Quote:StarCraft Patch 1.12 Now Released!
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Version 1.12 of StarCraft has arrived! This latest patch includes a host of new features that will make playing against your online friends and competitors all the more fun. For a complete list of all the new features, please read the StarCraft Patch Text.
Some of our most popular ladder maps were also updated. Dire Straits and Rivalry received minor changes, and Lost Temple was balanced and enhanced to accommodate the more recent style of Ladder play. For a comprehensive breakdown on how Lost Temple changed, read the Lost Temple Upgraded Map Page.
We wanted to thank all of our fans for their insightful input and continued support of the StarCraft Universe. We had a lot of fun making this patch for you, and we hope to see you taking advantage of it on Battle.net!
Quote:Changes in StarCraft version 1.12
New Features
* Changed Speed from "Fast" to Fastest" for Ladder Games.
* You now can preview your map in the Multiplayer chat screen.
* Added feature that allows the creator of a private Battle.net game to make the game public under the creator's name in Multiplayer Chat screen.
* Added full Korean language support for battle.net and in-game.
* Added a Friends List Feature and button that allows you to keep track of your friends on Battle.net.
* Added Friend mail feature that allows you to email members of your Friends List.
* Added Password Recovery and email registration features (like Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2) so you can recover your password via email.
* Changed the default race type in single custom games to Random.
* It now remembers your last map and folder setting when you create single or multi player games.
* Brood War will now show 'maps\BroodWar' folder as your default map folder.
* When a building is selected and if a ground rally point is set the rally point will briefly animate.
* Added minimap ping (Alt-left-click on minimap to show graphic location.)
* Added alliance colors on units - Shift-Tab changes your color to green, your allies to yellow and your enemies to red.
* Added right-click feature that will set your building rally point.
* Added shift-# to add a unit to a control group.
* The mouse cursor stays on the game's monitor in multi-monitor environments.
Updated Maps
* Lost Temple has been updated, while Dire Straits and Rivarly have been slightly tweaked to balance resources and space for building.
* All maps have been resigned. If you have moved standard maps to different folders you must do so again. If you have maps downloaded from our FTP site you must do so again.
Bug Fixes
* Fixed bug related to seeing Question marks instead of Korean characters when using /where command in Battle.net
* Fixed a bug that hindered Korean text in Battle.net chatrooms and game advertisements.
Link to the page that explains the changes to Lost Temple... it's been changed pretty significantly.
http://www.battle.net/patch/index.html
So... what do I think? Mostly good. A few of these things are bad -- do we have to redownload all the officially released add-on maps again if we want them to still be signed as Blizz maps? Looks like it. :( Also, I really liked the fact that ladder was Fast. Not Fastest. I really dislike Fastest and have never been very good playing at that speed... I'm not great at Fast either, but at least I can do that. Ladder was the one refuge from everyone playing stupid Fastest and now that's gone too... okay, I don't exactly play SC online very often. But still, it's too bad.
Other than that, it's all good. Well, I really love Lost Temple so changing it is weird, but the original version is still accessible (this just changes the Ladder version of the map, I'm pretty sure), so it's not that bad. And some of those changes are good -- moving the top center base enterance farther from the edge of right's upper left cliff, recentering all the base locations for better access to the resources (it was not balanced), etc... top is still disadvantaged with their base enterance, but it's not nearly as bad now.
Too bad they pushed back the release of Starcraft: Ghost until Forever.
Yeah, but how many companies are still making patches for games they released closing in on seven years ago? :) And ones that add major interface improvements, too!
As for Ghost, it is as I've said before. Either the game will come out (eventually) and be great or Blizzard will cancel it.
I need to find my copy of Starcraft, I feel like playing it again.
Didn't Blizzard just give the project over to another company, a company that promtply turned it from a stealth game into straight shoot em up?
Anyway, I got the patch yesterday. Yes, you do have to redownload all the maps again, but fortunatly, all the Starcraft maps ever released are in one zip file. I downloaded it, though I had to wait a bit to get a chance, and noticed right away that the "last edited" tag was a few days ago, meaning yes, they were resigned. They are also all about 1 kilobyte larger in size, no biggy really :D. I really have no idea what folder they want me to put them in, so I just put them in my scenario map folder. Anyway, the patch really doesn't change that much does it? I mean, that one map got changed, but who uses the official ladder maps anyway? The e-mail feature is nice I guess.
What I'm waiting for is a decent balance adjustment for Warcraft 2. I'm sure ABF will agree the orcs just totally outclass the humans thanks to bloodlust. Maybe a good adjustment would be to allow paladins to auto-heal rather than having to micromanage that, you know like medics in Starcraft?
Ooh! They have a 'download all maps' file now! ... or at least it looks like they do. Last time I downloaded all the maps they had a "all" maps file but it stopped at some date and I had to download the last bunch of maps seperately... maybe that's changed now though and they're really all in one file. I hope.
Quote:Didn't Blizzard just give the project over to another company, a company that promtply turned it from a stealth game into straight shoot em up?
No. Another company was designing it from the start. Yes, there was something at one E3 about how it was looking more like a shooter (a bad thing evidently) and that people weren't happy, and Blizz was going to redesign it, and yes, soon after that company was dropped... the excuse used though was that they had reached the end of the time period they'd signed up for and had other projects they'd promised to do at that point so they had to stop. And another team was found. Is there a direct connection between the way the game looked and the dropping of the team? Possibly. Likely. But direct and absolute? We may never know the whole truth.
Quote:What I'm waiting for is a decent balance adjustment for Warcraft 2. I'm sure ABF will agree the orcs just totally outclass the humans thanks to bloodlust. Maybe a good adjustment would be to allow paladins to auto-heal rather than having to micromanage that, you know like medics in Starcraft?
Warcraft II has either never had a balance change or it had one once soon after release and no more. Don't expect any... yes. Orcs are stornger, but it's because of that lack of auto-heal, not because of an easily balanced stat or something... and they've said before that they aren't going to add auto-heal to war2.
Quote:Anyway, the patch really doesn't change that much does it? I mean, that one map got changed, but who uses the official ladder maps anyway? The e-mail feature is nice I guess.
Um... no. Not true. Just look at that changes list! Preview maps in the BNet interface, right-click sets building spawn points (instead of having to click the 'set spawn point' button), when you select a building its rally point animates, minimap pinging, ally-color setting (you know, the same as the button in WCIII that turns you red, the enemy blue (or was it the other way around?), and changing the ladder speed from Fast to Fastest... plus smaller features like shift-# to add a unit to a control group, password recovery, remembering your last map/folder settings in game creation, a Friends list button (instead of just the chat command) and friend-list mail, default race is now random... a long list of interface additions and improvements there that moves SC closer to WCIII's ingame and BNet interface/controls feature list. I'm sure that there are some things in that list that will change to some degree how you play SC...
Dont expect anything done to warcraft II , Its way to old and few people play it, While Starcraft is still big on B.net because its one hell of a long lasting game.
Its really cheap now, I got the battlechest with strategy guides for 20 bucks.The Guides suck :o ! I always do better with my own strats and ideas.
Who gives a crap about SC Ghost! Its Starcraft II that matters!
SC: Ghost, if it gets released, will be a great stealth game... and those can be fun, so I'm definitely looking forward to it. It's a great use of Starcraft in another genre -- the Ghost is perfect for a stealth game... (they could do a mech game with the Goliath, of course, or a flight sim with ... well there're are bunch of fighters... but those are less popular than stealth.)
As for WCII, it IS still played on B.Net. No, the numbers aren't as large as the numbers for WCIII or SC. But it IS played some... but yeah, probably not enough (and the game is just too old) for them to really consider big balance changes after so many years of it being the way it is... especially when you consider that Humans CAN be just as good. If you're really good at micro. :) (true, even with micro Ogres > Paladins. But if you can manage spells, Mages > Death Knights...)
Oh yes, no matter what a death knight has, it just can't compete with turning an enemy into a harmless creature of the fields. Problem is most games don't get that far... So Blizz won't be adding auto heal? Hmm, maybe they tested and it's too powerful? What's their word on it? No matter...
Anyway, I did read the changes list, the day before you posted this in fact. I just wasn't all that impressed by the changes. I guess the main reason is I don't play ladder games... The better interface stuff for the battles is something, but not really a huge overhaul of much... I guess I just don't see this as a major update. Appreciated, but minor, that's my thoughts here.
Ya know though, I would like it if the battle.net accounts across all Blizz's games could be linked... Mainly, I'd like to be able to see how good someone is at Starcraft while looking at their profile in Warcraft 3.
If you mean that it didn't include any balance changes, you're right. Blizz decided that SC balance was at a point where it did not need to be changed anymore a few years back. This is just bringing SC's interface closer to the point where WCIII's is... and a lot of people will really like some of those features. I know that for a while every time we played SC bleakstare would complain about not being able to right-click to set building waypoints (for the units they create), for instance...
Yeah, that's about what I meant, but yeah interface updates are nice.
So what do you think about linking battle.net accounts across all battle.net games? I don't mean anything special like a single ladder for all games, that would be silly. I'm just saying it would be nice to have one account and one password that signs you in for all of it and lets people see two things about you, a, how good you are in other Blizzard games, and b, if you are online on another blizzard game (for example if you are on their friend's list, they could see in Starcraft that you are currently playing Warcraft 3). A little further than that, people could talk to their friends via a direct channel despite what game they are on, so you could then actually invite someone to play Starcraft while they are playing Warcraft 3. The only status beyond what game they are playing would be "in chat room" or "in game". I think that would be nice. I know I like that in XBox Live for example.
If they won't consider an auto-heal option for WC2, maybe just increase the amount of HP the heal move restores? If they won't consider that, I wonder if Blizzard considers the two sides balanced, or they just don't want to waste time and resources on that game?
You WANT balance changes in SC? Why? It's as close to perfect as it could possibly get! What would you want them to do to it? No, when it's as balanced as it is now you shouldn't change things.
As for WC2, think about it. They haven't changed that game's balance since launch. There were two patches, true, and maybe SLIGHT balance changes, but nothing significant, ever... so why should they start now? Sure, Orcs have advantages. But obviously not so much that no one plays Humans and no one can win as Humans, and almost certainly not worth the effort it'd take to patch the game... even if you did just patch WCII BNE (from 1999). I know there's some imbalance, but I don't see a big need to fix it. It's pretty good as it is.
Overall BNet accounts? It'd be nice, but I'm sure that the architecture of how it is designed precludes such things. I mean, you can't even see people or accounts on other servers playing the SAME game, much less others... obviously each of those is on seperate systems, and I'm sure that that is true for each game as well. Having some kind of overall-connecting accounts and stuff would probably be a huge effort and I expect Blizz just doesn't think it's worth the money it'd cost to set that up.
Well really changing the HP that spell restores in WC2 wouldn't take that long so long as it's a readily available variable they can edit on the fly (which it SHOULD be). Assuming they set it up as easily editable, at least that's something easily editable in map editors in their other games, it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes' work from one guy. Also, I really don't care about the DOS version. They already stopped updating the old DOS version of WC2 the second they released the Battle.net version.
And um, really I don't want any balance changes to SC (I never said that), but that's what I need to consider a patch to be major. What I mean is from here on out, it's minor interface patches, so I'm not all that excited about it. Well, unless they do account linking :D...
Regarding account linking... You bring up a question... Are all 3 games run on a single server? I mean, I know they have 4 servers running, west, east, and so forth. What i mean is, do they have 3 west servers or just one west server for all games played in west? If they have individual servers for each game, then pay no mind to what I say. If they do run all 3 games, depending on region, on the same servers, then they should consider it I think. I mean, I think there is a little linking already going on. That is, if you go into a channel in Starcraft or Warcraft 2, there are icons next to everyone's name that shows what they are playing. Warcraft 2, Starcraft, or Starcraft Expansion. Wait, I checked again, some more people showed up in this channel (I had to pick one where everyone, despite game, would show up, like tech support). Yeah, ALL the Battle.net games are on a single server... well on a single SET of servers based on location selected. So the west server runs all those games. I'm seeing the icons for WC2, SC, SC Expansion, WC3, WC3 Expansion, Diablo, and yep, Diablo 2 and it's expansion.
That answer that question (who knew research would yield answers to questions? :D). So, their various servers run all the games on them. And, they can tell the info of one player's status to another player on another service. However, as of yet this is limited to random players entering your channel. The next step is like I said, it would be nice to be able to link accounts across games and thus link your friends (adding someone in one game also adds all the accounts linked to that friend to your list for example). That way, if they are logged in on WC2, and you are in WC3, you can see them, and more importantly, send them a tell.
So, the server framework is already there. It's just the interface they must adjust. Also, they will need to overhaul the way accounts are managed so linking is possible. They have already overhauled the accounts for Starcraft just so that people can assign e-mail addresses to them, so it's not totally out of the question...
Anyway, yeah I'd say my little wants here are doable.
Edit: I found out a little more. First off, seems the accounts for WC2 and SC ARE linked, as my friend's lists were in fact maintained between them and alterations I made between them were reflected in the other game. However, the WC3 account is not linked to either of them. So, at least it seems a little linking is being done.
Hmm... thinking about the server thing, I was wrong to say that the games are totally seperated within each of the four servers. I should have remembered how you can be online in SC and WCIII in the same chatroom in BNet if both are in the same server (USEast, etc). So within-server stat tracking for other games well might be possible. But each of the four main server divisions? They'd probably need a new server to do that and it probably isn't worth the effort.
Quote:Well really changing the HP that spell restores in WC2 wouldn't take that long so long as it's a readily available variable they can edit on the fly (which it SHOULD be). Assuming they set it up as easily editable, at least that's something easily editable in map editors in their other games, it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes' work from one guy. Also, I really don't care about the DOS version. They already stopped updating the old DOS version of WC2 the second they released the Battle.net version.
And um, really I don't want any balance changes to SC (I never said that), but that's what I need to consider a patch to be major. What I mean is from here on out, it's minor interface patches, so I'm not all that excited about it. Well, unless they do account linking ...
WCII: I just don't see a point, and Blizz doesn't either. As for how easy it would be, who knows? It's not a new game after all, despite the Win95 port.
SC: Uh, if you don't want big change, why are you complaining that they didn't do big change... I mean, for SC this is a big patch. Bigger than the last few patches for sure. Probably as big as the game needs... so why be annoyed that it's not more when if they had made it do more things it might have been detrimental to either the game or the game's balance?
You should be excited because you don't seem to realize how extremely rare it is to release a patch for a game almost SEVEN YEARS after it came out.
I wasn't really complaining. I was just saying I didn't think it was that big a deal... Yeah, Blizzard is cool for releasing patches to really old games like that. It is rare, but I already KNEW Blizzard was awesome. :D
As for WC2, I was only suggesting that little adjustment as something they could do if they wanted to do something nice. I think it'll be easy enough, I mean I'm sure they still have the source code and I would be VERY surprised if that variable wasn't easily accessible.
No I wasn't suggesting they link together all the region servers. Linking together all the game data on each individual server is enough for me really. And honestly, I want to test something. Next time I see you on IM will you help me do that?
Quote:I wasn't really complaining. I was just saying I didn't think it was that big a deal... Yeah, Blizzard is cool for releasing patches to really old games like that. It is rare, but I already KNEW Blizzard was awesome.
Many of those don't matter much, but a few are really nice. I know that I really like the addition of minimaps in the BNet interface... that's a great feature of WCIII and it's great to see it in WCIII too. Most of the others depend on how much you like to use those features in WCIII... I don't use many of them, but know some people do and will be quite appreciative.
Quote:As for WC2, I was only suggesting that little adjustment as something they could do if they wanted to do something nice. I think it'll be easy enough, I mean I'm sure they still have the source code and I would be VERY surprised if that variable wasn't easily accessible.
If it was really as easy as you wish it was, I suspect that we'd have seen this added to the game already... because it would be awesome and a huge help to balance and fun in the game. But they've said that WCII is done.
Ya know most likely they are refusing to patch that game because it's not very popular (really, people still play it, but not that many, especially compaired to Blizz's big 2), and also, because to do so would result in demands for all sorts of other edits to the game... Honestly I don't even expect them to alter the b.net interface ala what they just did with Starcraft (though that would be much harder actually...).
Any changes or improvements will only come in the form of a sequeil.
As for SC there is just a few interface features I noticed missing when playing that War3 had , Alittle pop up to tell me that there is idle SCV's not working would have been nice , Que buildings , being abled to control droped allies, Shared control options you couldnt do the "Ants in your pants strat" without that, I never had a chance to try that since I have no partners skilled enough to do such a macro/micro tag team coordinated challenge,Its more a clan technique , But I have had that damn trick pulled on me once and I was completely baffled it had taken me long meditation figure out how they did it since that kind of organized control would be normaly impossible without the shared control option you need atleast 3-4 players to do this, The idea is for 2 players to control small scatterd forces and constantly peck at the enemy team and make it feel like a whacka molely type raids were your just poping up all over the place with no time for their brains to register,Its like getting them to swat flys and constantly miss, The principle idea is too toss their concenstration and macroing completely into choas so you litterally out macro/micro them. While the two other team mates build up a sizable force managing the 4 bases and of course giving extra units to the other 2 in case they lose a few raiding,Also can change shifts if the 2 attackers get tired, They finally unleash a final assault with a built up force giving no chance for the opposing team to recover.
It sounds easy on papper but its alot more complicated doing it, But since I have seen it rarely done by other playes in War3 Its definently possible. But you need fast hand eye and preplaned out responsive thinking.Its not somthing you can do in the first try it requires practice.
So... is Warcraft II better than 98% of all other strategy games, or is it just 95%? :)
Seriously, Blizzard's strategy games are just so good that I don't buy many others. Strategy is my favorite genre yet I buy more games in other genres... and a lot of the strategy titles I do buy I don't play all that much overall. But why should I? Blizzard's RTSes are just so much better than the competition that it's kind of pointless, really...
Sure, Age of Empires II is good. But it gets dull fast.
Conquest is cool. But no one plays it and it is somewhat predictable.
Netstorm? Netstorm is unique, and I love the game. But it doesn't have much polish, that's for sure... and the single player is worthless.
Uhh... Red Alert 2? Fun enough, for a little while. But it doesn't hold a candle to any of Blizz's last three RTSes.
I could continue with saying how I played Warcraft II more than Civilization II and Caesar II and Heroes of Might & Magic II and Master of Magic, or Starcraft over Worms II and Disciples and Gettysburg and Homeworld, or Warcraft III more than Medieval, Disciples II, Zeus... I think you get the picture...
I would be surprised, honestly, if the total of all of those other games added up was as high as the amount of time I've put into WCII, SC, and WCIII.
... why post this now? I don't know, I was thinking about it when I was thinking 'Okay, I say I like strategy games the most of any genre but I buy comparitively few of them... why? Is strategy still my favorite genre?'
This is that answer. :)
... and yes, I am listening to the Warcraft II soundtrack right now. :D SC and WCIII are great, but ... four sound and voices, I have to pick WCII... and anyway, I don't have the SC soundtrack. It's not burnable and I don't have the soundtrack CD, if indeed there is one.