I got the random urge to make a map the other day but sadly the Brood War community is virtually gone. It sucks because last time I logged on to Star Craft 2 the UMS games were pretty weak. Have many of the map makers on here moved to SC2?

We have some active mappers around here and are even hosting occasional StarCraft 1 Contests. Also if you have mapping questions SC1 UMS Mapmaking Assistance is still fairly active.
Some SENners have moved on to creating SC1 Mapping Tools which can help immensely in creating maps with EUDs or mass triggers.
Most of SEN meets on US East in channel Donuts, if I'm not mistaken because our channel OP SEN is flooded with bots and spammers.

Personally I haven't moved to the disappointment that SC2 is, but I'm also not very active in SC1 anymore. Just a few UMS games once in a while, but no more mapping.

We have a handful of SC2 mappers too, although not as many as expected as a lot of people didn't shift over.

Yeah sadly it seems like SC2 killed SC1 but SC2 never really took off either. Last time I was on SC2 it was pretty dead and nowhere near as popular as I thought it would be.

Wait and see if patch 1.5 improves SC2, it seems to have made a lot of fixes to the mapmaker (which was very obviously thrown together at the last minute and not what Blizzard themselves used) as well as introduced the new interface for arcade games to b.net.

It has come too late. There's no recovery and any attempts at unbound and unshackled creativity (modding) is illegal.

My question is, what will it take to bring Brood War back?

Make maps and play Brood War. As opposed to not making maps and not playing Brood War.

This is the only way.

Brood War isn't coming back. You can prolong its life, but it's never going to be what it was 7 years ago. Hell, it's never going to be what it was 3 years ago. But as Oh_Man said, the only way you can keep it alive is to play it and make maps.

It will never go back to the way it was, unfortunately. You can just produce more maps and make the best of where its at now.

A time machine would be your best bet. If you're interested in competitive melee, that's still active in Korea. It's just a sad truth that a game's prime will not last forever, especially when a sequel with improved mechanics and graphics is released.

StarCraft II is still in its infant stages as far as custom maps go. There are plenty of creative and impressive projects that go far beyond what the game's predecessor could even hope for! The map editor is still being improved, and the whole structure of custom games is still changing with each major release.

Maybe making StarCraft I free to download and play would give it an additional period of action, but it's unlikely Blizzard will choose to do that. Like all things, the game will die.

But! For some of us, the original StarCraft is considered to still be alive! It's a great playing ground for modding, and community-driven contests are still ongoing (as well as various other contests). There's even still things to learn for the mapping enthusiast, as you can see in the SC1 UMS Theory and Ideas forum! Even today, there are new tools being released and developed!

So stop being a Negative Nancy and enjoy what still remains from one of the most successful real-time strategy games of all time, and look forward to what its sequel has in store for you.

I think if Blizzard made Brood War free to play it could come back, but who am I kidding. That would never happen LOL

Edit: I just logged on US East, it's way more populated than West. West is a ghost town, there are usually 1-2 games that are hosted and non-Korean.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 2 2012, 1:41 am by Roy. Reason: Try not to double-post. Use edit instead

Why do you think Blizz wouldn't make SC f2p Roy?

Valve did it with Team Fortress 2! Then again... they were no doubt relying on the massive $$$ generated from hats....

Ey-yo, get da fuck outta here. SCII has graphics in a different vein and less quality work went into producing them than producing the sprites for the original game. If you can compare them at all, SCII has devolved graphics when compared to the original - and only slightly-improved gameplay mechanics that should have all been in WarCraft III (but Blizzard sucks).

More on-topic, SC:BW is on life support. Modding is pretty much dead. Mapping is only slightly better off. Come join a contest, make a map, shit on a stick. Have some damn fun. That's how you can boost SC:BW up a little bit.

They don't seem like the abandonware type (at least not anymore). Diablo 1 still isn't free, and you can't even buy it from Blizzard anymore; you have to find a copy through Amazon.

Yes, Blizzard could change their minds eventually, but then again, so could Microsoft with Windows 95. Some companies just don't do abandonware.

It is. As long as I can get a full house when I host a map, it's alive. I don't see why anyone would need more activity than that.

And yes, making it free-to-play would be amazing, if for no other reason than the influx of custom content it would generate.

The only reason Broodwar would become free-to-play is if Blizzard can find a way to monetize it.
With TF2, valve found that people will spend money for hats and vanity items, so after certain margins were met, they opened it up for f2p.

In Broodwar, there aren't any systems that would allow blizz to monetize it, and they probably will not bother coming up with a system to do so, since it isn't really their cup of tea. Lastly, it's such an old and widely cracked game that it is pretty much f2p if u know where to look (on the internet or simply ask one of your friends)

It is good to look at the positive side of things, but don't neglect criticisms either. SCII's launch, in terms of mapmaking, was a disaster, and suffocates mapmaking/modding in both sc2 and sc1 to this day. Blizzard made no attempts in the beginning to smooth things out, and now patch 1.5 may be too little too late.
Then again, there are still great maps on SC2 (like nexus word wars) and still newer maps made in SC1 (take one of the maps from those recent contests).

It's true that it'll never be the same, but nothing can take our creativity from us. So just keep mapping.

Remember when there were ads at the top? Now they are gone.

I'm pretty sure that was just because of the volume of users using battle.net ... And battle.net being free, they used ads to help pay for the servers.

I don't think Blizz would make BW f2p. Greed moves them.

That's why Warcraft II is only played on a Russian free server and not battle.net.
In some years Brood War UMS games will be like "a good old game" played by just a bunch of people in the world, sad but true story.

For now all we can do is extending the life of BW, until something happens. We don't know how SC2 will evolve.
Some people may come back if blizz ruins SC2 gameplay (or becomes too expensive, I don't know, just saying).