly rare I have seen someone with prior software development experience.
omg, this QA was useless as hell. PPL couldn't ask normal questions?
@Domper: Go
This is the most promising news we've gotten on the future of the editor... ever.
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord