Echoes from Blizzard's Past

Edited "Games" Page from Battle.net Launcher. Originally Made by Kacpa2.

Technically more than three years ago, Ilko's Hall got its proper start and it started with "Blast from Blizzard's Past" where I caught onto strange anomaly on Blizzard's website regarding its pre-Warcraft games. Originally I thought they were planning to hand them over to GOG, but a few days later Blizzard Arcade Collection was shadowdropped during BlizzConline. I still look back at this quirky "kind of prediction" fondly. Despite this, I guess I was hesitant to revisit this topic as time went on. To be fair, there wasn't much to cover and I'm not sure if I even mentioned anything new in some random post.

Anyway, that doesn't matter now! Because I'm about to pick things up right where I left them at that first "article". Since I completed the "main quest" of Ilko's Hall, it feels natural to complete this concluding circle by falling into sudden old school Blizzard rabbit hole yet again and there's quite a few things I have to cover. In order to let the proper atmosphere settle in, I also recommend you to check out both "A Tale of Warcraft Remasters that Almost Happened" & "Callback to Blizzard Classic 'Arcade'" before reading this one.

Downloading Oddities.

First of all, it's important to bring you up to speed with whatever was happening with "Download" page on Blizzard's site. A few months after I covered this mystery in aforementioned post, Blizzard Arcade Collection received its only major patch that introduced both The Lost Vikings 2 and RPM Racing among other things. In a tweet dedicated to that update, I stumbled into this clarification from Tami Lan (now ex-Blizzard developer who worked on Blizzard Arcade Collection and was part of the team that was covered Heroes of the Storm, Warcraft 3 and both Starcraft games):

"You still can. :) These are not the same versions though, these are lovingly recrafted and in a more archival format, with special features. Though our website hasn't ever had RPM Racing or Lost Vikings 2 - those are new!"

I believe the deleted reply was complaining about how Blizzard "removed access" to free versions of games included in this new commercial re-release. My memory is sadly a bit fuzzy here, but at some point I somehow discovered the more specific nature of that issue. It turned out that you didn't have to worry about not seeing downloading links to those titles if you were from US. Pretty sure it worked properly if you're actually living in America or used VPN. Either way, I replied to Tami's clarification, and she promised to look into that.

As far as I was aware at the time, it didn't seem like this lead to anything. Probably because I was distracted with some other things and didn't knew where to look at the time. During my research for this "article", I run into this thread in GOG forums where people talked about getting pre-Warcraft trio from Blizzard... Maybe that's how I found out about the US thing. Either way, users Grargar and mistycoven pointed towards an interesting Blizzard Support page called "Classic Games are missing from Blizzard download page". Its earliest archived version comes from February 20th, 2021 and I'm not pointing this out because that's kind of silly in retrospective. You see, the other captures at Internet Archive show that this page was rewritten into "How to Install Diablo 2 and Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction" and this version of the page is the one present at this point in time.

"Classic Games" section of "Download" page from February 21st, 2021. Taken from Internet Archive.

So it seemed like The Blizzard Classic Team (as they called themselves in Blizzard Arcade Collection's announcement article) wanted to be more honest about this, but some decision makers didn't share the same opinion. While this doesn't explain the region detail, I think it's fair to say that Blizzard didn't want to remind people about free PC versions of The Lost Vikings & Blackthorne (Rock n' Roll Racing is demo of Super Nintendo version) in order to redirect people's attention to Arcade Collection. They could've taken down the download links directly, but for some reason they decided to just kind of hide them. Whenever it is a result of laziness or a gesture of good faith from people handling Blizzard's websites and links, I think it's important to give them credit for it.

That's actually a good moment to mention that this "Download" page I've mentioned a few times throughout this post actually seized to exist sometime after July 24th, 2023. Blizzard has been seemingly rolling in some design changes for their official website, so now you get redirected to the launcher's page. Direct access to all those game installers has been cut off, but (as was the same a few years ago with pre-Warcraft games) you can still get access to them if you have proper links at hand or look at an archived page for some general directions. You'll obviously still need the desktop app to launch and probably install the vast majority of those titles, but the option is technically there. For now, at least.

Good Old Reunion.

While I doubt we would get official confirmation as to why "Download" page has been taking down, I think it's fair to assume that Blizzard Entertainment simply wanted to tidy things up on this front in order to prepare for some upcoming changes and developments we will likely see soon enough. To make sure that their games are easily available on proper gaming platforms on personal computers. Naturally, I have to talk about three Blizzard classic games that were added to Battle.net on January 30th, 2024:

• Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

• Warcraft 2: Battle.net Edition.

• Diablo.

Seeing this news early in the news was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. Even though Blizzard clearly just took bare bones clients from their archives and thrown them in. You don't really need to hunt down rare reports from people who actually bought any of those titles. Just look at BlizzTrack that keeps track of all game builds and such uploaded to Battle.net servers via Blizzard API. The reason why you can see both Warcraft 2 (w2bn) and Diablo (drtl) on there is that those two come in a form of proper Windows clients. Meanwhile, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is nothing more than a simple DOSBox package similar to The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne. Unlike Diablo 2 and its Lord of Destruction expansion that weren't directly updated to Diablo 2: Resurrected, all three of them (even first Warcraft) are installed and played through the launcher.

You would thing that the reason for their addition is pretty obvious. Blizzard's catalog would eventually be added to Game Pass and Microsoft Store, so it would make sense to add these games to Battle.net in advance. However, this trio was initially re-released on GOG almost five years ago, in 2019: original Diablo on March 7 (don't let this Battle.net article confuse you: it was Hellfire expansion that got added in on June 6) and first two Warcraft on March 28. Considering that GOG offerings come with exclusive enhanced versions of Warcraft 2 and Diablo with their own DOSBox setup for Orcs & Humans, I could totally see them making an five year exclusivity deal with Blizzard starting around January 30th, 2019. With GOG spending almost two months on bringing them in line with other classic releases on their DRM-free platform.

What About The Rest?

Like I said before, we should expect some Blizzard games getting to Microsoft platform and subscription service right around the corner. Thanks to me being held back by technical reasons, I wasn't able to get this post ready for February 15th and that means I was able to see the latest Xbox news. Including this quote from "Updates on the Xbox Business":

Sarah Bond: "And I'm so excited to announcem you know, with the coming together we had with Activision Blizzard King, that Activision and Blizzard games are coming to Game Pass starting with Diablo 4 on March 28, which I'm super, super excited to share today."

While they seemingly refer to Diablo 4 as the first game crossing this border, I don't think it's going to be the only one. My guess would be that we're going to see the entire Diablo franchise getting added to Game Pass, maybe alongside other Activision games. Microsoft added Bethesda titles slowly throughout 2021 and 2022, so we can make comparisons to that with examples from March 12 (2021), June 13 (2021), August 19 (QuakeCon 2021) and August 18 (2022). Freeware release like The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall were also thrown onto Game Pass, which adds some confidence into the idea of classic Blizzard games sharing the same fate.

Commander Keen series paints a slightly different picture though. While even the likes of Wolfenstein 3D and An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire were added to both Microsoft Store and Game Pass, these cheerful platformers keep avoiding them. By looking at Commander Keen Complete Pack on both Steam and GOG, you'll notice that they're published solely by id Software. No Bethesda in sight. Considering how eager they were to bring up Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and others to the spotlight, Bethesda clearly saw some worth in doing so. While id Software seemingly didn't lift a finger for Billy Blaze.

Perhaps this time Microsoft would be more demanding, but I currently don't really have a reason to believing so even in light of 1900 layoffs at the companies. Even if it's going to be different this time, PC versions of The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne (let's just forget about Rock n' Roll Racing's demo) would likely be solely in Blizzard's hands due to their freeware status. Blizzard Arcade Collection has much more chances, and you can already see how secretive Blizzard has been about freeware games from this compilation after its release. As for PC port of The Lost Vikings 2... Maybe? It has a different feel to it and Blizzard managed to bring up Hellfire. I have my doubts, but let's just wait and see.

Most of the Blizzard games are likely good to go: from Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to Overwatch. Only two outliers remain though. I already mentioned Diablo 2 with its unique position where both Classic and Resurrected version of the game coexist together. Meanwhile, Warcraft 3 followed in the footsteps of Starcraft by getting directly updated to its current 'remastered' state. There's a way to get older patch for War3 that's hidden even better than pre-Warcraft games, so Blizzard's change of heart seems even less likely here. It's something within the realm of possibility, but (similarly to Arcade Collection) I think they're more likely to let latest iteration take the main stage.

Conclusion.

Initially I thought this "article" would bring together lesser amount of information than I ended up gathering. You know, that's what I really like about this "old school/re-release" corner of Blizzard Entertainment's history and that's why I recommended other similar-ish posts. After going through each of them, you end up discovering this whole new perspective on how Blizzard has been doing small steps towards re-releases and remasters before Starcraft Remastered with ironically similar conclusions of all these stories.

To make this part of the post more useful to some random readers, I've decided to (yet again) provide direct download links to older Blizzard games I've mentioned before. Keep in mind that you would need CD-keys in order to complete the installation of classic Diablo 2 and archived Warcraft 3 with or without their expansions. As to freeware trio, all you have to do is extract the ZIP file you downloaded:

• The Lost Vikings (tlv).

• Rock n' Roll Racing (rnrr).

• Blackthorne (bt).

• Diablo 2 (d2).

• Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction (d2lod).

• Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos (w3roc).

• Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne (w3tft).

As I've mentioned before, download links for Patch 1.27a for Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne are hidden better than the rest. While the dedicated page for these archived versions of War3 still exist, after opening them you get current version of Warcraft 3 Setup file for game's latest patch. Therefore I posted them together with secret "Downloader" links in order to provide the full picture while it's still here.