If you'll check the EULA for SC, you might notice that they own everything you make with any map editor. Nowhere do I see them say that they WON'T take custom maps by fans and put price tags on them, especially since even if you make it, they own it.

Blizzard is going to have to own everything made with their editor just to keep themselves safe from lawsuits, they don't want to give away rights to the maps as that could potentially inhibit what Blizzard could do overall to Battle.net. Here is an example:

Blizzard allows map creators to fully own the maps they developed. Blizzard releases a patch modifying the High Templar's spells -this in turn renders a map based entirely around the old version of the High Templar completely useless. The owner of this map can potentially sue Blizzard, since Blizzard rendered their map useless.

Sure, it doesn't say anywhere that they won't be taking maps and making you pay for them, that doesn't mean they will. Blizzard is a large company with many intelligent people, and however biased my opinion towards the company is, they aren't going to be making simple immature mistakes that will cost them their own fanbase. WoW has Blizzard sitting on a nice bucket of money, they won't have any incentive to sell maps made by fans. The negative impact from taking maps away from fans will by no means be better for Blizzard than if they were to turn around and sell it; a thriving fanbase is what kept SC1 alive for all these years, they aren't going to mutilate their fanbase for SC2.

That 'thriving' fanbase has severely dwindled with the unoriginality stuck in blizzards pubs these days. We have iccup, but not many of those will be thoroughly interested in ums....

The power of rumors could lower this even more.

I'm kind of excited for this. If Blizzard's working on making SCII a super gaming platform, it means that they'll probably try to add new models and such to the game as time passes. I can imagine something like a model a month, or just randomly, to help bolster the mapmaking community, which won't be able to keep up with SCII's artistic complexity.

How acquainted are you with Warden?

I've never had any problems with Warden much before.
Only these 3 are known to me that causes problems with the Warden.
1. Hacks, which shouldn't even be allowed anyhow.
2. Bots. Well. I dun care about bots.
3. Firewalls? Mebbe. I am not sure.
or the connection sucks and its not the Warden to blame.

Actually since Warden's last update, it has been verified through bot makers, hack makers, and normal users, that Warden has dropped users who return completely normal and correct hash values. Blizzard, as they have done in the past, tried to fix/update their own program, and wound up breaking it.

Yes, well, but it was still unintended.

I don't use hacks, have any bots, or have a firewall (that would affect this), and I get dropped by Warden every time I join a game or if I sit in a channel for more than 5 minutes.

Don't change the subject.
Thanks to Warden we know this to be false, or at the very least in grave uncertainty. Warden drops us randomly for no reason, so we take the prescribed steps to remedy it and contact Blizzard. If you manage to get more than a copy+paste reply, you are told that: 1) Warden doesn't do that, 2) you are the first to complain about this, and 3) The problem simply does not exist - END OF CONVERSATION. Refusing to admit a problem is an immature mistake.

If you don't like it, then take it up with Blizzard over and over again.
Then if you are still not satisfied, then Blizzard just ain't for you. It probably doesn't mind losing a couple of old fanbase because its been 10 years. And its got a whole new fanbase, or a lot people who haven't even heard of Starcraft before.

We have taken it up with Blizzard over and over again. Us being unsatisfied isn't the issue. Blizzard's irresponsibility is.

Well in Blizzard's defense, they could be testing something out for battlenet2.0, and this caused issues with Warden. On the other hand, Blizzard is busy with a next gen MMO, SC2, and D3 -I'm fine with them focusing on this and working on their games. And you know, Blizzard has talked about, but not confirmed, merging the older games that used battlenet1.0 into 2.0.

But when I did make my claim earlier, I was talking about their newer games, not decade old games they hardly update, and update badly.

Uh, yes it is. If you're unsatisfied, it's personal and you could either choose to stress more with Warden or stop playing.
Blizzard however doesn't spend much time on StarCraft as it has 3 projects working in progress. If Blizzard were truly irresponsible, it would probably shut StarCraft Battle.net servers down for 'financial issues'.
Well, the only reason I can think of why they aren't doing that is because there are more games than Starcraft on the same Battle.net.

Battle.net 1 and 2.0 are completely different. Whatever they test on 2.0 should have no affect on the current one. As for them talking about merging them, I'm not sure where that's from. At BlizzCon they said they will remain separate and don't have any plans to upgrade older games to 2.0.


So if they're ignoring the fact that there's an issue with their product, that's my problem because I'm unsatisfied? If their product is unplayable, that isn't my problem.

So, why are you complaining if it isn't your problem?
If the Warden drops you, and its not your problem- just drop and stop.

Here is another really interesting link about SC2: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4174/the_design_of_starcraft_ii.php

I haven't read it yet, just found it myself.

Edit:
Forget it, this is going nowhere and completely off topic.

EDIT2:
That's a really interesting article, Cecil. I haven't read it before, thanks for sharing. Also very cool screenshot included. I'm gonna really like adding trains to maps (or whatever that is). I'm not looking forward to the tight unit management, though.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 27 2009, 1:54 am by DevliN.

Oh, what I got out of the article is that Blizzard won't have an entangled mass of strategies to use in SC2. They are currently at their unit max, so whenever they want to add a new unit, they must remove an older one. Though, single player maps sound like they will be extremely open ended. Maybe single player maps will be able to be created as well, for "UMS"? Maybe?

Oh wow, you're right. I think I misread it from a gaming perspective rather than development (i.e. SC2 having the same unit cap as SC1). Not sure how I came to that, though.