Announced several years ago, Warcraft III Reforged just arrived on our PCs a few days ago. So what happens ?
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The genre of strategy games has been really blocked for years, dethroned by MOBAs (which ironically have their origin in Warcraft 3). Yet the genre still has its audience, proof is that this War3R was rather expected and by the very recent success of Age of Empires 2 Remaster. In addition, Warcraft 3 can count on a known lore that really exploded with their MMO World of warcraft,, it could reconcile the old War3 players with a new arrival of curious people for whom the story pre-WoW is just a huge stranger, or almost. And yet, Warcraft 3: Reforged is a failure that we rarely see in the industry and after the scandal that Blizzard to already created with his ” Diablo Immortal “Last year, it started to do a lot of damage to the image of this flagship developer of the last decade.
Let’s talk about the positive first.
I draw satisfaction from a few points. First, the campaign. All the campaigns of Warcraft 3 Classic and Frozen Throne are present, therefore ideal for learning the lore from the Warcraft 3 universe. We discover the ins and outs that will link up with World of Warcraft.
Then the gameplay
Hardly translatable English term designating at the same time the whole of the rules governing the game and the pleasure of play. An MMOG with the innovative gameplay will offer a new game experience to the player. Likewise, a game claiming “good gameplay” will be fun and attractive.
“> Gameplay is also the same and I quickly regained my gaming sensations and my automatisms, being a veteran former Warcraft 3 player (in the top 20 ladder, at the time). Since Reforged allows us to play against players who are on the classic, normal that the gameplay has not been changed, but with the graphic improvement we could have feared that this was not the case. On these two points there, Blizzard was honest … but … for the rest we can not say the same.
But for the rest…
Not only does the game have huge problems with Level
The “level” of a character symbolizes his degree of expertise. During its creation, the character begins at level 1 and accumulates experience (see this term) to increase level. The higher the level, the more powerful the character and has various skills.
“> Level bugs (presented by the community manager himself the day before the release … clap clap), it also has a completely failed optimization, some players with powerful graphics cards experiencing graphics slowdowns.
Level gameplay, it was squarely amputated from what made the glory of the title: no ladder, no rankings, no statistics, no bnet tournament, no possibility to create clans (there is no official information concerning the fact that these absences are temporary or permanent) and especially a new Blizzard policy concerning any mods produced on the game: any creation of mod on War 3 Reforged will be the property of Blizzard only. The decision makes sense when we see that a whole style has been created on a War3 mod, but the pill is hard to swallow for fans and for modders who express their disagreement on social networks, to the point that a superb logo “Warcraft 3 Refunded” circulates everywhere on the net.
Worse, as I said above, the original game being compatible with this improved edition, it is also deprived of all its features. Ugly for players loyal to this game for 20 years, and there are quite a few.
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So yes, it’s supposed to be a temporary state, but the damage is done and the player doesn’t understand.
And that’s not all, the cutscenes, which were to be one of the strengths of the release of this game and which had been sold as a real revolution to the BlizzCon 2018 have been changed as you can see in the video below.
Others are even far below what Blizzard has accustomed us to see … so much so that I have often wondered “but did they leave the original videos? “.
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The game itself is not even as beautiful as one might have hoped. The appearances of characters are, I find, less fine than the original edition. There is less distinction between the different units which, in a micromanagement game, can be very disabling. On the other hand, I know that many people complained about crappy graphics and glitch; personally, I didn’t have one. I was able to avoid this skiff.
So doing something new with old is not easy, especially if you want to keep the gameplay intact, but you only have to see Age of Empires 2 which has just come out to see that it is possible. The release of the latter is even an even tougher blow for Warcraft 3 Reforged, as it is proof that you can make something clean and efficient on a revamped game.
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But it’s still very little positive compared to all that is negative. I’m not even hoping for a gesture from Blizzard to its audience… and yet, it’s time to think about it. I know that the fanboys, of which I am one, can be very lenient, but at some point the image of Blizzard will end up destroying itself irretrievably, by force of taking them for morons who line up the wagons …
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– Game tested by Seiei with a version provided by the publisher
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