Warcraft III: Refunded General - How one company managed to mess up a remaster of a 17 year old game.

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

I wish world of warcraft never happened.

So many UO friends and enemies, just gone. In a blink of an eye.

 

[ZMOT]

Never got why they had to put that corset on sylvanas its not like it protects her or anything. Maybe it was just lazy editing where they didnt want to update the model showing her scars and figured just shove a plate on it?

as far as the story goes allegedly metzen's daughter saw sylvanas, and after asking "why is she wearing a bikini?", all he could say was "I don't know" (of course she did)
I'm pretty sure he designed her way back, or at least signed off on it, and I get you don't want to explain your kid what sex appeal is, but ffs even if the story is legit that's even more retarded than the one with the dicecuck trying to collect browniepoints for the battlefield V shit.
there's also one where "other female developers" are mentioned, but couldn't find the source - which was a trip in itself, trawling shit like 2015 mmo-champion forums; my favorite was all the usual suspects going "hurr that doesn't mean it was SJW or censored, this is blizzard yadda yadda" and "she looks better this way". fucking really?

In many ways, I think World of Warcraft was a poisoned chalice for Blizzard. Sure, it made them billions of dollars, but at the cost of their souls.

not a problem in a different company, you can have your cash cow and then have the big brains experiment with the infinite money. however real issue is blizzard was never good with ideas, just polishing others. they took the parts that worked, properly mashed them together in a nice shiny package and put their stamp on it, and for a while all you needed was the stamp. when the industry became more and more stagnant and/or expensive so you had less people experiment and fail with stuff to could re-use, their "idea pipeline" dried out.
even back in 2004 most they tried in WoW was an utter shit show (for example it took them months to get summoning stones barely working, when from the start people were outright telling why they wouldn't work and how you could fix it).
there's a reason most of the shit they tried is crap with enough eye-candy for distraction.

 

[Urbanmech]

not a problem in a different company, you can have your cash cow and then have the big brains experiment with the infinite money. however real issue is blizzard was never good with ideas, just polishing others. they took the parts that worked, properly mashed them together in a nice shiny package and put their stamp on it, and for a while all you needed was the stamp. when the industry became more and more stagnant and/or expensive so you had less people experiment and fail with stuff to could re-use, their "idea pipeline" dried out.
even back in 2004 most they tried in WoW was an utter shit show (for example it took them months to get summoning stones barely working, when from the start people were outright telling why they wouldn't work and how you could fix it).
there's a reason most of the shit they tried is crap with enough eye-candy for distraction.

Been saying this for years and always got ignored or called a liar. I guess all those companies had time machines and stole it from the Blizzard in the future....

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

not a problem in a different company, you can have your cash cow and then have the big brains experiment with the infinite money. however real issue is blizzard was never good with ideas, just polishing others. they took the parts that worked, properly mashed them together in a nice shiny package and put their stamp on it, and for a while all you needed was the stamp.

True, both Warcraft and Starcraft IIRC were just rip-offs Warhammer and Warhammer 40k that were created after Blizzard failed to acquire the licenses for the latter two.

 

[Never Scored]

True, both Warcraft and Starcraft IIRC were just rip-offs Warhammer and Warhammer 40k that were created after Blizzard failed to acquire the licenses for the latter two.

That's actually pretty interesting. I always assumed Warcraft was a LOTR knockoff.

 

[Dark Edea]

Now the merged studio is working on a Diablo II Remaster with help of those working on Diablo 4.

Diablo II remaster??

Oh no...

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Diablo II remaster??

Oh no...

Better back up the working version if you have the game legitly.

 

[ZMOT]

LOTR knockoff.

what isn't tho?

however, that would still be only the window dressing, I meant more the spastics @Urbanmech mentioned who unironically think "warcraft was the first rts", "WoW was the first mmo" asf.
there was a time when talking to a blizzdrone was a lesson what dunning-kruger really means. these days they mostly moved on after blizzard lost it's luster and they found something else to latch on, like funko pops and marvel crap.

Been saying this for years and always got ignored or called a liar. I guess all those companies had time machines and stole it from the Blizzard in the future....

in old-blizzard's defense, this still requires some form of talent. you need to know what to throw out, what to keep and iterate on etc. as they say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery".
of course you could argue that's how the industry works, people re-use stuff all the time, and I would agree with you, it's more my personal gripe that a lot of people think that blizzard is this super innovative studio that can do no wrong, when all they ever really did was repackage it in a more attractive box; just look at titan where they sunk millions into making "WoW 2" only to release brink with waifus. these days they can't even do that anymore. this might sound like boomer whining, but old blizzard would've never shat something like reforge out (to get back on topic). remember they canned an almost feature complete game and ghost later.
the industry isn't what it was 10 years ago, in retrospect I'm not sure even old blizzard could've operated in this environment considering how things are these days with all the hugely marketing driven, focus tested and designed by committee AAA shovelware.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

not so mad about diablo two because project diablo still exist (if blizz dose something to fuck with that, i swear to god).

 

[Borax Bozo]

Diablo II remaster??

Oh no...

They're going to "revamp" or replace Metzen's music, aren't they?

 

[biozeminadae1]

True, both Warcraft and Starcraft IIRC were just rip-offs Warhammer and Warhammer 40k that were created after Blizzard failed to acquire the licenses for the latter two.

No, that only applied to Warcraft and the team itself was against the idea of licensing Warhammer.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I wouldn't worry about Vicarious Visions taking over Diablo 2. They seem to do things far more competently when it comes to remasters.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

even after everything blizz has been through and done, this one still hurts me the most.

 

[Well Intentioned]

That's actually pretty interesting. I always assumed Warcraft was a LOTR knockoff.

Warcraft owes a lot aesthetically to Warhammer Fantasy, but a lot of the ideas and storylines draw a lot upon Dungeons and Dragons and specifically a D&D setting called Dragonlance.

Metzen himself has been open about this, but even things you may not even really think about, like Paladins having Lay Hands or a mount as one of their class features stems from D&D.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Look guys a new patch is coming! Good to see that they still care about this dumpster of a remaster, will they fix the custom campaigns?

ah....

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Took them almost 3 fucking years to fix a fucking interface.

 

[augment]

Thank you for reminding me that this garbage automatically installs itself when you update Warcraft III.

 

[Vect]

Year-long necro - my personal experience of the Reforged game is that the campaign and editor suffered from heavy crashes - over the last year, it appears to have gotten much more stable. I personally got Reforged because it was on sale I was perfectly happy with a reskinned Warcraft III, so the downgrade in promised content never bothered me. Currently the only recurring issue I've seen is a bug in the Human AI where they stop advancing up the tech tree, or become overtly passive, but that was present in the old Warcraft III.

Anyway, a team of modders have released a modern version of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness for the Warcraft III: Reforged engine, called Chronicles of the Second War. It was delayed due to the issues with the base game, but the Orc campaign, complete with custom cutscenes, voicework, art, models, expanded missions and updated versions of the original units is now available to play. The resource and logistics system is based on the original game, but the combat and balance is based on the newer game, including hero characters. Total download size for the campaign and assets is around 3GB.

As somebody who only ever dabbled in Warcraft II decades ago for the ship combat, it seems pretty solid. I'm only three missions in, and it appears to be a loving and thorugh rework - the cutscenes are a bit indulgent, if technically very well done, and the voice acting is...well, hit and miss (the troll voices are obviously recorded in somebody's cupboard, and the guy doing the elves is whisper shouting. Some of them sound like they're trying to hide European accents, other might be placeholders). However, apart from some minor spelling errors, and a few inconsistencies with triggers and key bindings (training and construction use alphabetic shortcuts but abilities use Starcraft II style QWE shortcuts) it largely captures the feel of the original, in presentation if not gameplay, it's very stable, and the AI works perfectly, including with ships - the oil system is slightly ramshackle due to the limits of what you can change with the engine, but it works. Missions have additional quests and complications. It also feels like it was designed for people experienced with classic old-school Blizzard RTS - I played on medium difficulty and the game doesn't let you get careless or tool around, and the hero characters allow you to be more flexible rather than simply being able to complete the entire mission by themselves (items are scarce). Patches by the team are promised, including responsively to any future bugs with the base game due to updates from Blizzard. There are already playthroughs on YouTube.

Note it's not currently compatible with the graphics Quenching Mod, which if you didn't know, was a fan made graphics and art package that brought the game much closer to the visual quality that was originally promised, though I believe it can cause minor issues due to being memory intensive.

A skeleton crew from Blizzard seems to be slowly cleaning up the game, with the last major stability and balance patch in November. Generally the modding scene seems pretty active, and it might be a Bethesda situation where as the base game stabilizes, it might in future be worth a second look due to the community keeping it alive.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

I bought Warcraft 3 Reforged so I could just play these custom classic campaigns stuck on the post-1.27b patch limbo, imagine my shock the Reforged graphics makes the fucking menus lag like shit on my potato PC.
Amazing how the entire existence of this product gives the vibes of being made of pure pettiness, not even a fuck up like many of modern gaming remasters, they just took a fat dump on a perfectly working product and left like that until the flies and maggots left years later so they could send 3 guys to finally start fixing it.

 

[Weltraumfürst]

That WCII-Remake looks pretty dope, actually. I always wondered why no one did that with TFT. I'm not gonna get Reforged for that, however, I'm done with Blizzard.