ActiBlizz is dead to me. I won't give them a penny.

Warcraft 3 still works up to 2560x1440 res on windows 10 like a charm same with starcraft but the resloution is screwed on that same with diablo 2 if someone made a patch to fix those that would be cool. cause I know if they fix those games you will need the blizzard launcher to use them :(

Torchlight 2 is the Diablo 3 we really wanted (well, it's what I wanted at least, and seeing that the game was actually created, it seems I'm not entirely alone).
If the installers are pulled off the site and activation servers are taken offline, at least those of us that had already downloaded the installers will have them archived, the keys will still activate offline, and the singleplayer and LAN modes will still work.

Knock yourself out:

Starcraft - http://www.wsgf.org/dr/starcraft
Diablo 1 - http://diablo1.ovh.org/hd/?download
Diablo 2 - http://www.moddb.com/games/diablo-2/downloads/d2multires-version-102

I agree, that those things should be made by such large companies for free by now and not sold like with Fallout 1+2 and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I wonder how much of their "work" was actually community made, since those HD-hacks do exist for ages.

Believe me I've tried.

- That Diablo 1 HD mod afaik is essentially a recreation of the entire game using the graphics of the original (so a clone). I believe resolution in D1 is hardcoded.

- The Diablo 2 widescreen mod (last I checked) does not support the most recent version of the game. Also if you want to use it on battle.net you'll most likely be banned. Also it generally creates all sorts of instability, for example in widescreen mode the cinematics don't play.

- The Starcraft res mod is BROKEN for the single-player campaign, basically what happens is, if you get a voice transmission (like Jim Raynor etc saying something during a mission) it locks the mouse. Read up. Also there's also a lot of minor issues that introducing higher resolutions had.

Also regarding the D2 and SC res patches: They haven't been updated in years, so there's little chance that they will ever be "finished". Afaik the issue with the HoMM3 re-release was that the devs only had access to the source code of the base game (Restoration of Erathia), not the expansions. If Blizzard has all the source codes (which they probably do) then they can make "perfect" HD versions which fans could never because they don't have source codes. Source code > hacks, always

And spawn installs! Are spawn installs available on those DRM-free installers like they were with the CDs? Not that I ever used them, as I don't do multiplayer, but it's interesting now that I think about it.

From free spawn installs to forced battlenet, you sure have changed Blizzard.

My two cents.
Evolving hardware and OSes have indeed broken compatibility out of the box, but restored it with specialized tools. You can pretty much run StarCraft on practically any linux distro at this point. And a current average rig should be more than enough to run starcraft on virtualbox.

But wait, not all gamers are linux geeks or know how to set a virtual machine. You can't expect them to be able to do that. True, but I also don't expect casual gamers to really want to go back to those glory days. Most of them will only want the shiniest newest toys. If you're interested in old school gaming, you're also interested in old school hardware and you have a minimum of computer-tech savvy. The rest have farmville.

The big red flag is the online services bit.

Auction houses in the first diablo, yay!

I've played with those too.

Finished Diablo 2 - LoD in widescreen via LAN with my ex-GF about 7 times, no problems at all, videos did work although of course you need to use the proper version of the game and not use the last update. I think there only was one update after this one. Hamachi is a solution for online multiplayer, battle.net is taboo of course, yes.

I'm aware of the bugs in the StarCraft hack and although it did only happen to me randomly, it was still too annoying at some point and I hoped someone would pick up the project.

I've got no problem with the cloning method in D1 though, it's the only way for some really old games, I guess.
I just wish they would have implemented a "classic" mode that doesn't have their other modifications in it and of course it lacks "Hellfire", which doesn't seem to be very popular anyway for some reason although I love it.

But there is work already done and Blizzard could just hire those people and let them finish their work, like what is currently happening to the guy making the upgrades for Turok 1+2, which is the guy that made PC versions of Doom: Absolution and started making an upgraded version of "Powerslave" by the way, which is on ice now thanks to his paid work on Turok.

Sure, but the work of some modder years ago can never compare to Blizz actually doing it officially with access to source code. Lol, that's a very diplomatic way of putting it. The single-player campaign is unplayable with the widescreen mod. The issue with a "clone" is, it isn't the actual game, it's an approximation of it by these modders, there may have been things happening under the hood in Diablo's source code which of course these modders don't know about. I'm sure many players would prefer to actually play the real Diablo.

And that's one of the many reasons why PC games should be made OpenSource after a while.
Doom, Quake, Duke3D, etc... wouldn't have stayed as popular as they are today without having their Source Code made public and are still making money. I shudder when I think about all the cases where the code was simply lost by the companies.

StarCraft, Albion and some other old Dos games got a static recompilation by genius low-level coders, so there is some kind of source for it out there and it would be possible, since the resulting ports are working quite well, but the rights owners still don't seem to have interest in such things.

Diablo III is actually pretty fun. I played D2 a lot and i think D3 has improved to a point where it's better than D2 ever was.

I suppose the other thing to mention here is mods. As we have seen with the "Enhanced" Baldurs Gate/IWD money grabs recently, when the "enhanced" edition comes out, most mods don't work with the new version, either by design or accident (and to note all new parts only work with the new version).

Therefore the great selection of mods out there - The Hell (D1), (D2) - Zy-El, Median etc. will likely not work, and I doubt they will provide any support to modders.

Out of all their games, I would probably like to see the first Diablo and Warcraft remade/remastered.

Blasphemy! Compared to Diablo II, DIII is a damn toy for the Facebook generation. Which doesn't know shit, really. There is no planning, no satisfaction for building your personal character, plus the story and the atmosphere (especially music) are sub-par compared to Diablo II. You enter a fucking on-line server (if your connection is stable enough, and lately I had serious issues on that), you kill some crap for half an hour and you have completed your mission. What a load of shit.
Nope, same shit for me: Blizzard wants to fuck your time with worthless entertainment, the others want to fuck your money or belly. Either way, they are monsters to my eyes.