Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft 3: Reforged has been out for a week but what should have been a celebration of the classic RTS’s return has instead turned into a reviled remaster. Fans have criticized the remaster for its lack of improvements to the UI, multitude of bugs and policies for custom games. That’s not even taking into account that Warcraft 3 Classic owners have to deal with the removal of several features and maps that have been enjoyed for years.
Blizzard Entertainment sought to address some of these concerns in a recent forum post. It noted that, “We’ve identified the bug causing the colors and shading to look different from the original Warcraft III, and we’re testing a fix that will be incorporated in a larger patch addressing this issue and others. We expect to release that late this week. The patch will also address many other known issues, such as fixing some portrait animations and audio bugs, implementing some UI fixes, and more. Please keep an eye out for the patch notes for a detailed list of all the bug fixes.”
Concerning leaderboards and clans, the developer said it was working on setting up a back-end to help transition to a new MMR system. “As with [Starcraft] Remastered, these and other features will be included in a major patch for Reforged, which will also address the issue for players of the original game. We’ll share release plans as work progresses in the coming weeks—please be assured that the team is hard at work on standing these features up.”
What about the removal of tournaments or the ruleset for Reign of Chaos? This was apparently removed in mid-2019 due to low usage in version 1.30 of Warcraft 3 Classic. “Eliminating the maintenance for underused elements has helped us streamline our overall support of the game and focus on areas impacting the most players. That said, we do anticipate that players who prefer Reign of Chaos will find custom games with similar rulesets, which we hope will help satisfy that concern.”
Finally, regarding the cutscenes that were dramatically scaled back from those showcased in 2018, Blizzard said, “As we talked about last year at BlizzCon, we did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game. We went a little deeper into the thought process behind that at the show, but the main takeaway is that the campaigns tell one of the classic stories in Warcraft history, and we want to preserve the true spirit of Warcraft III and allow players to relive these unforgettable moments as they were (albeit rebuilt with new animations and the higher fidelity art).”
Of course, this doesn’t explain why the Battle.net store page for the game is still promoting “over four hours of reshot cutscenes.” Blizzard also avoided addressing the policies governing custom game creation which states that anything made with the toolset will be the sole property of the company. Heck, it even asks you to sign over your “moral rights” which means you can’t even be credited for the custom game’s creation.
We’ll have to wait and see how things pan out, especially for those who just want to experience the original Classic game as it’s been for the past several years. You can check out our review for Warcraft 3: Reforged here for more details.
