Why are War3 Alpha assets no longer on Planet Earth?

[Retera]

Does it bother anyone else that the assets from Warcraft III alpha are no longer on Planet Earth in most cases?

I was looking back through the old alpha screenshots again recently and I really would have a hayday hacking together fun things with the assets I see in those pictures, if I had them.

It seems pretty unfortunate to me. In one of those recent "ask me anything" videos with Designer Dave, I messaged him a little about this in the YouTube comments and got some great responses, but unfortunately he doesn't have the assets or anything.

Spoiler: Screenshot of YouTube Comments

I also asked Kam about this while he was working on Reforged and he said there was no hope. But I am left to wonder, is that really true that in some cases we will just never have these assets? It seems like a net loss to Planet Earth.

So then I was wondering, if I was going to make any last attempt to contact someone on Earth to find these assets, maybe even if I was the last man on Earth interested, who should I contact? Is there really no hope?

Let's say I wanted this Druid of the Talon model:

Or this Altar of Elders model:

Or this Dreadlord model:

Or this farseer riding on a ghost wyvern:

Or this Knight model with wings coming off of its head:

Or this lumbering land frost wyrm model:

So, I am aware that Designer Dave originally stated at the top of that YouTube comment thread that all this stuff is "smoke and mirrors":

But my point is that I have the War3 modding skills that even if these models were incomplete, or missing animations, or whatever... if I had them I could fix those minor details. Yet, I have not trained to be a 3d artist skilled enough to necessarily just up and draw these characters out of nothing. And that's really interesting, but it means that even after 20 years these files would have some marginal value if anyone on Planet Earth had saved them.

So, I am making this thread without knowing who would reply, hoping to ask the world maybe one more time whether somebody has some of these files that I could port to run on Frozen Throne/Reforged format. Because even if you had them in the alpha format and they didn't work in present-day War3 engines, I could fix them. I just wonder if they really don't exist on Earth at all...

 

[Evilhog]

I remember reading somewhere that Blizzard was not particularly happy when Warcraft 2 press alpha leaked. Since then, the company had been trying to prevent any development builds from leaking to general public, and that's why we never got our hands on those sweet, sweet early alphas of Warcraft 3, Starcraft and Starcraft 2. I would sell my kidney for the "orcs in space" iteration of Starcraft.

There's some interesting stuff at Betaarchive you might want to have a look at:

Blizzard Alpha/Beta Stuff BEFORE WoW - BetaArchive