World of Warcraft

software: BitTorrent, Lua programming language, Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther, Extensible Markup Language,

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Linux Game Publishing saw to it that this version of World of Warcraft was 100% ready for publishing. LGP agreed to publish, maintain, support, update, and otherwise handle every time and expense of this release, thereby removing all liability from Blizzard whilst Blizzard would enjoy the same profit per sale as a they do with the versions of WOW they handle themselves. Blizzard canceled just before publishing citing no reason at the time. Other comments from Blizzard representatives strongly suggest that Blizzard considers the Linux platform "untargetable" due not to the hundreds of distros available (as some companies have whined), but the possibility of more distros becoming available in the future (note, different versions of Mac and Windows happen on a regular basis for various systems like intel, arm, ppc, desktop, portable, as well). However, this oft mentioned reason would have no validity whatsoever if applied to WOW for Linux, as LGP has already agreed to take on the imagined burden of future distro possibilities. Note also that Blizzard's argument assumes that all Linux Distros, past, present, and future are and will always be equally popular and completely incompatible with each other. They also seem to have not considered targeting just one distro, maybe two, and letting users or volunteers handle other distros themselves (unsupported but not activly prevented by the developer) exactly as hundreds of Linux developers do now for the 7500+ Linux games available.
Further insanity is that Blizzard has maintained this version at least until 2011 and probably since.

zerothis # 2014-04-26 14:08:55