Version 2.0.2 Build 22726 PTR Patch Notes

[deepstrasz]

Well, at least they tried:

Spoiler

Cool thing is you can toggle through these by clicking the logo not needing to go to options every time.

 

[Barade]

Did anyone else get weird syntax check errors in the World Editor after the patch? vJass and JassHelper are still enabled but I get some syntax errors in generated lines with global variables now.
View attachment 529244

Old versions of my map cannot be started anymore:

View attachment 529664

Does anybody know how they broke old maps again? Is it some tooling stuff or some natives? I would like to fix my map but I don't know how. JassHelper and pjass don't report any issues, it is just Warcraft III and the World Editor. It isn't the object data either because I exported it and imported it into another map and there was no issue. I suspect something in the script. My map uses a custom scripts/common.j and scripts/common.ai but importing that into another map did not cause a problem?

edit:

They have removed these natives from scripts/common.j:

native RequestExtraIntegerData                     takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns integer
native RequestExtraBooleanData                     takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns boolean
native RequestExtraStringData                      takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns string
native RequestExtraRealData                        takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns real

 

[Homor]

All the more reason to switch over to Community Edition.

Seriously, everyone who told me about it heavily undersold it. CE is amazing.

 

[Retera]

Does anybody know how they broke old maps again?

I'd like to dedicate tonight's AI song that I generated to your post here. I was reading it, and I ended up getting inspired to type out the lyrics for another musical masterpiece for the AI web portals to shoot out at a me. I uploaded it below:

Patchday Theme Song [explicit] - Music

I made this song with Suno AI. It is a song about patches ruining WC3 customs. They're telling me that because I didn't pay Suno for this song, this song cannot be used commercially, so you can keep that in mind if it's really important to you to generate revenue for a big AI company that makes...

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[LeP]

They have removed these natives from scripts/common.j:

native RequestExtraIntegerData                     takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns integer
native RequestExtraBooleanData                     takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns boolean
native RequestExtraStringData                      takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns string
native RequestExtraRealData                        takes integer dataType, player whichPlayer, string param1, string param2, boolean param3, integer param4, integer param5, integer param6 returns real

That's the only change? Can you upload common.j/Blizzard.j/common.ai somewhere? I need them for jassdoc etc. but cannot extract them easily myself.

 

[Barade]

I have extracted the three scripts common.j, common.ai and Blizzard.j on 17.04.2025 with a CASC viewer.
You can check for more changes.

Is there any good command line CASC extractor for Windows? A batch script which always extracts these 3 files would be useful for comparison.

 

[Midnighters]

Bro give me a break, I'd hardly had any interaction with Blizzard for ~15 years* before buying Reforged because I wanted to start playing with the editor, and assumed there was no other way. What were you supposed to do if you couldn't find your disks from a liftime ago? I assume this site isn't pro-piracy, right?


*If you don't count playing a Vanilla private server for a couple years; Kronos if anyone's interested.

That's on you man, I can still pull out every single physical copy game I've ever bought for PC and install via disc. Even those from 20+ years ago. I still have my original starcraft discs, age of empire discs, and a bunch of others.

 

[Vibe]

I haven't been paying attention to the HIVE community for a while, but I've been consistently translating the latest Warcraft III patch notes in the Chinese community. During the PTR period, I noticed the issue with the Orb of Slow and commented on it in the Chinese community. Below is my Chinese comment:

The entire modification history from Orb of Fire to Orb of Slow by Blizzard is just stupid.
First, in 1.31, the splash effect of Orb of Fire was changed to a healing reduction effect.
What’s the connection between fire and healing reduction?
Why introduce a new mechanic like "healing reduction," increasing complexity, new code, and new bugs?
Why add such a treasure that’s highly effective for Humans against Undead?

Then, in the second version of PTR 2.0.2, Orb of Fire was changed to Orb of Slow.
Lore-wise, Arthas and the dwarves killed the black dragon together, which is why Humans had Orb of Fire. Changing it to Orb of Slow contradicts the lore.
Buying a slow effect at Tier 3? What’s the point when you already have Sorceresses? And it basically duplicates the effect of Orb of Lightning.

Then, in the third version of PTR 2.0.2, Orb of Slow was based on the Shadow Strike ability.
It does stack with the Sorceress’ slow now, but this means it can’t stack with Shadow Strike and will override the latter’s damage-over-time effect.
Blizzard directly hardcoded changes to the Orb of Slow ability, which will affect all custom maps based on this item ability. The correct approach should have been to create a new melee-version Orb of Slow and its corresponding ability, rather than modifying the campaign version of the Orb of Slow ability.

I’ve been reflecting—my comments on Chinese forums obviously won’t be seen by Blizzard staff. So I’m thinking maybe next time I should reply on Blizzard’s forums or see if others have raised similar issues, hoping the Warcraft III team lead at Team 2 might notice the problem.

Essentially, I hope Blizzard takes on some responsibility for forward compatibility. Changes like those to Orb of Slow and Moon Blade should minimize impact on existing custom maps, just as with custom portrait issues. As developers with good practices, they should consider whether old user data can smoothly transition to the new version, ensuring minimal disruption. Morally, courteously, traditionally, culturally, and professionally, they ought to do this. I hope the community can exert positive influence to establish a good bug-reporting mechanism to ensure this.

However, I don’t believe forward compatibility for custom maps is a mandatory responsibility for developers, whether commercially or legally. You might curse about it, but that’s how I see it. The World Editor is just an intermediate tool they repurposed from their internal level designers and engineers—a side dish, not the main course. Blizzard’s primary responsibility lies in the official campaigns, melee, and multiplayer—the actual main dishes.

There are always people in this world who take what they have for granted and treat what they lack as something others owe them. But in reality, beyond the absolute authority of legal terms and the logic of economic reality, there aren’t so many moral, courteous, normative, or professional "shoulds" or "should nots" in this world—you can’t use such things to demand anything from others.

In any case, it’s great to see such lively discussions on the forum—especially from StormKnight and Retera, who truly make me feel that there are people caring about this game every year, every month, every day.

 

[Barade]

Was there another build? My Warcraft had a small update before starting. The current patch number is 2.0.2.22796.

I like that they readded the old screens but are they simply video sequences and not 3D models?
In the original Warcraft 3 there was some moving camera in the Undead campaign screen which moved to the Lich.
Besides, the Infernal meteors are missing in the Reign of Chaos Screen

The Orb of Fire really made more sense because of the Dwarf part in the Human Campaign.

 

[Ravager16829]

Was there another build? My Warcraft had a small update before starting. The current patch number is 2.0.2.22796.

It's just a hotfix. Here's the thread if you don't know about patch notes (scroll down all the way to the last post):

Warcraft III: Reforged Hotfixes -- Updated April 29

August 19, 2022 – 10:45 a.m. PDT We’ve just applied hotfixes to the game to address the following issues: Fixed an issue preventing LAN functionality. Fixed an bug that prevented AT players from matching against RT players.

us.forums.blizzard.com

I like that they readded the old screens but are they simply video sequences and not 3D models?
In the original Warcraft 3 there was some moving camera in the Undead campaign screen which moved to the Lich.
Besides, the Infernal meteors are missing in the Reign of Chaos Screen

The classic background menu added in 2.0.2 patch is just a 3D animated ones without an extra video sequences in Reforged.
One might expect that you won't be able to see the transition scene like the cartoon-to-3D Rexxar used in the Orc TFT campaign, unlike the pre-Reforged's ones.
As deepstrasz said, it is possible to switch between Reforged and pre-Reforged rendition of ROC/TFT screens by clicking on the game logo.

 

[deepstrasz]

OK ultra boomer bug.
So, in singleplayer saving works like in multiplayer/LAN/etc. i.e. you can only save three times before the saving button gets disabled. Initially thought it was something particular to a custom map but it's not.

 

[Drake53]

That's on you man, I can still pull out every single physical copy game I've ever bought for PC and install via disc. Even those from 20+ years ago. I still have my original starcraft discs, age of empire discs, and a bunch of others.

I can tell you either don't have borderlands in your collection or you haven't tried re-installing it recently. The installer phones home during installation to a server which has been taken offline, so it gets stuck and you can't install it anymore. I'm sure there are other games like this but this is the only one I'm aware of.

 

[StormKnight]

Essentially, I hope Blizzard takes on some responsibility for forward compatibility. Changes like those to Orb of Slow and Moon Blade should minimize impact on existing custom maps, just as with custom portrait issues. As developers with good practices, they should consider whether old user data can smoothly transition to the new version, ensuring minimal disruption. Morally, courteously, traditionally, culturally, and professionally, they ought to do this. I hope the community can exert positive influence to establish a good bug-reporting mechanism to ensure this.

Forward Compatibility is an idea that's looked down upon for a good reason but its true nature might be misunderstood in the context of War3.

I remember when someone i consider to be my friend was talking about this in Hive Discord server and said the idea that Reforged should remain compatible with old maps is actually, backwards compatibility. Forwards compatibility in the case of Warcraft 3 would be if a mapmaker creates something in Reforged and expects it to run on older patches. But if i make something in older patches it should work in Reforged, and that's real backwards compatibility.

I know it sounds a bit strange, but if you think about it its true. So what me and others are asking for is not some absurd thing like forwards compatibility its just backwards compatibility in an appropriate amount (not absolute) in the context of Warcraft3. Which is good and desired. This idea was how i understood it after an ex developer explained it to me. Because i previously thought similar to you.

So the idea that Blizzard writing bad ability hardcodes that break compatibility with old maps is in reality, breaking backwards compatibility. Not Forwards compatibility. And that's not even the primary reason they shouldn't this because effects NEW maps that are just older than 2.02 itself.

When all the Reforged guys sat at Blizzcon 2018 and promised all sorts of amazing things would magically fit and work together merging old and new in a harmony. The issue for me is that Brad Chan ended up saying similar things like "when something is broken you fix it" well, i remember that too but in hindsight they should just go ahead and not break what worked perfectly fine before. So Blizzard made Brad Chans statements sound hollow just like how they tricked Pete Stillwell to give his heart out for fans only to sound like a liar years later. This is the nature of Blizzard. They create suffering for everyone who works with them and plays their products and never takes the blame for it.

Blizzard needs to stop creating changes through updates in a brute force way that disregards mapmakers. The classic Team that worked on Reforged had developers onboard who knew how to execute these problems elegantly, Blizzard needs to relearn what they already knew in the past.
---------------------------
This part is more offtopic and not a direct respond to you Vibe. every now and then i see very specific people speak agaisnt the common mapmaker, not the super mapmaker who can code in Lua and become a God. The average mapmaker who expects stability, and compatibility, not just compared to 2004 like some people suggest, but to yesterday in 2025. If we allow their message to settle in. Reforged mapmaking will transform into this frustrating hackjob that only a few bother to understand. It'll end up turning into "mods" from "moddb" that you have to install in large file sizes and do a dozen things to activate and cross your finger and pray it works. The day something similar to this happens is the day i stop even mentioning Reforged as a product related to Warcraft 3. Because it would lose its way.

Spoiler: Context.

Edit: this post was edited to be less aggressive and confusing thanks to @Kyrbi0 's advice.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Stormknight, I think we all largely agree that this is a bad thing. And we agree they should not do it. And no one is saying you don't have the right to complain about it, either way; plenty of us are, too. And pushing back against Blizzard doing stuff like this will, hopefully, discourage them from doing it again.

I think the pushback you're receiving here has more to do with the moralistic/ethical slant of your complaints; that Blizzard "cannot" do this & "must" fix it, that "they promised in 2018 it would 'just work'!", that there's some eternal obligation upon developers to never fail to maintain backwards compatibility. That anyone who disagrees with you must not care about old maps or compatibility.

I completely agree all of those things would be nice, and will fight for them to be so. But I'm not going to rail against Blizzard as if they've committed some moral trespass. And I'm not under any delusions that they will do it forever, or even the next ~10 years. 2018 was (brace yourself ) 7 years ago. That's longer than the gap between v1.26 & v1.27 (a full 5-year radio silence where we just assumed Warcraft 3 was, for all intents & purposes, 'dead'). And the guys who said that in 2018 are long gone.

Let's fight for what we want, what would be best for our community. But let's not pretend we're any different than fans of any other game out there. And let's not attack strawmen of each other.

 

[StormKnight]

Stormknight, I think we all largely agree that this is a bad thing. And we agree they should not do it. And no one is saying you don't have the right to complain about it, either way; plenty of us are, too. And pushing back against Blizzard doing stuff like this will, hopefully, discourage them from doing it again.

I think the pushback you're receiving here has more to do with the moralistic/ethical slant of your complaints; that Blizzard "cannot" do this & "must" fix it, that "they promised in 2018 it would 'just work'!", that there's some eternal obligation upon developers to never fail to maintain backwards compatibility. That anyone who disagrees with you must not care about old maps or compatibility.

I completely agree all of those things would be nice, and will fight for them to be so. But I'm not going to rail against Blizzard as if they've committed some moral trespass. And I'm not under any delusions that they will do it forever, or even the next ~10 years. 2018 was (brace yourself ) 7 years ago. That's longer than the gap between v1.26 & v1.27 (a full 5-year radio silence where we just assumed Warcraft 3 was, for all intents & purposes, 'dead'). And the guys who said that in 2018 are long gone.

I'm actually shocked with the nature of your reply, but in a curious way. Reading it almost sounds like the guy you're replying to wrote something very different than what i actually tried to write, Later i ended up realizing how this happened. But for now there is room to elaborate. The first thing that caught me offguard is that ~ i'm getting pushback ? other than some banter earlier i didn't see much of that. And Vibe well he was just looking at backwards and forwards compatbility from the wrong angle.

The first and biggest half of my post is just explaining a detail that people might get wrong about Warcraft 3. And then i end up going into more semantical stuff with my 2018 comment, but while your reply to me is trying to calm me down (in a good way), you do also glance over the interesting detail that in 2024 or 2025 was it ? Blizzard after (like you point out) 7 years... put out a youtube video basically claiming similar absurd things without holding themselves up to it. For the second time. Maybe that's why i put both of those together in one post, trying to get people to think how long has it been without Blizzard changing. I do not have an absolutist stance on maintaining backward compatibility, because number changes and description changes are up to the mapmaker to update. We have a system in the world editor that changes the games dataset, if people want to use the latest stuff they need to put up with the latest changes numerically. That's all well and good, The position i have is the bare minimum request for Blizzard to not change fundmental core functions of pre existing abilities or units that we cant easily escape from no matter what dataset we choose. Creating a compatibility problem that infects all maps modern or old. And it isn't just editted abilities that impact this. Its the implementation of Zoom, Hotkeys, HUDUI scale aswell.

On the flip side. I absolutely think we need to push Blizzard so that they feel like they have an obligation to care about custom mapmakers plights more, and i will never stop pushing for that. The amount of people who see custom games as "other" and not a part of Warcraft 3's main service is increasing at a greater rate than people who dont think so. Even if the former benefit from custom games being such a big part of the game without really thinking about it too much. The problem is Blizzard is a part of the former when they shouldn't be, if you think i'm moral grandstanding by saying after 25 bloodsoaking years Blizzard should see Custom Games and maps as important as melee then i'll be moral grandstanding until the heat death of the universe.

Let's fight for what we want, what would be best for our community. But let's not pretend we're any different than fans of any other game out there. And let's not attack strawmen of each other.

It took me several tries and few edits to realize what did you mean, i said to myself who am i stawmanning ? what's going on here ? But i realized what i wrote in the very last paragraph sounds like i'm attacking everyone. This is not reality, why would i attack people, you, Vibe or anyone who've (in your case and many others like Footie, Grapes, Kam and such) have been right there with me in the bugreporting war.

I wrote that part for very specific people, and they know who they are, they are the avatars of Delores Umbrige as like to call them.
But i ended up writing as if i'm attacking everyone, so i apologize for that.
i'll try to edit my original post to remedy the issue.

 

[Retera]

Forwards compatibility in the case of Warcraft 3 would be if a mapmaker creates something in Reforged and expects it to run on older patches.

This is not what I would expect the phrase "forwards compatibility" to mean. I would expect the phrase "forwards compatibility" to refer to when a mapmaker creates something in Reforged and expects it to run on a future version of Reforged that might be released next year, or the year after, etc, into the future.

The classic Team that worked on Reforged had developers onboard who knew how to execute these problems elegantly

I'm not sure I would go this far. I had the distinct impression that the Classic Team had a couple of folks who understood the game in roles like maybe Associate Producer who interfaced with the map makers and how map makers used the technology, and then they filed tickets to get semi-apathetic devs (who were possibly on loan from WoW) to actually implement the changes to keep things running smoothly. That resulted in honestly a lot of backwards compatibility in the Reforged game engine -- which frankly I was worried might not be achieved at the time -- but this successful creation of backwards compatibility often felt like it was the result of a team effort at Classic Team and not the result of "developers onboard who knew how to execute these problems elegantly."

For example, if I had a time machine and infinite wealth, and I could build a team with some of the best minds lurking at Hive Workshop (in the past or present) we might be able to have developers who barely need to read tickets about what to do, because they already elegantly know how to execute the solutions due to their tremendous domain specific knowledge of dealing with Warcraft III.

It's not realistic and those people aren't available for hire, but because I think they hypothetically do really exist, it seems more accurate to be pedantic about this and say that the actual developers at Classic Team were the sort of people who make BlzSetSpecialEffectX modify the Y coordinate of a special effect, because they're just doing what they're told and don't even bother trying to use it to make something cool for 5 minutes. You know, if I had TriggerHappy or maybe the 2008 version of Vexorian making my jass natives, like, I wouldn't have to tell them that a function called "SetSpecialEffectX" should only modify the X coordinate of the object. They would elegantly solve that problem, just based on a description in passing, without additional input from me. That's... often not what Classic Team was doing back in 2019-2020. It felt a bit closer to Kam herding cats.

i'll try to edit my original post to remedy the issue.

I never saw your original post, but I have an interesting perspective when reading the comments you guys are making.

I think the pushback you're receiving here has more to do with the moralistic/ethical slant of your complaints; that Blizzard "cannot" do this & "must" fix it, that "they promised in 2018 it would 'just work'!", that there's some eternal obligation upon developers to never fail to maintain backwards compatibility.

Maybe I made a comment earlier in this thread that I should stop replying on this topic because I'm going nuts and have quite a bias. But I guess at some point, when we talk about what the company "must" do, it might be worth thinking about the "or else" in that situation. What are "we" going to do if this company never appeases us?

I'm getting kind of old. I mean, I guess at some point

Let's fight for what we want, what would be best for our community.

... I don't quite know what this is or means anymore. In my head, when I picture "fighting" over a video game that is quintessentially imaginary, I have a sense that one of the funniest things I could do is hack my Warcraft 3 simulator program until it can also simulate WoW, and then create an ingame cinematic where the programmers and custom map makers sail onto the WoW a bit like the WC2 intro cinematic, but with a giant battle afterwards where the Warcraft III-isms land on shore and have siege weapons and are demolishing the WoW in protest against the bad treatment of their tech stack. I just think it would be a really funny YouTube video if I made that, and it might literally embody fighting these people. I find myself daydreaming about this whenever I listen to my AI generated song that tried to parody Brad Chan, although the song lyrics in hindsight don't perfectly match the exact words Brad said on stream a few months ago, the meaning of the words is the same:

When something is wrong, you make it right.
When something is broken, you fix it, tonight.
When things aren't good enough, you make them better!
And it's wrong to be a fan of custom game modes.

Something about using this as like the war-time march chant of a giant military destroying WoW in a video seems like it would be a very epic and entertaining thing that I could share with people.

But at the end of the day, that probably actually doesn't help. What actually does help? I've been trying to experience Warcraft III as a concept on a computer that doesn't have Windows or World Editor, and it's a really, really uphill battle. I could easily see people on this website arriving at the conclusion that I'm just a troll now and I'm not playing Warcraft III.

Above is an example of my simulator's on-the-fly transcription of Azeroth.wdt to try to load it and shoehorn it into the same existing codebase that could load W3X and W3M, if you know what that means.

We can almost combine the games and make the Universal Warcraft (both WoW and Wc3 in the same game program and the units can fight each other) and then use that to create a cinematic of fighting against the modern bosses.

But then I guess you get back to... maybe that's not what you want to do. Maybe... we all just still wish that patch 1.26 (plus a security fix for virus bugs) was the live game version. There are so many different possible things that a person could want.

For me, when I think about the "moralistic" side and the sort of things, maybe I have been ruined by extremist or something. I have been arriving at the conclusion that if we actually want to think about "moralistic" ways that technology should be, there is a guy called Richard Stallman who figured that out maybe 40 years ago, but I didn't know that he did that, because no one told me. And all of my experiences interacting with Warcraft since childhood happened in the shadow of not knowing that someone else already figured it out years prior to my birth. Because I was not informed, and I lived among people who did not care, or were not at liberty to care.

I guess that's the weird thing if we start to think about right and wrong. At some point, there's always going to be an extremist who is actually more right than you are. The world is filled with many different kinds of people. Are people who do not, and never have and never will, play Warcraft... people who are "more morally right" than I am? What if I still want to anyway? Does that make me bad like currently Reforged managers, but in a different way? Then, who am I to advocate that humans should always have access to live patch 1.26 servers or something (or live 1.31 servers)?

 

[StormKnight]

This is not what I would expect the phrase "forwards compatibility" to mean. I would expect the phrase "forwards compatibility" to refer to when a mapmaker creates something in Reforged and expects it to run on a future version of Reforged that might be released next year, or the year after, etc, into the future.

Well now you know, i thought like you but thats not really the case. Forwards Compatibility in the context of War3 means what you make in the most up to date patch would somehow have to work in older patches/versions of the game which would be absurd. But making something in the game and expecting developers to not completely destroy it in the next update is backwards compatibility. And there would always be some level of that even beyond the knowledge of both us and the developers combined, the trick is to not let it get out of hand, otherwise the point of mapmaking would just be null and void.

The only time we've really had an experience this absurd is the release of 1.32.0 Blizzard then spent an insane amount of time updating the game to make sure backwards compatibility is maintained until we sat on 1.32.10 for a year or more, with 1.33 and beyond they've uh, forgotten their previous practices because too many people changed.
-----------------------

About your comment on whether or not the classic team had it in them, i'm confident if the team that shipped 1.32.10 weren't just disbanded, they finally (with all their mistakes, some that you even point out in your reply) had the experience to come in and clean house with all the bs. But that didn't happen. Everything they knew, the guardrails, the warnings left in the tickets, so fourth, was cast aside while the project kept juggling from one team to another.

From wow and diablo2r team to the team that worked on PlanetSide 2 to some phone company to whoever else i dont even know at this point, circling all the way back to some wow people. I dont even know what were people like Brad doing, was he just a marketting guy ? i mean the guy was just an esports player i dont see how that translates to "i know how to fix this bug now".

I dont even know what's going on with their UI changes it seems oddly inspired from all the photoshop illustrations and demands i kept shooting at them through various means.

 

[Retera]

But making something in the game and expecting developers to not completely destroy it in the next update is backwards compatibility.

Well, whatever you want to call it, I don't have that. I don't expect them not to destroy what I make anymore. I am losing the faith in those people.

otherwise the point of mapmaking would just be null and void.

In my life, I have decided to choose the point of what I am doing for myself. I am not interested in allowing external forces to make what I am doing be null and void. As a result, that means not caring about the opinions of other people, for example if everyone plays a game version where what I created does not work. That is their loss, not mine, because I create the product because I want to and not to control them into playing it.