Warcraft 3 Patch 1.28.5 is LIVE
Link to Patch 1.28.5 battle.net post

Additionally (not in the patch notes), the

Preloader

JASS native is working again.

Patching seems to be much faster as well, indicating that the launcher no longer re-downloads the entire game.

Today, Warcraft III turns 15 years old since it was first released on July 3, 2002.
Happy Birthday to our favorite game! Click the image for full size

It goes without saying that both ladder and custom game players alike have dreamed of playing other races in WC3. It's been quite some time since we had an altered melee hosted on Hive. Scars of Conflict was the last one, but now we've returned to the genre with a splash. Presenting Warcraft: Ultimate Battle! Ultimate Battle is a massive total melee race compilation, perhaps the biggest project of its type, brought to you by @Unregret, @Wa666r, @ZiBitheWand3r3r, with major contributions from other creators. The main map, Raging Stream, allows you to play as one of 4 original races or 14 custom and unique races and counting! Each race has their own strategies, differing units, expansive techtrees, exciting heroes, and unique abilities. The aim was for them to be as complete as the main four races, but also to make sure they have their own identity just as the original four. Most of the custom races even have fully functioning AI. But if you prefer playing with and against other players, you can! Thanks to Blizzard's 1.27b patch, you're able to play this over battle.net without any third party tools. The series also uses an a plethora of custom resources from Hive authors. Without all the custom models, skins, UI, spells, and icons, the factions wouldn't be able to stand on their own. 14 Playable Custom Races 1 Massive Compilation Map 11 Individual Race Maps Fully Functioning AI Thousands of Custom Resources Unique Strategies Join us in making one of the most enjoyable altered melee compilations ever to exist on Warcraft 3! -> Enter Forum <-

Warcraft 3 Patch 1.28.3 / 1.28.4 is LIVE
Link to Patch 1.28.3 / 128.4 battle.net post

The game turn rate being lowered is perhaps the biggest update in this, as it dramatically reduces the lag / delay in battle.net for both melee and custom game players. User MindWorX found this out a little over a month ago, that the 250ms delay would be reduced to 100ms, and it's been confirmed. This was perhaps the most suggested fix in the entire battle.net community, especially in the competitive scene where minimal delay is of extreme importance. And it's finally here!

You can also now switch between The Frozen Throne and Reign of Chaos in game, in addition to what was said in the patch notes about the editor.

Next up, there are more compatibility and quality of life changes which can hopefully both make the patching process and game itself run easier. Perhaps not so exciting, but it's good that this stuff is being prioritized as well.

If there's any new information that arises, before and after the patch is live, we'll make sure to update it!

BattleNet Latency Reduction

UPDATE: Patch 1.28.4 released, hot fixes some things. ~Updating thread.
Addressing Windows XP issue
Windows XP Issue Resolved

UPDATE 2: The import manager in the editor isn't working for some right now, so while we wait for Blizzard's fix, you can use the WEX editor as it works there.

19 June 2017

So if you went out on social media today or browsed some gaming & journalism sites, you may have noticed that a plethora of news sites published news about WC3 remastered today. There's been a lot of commotion about it, and people want to know what's going on and if things were confirmed. Even IGN and Forbes wrote about it. So that's really awesome that these sites are paying attention to Warcraft 3 for the first time in forever.

However, note that the information provided on these sites is outdated. The source they use are Blizzard's classic game job listing descriptions, which some have been up since early 2016, or even late 2015. Perhaps whoever wrote an article about this first out of these sites found those job descriptions for the first time, and passed it off as new news. Or, this could be intentional and information might have been passed by an external source. Whatever it is, know that this isn't new information.

Back2Warcraft tweeted to quite a few of these news outlets, telling them that they're using old sources. They also linked these sites linked Hive's The Future of Warcraft article. So thank you guys over at B2W! In other words, some representatives from news sites could be looking at Hive now, just like Blizzard has already been.

If you're looking for the most recent news on Warcraft 3 remastered, we have it in our State of the Union (Warcraft III) article, which was posted a month ago. It could be passed on as rumors, but there's solid evidence and hints that Warcraft 3 remastered will come in the future.

UPDATE: The original source seems to come from BlizzPlanet
They actually did a good job in updating all of their information keeping it up to date.

UPDATE 2: Thank you PCGamesN for sharing a bunch of Hive Workshop threads on their article here!

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In addition to this, Blizzard recently released a sneak peak regarding Battle.net channels and the custom game list for Starcraft Remastered. Hopefully we can see this in Warcraft 3, as it makes communication, hosting, and finding custom games much easier.