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Gaming / Re: World of Warcraft
« Last post by Spectere on Today at 12:56:04 AM »https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21881587/dev-watercooler-world-of-warcraft-classic
Looks like Blizzard is taking an interesting approach to how they're going to implement WoW Classic.
To summarize: they decided to replicate 1.12, dusted off their archives, and were able to get a client/server build up and running. However, as I suggested, they were 13 years behind on critical security updates, ran into hardware compatibility issues in some cases, and obviously it didn't support their new login system at all. Instead of trying to maintain two divergent code branches (which is difficult for a small project, let alone a project with that level of complexity), they are porting the old data to run on their new server infrastructure with a modern client, and they're showing every indication of following the #NoChanges mindset along the way.
I suspect there are going to be some things that feel a bit different as a result of this, but I suspect that using a newer client is going to generally be a positive. I'm thinking that the shenanigans that you could pull off with addons in 1.x (like addons that would basically just let you "play" a class with a single button) will, I imagine, be nullified with the secure action system. At the same time, the new APIs introduced later on will more than likely work, so I would assume that some modern addons will still work so you won't have to hunt down ancient scraps of Lua and XML in order to watch your threat. Speaking of threat, if the new APIs are available, the threat API that was introduced in 3.x should be there as well so Omen won't have to guess like it did in Vanilla/TBC.
Much of the WoW UI is defined by XML and Lua code, so I imagine that after they port the old code to the new engine it'll look the same. The option pages will probably still look modern, but that's not really a bad thing. One of the main drawbacks of Vanilla is that it runs on DirectX 9 and OpenGL. The former isn't exactly a first-class citizen in modern Windows versions, and macOS is deprecating OpenGL so the latter is far less appealing. The newer engines can use DirectX 11 (maybe 12 in BfA, though that won't matter too much at this time), Vulkan, and Metal (on macOS), so the graphic APIs will be fully modernized, ensuring compatibility with modern systems. The only downside is that you won't be able to dust off an old XP box or PPC Mac and play Classic with them. Oh no.
So yeah, color me intrigued. Definitely interested in reading more about this.
Looks like Blizzard is taking an interesting approach to how they're going to implement WoW Classic.
To summarize: they decided to replicate 1.12, dusted off their archives, and were able to get a client/server build up and running. However, as I suggested, they were 13 years behind on critical security updates, ran into hardware compatibility issues in some cases, and obviously it didn't support their new login system at all. Instead of trying to maintain two divergent code branches (which is difficult for a small project, let alone a project with that level of complexity), they are porting the old data to run on their new server infrastructure with a modern client, and they're showing every indication of following the #NoChanges mindset along the way.
I suspect there are going to be some things that feel a bit different as a result of this, but I suspect that using a newer client is going to generally be a positive. I'm thinking that the shenanigans that you could pull off with addons in 1.x (like addons that would basically just let you "play" a class with a single button) will, I imagine, be nullified with the secure action system. At the same time, the new APIs introduced later on will more than likely work, so I would assume that some modern addons will still work so you won't have to hunt down ancient scraps of Lua and XML in order to watch your threat. Speaking of threat, if the new APIs are available, the threat API that was introduced in 3.x should be there as well so Omen won't have to guess like it did in Vanilla/TBC.
Much of the WoW UI is defined by XML and Lua code, so I imagine that after they port the old code to the new engine it'll look the same. The option pages will probably still look modern, but that's not really a bad thing. One of the main drawbacks of Vanilla is that it runs on DirectX 9 and OpenGL. The former isn't exactly a first-class citizen in modern Windows versions, and macOS is deprecating OpenGL so the latter is far less appealing. The newer engines can use DirectX 11 (maybe 12 in BfA, though that won't matter too much at this time), Vulkan, and Metal (on macOS), so the graphic APIs will be fully modernized, ensuring compatibility with modern systems. The only downside is that you won't be able to dust off an old XP box or PPC Mac and play Classic with them. Oh no.
So yeah, color me intrigued. Definitely interested in reading more about this.
