USEast Scheduled Maintenance

Battle.net
Battle.net

Blizzard will be performing maintenance to the USEast Classic Battle.net servers on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 from 10:00AM to 3:00PM PST.

Announcement: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20753116768

The following games will be down during this maintenance:

  • Diablo
  • Diablo II
  • Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
  • Starcraft
  • Starcraft: Brood War
  • Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition
  • Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
  • Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
Edited: Caaaaarrrrlll

US West Scheduled Maintenance

Battle.net
Battle.net

Blizzard will be performing maintenance on US West on January 17, 2017 from 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM PT (UTC-8).

Official Announcement: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752529363

Update: Blizzard is pushing the maintenance to January 19, 2017 from 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM PT.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752529363#post-5

Edit by Carl Bennett: This maintenance appears to have enabled the ability to register illys (accounts with names that contain what used to be invalid characters).

Edited: xboi209

What's Next for WarCraft 3

Warcraft
Warcraft

With the release of the 1.27b patch on December 13, Blizzard has been more vocal about their intentions for the next WarCraft 3 patch, 1.27c.

In regards to broken cinematics,

Cinematics are wonky in the latest builds because of a missing codec. The issue is fixed internally and will be pushed out in a future patch.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20745244931#post-14


The 1.27b patch has also introduced bugs for Mac players, causing them to be unable to save replays.

We've got a fix implemented for 1.27c. Should be out in mid January.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752586651#post-4


Spam bots may be loud, but the players are louder.

We are still working on ways to combat bots and spam within our community, not only in game but also here on the forums.

I know this isn't the answer you're looking for because it doesn't impact your day to day gaming experience immediately, but we are working towards a better playing environment for our community in Diablo II, Warcraft III, and StarCraft.

More to come in the near future.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20743074310?page=2#post-33


2 coordinates will be whitelisted

We intended to fix all the negative coordinates that cause maps to crash. We have the two pairs of coordinates that don't cause crashes (0, -11) and (-2147483648,
-2147483648) white listed in 1.27c. Soon.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752447283#post-4


Self explanatory

As of right now we're not looking to make any gameplay changes.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752516950?page=2#post-31


Blizzard pushed back some of their plans that they wrote about earlier this year, but the plans are still on the table.

Balance Changes, New Map Pool, and More are being evaluated.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752516950?page=2#post-36


Vague hint of what they'll change in the next patch

Next patch will continue to be bug fixes, along with some minor implementation of features coming Q1 of 2017.

Also

w3 Website should be getting an overhaul to better support stats for players.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752516950?page=3#post-43


High CPU usage will be fixed

We're aware that the CPU is being used more than it should, and are looking into a fix for it. I can tell you that it will not be in 1.27c but possibly in 1.28a.

Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20752586651#post-9

Edited: xboi209

StarCraft: Brood War Remaster Rumors Recap

Starcraft
Starcraft

In early August, iNews24, citing an inside source, reported a StarCraft: Brood War remaster in the works that would include high resolution graphics and an improved user interface, and would be initially announced in September with another announcement coming in during this year's BlizzCon, which occurred from November 4 – November 5.

This rumor didn't come as a surprise to some people, job positions listed under Classic Games began appearing as early as October 31, 2015, as shown by the Wayback Machine. The job positions were interpreted by some as evidence of a remaster in progress due to its wording, namely, "We’re restoring them to glory" and "Create conditions for experiences that look as good as they play", and therefore supported the rumor by iNews24.

Various debates quickly arose following the rumor, most of which focused on what Blizzard should or should not change. The validity of the rumor was less discussed as many fans hoped that the evidence presented was just good enough. September rolled by and no announcement from Blizzard, though that did not discourage fans from believing an announcement would be made at BlizzCon instead. BlizzCon slid right by with no announcement as well, though Diablo 1 fans will be able to get a taste of the original Diablo remake inside of Diablo 3 if they have a copy of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls.

Despite no announcement of a StarCraft: Brood War remaster, it's important to note that the possibility is not completely off the table (to the public's knowledge), unlike WarCraft and WarCraft 2 which Jack Pearce, Blizzard's co-founder, and Mike Morhaime, Blizzard's president, explained that they are choosing to not remaster the two WarCraft games and will instead focus on other efforts.

With the passing of BlizzCon, it seems as though we're back at square one again. Not quite however, the existence of the, albeit unpublished, 1.17.0 patch could provide us with some insight. There are two routes that Blizzard must choose between should they decide to remaster the game: 1) make a backwards compatible client so that those playing on the remastered version could play with those on the traditional version, and 2) make a non-backwards compatible client that will not be able to play with those on the traditional version.

The latter case would cause a significant split in the Brood War community regardless of the changes that will be made, unless this remastered client will be offered for free, which doesn't sound very likely for a remaster. Also, depending on the changes that could be made as well as its pricing, the Brood War community would most likely stick with the traditional client. Assuming, increased game resolution will be provided, the former would cause backlash from the Brood War community due to concerns about fairness of gameplay. In both cases, Blizzard would have to maintain both games as it appears that a remaster will not supersede the traditional client, due to the fact that a new patch for the traditional client exists. This does not seem like a good idea for Blizzard's Classic Games Team because having to maintain an additional game would consequently strain their resources more.

What are your thoughts on the possibility of a StarCraft: Brood War remaster?

xboi209

Simplicity 1.0

Battle.net
Battle.net

It has been almost 4 years since the last update, but I am pleased to once again provide an update to this program. There are a lot of minor details with this update, but the biggest change is using custom named initiates in a newly created clan instead of just using the generated initiate names. The biggest issue that was addressed was the creation of clans in general. The last public version (version 0.72) did not handle clan creation very well.

If you're new to Simplicity, it is a clan creator that requires minimal configuration to use, relies on SOCKS4 and HTTP proxies, checks for clanned keys when creating a clan, and more.

You may download Simplicity here: http://files.codespeak.org/projects/simplicity/Simplicity.zip

Edited: Vector