Tuesday, February 21st 2017

Blizzard Ends Windows XP and Vista Support for Popular Titles

by
R-T-B
 Discuss (16 Comments)
Blizzard announced that support for several of its popular titles in Windows XP and Vista will be ending later this year. These titles include World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm.

Dropping support for these platforms makes sense from an economic standpoint. As a platform ages, it becomes increasingly hard to make software work with it without making it difficult to support modern technology and features. Windows XP in particular doesn't support above DirectX 9, severely limiting the abilities of a developer wishing to take advantage of modern graphics and effects. Vista, on the other hand, supports up to DirectX 11, but has such limited market share as to make it statistically irrelevant (XP market share hovers at slightly less than 10%, while Vista market share doesn't even register, according to netmarketshare.com).

Source: HardOCP
Source: Blizzard

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16 Comments on Blizzard Ends Windows XP and Vista Support for Popular Titles

#1
Xzibit
Ending Support for Windows XP and Vista
Blizzard ForumsStarting later this year, we will begin the process of ending support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. Microsoft ceased mainstream support for these versions of Windows in 2009 and 2012, respectively, but since a decent portion of our audience was still using them at the time, we continued supporting them. However, there have been three major Windows releases since Vista, and at this point, the vast majority of our audience has upgraded to one of the newer versions.

After these older operating systems are no longer supported, the games will not run on them, so we encourage any players who are still using one of the older OSes to upgrade to a newer version. We’ll be rolling out this change on a staggered schedule, and will post further notices as we get closer to making the change for each game.
Darn wont be able to Pew-Pew on XP and Vista anymore how sad
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#2
R-T-B
XzibitEnding Support for Windows XP and Vista
Yeah, that was supposed to be in the source list. TPU has been going down and losing data in my posts like crazy.

Fixed (the source list anyways, W1zzard has to look at the site).
Darn wont be able to Pew-Pew on XP and Vista anymore how sad
Yep, slow news day eh?
Posted on Reply
#3
Prima.Vera
I have a Dell XPS M1710 gaming laptop which still plays like a rock star WOW and D3, but because of lack of quality drivers for Sound and Video, I am forced to stay on Windows XP. Which is OK, since it only has 3GB of RAM anyways, and is very sluggish with Win10.

So, yeah, I'm frustrated if I am no longer able to play those titles on my laptop.
Posted on Reply
#4
bug
Does anyone realize Vista was actually released after WoW? Meaning Vista support was added to WoW and now it's being removed. We have a game outliving an OS release here.
Posted on Reply
#5
londiste
bugDoes anyone realize Vista was actually released after WoW? Meaning Vista support was added to WoW and now it's being removed. We have a game outliving an OS release here.
theseus's paradox more than anything. wow is far from the same game it was back then. :)
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#6
R-T-B
bugDoes anyone realize Vista was actually released after WoW? Meaning Vista support was added to WoW and now it's being removed. We have a game outliving an OS release here.
Hell, XP 64-bit was released after WoW.
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#7
SaltyFish
Looking further in the source thread, it seems Blizzard is planning to do an OS query and start upgrade-nagging before eventually hard blocking XP/Vista users. Simply dropping official support would've been easier in my opinion. But I'm also somewhat amazed that a company is doing engine/back-end stuff that would potentially cause OS-compatibility issues for a game that's been out for more than 10 years old now. Usually companies just tinker around with game mechanics and other such content that's built on top of the engine, which shouldn't affect compatibility. Engine updates tend to be reserved for sequels and/or other future projects.

On side note, this announcement comes just ahead of Vista's upcoming EOL. While XP will have had much longer post-EOL support than Vista (for very understandable reasons), I wonder how long 7 will be supported after its eventual EOL in 2020. Maybe same or longer than 8/8.1?
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#8
Tartaros
SaltyFishLooking further in the source thread, it seems Blizzard is planning to do an OS query and start upgrade-nagging before eventually hard blocking XP/Vista users. Simply dropping official support would've been easier in my opinion.
wut? I don't know where did you bring that from. Says clearly support will stop by end of the year.

Also blizzard has updated almost all its games to win10, even blackthorne. Another entirely different thing is bring content to those games.
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#9
kn00tcn
Prima.VeraI have a Dell XPS M1710 gaming laptop which still plays like a rock star WOW and D3, but because of lack of quality drivers for Sound and Video, I am forced to stay on Windows XP. Which is OK, since it only has 3GB of RAM anyways, and is very sluggish with Win10.

So, yeah, I'm frustrated if I am no longer able to play those titles on my laptop.
how is win10 supposed to run on old hardware, isnt it missing drivers? (in fact, if it's missing gfx drivers, that would make the OS sluggish)

running xp online is a really bad idea, yes even if you're only opening the same games with the same launcher & never opening a web browser
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#11
londiste
Bjorn_Of_Icelandhow will koreans play their starcraft 1 then?
not sure if serious, but:
blizzardStarting later this year, we will begin the process of ending support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm.
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#12
Prima.Vera
kn00tcnhow is win10 supposed to run on old hardware, isnt it missing drivers? (in fact, if it's missing gfx drivers, that would make the OS sluggish)

running xp online is a really bad idea, yes even if you're only opening the same games with the same launcher & never opening a web browser
Sorry, you have to repeat that, I didn't understand what were you trying to say...
Win 10 has generic drivers which are very slow and lack features (ex: cannot enable laptop's woofer in sounds, and bass, treble, spatializer and equalizer are all missing; video drivers are way slower and full of artifacts, etc) , and is sluggish because of higher RAM reqs compared to XP ;)
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#13
kn00tcn
Prima.VeraSorry, you have to repeat that, I didn't understand what were you trying to say...
Win 10 has generic drivers which are very slow and lack features (ex: cannot enable laptop's woofer in sounds, and bass, treble, spatializer and equalizer are all missing; video drivers are way slower and full of artifacts, etc) , and is sluggish because of higher RAM reqs compared to XP ;)
how is there a video driver AT ALL on a dx9 geforce from a decade ago? i remember amd had trouble with 4 series (dx10) radeons on win8, while 7 series geforce is legacy for a long time
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#16
Prima.Vera
works with this one. also Win10 has generic drivers as I said.
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