My honest opinion

[Anachron]

I am a big lover of Warcraft 3. It was my first RTS and I have to give credits to this wonderful game for a lot of positive things in my life. Honestly, I wouldn't be having this great job today if it wasn't for Warcraft 3. It got me into programming and from there it just developed itself.

I spent the first 5-6 years after the launch of TFT with playing and modding daily. I've played so many custom maps I can't even remember most of them. I watched genres rise and fall, authors change and the community grow up. I've seen communities arise from nowhere, wc3sear.ch, thehelper.net, wc3c.net and alike. There were hundreds of clans active with many having their own forum/board.

During all of these times I was always excited about the World Editor. This tool was surely out concurrence back then. Even today it stands for it's ability to create rich content while providing a simple interface which is understood by everybody.

After at least 200 custom maps that I made, a lot of public systems and resources, I can really say that this editor hit the sweet spot between being easy and being able to create diverse content.

I've played the original Campaign several times, first on normal and then on harder difficulty. I also played melee for some time when grubby became famous and got into competitive versus games.

Going forward 10 years, Warcraft 3 Reforged arrives. A remake which keeps me speechless. Here is why:

• We can clearly see how the budget for Reforged has been cut:

1. Campaigns become less and less edited/modified the further you progress and also have been made easier in general. Normally as testers become better in a game, the difficulty is increased to make up for the new skills learned and to make the game more challenging.
2. A lot of originally promised features were rolled back and either replaced by something worse or reverted back completely.

• The quality of Upgrades/Patches has been low during all the time. I don't get this point. I am a developer myself. So how do we end up with patches breaking more things and even returning bugs as we progress further with the game? Either there is no official bug tracker / issue list in the official Reforged team ... or there are no resources for testing. Either way, this is terrible.
• The new menu engine (a browser, wtf. Blizzard?) is such an insane concept. Why would we ship a browser for a new menu? To me it seems like there were not enough resources for a better UI implementation and they just threw the web developer team at it and made it all HTML. I can't stress enough how bad this idea is and just how desperate one needs to be in order to do this.
• The new EULA is basically killing the modding scene. I get that they're afraid of other genres developing from Warcraft 3 again without having a say in it (*cough* DotA *cough*) but this is not the way to do it.

While there are a lot of other negative points I have, I want to point out something good:

• The new LUA runtime is a great addon. It makes things both easier and more modular.
  
• The new World Editor natives are great, even when they're lacking of quality and some don't work just yet
• The idea of reviving Warcraft 3 is noble and a big undertaking. I have read the story behind Warcraft 3 and so I know how flicked the engine itself is.

All in all I don't blame the devs at all. They're just the poor people who have to deal with the bad decisions and budget cuts the higher ups are giving back to them. I can't imagine what it must feel for a developer to be in their role. Everybody is throwing hate and changes at them and nobody is showing any understanding. I can truly understand every developer who is going to leave in this kind of circumstance.

TLDR:
Devs: I feel sorry for you.
CEO/Managers and alike: Stop being so greedy & turn away from sins or your whole department has to be purged.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Campaigns become less and less edited/modified the further you progress

I've noticed this as well - it's good to know that it wasn't just me.

 

[Power107]

@Anachron What do you think about the new artstyle and graphics?

 

[Frotty]

From what I gathered, I think most ppl would not care at all if "remaking" the game would not have meant breaking classic with bad patches and ultimately just abandoning it completely.
I don't really care about the EULA, even if it were not their IP, they could simply take a mod idea and make a standalone variant with actual budget and manpower, see autochess -> dota underlords.
I am mapping for fun, not because I think i can garner some people to eventually earn some money from.

Everybody is throwing hate and changes at them and nobody is showing any understanding

I don't think the hate is directed specifically towards the devs. As you say, these seem more like upper management decisions.
But why would you expect anything else? Reforged is a rip off in its current state and the last 2 years of classic patches have also been a disaster.
Showing understanding for this just seems like the wife going back to her abusing husband.

I really don't feel sorry for the devs. And yes, I work as a developer too. The job market for devs is amazing right now and you can basically choose where to work.
If you choose a job where you have literally no say and/or get screwed by upper management - then you simply shouldn't work there.
The gaming industry has always been taking advantage of devs by paying them less and treating them badly (my own experience + plenty recent news) because they have the "honor" to make a game.
IIRC most of the classic/reforged devs are not game devs nor even played wacraft thoroughly, the job offerings were for reverse engineering positions.

 

[Razorclaw_X]

All in all I don't blame the devs at all. They're just the poor people who have to deal with the bad decisions and budget cuts the higher ups are giving back to them. I can't imagine what it must feel for a developer to be in their role. Everybody is throwing hate and changes at them and nobody is showing any understanding. I can truly understand every developer who is going to leave in this kind of circumstance.

TLDR:
Devs: I feel sorry for you.
CEO/Managers and alike: Stop being so greedy & turn away from sins or your whole department has to be purged.

Yet the Devs are the ones responsible for actually breaking the things that were working. There was clearly a sense of "hey let's see how much stuff we could throw in!" that turned into half of those said things not even working to breaking things that used to work. Every single patch that added a new feature inevitably broke something else that you can't point at any 1.27+ patch and reasonably say "this is the patch we should all be playing on" because every single one of them broke something that was working before.

I can blame the suits for overselling Reforged, but I can also blame the devs for not knowing when to make sure the game still worked before going crazy adding new stuff.

And that doesn't even go into how terrible the Necromancer changes turned out.

 

[Power107]

@Anachron There is an indie open source RTS called 0 AD. Maybe if you do not wanna play it then watch videos on you-tube. This will change your view of classic team devs.
Better graphics and optimization than this Reforged by a AAA company with over 18 billion USD assets.
EDIT: A screenshot for quality purposes

 

[Duke]

I mean I can understand that new things don't work. But they fucked up stuff that was already there and on top of that they straight up removed several features even for people who do not own Reforged. That is just inexcusable blunder.

 

[Kino]

I mean I can understand that new things don't work. But they fucked up stuff that was already there and on top of that they straight up removed several features even for people who do not own Reforged. That is just inexcusable blunder.

This pretty much.
I dont really care for skins and new graphics, but I dont hate that they exist either
The big killer for me is the loss of functionality for people who enjoy singleplayer content (custom campaigns etc.)

 

[BlinkBoy]

@Anachron There is an indie open source RTS called 0 AD. Maybe if you do not wanna play it then watch videos on you-tube. This will change your view of classic team devs.
Better graphics and optimization than this Reforged by a AAA company with over 18 billion USD assets.
EDIT: A screenshot for quality purposes

Well as far as I agree graphics in Wc3 Reforged could have been better. This is an unfair comparison. 0 A.D has been in the works for a very long time and they weren't constrained to keep the original feeling of an old game.

 

[Duke]

they weren't constrained to keep the original feeling of an old game.

Well judging from Reforged graphics, neither were LemonSky

 

[Krom]

The problem is not about graphicals. Some models are not great, but the majority is good ! The real problem is : Blizzard cuting eveything that they promised, editor, campaign, battle.net, new tools for models, maps rights etc...

 

[Power107]

Well as far as I agree graphics in Wc3 Reforged could have been better. This is an unfair comparison. 0 A.D has been in the works for a very long time and they weren't constrained to keep the original feeling of an old game.

Even if it's in the works for a very long time it's an open-source software made by volunteers. Thus Blizz has no excuse here.
@Duke Lemonsky is a good art studio as they worked on Dark Souls and Sc remastered. It's all Blizzard's management fault for Reforged as they did not invest the required amount of $$$.
EDIT:
Lemonsky's criticism is a result of racism as they are not white and western. 100%

 

[Ezekiel12]

Nice to see a thread which is not thoughtless bashing on Blizzard or creating hate feeding the mob mentality.


Warcraft 3 is also by far my favourite game and I have been playing it or learning about it's quirks via the world editor for more than 15 years while growing up.

It has given me countless hours of fun playing custom maps over and over again with friends.

It has provided me countless hours of feeding my curiosity to find out how things work and sharing it with others. Because to know how things worked or how limitations could be overcome was really important for some, like-minded people came together and formed communities.
For us a new discovery was equally exiting as being a physicist finding a new law of nature.

It has in big parts contributed to me gaining problem solving skills and chosing my career path in real life.


In my opinion the thing which speaks for itself the most indicating internal discrepancies at Blizzard is the months (years?) silence of communication after the 2018 announcement. Strange is also that Samwise Didier is mentioned nowhere.


I can imagine that similar people like me were hired (also from this forum) to do the remastering and I know that I would be crushed having to be in an ordered silence for a long time and then having to release the game in this (unfinished) state.
So I would like to give praise to all the Blizzard employees who fought for Warcraft 3! Things will get better in the coming months.

 

[Frotty]

Things will get better in the coming months.

How? I highly doubt classic will be brought back, which is really irreversible damage.

 

[Selaya]

How? I highly doubt classic will be brought back, which is really irreversible damage.

We can bring it back ourselves, fortunately.
-> pvpgn

 

[Frotty]

We can bring it back ourselves, fortunately.
-> pvpgn

Which has its own problems, e.g. user and patch fragmentation. Eurobattle is in 1.28.5, RGC on 1.26, ENTConnect on 1.30.1 - so which version do I make my map for?
And of course, those communities are usually smaller than the officially endorsed method. Most players don't want to download "dubious" tools.
It was already kind of hard to get ppl into lobbies of lesser known maps in latest classic, with pvpgn it's even harder from my experience.

 

[Selaya]

Obviously.
However,
(a) the worse blizztards fucks it up, the more likely a concentrated push for pvpgn will be
(b) it's either that or surrendering, in all likeliness.
I wouldn't expect greedy, retarded executives to see reason even if we were to bludgeon them to the death with it, so there's that.
Besides, 1.26 - 1.28 can sync if I'm not mistaken (1.30 is probably rip).

As they would say, the ball's in our court now; in all likeliness if we do not make a coordinated community effort towards 1.26/1.28 or 1.30, most of what we have will just die instead because let's face it, no1 wants to play this bugged shit

 

[Drake53]

in all likeliness if we do not make a coordinated community effort towards 1.26/1.28 or 1.30

And therein lies the problem, there will never be a consensus as to what older version of wc3 is best. Why not 1.31? I want lua and UI natives.

 

[Selaya]

If discord is all we can muster, then we truly would have got what deserved in any case, so there's that.

 

[Ezekiel12]

How? I highly doubt classic will be brought back, which is really irreversible damage.

I meant the employees which are currently the subject of this exaggerated hate train, for them it will get better.

But also for us. Yes reforged in its current state is disappointing and released a year to early (or not having enough man power in its development time).
But I'm sure there will be at least some patches bringing in more of the important stuff (I hope for several years).

 

[Anaxie]

I'm pretty much Done with reforged here is a little list after i finished TFT campaign it's actually fucking sad to me.

List of Reforged Campaign Maps

100% uninstalling
Grabbing my disks and finding a 1.29 installer or whatever most people customs were at that wasnt a broke as shit Classic patch.

Uninstalling Bnet should be enough to keep this shit company away from my game.

 

[Fingolfin]

All in all I don't blame the devs at all. They're just the poor people who have to deal with the bad decisions and budget cuts the higher ups are giving back to them. I can't imagine what it must feel for a developer to be in their role. Everybody is throwing hate and changes at them and nobody is showing any understanding. I can truly understand every developer who is going to leave in this kind of circumstance.

I am also a developer who owes his career to this game. I have to say though, i don't completely agree with this statement. Even if budget is tight, you have to at least work from the premise of delivering a minimum viable product. Working vertically and making sure that each feature is stable before moving on to the next. It's one thing to downscale on features and add them in later, but the amount of things in the classic version that were broken by this update is just mind-blowing. Have they never heard of regression testing? Sounds not working, client not loading, broken maps, instant defeat screens - how could these issues possibly have slipped through the beta phase? And it isn't the first time - this is how it is every new version these days. Also the fact that the broken and slow game menu is apparently implemented as a chrome web app using electron isn't very reassuring. As much as people like to demonize Blizzard management, i refuse to believe that they would have gone forward with the release in this state if they had known the full scope of the game-breaking issues. Poor organization and testing on behalf of the dev team is also a factor.

 

[Brambleclaw]

The problem is not about graphicals. Some models are not great, but the majority is good ! The real problem is : Blizzard cuting eveything that they promised, editor, campaign, battle.net, new tools for models, maps rights etc...

Every single model looks like a big hero out of a mobile game. Artistic style is incoherent, very in your face, and not suitable for a RTS, especially one that has a camera height max.

 

[Power107]

Every single model looks like a big hero out of a mobile game. Artistic style is incoherent, very in your face, and not suitable for a RTS, especially one that has a camera height max.

They will solve this issue. They will release: Warcaft 3 Reforged: Remastered - for just 30$. Do you guys not have 30$?

 

[Krom]

Every single model looks like a big hero out of a mobile game. Artistic style is incoherent, very in your face, and not suitable for a RTS, especially one that has a camera height max.

This is totaly subjective, you have your right to think that, but I dont think everyone is sharing your opinion. IMO, the better graphics are not a bad thing, but it should be not the only ''thing'' that Blizzard is giving to us to making the players buying it 30 euros.

 

[Jarrot]

They will solve this issue. They will release: Warcaft 3 Reforged: Remastered - for just 30$. Do you guys not have 30$?

if they restore the old version online and patch it with stable 1.29 and give the possibility to download it again i can give them money or they never see again a money from me and i continue to play warcraft 3 and d2 offline forever

 

[Brambleclaw]

This is totaly subjective, you have your right to think that, but I dont think everyone is sharing your opinion. IMO, the better graphics are not a bad thing, but it should be not the only ''thing'' that Blizzard is giving to us to making the players buying it 30 euros.

Some of the units do not match any artistic style from any other Wc3 released content ever in the history of blizzard and some of the units look like custom units that have come from this website.