One name... Grubby ! Former Wc3 veteran, he won so many times the wcg... he barely is able to do anything in Sc2. The reason is that Wc3 is mostly micro-based while Sc2 is macro-based.
In Sc2 you can have the most godly micro ever, if your army is 100 supply on twobase and I am 200 supply on three base, I will own you! The reason why from bronze to platinium it's the same game style like you said.. it's becauase from bronze to platinium it's all about 'who has the better macro'. Because apparently, there are 4 stages on how good your macro can be. Supposedly at Diamond, your macro is good and you can start to worry that your micro and knowledge of timings is not on par to your opponents.
In Wc3, any noob would get in the game and say "I got... 1 hero, 3 huntresses... what my opponent got?... 1 hero, 4 huntresses... hmm i can outmicro him."
As for "Is Wc3 dead or not, is the Warcraft franchise dead, is Warcraft 4 coming out ?" I think these threads should get locked/closed since there is nothing to actually be discussed about this. These decisions are taken by Blizzard and it's related only too money only and only Blizzard decides what they will do with this francise. I understand that people have freedom of speech but seriously, this topic is present on different forum boards, and has different forum threads about it where mostly two groups, some who see the reality that warcraft is not what once was argue with another group who faithfully believe that god shall give them warcraft. And they argue and argue but to no avail, because Blizzard decides these things. And why it annoyes me, it's not the subject itself, it's that this subject it's debated over several forum boards which contain several forum threads about this. I mean what are we waiting for ? A new thread in the Modelers section entitled "Is Wc3 modeling dead ?".
Grubby started playing SC2 late. You do know that most of the best players outside Korea are all war3 players right? I assure you, war3 skill carries over as much as BW skill. Of course, it's easier when you have played more SC&Broodwar as SC2 is SC afterall. But why War3 players play better overall? The fact that war3 was a micro game does not mean it is hard for these players to be one of the best. It seems they quickly learn the macro part. I also thought war3 players would have problems but all who have a lot of skill adapt to SC2 quite easily. To give examples of war3 players being the best players and basically players outside Korea:
Thorzain, Kas, Naama, Elfi, Lucifron, Happy, Sase, Naniwa, Sjow, Satiini, Infi (that's right the top Chinese human), ++ others I cant think of atm.
If you mean why they are not as good as Koreans, well, same reason why European SCBW players didn't reach the heights of SCBW Koreans even though they r all playing the same game. Koreans are beasts and SC is in their veins so to say..
But even there war3 Moon finished 2nd on Dreamhack 2011, other Koreans from war3 ofc see so high competition in Korea that they dont bother. But Korea is a completely different story.
The reason why Koreans are better does not mean war3 players have problems learning SC2... - the example why SCBW players outside Korea never reached their level, this has nothing to do with they came frm war3... See what's going on the EU scene or EU-NA scene, with few exceptions like HuK, Select
(NA never had any good War3 players thast why in North America you see Starcraft names) but in EU.. all dominated by war3 players and along with them the fewer SC players like Nerchio, Dimaga, Strelok, WhiteRa, BratOK, Tarson, Mana.
-And these are only some of the best players from EU supposedly. If you see Grandmaster EU, more than half are war3 players, I know cause i've seen these names in war3.
And I agree with the 2nd paragraph. Such threads are pointless, not to say 2 threads wait 3 threads about the same thing.. 'Is war3 dead' 'war4' agreed they should be locked so it doesnt matter where this thread is going.