Well it's come at last. Temple Siege 3.4 has been Re-Stolen by Clan FH. They are a Heaven's Last Stand clan, but FH-Wally won the last TS tournament. They are calling their version 1.4MX, earlier it was called vPRO. I found it on b.net being hosted by FH-Torture with the game name "New TS!(Less Gltichy)"
Basically the only changes to the map are string changes in the form of credit stealing. UnholyUrine's name is only left in 1 spot on the map, and minimoose's credit has been removed. He also adjusted the list of names I left at the end to thank people that host TS(I put my name in one small spot in 3.4 that you'd have to open the map to see, that is now replaced with FH-Torture). Anywhere that said Clan Orig now says Clan FH, and FH-Torture has been plastered everywhere else. He also removed Pornos's credit for winning the last tournament. I thought I'd get further by putting on a mask and playing nice with the map stealer to get the whole scoop (xyoshix also joined, but was pretty much just flat out flaming him and calling him out on everything). I learned much:
I asked him what glitch exactly he fixed in 3.4, because as far as I know it only has 2, and only myself and moose know about the glitches, and no one else could even easily understand them without playing around with the map for a long amount of time.
You aren't gonna believe this but the glitch he thinks he fixed is what any competent map maker of sc player with micro skills KNOWS is a STARCRAFT GLITCH. The glitch he thinks he fixed is when you try to attack+move with a melee unit like zealot, ling, or ultra. You know when the unit freezes up and it totally fucks you over? The only way to break the freeze is to right click in the opposite direction you're facing, but FH-Torture is POSITIVE that it was CLEARLY in the triggers and has now been fixed(It's funny because I've definitely played games with moose where this would happen and the noobs would flame moose blaming it on the map, this retard took it straight into the end-zone). At this point xyoshix was bashing his head against the keyboard in rage and proceeded to get banned, but I was like "Oh wow cool really? What exactly did you change in order to fix it? No1 at SEN has ever even heard of this so you're definitely breaking new ground!"
He proceeded to tell me that it was because the units where not placed perfectly on the grids when the map was made(what happened to that trigger lol?), and that there were still some stuff, especially doodads, that could be re-placed right to "eliminate random lag spikes"
Anyways I went back to his channel and talked to fh-wally who I know to understand more about the madness, and it turns out FH-Wally is commissioning FH-Torture to make a better 3.4, unfortunately this is Torture's first foray into UMS making... I kinda got the feeling it was when he was trying to explain to what exactly he did to the map other than paste his name everywhere on it. And when when he asked how to make the leaderboard work
Some D2 player Tychus started asking him harder questions like "does TS use hypers?" "How do you even insert that into a map?" and the best revelation of all spilled from him
He isn't even editing the map himself... 90% of the stuff is done by some guy on USWest by the name of 557 he's the one that told hm and fixed the unit freeze 'glitch'.
Wally started to see just how bad everything was looking and said that it's a work in progress and all the apparent bs will be adressed, but at the same time Torture is trying to spread his version where all he did was change strings. torture will talk a lot about having the leader board also show hero kills, but that's just something he want to learn to add to some future version. Wally comes out and says exactly why they are doing what they are doing; he hates m8 with a passion
(they were talking about who they should probably give credit back to in the map, I asked them not to put my name anywhere on it)
So I try to explain to them that M8 is a sort of evolution of temple siege where new things are constantly being tried, thrown out, and polished; and is supposed to be very experimental. FH-wally, like maxx, is part of the die hard group(some would say majority) that is completely disgusted by change that isn't a bug fix. I made 3.1-3.4 for these people so they could get there classic game play desires met unglitched, so they could hopefully some day move onto m8 because they would be doing the same things over and over again. Unfortunately some how this happened, and I don't know if what I did was for the better anymore. I can't even really get mad about it because I stole M7 myself, although in my defense I'd like to add that TS was dieing, m3-m6 sucked, I didn't put my name anywhere a player would see it, and I fixed quite a few glitches that were carried over to help M8.
Oh yeah the best part, so after I ask him why he doesn't just use 3.4, he admits that they plan to change the game around a lot and add new spells.... the exact they bitch to moose about. Staggering hypocrisy even worse than mine at them stealing my stolen map.
The good news is that for the first time in a long time a true moose version is seeing a ton of play, M8e. M8e is hosted almost as much as classic versions (I'd say 40-50%), and when I say classic versions I mean 3.1-3.4 () Those 3 maps combined do seem to be hosted a little more than M8e, but they aren't being worked on and maintained like M8(9) is. I think there are 3 reasons for m8's success (in order of importance):
1) It's a good map that moose put a ton of work into
2) The first thing 3.4 tells you to do in the briefings is play M8(twice)
3) The upcoming tourny is definitely using M8
So in conclusion, I am putting my faith in the TS community to reject this bs version, and and maybe show for once that even if you steal a map, it won't get you anywhere if you haven't improved upon it.