Blizzard are not the best games company !

[erjin999]

http://www.eff.org/IP/Emulation/Blizzard_v_bnetd/

And there are some who talk about blizzard being so good for gamers.

Luckily EA dont seem to give a monkeys what happens. Probably because it is the old games that wol serves.

[exatreide]

they are not either I reckon, but they are pretty dun der good!

[Muniin]

Im in big Bnet clan, 200+ members always... Anyways Bnet is cool but sucks at same time.  The bnet way meh has developed into this chaotic clan struggle left and right.  Sure you COULD go play the old games, which are STILL fun especially with the great mapmakers out there and the custom maps they make (theres some pretty random stuff).  However now clan politics comes into play, alliances and enemies are important.  Warring/Flooding is big/rampant, you could make an enemy along ur clans path, and suddenly find ur channel being flooded with spam 24/7, ur site and forums all jacked up, and suddenly, someone got ops in the channel and has tagbanned UR clan, there goes ur clan.  yeah, Bnet has been cracking down on the Warring which has basically stopped the warring now, so its a really wierd moment of peace in Bnet right now, lot less flooding and all with the new patch n all.  Cant say im TOO pleased, i liked it that way =) was in the forein Affairs dpt of our big ol clan.  Were gon stick round but its funner with the blatent warring, now we will jus have to stick to our old fashioned stealing accounts and protecting against trojans and spies n all that crap we shouldnt have to deal with with GAMES!  Gah Bnet has gotten to serious, hence why im taking a break now that ive found EMP.

[gunner154]

Funny, from what I understand of that scenario, it's not really the fault of Blizzard (besides encouraging the setting up of clans). Even Emperor had clans (at least when it first came out).

[erjin999]

WEll my take on it was the fact that they shut down servers that were not thier own, but served their games.

Thats not a nice thing.

[gunner154]

Okay, I have just skimmed that article. Can't blame them... U.S.'s antitrust laws are s***. Monopolies are here to stay.

[erjin999]

Well where would we emp players and dune2000 players be if we didnt have non-EA servers ? XWIS did so much to keep this community playing. What if we didnt have XWIS and RA's servers ?

If this was a blizzard game, would we be able to play these games on our own servers ? Why would they want to stop people making their own servers ?

[Andrew]

Blizzard issued a patch for Starcraft on June 29 2005. Starcraft came out in... 1998?

When was the last time C&C generals patched? (May 2, 2005.)

EA is not much fun, but most companies they devoured were fun.

[Nuvollari]

Lol yeah ur right...Well about Bnet servers...hmm i really enjoy b.net servers with free hacks etc...About the sc patch...it rocks...

P.S.:Well EA doesnt care for their old games...They arent like blizzard...Why do u think World of WarCraft has 3.5 million players on line?lol

[Cyborg]

Blizzard is still my favourite. I love all their games.

[Rostok]

Westwood was the best games company

[gunner154]

Making great games and being dedicated to their improvements is another. It has become quite obvious that EA is in it for the money, nothing more. Now barely anybody plays Zero Hour online, but Warcraft III servers are still flooded with.... I can't deny this, but it's just Defense of the Ancients there. Maybe if not for DotA even Bnet servers would be as deserted...

But I must admit. Blizzard has come up with more patches for their games than any other game. Two arguments follow. Either the game had terrible imperfections once it hit the market, or they are just dedicated. Your thoughts?

[Schorpie]

IMO Westwood was the best company because of their great games (dune, c&c, nox,...) closely fowwoled by Blizzard.

Now Blizzard is clearly the best company for me.

They ain't bringing that patches because their games were shit at the launch, they're bringing that patches because they atleast support their games and support the one's who play their games.

[erjin999]

Lets face it, most of us would like pacthes for emperor, even though we agree that its an excllent game. There is almost always something to patch, like stupid backspace bugs and loading hangs...

I dont take anything away from blizzard for issuingpatches so long after a games come out. In fact, I like that and wish it could happen to Emp.

It has become quite obvious that EA is in it for the money, nothing more.

Agreed. (that has the word "greed" in it ! A-greed !...EA-greed ! :P)

[gunner154]

EA-greed! Uhh.... yeah  ;D

And it's not the first time ::)Think about the projects that followed Emperor...

[Nuvollari]

Well ...WestWood was a great company

[tag]

Over the years I've talked to Starcraft/Blizzard fans and C&C/Westwood fans and I've also played most of the games in question.  My impression is that Westwood has generally made great games that were poorly executed where on the other hand Blizzard made medeocre games that were extremely well executed.

If you look at the incremental changes between Westwood RTS games and their Blizzard counterparts, you'll find that Blizzard made greater improvements in between games.  All that Red Alert really added was the introduction of Sea Power, which made it seem more like an update than a separate game from C&C, and Tiberian Sun's main contribution was isometric graphics, seemingly ignorant of the multi-theatre warfare Red Alert had paved the way for.  Warcraft II, Starcraft, and Warcraft III each offered definite improvements over ther predecessors.  In short, I think Westwood made a poor move by flooding the market with new titles, raking in a ton of money in sales but losing consumer confidence that they actually -could- advance the genre.  They did, of course, but the change was so gradual from game to game that it was hardly noticible.

Blizzard, however, never figured out to adopt C&C's most important feature, the paper-rock-scissors effect of armour.  As a result, a units were more or less the same and an opportunity to introduce greater -tactics- to RTS was lost; players simply amassed armies of the most powerful units they could produce.  Of course, C&C suffered the same problem, hense why we have the term "Tank Rush" rather than "Ogre Rush", but not because the capability wasn't there but because Westwood broke the model by making Tanks too effective for players to bother producing other specialised units.  C&C had the superior model but it was never -executed- properly to make it worthwhile until, arguably, Emperor was introduced, a very long six year later.

Starcraft is not considered a great game because of anything new it introduced to the genre, in fact it's remarkable how -few- features it had that could be considered unique.  It was a great game, though, because it utilised the features it did have to the maximum.  The three factions were, in spite of the limitations detailed above, unique and more or less balanced right out of the box.  In spite of being more modest in the use of FMV than Westwood, the storyline was nevertheless entertaining and engaging.  No quote from any Westwood game sticks out in my mind as does "Thank God for cold fusion."

And finally there is the map editor.  This, I think, is what pretty much saved Blizzard from oblivion when C&C stormed shelves in 1995.  You could play C&C (single-player) from start to finish at most four times before growing stale.  Because Warcraft II included a map editor, even allowing you to edit unit values, gameplay was almost limitless.  Starcraft took this and went even further, introducing triggers and logic statements that allowed you to go beyond simple map making and create genuine scenarios.  You could even develop your own pre-game briefings and string maps together to create custom campaigns, including branching mission trees if you were savvy enough.

As companies go, I think I tend to favour Blizzard because they seem to be more interested in the quality of their product rather than produce with an eye always on market share.  Being a modder, though, I lean towards Westwood games because even if I don't like them out of the box, they leave me enough functionality that I am able to tailor them more to my tastes with features often in excess to what Blizzard was offering.

In regards to Blizzard getting injunctions to shut down external servers hosting their games, this is because Blizzard is notoriously cautious about piracy of its software.  You can only play on Blizzard's servers with a -legitimate- copy of their games so if there are rogue servers up, it allows for people with pirated copies to play.  The fact of the matter is that after all these years, Blizzard still supports Starcraft, and after all these years you can still find Starcraft on the shelf at software retailers.  If they can make a game with that kind of longevity, I don't see why they shouldn't be paid for it and why they shouldn't be allowed to protect the fruits of their efforts.

--Bashar

[Schorpie]

Blizzard, however, never figured out to adopt C&C's most important feature, the paper-rock-scissors effect of armour.

[gunner154]

The kind of armours are differentiated by the unit weapon type and the unit armour type in warcraft III. In starcraft, armour types are distinguished by the unit sizes.

[tag]

Yes, but how long did it take them to finally see the value of the armour-weapon relationship in producing Warcraft III?  Nine years since C&C initialy introduced the feature!  Most game companies don't even last that long.  In any event, I wasn't really including Warcraft III or C&C Generals in my overall anaysis since, admittedly, I've not played either.  A side note, the only RTS I have my eyes set on right now is Star Wars: Empire at War.

As for Starcraft, I'll agree that Blizzard -nudged- towards utilising armour; however, the system was so simplistic by comparison to Westwood's that I really don't give it much credit.  The maximum differential was about 30 to 50% whereas in C&C it ranged up to %400 or even higher in some special cases, such as the Sniper.  As I recall, there were also height modifier and natural cover bonuses in Starcraft as well, but again these seemed to be half-hearted attempts at improving the model and didn't appear to have any significant tactical bearing in the game.  In short, it wasn't these features that made Starcraft into a classic game.

--Bashar