WC3 Modding Information Center
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Hello my dear WC3 Community:

Today I have some mixed feelings, and I need to be honest about the (delayed) launch of WC3 Reforged. After the high hype caused by Activision Blizzard about this game, and many promises done, we've encountered nice things: the main intro totally remade, ok. The initial RoC cinematic... hype and hype AND!!!!!! .... no, just the classic cinematic but with 4K resolution. (I don't have 4K displays so itwas the same for me). Well.... No problem, but we hope to get some action with the campaign. Well, it looked nice (again), but there was practically NO changes at all in the map structures, a total replacement of doodads, models and other stuff we know is not tricky to adjust to make it feel different. But probalby because it was the tutorial cinematic, in the human campaign we will see the big amount of changes... no, no changes, just nicer models for all the assets in WC3. No compromises with the community, a cheap effort to trick our eyes.

So in essence, the feeling is simple: we paid as minimum $29.99 just to get new models, more detailed? just to have a repaint?? we were happy with the classic feeling, in fact many users with some knowledge in World Editor are capable to do that with more quality. We only see nice models plus the adjustments of camera to make great zoom in's to detail how nice a footman sways his sword.

We're in a gaming time where players appreciate the idea "less is more", model quality does not mean directly game quality, and much less for users like us. We're more exigent. And the proof of that can be seen in metacritic where, at the moment of publishing this post, the user rating was 0.5 / 10 (we don't read the others because they can be manipulated by companies, like Activision).

Let's me share some videos about this feeling:



About WC3 modding with Reforged

Now entering to the purpose of this site, I think is mandatory to make a halt and discuss about what can we do with the new rules imposed is custom games. First of all, Blizzard has changed the policy to adapt to the new reforged era, and this brings a new condition which can be dangerous for our purpose, that's the matter that we have to measure.

Ownership Custom Games are and shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Blizzard. Without limiting the foregoing, you hereby assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games, including but not limited to any copyrights in the content of any Custom Games. If for any reason you are prevented or restricted from assigning any rights in the Custom Games to Blizzard, you grant to Blizzard an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, unconditional, royalty free, irrevocable license enabling Blizzard to fully exploit the Custom Games (or any component thereof) for any purpose and in any manner whatsoever. You further agree that should Blizzard decide that it is necessary, you will execute any future assignments and/or related documents promptly upon receiving such a request from Blizzard in order to effectuate the intent of this paragraph. To the extent you are prohibited from transferring or assigning your moral rights to Blizzard by applicable laws, to the utmost extent legally permitted, you waive any moral rights or similar rights you may have in all such Custom Games, without any remuneration. Without limiting Blizzard’s rights or ownership in the Custom Games, Blizzard reserves the right, in its sole and absolute discretion, to remove Custom Games from its systems and/or require that a Custom Game developer cease any and/or all development and distribution of a Custom Game. Please note that your Blizzard account can be subject to disciplinary action in event that you do not comply with Blizzard’s request or this Policy.

I'll give more detail and discuss about this matter, but you can feel free to keep a serious conversation about this topic important for our interest.

New stuff:

After some days, Blizzard expressed its first message after all the issues, hate and disappointment in this reforged starting. Here's what they say:

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

Definitely, Blizzard DOES NOT recognize its responsibility in this failure. They say:

we want to say we’re sorry to those of you who didn’t have the experience you wanted

But they actually started all the high expectations with the presentation of the game in 2018. Even worse, they still keep in its main page the link to the youtube video showing us the improved cinematics that never has come.

Here's the proof: