What about Reforged is actually good?

[KalasZX]

This is a serious question. Everything I see in reviews or read on the Blizzard forum takes a massive dump on it, to the point of putting it in the conversation with Duke Nukem Forever and Cyberpunk 2077 for biggest disappointment of all time. The new graphics don't do much for me but there has to be something else that makes it worthwhile, right?

I'm pretty sure I've read everything that sucks about it. What makes Reforged worth playing over the original I already have?

 

[Ardenaso]

the unique models for each creeps I guess

 

[~El]

Not much, really. I find the best thing about Reforged to actually be the models themselves - ironically, not the way they look and feel in the game, but the overall quality is fairly good. The art direction is lacking a lot and that hurts the impression, unfortunately, though I legitimately think the outsorcing company did a good job there with what they were given.

 

[TriggerHappy]

The modding features including new natives, Lua scripting, and folder mode maps.

There are plenty of issues though.

 

[Drake53]

Ah yes let's pretend patch 1.31 is also Reforged so we can say more positive things about it.

 

[Rayman90]

One of sad things about reforged is that most of its good points are sorta unnoticed to most of average players.

Havent toyed with wc3 much yet, dont have a lot of time. But here is what I have noticed / heard so far:


Lua scripting is awesome. Actually, this alone made me return to wc3 mapping, lol. But ppl who dont make maps cant really care less about it. Ppl who use GUI probably dont care too.

New natives are really good. However many of things they do were more or less achievable without them. Not all ofc. But players maybe dont rly notice much changes in the maps. Except those some maps which actually now have legit custom UIs, instead of those clunky trackables UIs. But is it such a big deal tho ? Probably not. As far as I can tell, most of popular maps never used any custom UIs to begin with.

Maximum file size of maps for online play is big like never before, I think its 512 now, (correct ?) and this is amazing. Because people make so many super good models and skins these days. Not to mention models from "Ported models" section. However, not many popular maps has very big file size. And btw, so many ppl whined so much about having to download 30 gb of reforged data. So maybe they wont want to download too big map too, who knows, lol.

Reforged also doesnt have RAM usage limit AFAIK. While old patches had only, like , 1-2 gb I think. Most of maps never reached that limit tho, unless they had a lot of memory leaks. But its still amazing imo, that the limit is gone now.

I cant be sure, but havent they also removed that annoying "artifical delay" thing in online play in reforged ? if they have, its awesome.



Also, that new menu. It has performance issues. But looks like its very customizable . I mean, look at that custom ladder WC3champions. Was such thing even remotely possible to do in old menu ? I think it wasnt. Correct me if I am wrong. Now, in theory, its possible to make ladders, and automated game search / matchmaking for ANY custom map. Potential is huge !


Also, reforged graphics fit some custom maps rly rly well. I personally kind of like reforged graphics. But I can understand why so many ppl dont.

And I feel sorry for ppl who play melee mode only. Because for them in reforged literally nothing changed except some of the ingame menu features like ladder and etc are gone.



All in all, it feels like devs try to upgrade the game, make it run fine on modern hardware, make it future proof, etc. I definitely heard some ppl saying that reforged in classic mode runs better than older versions on their PCs.

Now WC3 has a future at least in theory, if they fix the issues, polish things , etc. Without reforged, wc3 likely would just stop working at some point. Or should I always somewhere have an old laptop with win XP just to play a 2002 game ? No thanks.

Ah yes let's pretend patch 1.31 is also Reforged so we can say more positive things about it.

I heard ppl reporting some weird bugs / desyncs about LUA in older patches. And some of new important natives actually got added only in reforged, especially UI related. Like getting childs of frames for example, or access to some of origin frames, etc.

Not to mention those patches are buggy overall, for example saving and loading game could break specific unit events etc. A lot of ppl reported FPS issues. And probably 99% of ppl who play online on old patches play on pre 1.29. Soo, ye, imo we can pretend that some of those good things mentioned in this thread happened in reforged. And those 1.3xx patches were made only as preparations to reforged anyway.

 

[Tasyen]

You only wanted to hear good. Here you go; others told quite much about modding stuff hence I skip that.

Reforged has built in GridHotkey Layout, also Quickcast and Changeable hotkeys for items. Sadly no UI/Editor for the hotkeys in the game, one has to change a file in user/documents/warcraft with hard understandable numbers. But the feature is there.
Occulusion actually works in reforged.
Reforged added a new Bar Mode in which only damaged Units show Life/Mana Bars.
Life Bars can be in playerColors.
Heroes show their current Level next to their Bar but only upto 99.
There is now a selectable less violance mode.
One can invite other people into your custom lobby.
Can show remaining cooldown in seconds over command/item Buttons.
Custom Game Lobbies show the map description before you entered it (when you have the map).
Can download the custom map used in a open lobby without entering the lobby.
One can reserve slots in a custom game lobby for friends (unsure if that was already a thing in the old version you refer to)

 

[Ardenaso]

There is now a selectable less violance mode.

I kinda wish it was customizable like I want gore and more blood but it kinda feels awkward to see corpses turn into skeletons in just 2 seconds

also it ruins the cutscenes with deaths like the dead archer before Sylvanas makes a speech to Arthas

 

[TriggerHappy]

Ah yes let's pretend patch 1.31 is also Reforged so we can say more positive things about it.

1.31 would never have happened without reforged. The new natives and such werent even suppossed to be released until 1.32 but one of the devs pushed to get them out early. so yes, they are part of the reforged feature set.

 

[tulee]

Despite claims that Reforged hurt the playerbase, in fact, as per Triggerhappy's website, the number of players has actually slowly been increasing.

WC3Maps

The main reason for that is probably Wc3 being on the Bnet launcher has made it far more accessible than before, when it was some random download on the blizzard classic games section.

Another is probably that there has been migration from private servers to Battlenet. If someday the private servers ever unite in 1 single place, then there might be an alternative to Battlenet (reforged), but until that happens, player migration to Bnet will probably continue because the private server playerbase is too spread out, which makes playing games there slightly more difficult.

Reforged could have been incredible, but even in its less-than-optimal state now, I think Wc3 has benefited from it in terms of more people playing.

 

[Evilhog]

Despite claims that Reforged hurt the playerbase, in fact, as per Triggerhappy's website, the number of players has actually slowly been increasing.

How exactly are we supposed to see this incline? Do you have any previous numbers for comparison?

 

[Barade]

• Integration in the Blizzard App is very useful. It makes the game more accessable and you can use your friendlist etc. to invite and chat to friends. You don't have to start the game and login via the old main menu into battle.net to patch the game. You are logged in into Battle.net by default (although it seems a bit broken). You can directly start the editor and get some news. You can choose multiple languages and switch them. In the past I had to download a different installer for the English version of Warcraft III.
  
• Playing games in Battle.net is easier. You can directly join games from the main menu (custom games and melee games). Hosting games is easier as well.
• You can switch the chat channel while hosting a game etc.
  
• The new graphics if you like them. At least the shadows etc. are useful. I think the resolution is better supported than in the classic game but maybe they did fix this already in the classic game.
• Everything that happened before Reforged to make Reforged possible: No port forwarding, new natives, resolution stuff etc.
• LUA scripting.
• JassHelper integration in the World Editor (no more custom World Editors are required).
• Search function in the object editor in all lists.
• Combo boxes in the import editor.
• FLAC-Sound files und FLAC support.
• The new voices if you like them (I prefer the old ones).
  
• The XP and hero level and player color bars.
• The cooldown numbers.
• Hotkeys are already highlighted by default not as part of the text in the ability name.
• Items are stacked?
• Remove of limitations (map size, objects etc. texture size/resolution) but I might be wrong and some of the limitations might have been removed before.
  
• I have the feeling that playing maps with classic graphics has a better performance than in classic (in singleplayer), so maybe they did improve the engine but it just still sucks for the HD graphics?

It is not too much but it would be a good starting point if they won't stop patching. The performance is my main issue with the game. The main menu and HD graphics are slow as fuck.

 

[Goffterdom]

How exactly are we supposed to see this incline? Do you have any previous numbers for comparison?

Regardless of the numbers which indeed show an increase in the playerbase, you can just guess and feel how it increased the playerbase.

I'm not saying Reforged is a good thing, but it's obvious as to why it would bring more people to the party.