Warcraft III: Reforged

Warcraft III: Reforged
"By the order of the king, this entire remaster must be purged!" — Arthas
Genre(s): Real-time strategy Platform(s): macOS Microsoft Windows Release: January 28, 2020 Developer(s): Blizzard Entertainment Lemon Sky Studios Publisher(s): Blizzard Entertainment Country: United States Malaysia Series: Warcraft Predecessor: World of Warcraft Classic Successor: World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

Warcraft III: Reforged is a real-time strategy game developed and published by American company Blizzard Entertainment. It was released on January 28, 2020, and serves as a "remaster" (originally planned as a remake) for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion The Frozen Throne.

Why It's Deforged

1. Multiple game-breaking bugs were present on launch day, such as constant server disconnection, frame rate issues, graphical bugs, and game crashes.
2. Even though this is a remaster, the game's graphics barely improved and still look outdated, almost like a low-quality 3D game from the early 2000s.
3. Despite outsourcing the game to Lemon Sky Studios, the main menu is a web app that runs on either Electron or CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) (which itself based on Chromium browser, known for being used in Google Chrome, Opera and Microsoft Edge browser), which can causes a lot of memory leaks and crashes.
4. False advertising: Some of the cutscenes that were showcased at BlizzCon 2018 were not featured in the game.
   • According to the developers, those cutscenes were scrapped because they believed that the majority of players would have preferred the way cutscenes were in the original. This argument sounds pathetic at best since a majority of players were expecting to see the showcased cutscenes in the released product. Thus, this decision looks more like nostalgia-pandering as a pathetic excuse, abandoning the entire purpose of remastering an old video game like Warcraft III.
5. The game replaces the original game even if you didn't buy it. On top of that, if you install Reforged, all your saved data and files from Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne will be completely wiped, not even ported over to the former.
6. It followed a similar fashion to Bethesda's Creation Club, but worse. A new EULA rule meant custom maps and game modes were banned indiscriminately regardless of their content while forcefully transferring their ownership to Blizzard against their creators' will and without their permission.
   • Map customization, the one feature that made the game famous and successful, is now heavily limited.
     • This is possibly to avoid seeing another game like DotA (an acronym for Defense of the Ancients) happening again, since DotA is originally made from Warcraft III's custom map and as a game mode.
7. Just like StarCraft: Remastered, mods for Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne now no longer work with Reforged.
8. The game has laughably bad optimization even on low graphics, possibly because of a situation mentioned in WID#3.
9. The game has unnecessary censorship that bans certain words. As a result, you can't play one of the official maps since it has the word "booty" on it, possibly due to Blizzard's support for the Communist Party of China.
10. Loads of server issues that have yet to be fixed as of December 2021. Server disconnections happened so frequently that even the game's first (and only) official eSports tournament wasn't spared from it and Swedish reigning Warcraft champion Marcus "ThorZaIN" Eklöf suffered a ridiculously unfair defeat because of it.
11. Some of the translations are horrible. For example, in the Chinese translation, the conversation between Muradin and Arthas about the cursed runeblade Frostmoune is now about wielding the power of eternal stupidity and being f***ed by elephants (which Arthas consented to).

Redeeming Qualities

1. The character models were greatly improved from the original.
2. The game received an update that allows you to switch to Classic Mode with the original 2002 graphics and art style.

Reception

Warcraft III: Reforged got mixed-to-negative reviews from critics but overwhelmingly negative reviews from fans, and has been considered not only one of the worst games of 2020 but also the worst Warcraft game in the franchise.

On Metacritic, the game has a critic rating of 59/100 ("mixed or average reviews") and a user score of 0.6/10.

Metro gave the game a 6/10, praising the game's campaign and new visuals while criticizing its missing features, bugs, outdated interface, and restrictive map editor items.

GamingBolt gave the game a 5/10, praising the game's story and gameplay while criticizing its poor optimization and lack of features that are supposed to be standard in modern RTS games.

Angry fans loyal to the game had mass review-bombed the game to the point where it earned the Guinness World Record for the lowest Metacritic user score by a major video game of all time with a Metacritic user score of 0.6/10. The game has since been surpassed by Diablo Immortal and Madden NFL 21.

Despite the game being a buggy, misleading mess, Blizzard had been refusing to offer refunds for the game. Eventually, they caved into the backlash several days later and started issuing refunds.

The game was ranked #4 on AngryJoe's Top 10 WORST Games of 2020! video.

Following the failure of this game, Blizzard Entertainment officially discontinued Lemon Sky Studios, and brought in Vicarious Visions (developers of Crash N. Sane Trilogy and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2) to release Diablo II Resurrected in 2021, where it was positively received by critics and players alike, considering it a big step up from the disaster of Reforged.

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