Blizzard Ending Support for Windows XP and Windows Vista This Year

Megalith

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Popular Blizzard titles that include StarCraft II and Diablo III will no longer run on anything older than Windows 7. Being that there have been three major Windows releases since Vista and most gamers have moved to 7, 8/8.1 or 10, Blizzard has no real reason to continue supporting XP or Vista anymore. Microsoft stopped bothering in 2009 and 2012, respectively.

Blizzard has announced that it will end support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm later this year. As Blizzard noted, the aforementioned games will no longer work on Windows XP and Windows Vista, therefore PC gamers will have to upgrade to a newer operating system.“ 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.”
 
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Actually, according to Microsoft's Life Cycle sheet, end of life for XP was April 8, 2014, and end of life for Vista is April 17, 2017 (that's this year). Having said that, anyone know anyone who is still running Vista?
 
I still get the odd Vista machine in. I tell them just to buy a new machine and I'll copy the data over.
 
I know two people running Vista :D, both machines were given to them by me years ago. I concluded they have no business owning a computer now :LOL:
 
A part of me thinks that they are ending support because they find supporting these OS's being a technical limitation on what they do with their engine.

But given Blizzard's track record, the other part of me thinks that Blizzard is just trying to find avenues for being lazy by removing legacy support.
 
Having said that, anyone know anyone who is still running Vista?

I know far too many people who are still using Vista. It's what's installed on most of our company computers. Thankfully IT finally upgraded mine to Win 7 a couple months ago.
 
I know far too many people who are still using Vista. It's what's installed on most of our company computers. Thankfully IT finally upgraded mine to Win 7 a couple months ago.

But, that's WORK.... how many bosses think WoW is a good idea at work?
 
But, that's WORK.... how many bosses think WoW is a good idea at work?
mine, we play wow on coffee breaks and on jobs when we have lots of down time lol. He even got us some nice gaming laptops because "our software needs the extra horse power to do our jobs properly!!" lol, he's an awesome boss :p
 
I know two people running Vista :D, both machines were given to them by me years ago. I concluded they have no business owning a computer now :LOL:

I agree. i gave a few ppl my old PC's and they just surfed porn until the PCs crash. Never learning a thing except how to get a virus.
 
I know far too many people who are still using Vista. It's what's installed on most of our company computers. Thankfully IT finally upgraded mine to Win 7 a couple months ago.

So, when will they start upgrading to Windows 10? 2023?

Other than some old VM's for testing or talking to some old equipment (soon to be retired), I haven't had Windows XP or Vista on my office network for a few years.
I'm currently upgrading people to Windows 10 as I replace or re-issue equipment.
I still have one department with old custom software that requires windows 7 or earlier, but that should be replaced by the end of the year.
 
I havent actually played a Blizzard game since Warcraft 3 *runs back under rock*
 
I love Win XP... will never let it go, progress peaked with it and ease of use without adding extra steps and bloat to the OS.
 
I'm sad to see Vista dying. It was the subject of a massive amount of marketing FUD.

Vista was a hugely underrated OS. Yes, it was terrible on old hardware, but if you had a new(ish) PC with a GPU you basically got Windows 7 two years early. It fixed all the security and stability problems from the XP era without breaking software compatibility. All the major issues were fixed by SP1 and it actually outperformed XP/64-bit XP in my own testing. It also included a few useful software tools that were gradually degraded and removed from 7 onward like Media center, Movie Maker, and the Photo Viewer+Editor.
 
I'm sad to see Vista dying. It was the subject of a massive amount of marketing FUD.

Vista was a hugely underrated OS. Yes, it was terrible on old hardware, but if you had a new(ish) PC with a GPU you basically got Windows 7 two years early. It fixed all the security and stability problems from the XP era without breaking software compatibility. All the major issues were fixed by SP1 and it actually outperformed XP/64-bit XP in my own testing. It also included a few useful software tools that were gradually degraded and removed from 7 onward like Media center, Movie Maker, and the Photo Viewer+Editor.


Idk I reinstalled Vista no less than 3 times before giving up on it due to random support issue. To be honest it boils down to this - Microsoft tried to drop support simultaneously for a bunch of old apps and functionality in Vista rather than producing alternatives and building in minor support for common ones. Which they eventually did in 7 and 10. I'm not entirely sure they were wrong but you have to respect your client base.

For myself I had to give up on Vista due to the lack of support for a couple older games and "Windows Media" problems. I forget the details but my Creative Labs MP3 player wasnt supported. I forget the 3rd problem, but at the end of the day with all my LAN gaming PCs I gave up and stuck with Windows XP SP3 until Windows 7 which has been perfect.
 
I'm sad to see Vista dying. It was the subject of a massive amount of marketing FUD.

Vista was a hugely underrated OS. Yes, it was terrible on old hardware, but if you had a new(ish) PC with a GPU you basically got Windows 7 two years early. It fixed all the security and stability problems from the XP era without breaking software compatibility. All the major issues were fixed by SP1 and it actually outperformed XP/64-bit XP in my own testing. It also included a few useful software tools that were gradually degraded and removed from 7 onward like Media center, Movie Maker, and the Photo Viewer+Editor.

It is underrated, im surprised more people didnt hate it bahahahaha. That said I have Windows 10 just as much as Vista. 7 is tollerable.
 
For myself I had to give up on Vista due to the lack of support for a couple older games and "Windows Media" problems. I forget the details but my Creative Labs MP3 player wasnt supported. I forget the 3rd problem, but at the end of the day with all my LAN gaming PCs I gave up and stuck with Windows XP SP3 until Windows 7 which has been perfect.

The hardware support issues I completely understand. Vista did not work well with older hardware.

I never could find a game that simply would not work on Vista except maybe Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, but that game was garbage anyway. Most of the compatibility issues people had were caused by the fact that Program Files is a protected directory, when you run applications there they get sandboxed by UAC and that could cause undesirable behavior in older programs. It was easy to work around, just install your games to a different directory (like C:/Games) or another partition/drive. Using a 64-bit OS also disables compatibility with 16-bit applications, but 16-bit apps can be run in a 32-bit VM.
 
Vista needed another 3-4 months of polish before it should have been released. Also manufacturers were lazy and skimped on the extra hardware needed. If you got it fully SP'd then in most cases it was fine. Also a good looking OS IMO.

The two issues that always annoyed me with a 'bad install' of Vista were -

1. The local only network bug. You log on and find your Vista laptop wont connect to the internet no matter what you do.

2. Search etc.causing endless disk thrashing.
 
If the games work now, and it requires writing code to disable them, why not just end support and let people stick to the last version, just kill online support and let offline play work. Diablo 3 didn't need online support to begin with, LAN play should be enough.
 
So, when will they start upgrading to Windows 10? 2023?

Other than some old VM's for testing or talking to some old equipment (soon to be retired), I haven't had Windows XP or Vista on my office network for a few years.
I'm currently upgrading people to Windows 10 as I replace or re-issue equipment.
I still have one department with old custom software that requires windows 7 or earlier, but that should be replaced by the end of the year.

The company I used to work for (been like 4 years ago so don't know now) still had a pc that was used for outside communication software that was running win 95 still. Then again, their own sofware was just beeing upgraded to windows a couple years b4 that is was still DOS based.
 
I'm sad to see Vista dying. It was the subject of a massive amount of marketing FUD.

Vista was a hugely underrated OS. Yes, it was terrible on old hardware, but if you had a new(ish) PC with a GPU you basically got Windows 7 two years early. It fixed all the security and stability problems from the XP era without breaking software compatibility. All the major issues were fixed by SP1 and it actually outperformed XP/64-bit XP in my own testing. It also included a few useful software tools that were gradually degraded and removed from 7 onward like Media center, Movie Maker, and the Photo Viewer+Editor.

Weren't there a series of bad business decisions by Intel/Microsoft that pushed "Vista ready" and "Vista premium ready" hardware requirements below what they should have been as well to help Intel clear out obsolete parts sitting on shelves? I remember hearing about this a few years after Vista launched but can't find a source. If true, that didn't do Vista any favors either.
 
A part of me thinks that they are ending support because they find supporting these OS's being a technical limitation on what they do with their engine.

But given Blizzard's track record, the other part of me thinks that Blizzard is just trying to find avenues for being lazy by removing legacy support.

SC2 still hasn't got multi core support. Game is mostly fine but menus are incredibly choppy.
 
I had an Acer laptop in 2008 I spent a little extra to get something that wasn't a Dell. It had Vista starter on it and I had to re install windows 3 times due to hardware driver failure which wasn't recoverable.. The issue was, the drivers/ hardware Acer used wasn't actually compatible with Vista.. I had to purchase a copy of XP and " upgrade " it to get a usable computer.


I have a PC running a TV card in Vista due to compatibility issues with Win 7.
 
Looking through a lot of the Blizzard forums, the people there are applauding the move. It seems that a lot of the older code base that lets the games run on those OS's are the ones most often exploited by bots and farmers, subsequently by stripping that older code out is going to clear up some of those problems. It also seems like they are not just cutting off access for those older OS's as they are rolling out newer updated game engines that are supposedly bringing some upgrades to the table. Fingers crossed for better task scheduling to make better use of multi core.
 
As humorous as it may sound you might be surprised at the amount of WoW players barely running the game on winXP PC. Just the other day a coworker was complaining his machine could not run the game in the new areas because it was too demanding on the lowest setting. I stared jaw agap thinking how he could easily build a $500 machine to run the thing.
 
Wait so Blizzard has been supporting Vista and XP this whole time, and they won't even consider supporting Linux. Wow, that's some silly logic right there. Pretty sure more people use Linux than Vista.
 
Wait so Blizzard has been supporting Vista and XP this whole time, and they won't even consider supporting Linux. Wow, that's some silly logic right there. Pretty sure more people use Linux than Vista.
I doubt it is a case of them specifically supporting XP and Vista it is more likely they still had XDDM support in their code base, they are in the process of updating a lot of their games and their game engines and they are probably removing the XDDM code and implementing WDDM 1.1 and higher.
 
The only part that bothers me here is the people not being able to play offline with XP or Vista. Online I get but if somebody wants to play the campaign on an old OS it's a dick move to block them seeing as how their service probably auto installs patches whether their wanted or not.
 
Wait so Blizzard has been supporting Vista and XP this whole time, and they won't even consider supporting Linux. Wow, that's some silly logic right there. Pretty sure more people use Linux than Vista.

I doubt it is a case of them specifically supporting XP and Vista it is more likely they still had XDDM support in their code base, they are in the process of updating a lot of their games and their game engines and they are probably removing the XDDM code and implementing WDDM 1.1 and higher.

In fairness he is right. Linux makes up 2.27% of the OS market share to Vista's .84%

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
 
The only part that bothers me here is the people not being able to play offline with XP or Vista. Online I get but if somebody wants to play the campaign on an old OS it's a dick move to block them seeing as how their service probably auto installs patches whether their wanted or not.

Retro computing and gaming is actually quite popular at the moment, for the first time however we may see an entire generation of gaming lost due to greed and no online server to authenticate to even years after the game can even be considered profitable.
 
Retro computing and gaming is actually quite popular at the moment, for the first time however we may see an entire generation of gaming lost due to greed and no online server to authenticate to even years after the game can even be considered profitable.
It can't be lost if you can still play it, and before you counter it won't be online forever this is Blizzard we are talking about they still sell Diablo II and the first StarCraft both are nearly 20+ years old.
 
It can't be lost if you can still play it, and before you counter it won't be online forever this is Blizzard we are talking about they still sell Diablo II and the first StarCraft both are nearly 20+ years old.

Of course, at 20 years old what they should be doing is giving them away for free.

Bear in mind that I'm talking about titles that require authentication servers, in which case without developer support it's going to be difficult to continue playing the title once the authentication servers go offline.
 
Of course, at 20 years old what they should be doing is giving them away for free.

Bear in mind that I'm talking about titles that require authentication servers, in which case without developer support it's going to be difficult to continue playing the title once the authentication servers go offline.
I realize that, but I am not particularly worried about Blizzard going under anytime soon. As an aside why in the world should any company give anything away that people are willing to buy just because they are old?
 
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