After plenty of excitement following its surprising reveal,Warcraft 3: Reforgedhas ultimately not been the product that many fans were hoping for. Disappointment seems to primarily stem from the poor UI, lack of dynamic cutscenes, an aggressive EULA that gives Blizzard control over all custom games, and other gameplay related issues. In fact, fans are so outraged by the end product that the game’s user score on Metacritic has completely tanked,reaching historic lowsfollowing over 12,500 submitted reviews. With things continuing to spiral out of control, Blizzard has finally broken its silence and provided an update on its plans for the game going forward.
In a post on the officialWarcraft 3: Reforgedforums, Blizzard community manager Kaivax provided an update from the development team based on recent events and feedback from players. The post leads with an apology to those who felt that they didn’t get the experience they were hoping for. Following the resolution to the server related problems at launch, the team moved to address key issues that players have been vocal about.
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The first is with the visuals when Classic Mode is selected. According to developers, there’s a bug that is causing colors and shading to look different from how they should be in the originalWarcraft 3. The team has created a fix and is intending to release it later this week. Thepatch also includes additional fixes for the UIincluding portrait animations as well as other audio bugs.
The other area highlights in the post touched on the online portion of the game and some of the decisions made there which even impacted non-Reforgedplayers. Developers intended to follow a similar model withStarCraft: Remasteredwith standing up the back-end to ensure a smooth transition to the new system. As such, the team is taking a bit of extra time over the next few weeks to get it right for both sides of theWarcraft 3community but features like Clans and leaderboards are coming in a major update soon.
The last major piece to this update is in regards to cutscenes, an aspect of the game which has been largely criticized due to what Blizzard originally showed being significantly better than what the actual game got. As it turns out, improved cutscenes are not planning to be addressed. The reasoning provided is that Blizzard ultimately did not want to steer too far away from the original game and to preserve the true spirit and let players reliveWarcraft 3’sclassic story as it was.
In addition to cutscenes not getting reworked, Blizzard also confirmed that tournaments and the Reign of Chaos ruleset are also not making a comeback due to very low usage rates following Update 1.30 in the originalWarcraft 3. By removing these elements, the development team has been able to streamline support and focus on areas impacting players the most. For those seeking Reign of Chaos, Blizzard points them to certain custom games with similar rulesets available.
While Blizzard has no plans to abandon the title and have clear plans to support the game going forward with new and updated content, the response hasn’t sat particularly well with players. Over 125 comments quickly lit up the post, most of which continue to vent frustrations over poor optimization, missing features, and advertising on the main website that continues toadvertise the 2018 dynamic cutscenethat isn’t actually in the game.
After a dicey few days, players now have the option to get a full refund from Blizzard. While many fans accused the company of initially denying requests and banning forum posts regarding the topic of refunds, Blizzard Support has now beganinstantly granting requests for full refunds. This bit of news should please fans, though the damage has already been done.
