When BlizzCon 2017 was done and dusted, many fans were satisfied with the announcements made. However, there were a number of questions raised. Even if there was going to be no Diablo news, what was the status of the rumoured Diablo 2 remaster? Would there be a Warcraft 3 remaster happening or not?
PCGamesN spoke to senior producer Peter Stilwell who’s working on the Classic Games team and noted that StarCraft was easy to remaster because it’s balance was pretty much “perfect”. Right now, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 have a number of issues that need to be ironed out before remastering.
That includes a “stale” map pool in Warcraft 3 and that the Undead “only really has one build order”. There are requests to change the game being made and the PTR remains active. Blizzard will keep soliciting feedback in the meantime.
For Diablo 2, it’s a question of hackers on the leaderboards. Stilwell’s end goal is to “keep rolling seasons but maybe eventually be good enough at combating them that you see real names at the top of the leaderboard again.” So until that’s sorted, a remaster is on hold. Once Blizzard figures out a way to fix things without affecting the two games’ current communities, there could be some progress made. But that won’t be any time soon.