Warcraft 3: Reforged Review

Warcraft 3 was originally released on PC back in 2002 a real-time strategy game known as Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos followed by Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne the year after. This was the franchise that actually got me hooked to the Warcraft universe and the reason I jumped into the MMO Warcraft for many years. I was bouncing on the ceiling when I saw that Blizzard was going to remake the game at Blizzcon 2018, even showed off some new cinematic intros, new UI and much more.

Welcome to what could be the best RTS game ever, and just to get you enticed here in the cinematic trailer

Now I am not going to hide the fact that Warcraft 3 Reforged has been hit by anger and plenty of complaints from fans of the franchise and most likely a load of trolls, review bombing the game on Metacritic, is it deserved? Not Deserved? Based on my current state of affairs with the game, some of it is.

I loaded up the game on its launch days 31st of January 2020, I jumped in and was instantly transported back to when I first played the franchise, with a very nice cinematic. Then a crash, hoping this was not going to be the start of things to come, I reloaded and this time I got through to the actual game and I started playing. This game is in NO WAY trash like many would want you to think, yes, Blizzard promised a load and have failed to deliver on a number of features, but the core game is all here.

If you are new to the series and want to dabble into this amazing RTS what can you expect? Well as with all games in this genre you will be collecting resources, building up your bases, training units and gaining new skills for your heroes unit. Hero units are all from the Warcraft lore, from the likes of Thrall, Arthas, Sylvanas and many more. The game will set you a simple goal, WIN; this will be either against AI, a set of tasks or if you dabble in Multi-Player destroy the opposing team/s.

All maps are blanketed in the shadow of war and will become viewable as your characters explore the map. Everything apart in-game cut scenes are displayed from a classical top-down perspective, with a teeny tiny angle to make the battlefield more viable, with the ability to zoom in and out if needed.

For the majority of the game, you will be creating settlements, training up troops, and gaining resources from gold, lumber, and food. Lumbar and Gold will be used to create buildings and Troops, while food if you do not have enough, can hinder the maximum number of units you can have with you at any one time.

Everything is controlled by a FIXED UI, this is the first item that should or was going to be changed by Blizzard, but for some reason, it was not and was reverted back to the original, possibly due to player feedback during one of the games testing phase.

The UI shows the Heroes Avatar or unit Avatar, all of which have been upgraded from their original character models. The UI shows your inventory, actions, special hero abilities, health, mana, a mini-map which is blanketed in shadow and will become viewable as your characters explore the map and a few other icons, see image below for a full view.

You will notice a small top bar; this display displays the current time of day, resources currently owned and your current upkeep level. In the top left corner, you have quick access to your heroes, and if you have troops scratching the butts and doing nothing they will show on the bottom left of the screen.

The game’s story follows some core characters Thrall as he leads is people to the world of Kalimdor to escape human captivity, Arthas before and after he becomes the Lich King and Tyrande Whisperwind who must deal with the incursion of the orcs and humans on their sacred land. You then have Maiev Shadowsong who is after the fugitive Illidan, Sylvanas Windrunner who is helping Arthas to purge the kingdom of the alliance. Rexxar who must rebuild the orc kingdom and Kael’thas. The story for both The Frozen Throne and Reign of Chaos is exceptional; it is what I call the Hey Day of Blizzard Entertainment.

Now let us talk about the most controversial elements, All the models have been improved as well as the environments and they do look good to me. The shadows that some have said are missing even me, but I found out this was my fault or a bug because after rechecking after a few reboots, the option was in the menu. Blizzard did promise new in-game cinematic intros, this was dropped and instead, we have been treated to new in-game cut scenes using in-game models. This in a way preserves how the game transitioned from playing the game to enjoying the story through in-game cutscenes.  Is this is a good thing? Or a bad thing? for some fans, Blizzard should have kept to their promise and created those new amazing cinematic visuals, to others, having these new cut scenes with improved models just keeps the game, like it was, and I think it flows better.

The voice acting seems to be improved upon, but that could just be me, but voice dialogue does seem to come across with more depth.

The worse thing about Warcraft 3: Reforged right now is all the bugs, which include for me, troops not doing anything even when commanded, chapters not loading, complete silence when you no something is going on during a cut scene, sometimes during a campaign. Missing hero icons and other avatars on UI, General Lip Syncing, reskins disappearing, connection to custom games now working, massive drops in FPS for no real reason, I could go on but I think this is enough. The worse thing for me is general crashes, where the game would just pause and do nothing forcing me to re-launch the game over and over and over.

I do not know what has happened between all the betas and development, but to get to a point where the game is somewhat unplayable at times is just not right and this is just not what I expect from a major development studio like Blizzard.

This game should have been delayed, fixed, with an announcement by Blizzard explaining why the delay and what players should expect from the game when it finally gets its release.

If you are able to play the game and are willing to ignore what Blizzard said during Blizzcon, then you should enjoy this game. If you are a map creator please understand that under the new terms and conditions Blizzard owns all work created. Think of it like Nintendo, if you use there IP they will take you to court as they own their IP not you, this is now the same for Warcraft 3. Blizzard owns the IP this means they own all content, in turn, this means they can take what they want and do what they want with anything you create.

I am hoping they fix this game for me, so I can truly enjoy the game from start to finish because in all honesty, I love Warcraft 3 and I just want to play this game with all the new models.

Update (06.02.2020) Latest Patch – I have been able to play the game without any crashes as of yet, but some of the bugs are still present. I really enjoy Warcraft 3 and I hope they fix all the other bugs in the game. 

Warcraft 3: Reforged is available on PC through BattleNet, click here to purchase now.

Want to know even more, still a bit unsure, want to ignore all the news surrounding the launch of the game head here.

Due to all the controversy around this game, it is best to try the game for yourself, you still might like it

As with any PC title, some players might find bugs and might experience crashes, this does not mean its the game, it could be your PC setup, or if there is a wide amount of users that have issues, then it could be the game or even both.

My score is based on the final version of the game I have played up to the 05.02.2020 this includes the beta which offered multi-player, as and when my bugs get fixed I will come back to this review and add an update to the top and reflect this update in the score.

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