Warcraft 3: Reforged was just released, however, it looks like this is yet another disastrous launch for Activision Blizzard. The game was pretty much unplayable at launch, with reports of instant crashes to defeat screen in campaigns and connectivity issues for multiplayer.
When the game was announced back in 2018, Blizzard promised a lot of things, from visual upgrades to balance changes, redone animations, additional voiceovers, new custom game editor, and more. They even showed a redone cinematic based on the remastered version of the game as proof. However, when the game was released, every previously mentioned aspect have fallen short. Firstly, the graphics of Reforged look rather weird – not nearly as good as promised. They haven’t upgraded every asset of the game – the unupgraded models clash with the remastered visuals and create a mess.
The remastered cutscenes were a complete lie, as nothing from Blizzcon 2018’s reveal was included in the release version of the game. Below is a comparison video between the two versions.
Besides the graphical issues, connectivity issues, and bugs, there are even legal issues. Blizzard has changed its End User License Agreement to grant itself the right to any content created by players using their custom map tools. This is actually illegal in the EU and crosses into the grey area of the law in the rest of the world. This is probably to prevent all future custom map to become yet another Dota (which was picked up by another company).
This is overall an anti-user move, as anyone with a good idea for a video game would avoid Blizzard like the plague. And this is not 2003 anymore, as a lot of game-making tools such as Unity and Unreal are available – programmers, in general, do not have to rely on tools that they cannot gain full ownership of. It is likely that the custom scene of this game would just die, similar to Starcraft 2’s.
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