Warcraft 3 reforged review 2023

On January 29, Blizzard Entertainment released Warcraft III: Reforged – the long-awaited remaster of the classic RTS, which in the mid-2000s was perhaps the main discipline in e-sports. Almost a year and a half has passed since the announcement of the game at BlizzCon 2018, and now users are finally able to face all their fears and hopes. Cybersport.ru tells how Reforged managed to surprise and disappoint franchise fans.

By the time of release, the beta test Warcraft III: Reforged lasted several months, so many have long made up the impression of its multiplayer. There were many opinions on the quality of the updated game, and far from all were laudatory. However, most critics immediately calmed down as soon as the beta appeared in the classic mode. In the end, the main highlight of the full version should have been new graphics and an improved ladder.

Since the announcement of Reforged, developers have repeatedly changed their plans for the plot. At BlizzCon 2018, they promised to add new side quests and gameplay elements to some missions that were not in the original game. A year later, the company’s plans changed – the studio decided to leave it as it is, improving only the models and voice acting. By the time of the release, it turned out that the game does not even have the only cinematic that was shown in the demo version at BlizzCon 2018.

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For many fans, the lack of new story content was an unpleasant surprise. Judging by the comments on reddit, even after the release, users periodically encountered texture bugs, FPS drawdowns and other problems that were complained about during the beta test. As for the campaign itself, with the updated graphics, it really looks more lively and beautiful, especially compared to the angular textures in Warcraft III: TFT. But the Russian-language dubbing in places sags. This is especially noticeable in Arthas’s dialogue with Uther Svatonosny: it seems that the characters are “on their own wave”.

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The crumpled dialogues of the two paladins sometimes look very funny. At the beginning of one of the missions, Uther tells Arthas that the orcs killed his negotiators, after which the prince furiously calls for “to destroy these creatures.” Then Uther suggests Arthas himself to lead the attack on the greenskins, to which he very surprisingly and uncertainly answers: “Me? Oh well”. Perhaps this is a deliberate irony from the developers, but during the campaign there are a lot of such inconsistencies, which is why the dialogues look unnatural. But most of all get upset when you hear a cry “For honor and courage!“. In the voice acting Reforged, this and many other phrases of Arthas seemed to have lost their energy. The main character pronounces them almost in a whisper.

The output of the remaster is definitely a worthy occasion to re-read your favorite missions and refresh the cult plot. Perhaps Blizzard really could better draw some textures, make shadows more voluminous and implement dozens of other custom Wishlist, but it seems that even then the players would have found something to complain about. Old fans of large franchises traditionally have a negative attitude to everything unusual.

The second important task of Warcraft III: Reforged was the merger of the ladder remaster and the classic version. Unfortunately, with the release of the game, Blizzard could not cope with this function properly. Firstly, after the release of Reforged, multiplayer did not work for several hours – players could only launch a storyline campaign. Secondly, Blizzard reset all beta accounts, deleting the obtained levels, match statistics and icons in the “Collection” (although the icons are still displayed in the chat). After that, many testers began to wonder: why did they spend tens of hours opening portraits in Reforged?

Many fans of Warcraft III are associated primarily with cool competitive discipline, so it’s doubly disappointing that so far in this regard the remaster looks only slightly better than its beta version. There is multiplayer, and it even seems to work stably, but the game still does not have a ladder, you can’t watch profiles, match statistics, a list of the best players, etc. In addition, with the launch of Reforged, Blizzard turned off Battle.net in the original Warcraft III : TFT, thereby leaving users in the dark about the fate of thousands of old accounts, many of which people have been pumping for years. Now the remaster menu has a button “Link account”, but it is not yet clear how it works and whether it works at all.

With the shutdown of the old Battle.net platform, not only accounts disappeared, but also clan channels, chat bots, quizzes, automatic tournaments and much more, which was the center of attraction for the community in the old ladder. The developers promised that all these functions will be available in Reforged, but when they appear is not known. The company promised to regularly release patches with balance and content, so for now, please be patient.

Already now we can say that the release of Warcraft III: Reforged passed, to put it mildly, with a creak. Not a day has passed since the release, and users are already massively complaining in forums and requesting a refund. At the time of publication of the material, the average user rating of Warcraft III: Reforged on Metacritic is 2.2 points out of 10. Nevertheless, even for all the shortcomings and problems, one can discern the community’s interest in the remaster. After the release of Reforged, dozens of streamers started broadcasting the game, and the total number of viewers in the Twitch section was almost 30 thousand people. I want to believe that Blizzard will be able to solve problems before losing the entire audience.