Blizzard responds to widespread Warcraft 3: Reforged criticism
Company will add some missing features, but not rebuilt cut-scenes
Blizzard has issued a lengthy statement following widespread criticism of Warcraft 3: Reforged.
Reforged released earlier this week and attracted criticism for releasing without many visual upgrades shown in a 2018 pre-release version of the game, when it was billed as “a complete reimagining” of the classic RTS.
At the time of publishing, the RTS has a Metacritic user score of just 0.6 based on more than 10,000 ratings, making it the worst user scored game ever on the platform.
Addressing the criticism in a blog post on Monday, Blizzard pledged to add missing features such as leaderboard and clan support.
However, it said it will not add the rebuilt cut-scenes shown in pre-release versions of the game, despite the fact the canned scenes are still being used in marketing videos on its official website.
The full post can be seen below:
Hail War3 Players,
We’ve been following the discussions the past couple days and want to thank you for your feedback as well as your support. First off, we want to say we’re sorry to those of you who didn’t have the experience you wanted, and we’d like to share our plans for what’s coming next.
There were a few hours during launch day where we experienced server-load issues that impacted players’ ability to jump right in, but we were able to resolve those later in the day. Separate from that, we’ve seen community feedback about different aspects of Reforged that we wanted to take some time to address.
Before we go on: the team is excited that Warcraft III: Reforged is finally upon us and we’re fully committed to supporting the game for a long time to come. The next few patches and updates we’ll discuss below are just part of our ongoing plans. This game is an integral part of the Blizzard DNA, with a team that loves Warcraft III, and we’re looking forward to pouring our hearts into Reforged and the Warcraft III community for the long term.
One of the concerns with Reforged that we’ve seen are the visuals when selecting Classic Mode. We’ve identified the bug causing the colors and shading to look different from the original Warcraft III, and we’re testing a fix that will be incorporated in a larger patch addressing this issue and others. We expect to release that late this week. The patch will also address many other known issues, such as fixing some portrait animations and audio bugs, implementing some UI fixes, and more. Please keep an eye out for the patch notes for a detailed list of all the bug fixes.
Another area of concern we’re seeing is regarding online features such as leaderboards and clans, which applies to all Warcraft III players, including those who haven’t purchased Reforged. At BlizzCon we talked a lot about how the team is actively working on standing up the back-end to ensure a smooth transition to this new MMR system, much like we did with StarCraft: Remastered. As with Remastered, these and other features will be included in a major patch for Reforged, which will also address the issue for players of the original game. We’ll share release plans as work progresses in the coming weeks—please be assured that the team is hard at work on standing these features up.
There are some individual concerns we’ve seen that we’re not currently planning to address and we wanted to give the community a heads-up. As of Version 1.30 of the original game, we saw very low usage of tournaments and of the Reign of Chaos ruleset, so we removed both in mid-2019 (in Version 1.31). Eliminating the maintenance for underused elements has helped us streamline our overall support of the game and focus on areas impacting the most players. That said, we do anticipate that players who prefer Reign of Chaos will find custom games with similar rulesets, which we hope will help satisfy that concern.
Related to that, as we talked about last year at BlizzCon, we did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game. We went a little deeper into the thought process behind that at the show, but the main takeaway is that the campaigns tell one of the classic stories in Warcraft history, and we want to preserve the true spirit of Warcraft III and allow players to relive these unforgettable moments as they were (albeit rebuilt with new animations and the higher fidelity art).
We know this update doesn’t address all questions, but we’re committed to the development and support of this game. We hope you’ll keep an eye out for this week’s patch and future updates and let us know what you think as we continue fine-tuning things. Until then, thank you as always for your support and passion for Warcraft III. We appreciate all your feedback and will continue to keep the Warcraft III community updated on everything we’re working on.
Sincerely,
The Warcraft III: Reforged Team
Warcraft 3: Reforged features overhauled character models and environments, as well as integration with the Battle.net platform.
However, the final game has none of the revamped cut-scenes shown during its announcement, and some visual improvements such as shader and lighting elements are seemingly missing.
The re-release also lacks many social features from the 2002 original, including support for clans and ladders.
And because the original Warcraft 3 has been updated to share Reforged’s client, these features can no longer be accessed in the original game either.
In another poorly received change, it’s emerged that Reforged’s user agreement essentially claims ownership of all user-created custom games.
In November 2019, Blizzard did appear to have back-tracked on some Reforged features, when some outlets and influencers indicated that the scope of the remaster had changed. However, many fans have claimed this was poorly communicated.
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