Warcraft 3: Reforged, which launched on Tuesday, has landed Blizzard in hot water. The game’s main subreddit and Blizzard’s own forums are full of negative threads, and complaints from players who feel cheated. There are a couple of reasons for this outrage, chief among them being the quality of the finished game compared to what Blizzard showed off at the remaster’s reveal at Blizzcon 2018. Although the final build features sharper art and updated models compared to the original, they do not stack up to the 2018 reveal. Blizzard entirely remade the opening cinematic with modern-day CGI, but the rest of the game’s cutscenes did not receive the same treatment. In-game cinematics, another element promised to be vastly improved, ended up looking slightly better than the original thanks to a few tweaks. They are, however, a far cry from the cinematics shown at Blizzcon 2018. The video below from GyLala puts the current version side-by-side with the 2018 reveal to illustrate just how much has changed.
Warcraft 3: Reforged’s other problems are perhaps more severe. Custom campaigns created for the original are not compatible with Reforged, and players are unable to create their own. The remaster also removed other longstanding features such as clan support and competitive play. These omissions are particularly frustrating because they also apply to the original Warcraft 3, which Blizzard updated in 2018 with wide screen support and brought into Battlenet. Both Reforged and classic have the same limitations, which made a lot of custom and community-created content incompatible, killing years of work. Even those not interested in Reforged had their existing Warcraft 3 installs lose more than gain. It’s a disappointing affair all around, and comes as Blizzard updated its custom game policy to extend its rights to ownership of mods and custom content created in Reforged and beyond. You can read Nic Reuben’s early impressions in our Warcraft 3: Reforged review in-progress, or check out these general tips for online and skirmish. Twitter image by John_FullSauce.
