1.32.0.4 BETA NOTES

[MasterBlaster]

Thanks for the clarification

Anyway, my friend did some further testing with the FPS meter turned on. Here's a translation of what he sent me:

"I found which settings are the problem. The game runs a lot better with shadows turned off and lighting switched from medium to low. With everything else on medium, I had a fairly consistent 100+ FPS outside of fights and about 60-70 during them. For the most part it felt fluid. It was a bit worse with everything except shadows/lighting on high, but still playable.

What worries me are random FPS drops. What I mean by that is sometimes FPS just goes down to 10-20 for 0,5-1 seconds and then quickly jumps back up to whatever it was before. These are the stutters that we've noticed. There's no rule as to when this happens. I've noticed at the beginning of the game, while I sit with a small amount of units in base and obviously during fights. But then I also played a 2v2 where all 4 players fought with 70+ food of units and it was stable for a couple of minutes straight.

I've also tried clearing the map (creeps, enemies), leaving only one building and 2-3 units standing in the middle of the map. Drops still happened. Finally, turning either shadows to low or lighting to medium or even both caused FPS to decrease, but it was still mostly smooth - the issue is that FPS drops happened more often."

So... anyone more tech-savvy has an idea what can be causing this? Specifically, does it seem more like his GPU is good enough or more like an optimization issue with the game? And is there a chance that once Blizzard optimizes Reforged some more, these drops will go away?

And before you ask - his graphics card is Geforce 1050, he has the latest drivers, Vsync and anti-aliasing are off, he plays on 1920x1080 fullscreen.

Oh, and just to expand on this.

My friend tried monitoring CPU/GPU/RAM usage while playing to see if the FPS drops correspond to a spike in any of that parameters. It doesn't. He says that while playing on all medium, shadows off and lighting low, his GPU was showing around 60% usage pretty consistently - well, obviously going up a bit when a lot was happening on the screen, but not very drastically and nowhere near 100%. CPU and RAM had a very safe margin too. His laptop wasn't overheating either.

Now, call me crazy, but all things considered - I don't think it's a problem with his laptop, but with the game needing better optimization.

P.S. And yes, I'm invested in this, because my laptop has almost identical specs to his

 

[GIMLI_2]

Not sure about this. If anyone can import/export them from the WE, I don't see why would anyone buy them in the first place? Why would they even release them than? I suspect that they will be visible only if you bought them or something, or else there would be no point in them selling them(and they have basically confirmed model/skin microtransactions).

there would be a point in selling them. if you want to play competitive rts online, you have to buy them.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Yes, I meant the 4 Spoils of War skins.

Then like I've said - we don't "know" anything and thus we shouldn't try to pass our speculation as a confirmed fact.

What DH and DK skins, I haven't seen any. I only know that they are female by default and that they added the option to change the female with Arthas/Illidan

1) Illidan doesn't have a skin.
2) You can change between male and female DH/DK.

I'm pretty sure that the four Spoils of War skins are just the beguining and the first one in line.

I'm not saying that it isn't, but you or me being "pretty sure" about something does not make it anything more than a speculation.

They aren't (most likely) just a fun little perk you get for a "deluxe edition", it's not a thing they do (generally).

Here's where you're wrong - every deluxe edition that Blizzard does has some cosmetics perks. It is a thing that they do. Reforged skins are perfectly in line with that.

And logically, if some people still wanted them, and didn't buy spoils of war, why wouldn't they be available if people wanna give few extra box?

Just like in Blizzard's other games, if you buy a base version and at any time you decide you want deluxe edition perks, you can just upgrade your version of the game by paying the price difference between both versions, i.e. in case of Reforged - 10 euro.

 

[Venombite]

1) Illidan doesn't have a skin.
2) You can change between male and female DH/DK.

Illidan has two models/skins: before and after consuming the skull. As what I've seen male DH is Illidan pre-skull, and male DK is Arthas.

Here's where you're wrong - every deluxe edition that Blizzard does has some cosmetics perks. It is a thing that they do. Reforged skins are perfectly in line with that.

Just like in Blizzard's other games, if you buy a base version and at any time you decide you want deluxe edition perks, you can just upgrade your version of the game by paying the price difference between both versions, i.e. in case of Reforged - 10 euro.

I didn't mean it like that, I meant that they don't release the stuff you only get with Lux Edition, and can't obtain anymore. I meant exactly what you stated. Plus they also like to release more "Delux Edition"-like specials as time goes by.

Then like I've said - we don't "know" anything and thus we shouldn't try to pass our speculation as a confirmed fact.
I'm not saying that it isn't, but you or me being "pretty sure" about something does not make it anything more than a speculation.

Here I agree, you're totally right. I apologise. Though I think that quite a few people agree with me (us) here.

 

[deepstrasz]

1) Illidan doesn't have a skin.

Spoiler

At least Illidan has hero glow.

 

[MasterHaosis]

Dalaran Doodads

Silvermoon Doodads

AND LAST YOU MUST SEE THIS! Animated Fountains, water elementals, firelord, Frostmore, Naga spawning grounds, Sylvanas banshee, waterfall, demonic gate, pitlord.... and more. Awesome animations I like it! Oh yes for hell sake, Druid Bear is finally bigger
@Archian here is your update, at least regarding some models.

 

[Venombite]

Finally good news! The art keeps getting better and better. And we're getting Azusna/Broken Shore/Suramar(ruins) style dooads at the Sunken Ruins and Tomb of Sargeras from WoW, neat!

---

Now anyone want to speculate on which eight chapters will be redone/reterrained. My guess is:

1. The Culling - confirmed;
2. The Fall of Silvermoon - confirmed;
3. The Siege of Dalaran - confirmed;
4. A New Power in Lordaeron - basically confirmed, Capital City dooads have been datamined;
5. The Tomb of Sargeras - the video above confirms it imo;
6. A Symphony of Frost and Flame - Icecrown citadel has been datamined, so seems likely;
7. The Black Temple - seems likely, I think they said something like that;
8. ????

Anyone got any thoughts?

 

[deepstrasz]

Dalaran Doodads

Those look sweet.

Silvermoon Doodads

Lovely.
They should go more with sapphires than emeralds to differentiated high elves from blood elves.

AND LAST YOU MUST SEE THIS!

OK, elementals look mighty fine now. That does seem more like water and fire than plastic.

• However, the Avatar and Spirit of Vengeance still look like mirror images and not ghastly. Spirit of vengeance even looks a bit like StarCraft II cloaked units but those actually look better in SC.
• Ugh, same with the cenarion ghost. Too bad they didn't actually make a ghost model for it.
• Sylvanas the Banshee is even uglier. I don't know if that red is team colour or not but it makes the model look like a sort of blood ghost now.
• Magtheridon seems OK, I guess. Would like to see at least Mannoroth have that fire in the mouth like in the original RoC short film with Thrall and Grom.
• Inferno's meteor should be bigger as the creature is much larger than the falling rock even if the being stands like a fetus. Some work needs to be done on the animation. It looks a little strange, coming too angled and maybe too fast. Also, feels a bit like the unit is just appearing not actually coming out of the boulder.
  
• I think Ethereal form shouldn't make units look like they're invisible. The FX should be different. There also should be some nice visuals when turning back and to ethereal form. Right now it feels as if that raising light FX is just mildly touching the tauren's upper body before it suddenly becomes non-ethereal.
• Spirit Wyvern also doesn't look nice. There needs to be a clear distinction between invisible, ethereal and ghostly representations.
• Dire wolves look like candy. I mean, the fur is cotton candy with that jelly FX.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Illidan has two models/skins: before and after consuming the skull. As what I've seen male DH is Illidan pre-skull, and male DK is Arthas.

So I had this verified - my friend compared melee DH/DK with Illidan/Arthas and as it turns out, the models are exactly the same. You were right on this one

Which is a bit of a shame, because it's starting to really look like the plan was to have only female versions and they only added males, because people were unhappy.

Plus they also like to release more "Delux Edition"-like specials as time goes by.

Like what?

Here I agree, you're totally right. I apologise. Though I think that quite a few people agree with me (us) here.

Don't apologize. Obviously you feel very strongly and got a bit carried away, not a big deal. We've discussed it, things got cleared up and that's cool

---

Looking at that update video - I really like most changes. Also after watching and playing some games on the latest patch, the overall look and feel of the game has improved quite a lot.

Which does kinda make you wonder, though... If it was like October or early November now, I'd have some faith that they will manage to polish the graphics to an overall very good level until release. But with how little time they have left... I don't know. I really hope that their internal build is far more advanced and in the next week or two we'll see some really massive updates - and if not, I hope they take their time and delay the game.

 

[Razorclaw_X]

Wow, custom stuff really do look bad in Reforged.

It really depends. Some models were intentionally made low-poly in the first place, but some aren't and look just fine with the new Reforged models.

And this is a bit on the extreme end, but this Prime Matron model (Prime Matron) still looks good in Reforged next to the Reforged Succubus.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

My next test was with
City of the Seven Mithril Golems v11

I played about 45–60 minutes from the start. Some observations.


1. Some custom models in cinematics are dark. This seems to be a lighting issue.

Models work sometimes in-game fine. Not sure how to fix it.

Erogdin Earthstorm and Theodin Rockheart models are dark in the intro

However, they are fine when you play the game.

2. The biggest problem of Reforged is the terrain. It just looks awful.

Gnoll Encampment terrain looks very bland. It's Underground Dirt tile.

Rocky Snow tile is also awful. It looked somewhat bad in Warcraft 3 Classic, but this is even worse.

To remind people, the old terrain had very many nice variations, which you can see in the picture below:

Old Terrain from Warcraft 3 Classic

I think they should try to match the reforged terrain variations with those of Warcraft III Classic.


3. Some cinematics become bad, because more area is revealed in top and bottom of the screen.

This is a similar problem to what the widescreen in 1.29 caused. Map makers must update all cinematics that become bad because of added screen estate.

Units in the bottom of the screen do not walk out completely, because there is more too see in the bottom

Map border is clearly seen here in the cinematic. I think it should not be visible at all.

4. Some units are really big

This was reported before already, but one more screenshot here.

A really big sludge. It looks cool in HD but maybe it is a bit too large.

5. Water Elemental's selection circle is hard to see.

Hidden

 

[Venombite]

It really depends. Some models were intentionally made low-poly in the first place, but some aren't and look just fine with the new Reforged models.

And this is a bit on the extreme end, but this Prime Matron model (Prime Matron) still looks good in Reforged next to the Reforged Succubus.

I don't know personally I don't think so. Prime Matron would still look bad in Reforged if you ask me. While it has the same design, her face and skin texture is far inferior to the succubus, if you get what I mean. Some very, very high poly models might not look that much out of place, but there will still be a noticable difference(Magni Bronzebeard, Mo'arg Overlord). Thing is, all of the custom models here are great, but they are made for Classic, where they are great. Reforged is a game in another era, where they look so different. The perfect example is given by @Tommi Gustafsson in the previous post. While the Archmage looks great in Classic now, in Reforged it pretty much looks like Betty Boop (cartoon character from the silent era) in the middle of Frozen. You get what I mean.....

Which is a bit of a shame, because it's starting to really look like the plan was to have only female versions and they only added males, because people were unhappy.

Honestly, I personally don't care about a hero gender, as long as that hero can be of both genders lore wise. I bet that people complaining all the time on Battle.net were purists, who complain pretty much about anything different than Classic. Well now they've got Illidan/Arthas for melee. Congrats!

Like what?

The perfect example would be Card backs in Hearthstone. If you pre-purchase card packs before an expansion goes live, you get an extra card back! Which is nice. But when an expansion is live, you can still purchase that card back, plus they release different card backs in a few monts after expansion goes live, again which is nice. Same thing for mounts in WoW.

 

[deepstrasz]

Erogdin Earthstorm and Theodin Rockheart models are dark in the intro

They look the same to me in both images, the difference being in the second/non-cinematic they are closer to the camera and seen from a different angle. The dark parts are present in both images.

ome cinematics become bad, because more area is revealed in top and bottom of the screen.

Is the UI by default removed?

Honestly, I personally don't care about a hero gender, as long as that hero can be of both genders lore wise. I bet that people complaining all the time on Battle.net were purists, who complain pretty much about anything different than Classic. Well now they've got Illidan/Arthas for melee. Congrats!

WoW basically made everything every gender lorewise so no that's not an argument for Warcraft III.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Is the UI by default removed?

They made the cinematics fullscreen by removing the letterbox mode graphics at the bottom of the screen, which used to be the place for dialogues. Now, dialogues appear on a transparent background, and the view is adjusted so that more things appear both in the top part and the bottom part of the screen.

 

[Venombite]

WoW basically made everything every gender lorewise so no that's not an argument for Warcraft III.

No, PotMs, Wardens and Naga Sea Witches are all female in WoW. Also there are no female Pit Lords or Dreadlords(Jaina doesn't count she's a joke from HotS team). And female KotGs are called Dryads and have different powers. The rest can be both gender from both Warcraft III and WoW point of view.

 

[deepstrasz]

No, PotMs, Wardens and Naga Sea Witches are all female in WoW. Also there are no female Pit Lords or Dreadlords(Jaina doesn't count she's a joke from HotS team). And female KotGs are called Dryads and have different powers. The rest can be both gender from both Warcraft III and WoW point of view.

This all doesn't have any weight when dreadlords can become good, under the Light in WoW, lol.

 

[MasterBlaster]

This all doesn't have any weight when dreadlords can become good, under the Light in WoW, lol.

A demon infused with Light is a bit silly, I agree, but the general concept is pretty feasible - if some of "us" can decide to serve the Legion or any other "evil" force, it's completely possible that some of them could choose to be "good".

Plus this whole "good" vs "evil" thing is actually something that WoW has done much, much better than Warcraft 3 - I mean, it's far more interesting to have a wide array of forces that all have their merits, viewpoints and flaws than the incredibly boring situation where one is inherently pure good (Light) and another pure evil (Legion).

 

[deepstrasz]

A demon infused with Light is a bit silly, I agree, but the general concept is pretty feasible - if some of "us" can decide to serve the Legion or any other "evil" force, it's completely possible that some of them could choose to be "good".

Demons in Warcraft worked much like those in Diablo, none of them good for obvious reasons.

Plus this whole "good" vs "evil" thing is actually something that WoW has done much, much better than Warcraft 3 - I mean, it's far more interesting to have a wide array of forces that all have their merits, viewpoints and flaws than the incredibly boring situation where one is inherently pure good (Light) and another pure evil (Legion).

That's beside the point. It's a fantasy world, not real life. Plus, they did it with the orcs since Warcraft II although they were deemed good before being corrupted.
I'm not saying it's not interesting, I'm saying it's not Warcraft. They however made a purist good titan become the total opposite in the RoC manual. I really don't see how that's going to happen to a demon, get depression because of too much destruction and switch to order.
So, while some gray areas might work, stuff like Light demons aren't Warcraft. WoW is an amalgam of stuff that's not put together smartly. It's more like a mix of various game universes.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Demons in Warcraft worked much like those in Diablo, none of them good for obvious reasons.

Which was boring, hence changing it was actually an improvement.

It's a fantasy world, not real life.

That doesn't mean that the fantasy world cannot have a bit more realistic rules, though.

I'm not saying it's not interesting, I'm saying it's not Warcraft.

And who's deciding what is Warcraft and what isn't? And based on what cryteria?

I really don't see how that's going to happen to a demon, get depression because of too much destruction and switch to order.

A simple example - a demon might start off wanting to rise through the ranks of the Legion, he gets shot down by his superiors and exiled, in order to survive he has to collaborate with the enemy, over time he starts to see some value in the other side and joins them permanently.

 

[deepstrasz]

Which was boring, hence changing it was actually an improvement.

Your favourite sentence: let's agree to disagree.

And who's deciding what is Warcraft and what isn't? And based on what cryteria?

The rules you start the universe with. Changes to those are retcons, not development.
It worked for the orcs because the change was more on the addition side than anything as it was never implied that all or the orcs in general were evil creatures but just savage. This however, cannot be said about the demons and the Twisting Nether.

A simple example - a demon might start off wanting to rise through the ranks of the Legion, he gets shot down by his superiors and exiled, in order to survive he has to collaborate with the enemy, over time he starts to see some value in the other side and joins them permanently.

Aw... demon's heart softens. You should play Turnro's Malfurion's Quest (Highborne Campaign/Story) if you haven't if you like 360 degree changes.

 

[MasterHaosis]

DEMONS INFUSED WITH LIGHT AND BECOME GOOD? AHAHAHAHAHAH
You must be joking! That is the most retarded thing I ever heard

 

[deepstrasz]

DEMONS INFUSED WITH LIGHT AND BECOME GOOD? AHAHAHAHAHAH
You must be joking! That is the most retarded thing I ever heard

But they look cool man and that's all that matters.

Spoiler

Imagine Sylvanas like that and dreadlord Jaina. WoW is all about the coolness! You won't understand...

Also, stuff started from here

Spoiler

Basically a ripoff of the alchemical Sefirot.

 

[Venombite]

@deepstrasz @MasterHaosis, the basic idea behind Lothraxion is that the Dreadlords use the Void, so why shouldn't one of them start to explore the powers of the Light and get consumed by it eventually, becoming the instrument of Light. Also remember, Light isn't good, it just has it's own goals, and sometimes does bad things to achive them. They started this in Legion and Lothraxion is one of the ways to achive that.

I also agree with @MasterBlaster that some villains(Sargeras, Kil'Jaeden, Archimonde) having motivations and character developement, why their doing it, is just better than we go and destroy planets, cause it's just what we do.

 

[MasterBlaster]

The rules you start the universe with. Changes to those are retcons, not development.

Oh, come on - a single character that's an exception to an already established rule doesn't change that rule. It's not a retcon, it's an addition.

Anyway, let's just drop it - I think some WoW lore is actually pretty interesting and there are rare cases where it's an improvement over Warcraft 3, I get the impression that you don't. We won't reach an agreement here, so... let's just agree to disagree.

---

Besides, I've brought you something:

Spoiler

It's to illustrate a certain small change that I really like - a lot of upgrades now show as passive abilities on the units. I think that's cool

P.S. In this game I went with Endurance Aura level 3, Command Aura from the Gnoll plus War Drums...
Damn, it was fun to watch AI units just melt - the same kind of fun as the original

 

[YourArthas]

But they look cool man and that's all that matters.

Spoiler

Imagine Sylvanas like that and dreadlord Jaina. WoW is all about the coolness! You won't understand...

Also, stuff started from here

Spoiler

Basically a ripoff of the alchemical Sefirot.

Dude you must have a god level patience to argue with those wow retconists here, they'll never understand what was Warcraft III and why WoW should never touch it in any area.

 

[deepstrasz]

Also remember, Light isn't good, it just has it's own goals, and sometimes does bad things to achive them. They started this in Legion and Lothraxion is one of the ways to achive that.

Remember that I and many if not most Warcraft RTS story lovers don't play WoW.
Light is supposed to be opposite to the Void not be part of it or in it. There's no mention of such things pre-WoW by the way.
Legion just made it look like a junkie's opinion on life is more important than the help it could get, that is, it's far more important to follow your stupid feelings than feel psychologically controlled by the ones trying to help you.
The moment they personified the Light, there was no more sense for what Paladins, Clerics and Priests were fighting for because a person is mirroring a human and humans are not just good or bad.

Oh, come on - a single character that's an exception to an already established rule doesn't change that rule. It's not a retcon, it's an addition.

It has to be done smartly, not like @Venombite wrote, the Light corrupting you to do things and stuff for its interest. That kills the point of what's right and what not entirely. Basically, it's OK to use demonology as long as you don't hurt anyone and use it for good. What good are we talking about again if there's no good but everything that works in its own interest? You can't just drift around from good-bad, bad-good. It doesn't work that way in Star Wars either. There's stuff that has to happen for it to make sense and tell me what Sith have you seen returning as a Jedi in the first three or 6 Star Wars movies? There are rules which create stability for every fictional universe, even ours. Pendulating around because it's cool, doesn't make a story be less nonsensical. Imagine if you were to have Black Dragons fight among themselves because some suddenly get good dementia and others retain their viciousness. In Warcraft, and generally, in fictional stories, things like demons, dragons, whatnot are there as stereotypes, to symbolically represent things while the humans or main protagonists are the ones experiencing the universe in a way or another, siding with evil, good, making amends, so on.

It's to illustrate a certain small change that I really like - a lot of upgrades now show as passive abilities on the units. I think that's cool

Nice but it shouldn't have the same description as the upgrade because it feels like you're reading the text for the upgrade rather than for the ability. So instead of Improves blah blah it should be like Grunts now have blah blah or something.

 

[MasterHaosis]

But they look cool man and that's all that matters.

@deepstrasz @MasterHaosis, the basic idea behind Lothraxion is that the Dreadlords use the Void, so why shouldn't one of them start to explore the powers of the Light and get consumed by it eventually, becoming the instrument of Light. Also remember, Light isn't good, it just has it's own goals, and sometimes does bad things to achive them. They started this in Legion and Lothraxion is one of the ways to achive that.

Oh thanks God we do not have it in Wc3! That is disgusting. Everything is possible and logical in WOW. That is why I stick to Wc3 lore. Screw WOW.
,,This entire city must be purged" - Good statement that undead and demons from twisting nether specially cannot be reverted by anything. And it stays like that in Reforged. As for some of WOW fans, yes, play whatever logic you wish and use it, I wont touch it.

@YourArthas exactly man! WOW retcons! But again WOW RETCONS! Can you imagine that? Story over story over story over story.... Just imagining something for sake of making game. Unlimited game, thus unlimited story. Until one moment, then restart timeline... DEMONS PURIFIED BY HOLY LIGHT. Imagine my doom guard, born created to destroy and chaos, to stand there with angels and such ,,BY THE POWER OF THE LIGHT BURN!"

 

[MasterBlaster]

Okay, so... I've actually went ahead and pre-purchased Reforged - after having played it at my friend's place, I think it's still the same kind of fun that I loved for so many years, just with updated graphics. So... even though it's rather expensive considering all the corners they're cutting and features they've removed, I know that I would buy it around the release anyway, so what the hell - I might as well do it now.

Downloading the beta now, gonna share futher impressions and performance on my setup once I get to play a couple of games.

 

[MasterHaosis]

BEHOLD!!!! Almost all units and structures showed in editor. @deepstrasz @Venombite @MasterBlaster now, lets see! Tons of units.
Oh Nether Dragons now have those purple effects.

 

[YourArthas]

Oh thanks God we do not have it in Wc3! That is disgusting. Everything is possible and logical in WOW. That is why I stick to Wc3 lore. Screw WOW.
,,This entire city must be purged" - Good statement that undead and demons from twisting nether specially cannot be reverted by anything. And it stays like that in Reforged. As for some of WOW fans, yes, play whatever logic you wish and use it, I wont touch it.

@YourArthas exactly man! WOW retcons! But again WOW RETCONS! Can you imagine that? Story over story over story over story.... Just imagining something for sake of making game. Unlimited game, thus unlimited story. Until one moment, then restart timeline... DEMONS PURIFIED BY HOLY LIGHT. Imagine my doom guard, born created to destroy and chaos, to stand there with angels and such ,,BY THE POWER OF THE LIGHT BURN!"

Mark my words the expansion after Shadowlands will be Sargeras leading 'heroes' and Legion against Void Lords.

 

[deepstrasz]

BEHOLD!!!! Almost all units and structures showed in editor.

1. The Golbin Land Mine looks a bit strange. Maybe a bit too modern?
2. Wolves look bad. Their fur is plastic.
3. Some Razormane and Draenei look too similar. It's a bit hard to distinguish them. Generally (referring to all creature variations not just the previously mentioned), they should make sure each model is unique and identified as such.
   
4. Good, we've got a custom model for the draenei artillery (demolisher; still needs a custom name).
5. The Gold Coin item model looks as if from a Mario or Nintendo 64 game. It should be much nicer and detailed.
6. The Dimensional Gate seems to be missing a proper texture or did they make it wholly black-gray apart form the green portal, runes and braziers?
   
7. Voidwalers=jelly genies.

Oh Nether Dragons now have those purple effects.

Which looks like Immolation or Disease Cloud (yuck), not an aura like the Pheonix had.

 

[Razorclaw_X]

I don't know personally I don't think so. Prime Matron would still look bad in Reforged if you ask me. While it has the same design, her face and skin texture is far inferior to the succubus, if you get what I mean. Some very, very high poly models might not look that much out of place, but there will still be a noticable difference(Magni Bronzebeard, Mo'arg Overlord). Thing is, all of the custom models here are great, but they are made for Classic, where they are great. Reforged is a game in another era, where they look so different. The perfect example is given by @Tommi Gustafsson in the previous post. While the Archmage looks great in Classic now, in Reforged it pretty much looks like Betty Boop (cartoon character from the silent era) in the middle of Frozen. You get what I mean.....

I think "the problem" is you think Betty Boop existing alongside it is an actual problem.

The models themselves aren't the problem. They still look fine in the game as they always did (and frankly if you have a problem with the models now, you've never liked the models in the first place). The question here is whether you accept watching "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and believing the two exist in the same universe.

 

[MasterHaosis]

@deepstrasz ,,We’re starting custom games on a Monday morning to give us the optimal amount of time to find and fix problems. We expect to patch aggressively."
WE EXPECT TO PATCH AGGRESSIVELY!
Two weeks left to expected release, still no new patch. I do not know what is time left for mass patches. They behave like they have two months, not two weeks. And how many patches are left before release (if they still plan to release this year anyway), who knows...

 

[MasterBlaster]

Two weeks left to expected release, still no new patch. I do not know what is time left for mass patches. They behave like they have two months, not two weeks. And how many patches are left before release (if they still plan to release this year anyway), who knows...

Yeah, it is strange - when they've said they were going to patch aggresively, I've expected at least 1-2 more patches last week. There are two options as to why that didn't happen - either they simply needed more time to apply fixes or custom games are working better than they've expected and so they've decided they don't need extra patches. Having played the beta myself, I actually believe it might be the latter option - sure, there are some bugs, but it really doesn't look bad at the moment.

Still, I'm not going to bash on them for not "patching aggresively" - if they think it's better that way, I have no issue with that. In fact, releasing a client side patch takes some work too, so if the reason why they didn't do them was that they didn't think they were necessary then that's actually better - I'd much rather have the devs focused on developing the game than preparing unnecessary patches.

P.S. They've dropped the last patch like 5 hours later than what we have now, so there's still a chance that they will do a patch today

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Some more testing with the City of the Seven Mithril Golems.

Mainly we noticed that there are rendering artefacts in old and new model portraits. A few screenshots below:

They are more noticeable in the old model, but the new one also has some in the mouth.

Also, the terrain seems to have some rendering artefacts:

Hidden

 

[stein123]

wtf medivh D:

 

[Devalut]

Dude you must have a god level patience to argue with those wow retconists here, they'll never understand what was Warcraft III and why WoW should never touch it in any area.

It's the artstyle and constant retconning of story, though a diehard WII or WI could argue into infinity on the story in WIII.
For me it's the artstyle:

A ghoul is supposed to be a walking corpse warcraft 3 emulates this well:

Spoiler

Wow on the other hand likes to draw inspiration from Looney Toons, the Last Dodo:

Spoiler

And what they pass for "acceptable" is truly remarkable:

Spoiler

 

[MasterBlaster]

According to some people on the official forums, there was a breaking news thing on the launcher that says they're doing a server stress test today.

I don't see it on my launcher, though, so I'm not sure whether this is legit or not.

 

[EredarArbeiterYU]

I agree with you Devault. Instead of going for "undead" with the ghoul, in WoW they went for a "mutant" look for him, an undead mutant. Why the fuck? No one knows...

 

[Venombite]

@YourArthas I'm just interested. If Blizzard re released Classic, just providing the UI to cover the whole screen, fixing the bugs of 1.29+ pathces, and changing the name to "Warcraft 3 Reforged" and the logo. Would you still pay 30 $/€? (have no idea where you're from, so I'm saying either EUR or USD) What I'm asking is if Reforged was basically just a bug fixing patch, would you buy it? Cause as far as I understand that's mostly what the "purists" are asking for. This question is purely out of curiosity, nothing personal or stuff.

 

[YourArthas]

@YourArthas I'm just interested. If Blizzard re released Classic, just providing the UI to cover the whole screen, fixing the bugs of 1.29+ pathces, and changing the name to "Warcraft 3 Reforged" and the logo. Would you still pay 30 $/€? (have no idea where you're from, so I'm saying either EUR or USD) What I'm asking is if Reforged was basically just a bug fixing patch, would you buy it? Cause as far as I understand that's mostly what the "purists" are asking for. This question is purely out of curiosity, nothing personal or stuff.

It needs to come with purist HD models\textures (check Sc2 Warcraft III HD Assets for an epic example) if it comes like this I can pay up to 100 euros\dolars.

 

[Venombite]

(check Sc2 Warcraft III HD Assets for an epic example)

Care to share some links/images/screenshots?

 

[YourArthas]

Care to share some links/images/screenshots?

 

[StormKnight]

@YourArthas I'm just interested. If Blizzard re released Classic, just providing the UI to cover the whole screen, fixing the bugs of 1.29+ pathces, and changing the name to "Warcraft 3 Reforged" and the logo. Would you still pay 30 $/€? (have no idea where you're from, so I'm saying either EUR or USD) What I'm asking is if Reforged was basically just a bug fixing patch, would you buy it? Cause as far as I understand that's mostly what the "purists" are asking for. This question is purely out of curiosity, nothing personal or stuff.

Here's the thing, for people who played and lived through the days of warcraft 3 slowly building up its custom community, they understand and know that the value of the game has greatly increased. it isn't just a 30 hour campaign with melee. it is limitless games and potential with a 30 hour campaign and melee.

Reforged is improving:

- The World Editor. (listing the editor improvements requires a gigantic list of its own)
- Brings in dedicated servers.
- Game is directly available through battle.net.
- Capacity of the game to use greater memory and better graphics, and existing ones with more efficiency.

And as if that wasn't enough remaking the campaign. giving far greater life to the pro melee people.

The issue starts with some things and i'll name them for you.

1: Blizzard decided to still remake the campaign with good deal of changes, just not to the extreme amounts that they had initially intended when they got the backlash from a great portion of their audience. so they're trying to make it more balanced in between the 2 audience they have. so what's the problem ?

- The new audience didn't like that, they wanted full conversion, voice lines entirely done by wow actors, with a heavy focus on ingame cutscenes to get an RPG feel from the game.

2- The old audience, speaking for myself and people similar to YourArthas. don't like the new Art for Reforged. and think blizzard did poor decisions and not handled this game with enough care when it came to this aspect.

Instead of preserving the Art that better suited the warcraft universe, which a cartoony art mixed with certain style that Blizzard art people invented. they decided to instead switch the art entirely into this "realistic" form which invited the wrong audience.
There is also a noteable issue with how are they handling the models, a Retail World of Warcraft End boss has 16K polygons, yet there are Hero models in Reforged that have 20k polygons. that absurd and to handle that the game has to be optimized soo much more and new techniques used to help keep the performance optimal.
on top of that they want to add water reflections, and ray tracing.

All in an RTS game that looked very basic and cartoony and it helped the game to be far more readable.

All people like me say, is that no... don't do this. just make the art to be .... Warcraft art. because Reforgeds art isn't warcraft, it just looks like an art form dressed like warcraft.

To end my note off, Warcraft 3 currently with patch 1.31.1 is easily worth 30$ for what you're getting. there is always a place for you to find within the community, from playing 100s of hours of singleplayer campaigns, to all sorts, shapes and sizes of multiplayer custom maps. and ladder melee with great people.

Also would like to say sorry for my lose quote mentioning of Old and New Audience. i know there are people with either mindsets mixed in both camps.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Release date was announced:

Warcraft III: Reforged Releases on January 28, 2020

---

Outside of release times for different time-zones, there isn't anything really interesting in the press release.

Well, I guess at least now we know when the game is coming out. Personally, I'm happy they delayed the game - looking at the beta, it seriously needs a fair amount of work, so if that extra month translates to a better end product, I'm fine with that.

---

Gonna tag @Archian because this is definetely front page worthy

 

[Venombite]

Well, I guess at least now we know when the game is coming out. Personally, I'm happy they delayed the game - looking at the beta, it seriously needs a fair amount of work, so if that extra month translates to a better end product, I'm fine with that.

And do you think a month is enough to make a difference? Both people on Battle.net and some people I personally know, doubt that it's enough time to make a difference.

Here's the thing, for people who played and lived through the days of warcraft 3 slowly building up its custom community, they understand and know that the value of the game has greatly increased. it isn't just a 30 hour campaign with melee. it is limitless games and potential with a 30 hour campaign and melee.

Reforged is improving:

- The World Editor. (listing the editor improvements requires a gigantic list of its own)
- Brings in dedicated servers.
- Game is directly available through battle.net.
- Capacity of the game to use greater memory and better graphics, and existing ones with more efficiency.

And as if that wasn't enough remaking the campaign. giving far greater life to the pro melee people.

The issue starts with some things and i'll name them for you.

1: Blizzard decided to still remake the campaign with good deal of changes, just not to the extreme amounts that they had initially intended when they got the backlash from a great portion of their audience. so they're trying to make it more balanced in between the 2 audience they have. so what's the problem ?

- The new audience didn't like that, they wanted full conversion, voice lines entirely done by wow actors, with a heavy focus on ingame cutscenes to get an RPG feel from the game.

2- The old audience, speaking for myself and people similar to YourArthas. don't like the new Art for Reforged. and think blizzard did poor decisions and not handled this game with enough care when it came to this aspect.

Instead of preserving the Art that better suited the warcraft universe, which a cartoony art mixed with certain style that Blizzard art people invented. they decided to instead switch the art entirely into this "realistic" form which invited the wrong audience.
There is also a noteable issue with how are they handling the models, a Retail World of Warcraft End boss has 16K polygons, yet there are Hero models in Reforged that have 20k polygons. that absurd and to handle that the game has to be optimized soo much more and new techniques used to help keep the performance optimal.
on top of that they want to add water reflections, and ray tracing.

All in an RTS game that looked very basic and cartoony and it helped the game to be far more readable.

All people like me say, is that no... don't do this. just make the art to be .... Warcraft art. because Reforgeds art isn't warcraft, it just looks like an art form dressed like warcraft.

To end my note off, Warcraft 3 currently with patch 1.31.1 is easily worth 30$ for what you're getting. there is always a place for you to find within the community, from playing 100s of hours of singleplayer campaigns, to all sorts, shapes and sizes of multiplayer custom maps. and ladder melee with great people.

Also would like to say sorry for my lose quote mentioning of Old and New Audience. i know there are people with either mindsets mixed in both camps.

I appreciate every comment and such, but you are wrong on many things:

1. I don't know abot the World Editor. Haven't seen it for myself, so I'm not going to comment on it. But the rest of the changes aren't really that big. Of course it's getting on Battle.net, every Blizzard game is there, and it only benefits them (*cough*microtransactions*cough*). Of course it's getting increasesd capacity and better graphics, let me remind you, in less than two weeks it'll be 2020. Gaming is one of the main reasons why the high tech industry developes so fase, so 2003 is pre history when it comes to gaming. You can't expect them to release the same thing as in 2003, if you saw computers and cell phones from 2003 you would think they belong in a museum.
2. They are not remaking the Campaigns. They are going to redo 8 chapters. With old voice, no WoW/books story in them, no new quests, in my book that means reterrain. And they are going to redo 8 chapters, 8 out of 56 (57 they count the bonus, 70+ if they count Rexxar).
3. Nobody was asking for anything they haven't promised already. They promised redone cutscenes, like the ones at Blizzcon 2018, they promised completely new voiceovers, with WoW/HotS voice actors, they promised making the story more WoW consistent. And later, Blizzcon 2019, they said we're getting none of it. On that aspect people have every right to complain. Many people on official forums claim that they got their refund, but I can't know if its actually true.
4. You're overestimating the power of the fans. Pretty much everyone, purists and otherwise, agree that all of the mentioned was cut due to lack of budget, and time but mostly budget. Remember that Reforged was cut so that Blizzard's main projects (Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4) can happen and work perfectely. The purists complaining merely gave them an excuse. If that was the purists goal than they did it. Congratulations!
5. I think it's pretty stupid, asking for Blizzard to give you a worse product than they planed. Water reflections, ray tracing and stuff actually make the game look better, and more realistic. And complex models as well, it just increases the graphics quality. At the begining of the post you said it's a good thing. Again cartoonish style looked very advanced, back in 2003. Again very soon it will be 2020 and things have changed a lot. Again you can't complare WoW models from 2006 and 2016, but you can compare Reforged models with WoW 2016 and HotS(that obviousely influenced Reforged quite a lot). I kinda get it, 2003 was the time when you were younger, and things were simpler, but that time is long gone and never coming back. Dvelling in the past is not good for anyone. It's the present where things that matter happen.

 

[MasterBlaster]

And do you think a month is enough to make a difference? Both people on Battle.net and some people I personally know, doubt that it's enough time to make a difference.

Depends on what difference you were expecting. Most people on Battle.net who wanted a longer delay are people who wanted Blizzard to take their time with Reforged to re-add all the things they cut. This was never going to happen due to budget constraints. So, if you wanted major additions or changes - no, a month won't be enough.

All we can hope for is that they polish up what's already there - you know, improve performance, fix bugs, iron out some graphical kinks, etc. For that, a month is actually quite a bit of time. And yes, it can be the difference between Reforged coming out as a broken mess and launching as a stable, yet still subpar in many ways, product.

 

[Venombite]

All we can hope for is that they polish up what's already there - you know, improve performance, fix bugs, iron out some graphical kinks, etc. For that, a month is actually quite a bit of time. And yes, it can be the difference between Reforged coming out as a broken mess and launching as a stable, yet still subpar in many ways, product.

Yes, I meant this. I know the former was always out of the question. I meant to improve performance, fix bugs, iron out some graphical kinks, etc. so that the game is at least at a playable stage, and to some what not loose your nerves on game breaking bugs. I also know it's unrealistic at this point not to have a lot of bugs at the launch, but at least not huge, game breaking bugs.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Hopefully, we get to beta test custom campaigns before the release. And also, the Blizzard campaign, of course.

At least, it would be good to confirm that they have fixed bugs with
1. Custom campaigns not showing buttons along with the campaign progression – Caused by patch 1.31
2. Resetting of the difficulty after the first map played, when using the built-in custom campaign difficulty – Broken since the early days of Warcraft III
3. The save-loading bug presented in 1.31, which makes unit-specific triggers not to work after save-loading.
4. Bugs in their own campaign since 1.31.
5. Hopefully, they also check all their cinematics in the Blizzard campaign, since in Reforged you can see more in the top and bottom part of the screen, and thus many cinematics become bad. We also think that the camera distance in the cinematics may have slightly changed so that you can see more of the area also because of that. Just check your cinematics out!

 

[deepstrasz]

I'm just interested. If Blizzard re released Classic, just providing the UI to cover the whole screen, fixing the bugs of 1.29+ pathces, and changing the name to "Warcraft 3 Reforged" and the logo. Would you still pay 30 $/€? (have no idea where you're from, so I'm saying either EUR or USD) What I'm asking is if Reforged was basically just a bug fixing patch, would you buy it? Cause as far as I understand that's mostly what the "purists" are asking for. This question is purely out of curiosity, nothing personal or stuff.

Ah, this again.
What purists wanted was an HD version like that of those Warcraft III models in StarCraft II.