What should have been a celebration of a beloved strategy game has somehow become the lowest-rated game on Metacritic. Warcraft 3 Reforged has the same core as always and some graphical changes, like the new high resolution models for units and buildings (which really please the eye), but that's kind of what a remaster is about right?
Due to poor communication from Blizzard and plans that changed over the course of development, Reforged isn't the remaster many people were hoping for. Blizzard has even annoyed players who are still on the 2002 original by updating that version to the new Reforged client, which is strangely missing out on some key features.
Warcraft 3 Reforged, Blizzard really dropped the ball
Blizzard announced Warcraft 3: Reforged at BlizzCon in November 2018, showing a cinematic trailer before talking about plans for the remaster on stage. A gameplay trailer also listed several of the features coming in the new remaster:
Following this reveal, Blizzard spoke about Reforged in more detail during a panel. Back then, one of the big plans for Reforged was to make it better aligned with WoW. Here are some quotes from the development team:
Lead Designer Matt Morris: "One of the things we want to do with our campaign is to level off what people know of World of Warcraft. ... Looking back on the campaign now, we want the places you remember or know from World of Warcraft. of Warcraft match what you see in Reforged, and we want to go through some of the stories and tie the two franchises together."
Producer Pete Stilwell: "It's incredibly important for us to first get it right for the existing community, and then we want to do things to attract more people. ... But in doing so, we need to make sure that you who are in this room, that core audience who never left this game and love it to death, and don't want to see us change it so drastically that you don't recognize it anymore. That's our first mission, to make sure you give us a thumbs up when the game comes out."
Great Expectation and Great Disappointment:
Blizzard also showed off the new hero models, talked about making changes to maps, and how Reforged would coexist with the original within the same client. It's understandable what many fans were expecting from the game when it launched earlier this month, but ultimately they were disappointed.
Reforged only delivers on some of the promises made in its initial trailer. It has revamped characters, some remastered maps and campaigns, and a new custom game editor. Supports 4K, but there are asterisks here.
In 2018, they mentioned that there were limitations to animation changes they could make while keeping the new version of Warcraft 3 compatible with the old one. And sure enough, those were obvious in Reforged. What really makes the units look a little weird is their low fps. Yes, you can enjoy Warcraft 3 at 200fps, but if you're looking at your army, it feels more like stop-motion.
The "remastered" maps and campaigns, however, turned out to be much closer in appearance in 2002 than they were in the 2018 demo. The video below compares the planned 2018 cinematic scenes with the new release version. The simplification is obvious.
Major changes were notably missing from the rest of the game. There are a few exceptions, but most cutscenes lack the emotion or cinematic flair of what was seen just over a year ago. Some locations, like Dalaran and Strathholme, have seen a more dramatic update, but for the most part they stay very close to the originals. Their design remains largely excellent, whether they were built with history and rhythm in mind, or just a great free-for-all online wrestling match. Veteran players will notice some tweaks, like fields, mines, and other things being moved, but significant changes are few and far between. Despite the higher quality textures, it's like playing WoW Classic with modern character models. The juxtaposition only makes the maps look more dated.
There was a huge lack of communication about what the Remaster would look like:
Blizzard also talked about making less dramatic changes to the campaign. Says producer Pete Stillwell: "Last year, as you guys saw with The Culling, we were really aggressive on some changes, I think, and telling the story from a different perspective. We got some pretty divisive, 'don't change my game' feedback. vs. "oh that's cool, it's going to get a new audience". So we went back a little bit and saw that we weren't happy with that, so we regressed a bit on the changes."
Stillwell added, however, that "all the cameras have been reworked. All the models are new. There are tons of new animations and gestures, things that make them feel more real." Thus, Reforged has been significantly reworked, but in much more subtle ways than most fans expected after the 2018 reveal.
By trying to make Reforged and classic Warcraft 3 compatible with each other, Blizzard has made the old game noticeably worse. If players upgrade their clients, they lose resources they had years ago, regardless of whether they purchased Reforged. This could be a short-term issue — Blizzard plans to relaunch competitive, and will likely fix major issues like custom campaigns in the coming months — but it seems unlikely that players will get it all back as Warcraft 3 is updated to this new Infrastructure. A blog post by Blizzard confirms that some features, such as tournaments, were rarely used and will not be restored. The release appears to completely miss producer Rob Bridenbecker's goal of not "breaking" the community or the original game.
Conclusion:
Of course, Warcraft 3 players are right to be angry and disappointed, but the 0.5 rating on Metacritic is a bit ridiculous. The game is still pretty consistent, a complete, fun and much more beautiful strategy game. The fatal mistake was the huge expectation created on top of a community of players loyal to 16 years and who were not properly informed of what would be the remaster of a game as iconic as Warcraft 3. forcing a client update is also far from ideal. The hate didn't come out of nowhere, it was a two year building process and it's all Blizzard's fault. Blame it on proposing something big, delivering something different and conservative, and just not updating players on any of it. It's completely understandable to get angry when you buy a game expecting one thing and receive another, especially with the aggravating factor of dealing with a long-standing, critical, and nostalgic community. The game might be wonderful for new players, but honestly, the massive share of players who would play Reforged were old-school, and have been for many years.
