Regardless, they had an opportunity and didn't take it and maybe this is their way of making sure they're better prepared to do so in the future.ignoring that the heyday of mapmakers/modders making interesting/unique/original maps is long, long over with Blizzard having nothing to show for it all the while. I'm not sure why Blizzard hadn't done that to begin with given how much DotA was clearly driving WC3 for so long - maybe they didn't like their legal standing, maybe they were just stupid and wanted the game to die at the time thinking WoW was always going to be the future (ignoring that they're completely different genres and the same group of people weren't playing them), I'm not really sure. If years before Valve had started working on DOTA 2, Blizzard had just taken it and turned it into an official WC3 map, maybe started updating the map themselves and started hosting tournaments for it, I think Valve would've been incredibly leery of trying to take it and run with it. I do think that it would make it easier for them to take possession of something like DotA before it ever got to the point where it could become a standalone game. Believe people agreed that its enforceability would be suspect at best, but of course, Blizzard has an army of lawyers that you don't want to test.
Yeah, I remember that something like this was already in the WC3 online or World Editor terms of agreement.
