Warcraft 3 reforged is a complete disaster

[Dabombinable]

If you're pissed, just stick with the CD version (luckily mine starts at 1.21b - no CD needed after install) and patch the shit out of it to 1.27b:

And don't use the online installer/updater, it breaks the CD install from my experience as Reforged is treated as an update even if you don't own it (the login requirement means your install will be locked out).

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

If you're pissed, just stick with the CD version (luckily mine starts at 1.21b - no CD needed after install) and patch the shit out of it to 1.27b:

And don't use the online installer/updater, it breaks the CD install from my experience as Reforged is treated as an update even if you don't own it (the login requirement means your install will be locked out).

Imagine buying a car in [checks notes] 2002 and then the carmaker releases an update that makes your car not work anymore... 

[Dabombinable]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Imagine buying a car in [checks notes] 2002 and then the carmaker releases an update that makes your car not work anymore... 

And that's where a substantial amount of the bad reviews come from.

[Giganthrax]

22 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

And that's where a substantial amount of the bad reviews come from.

That's implying the original game was being actively played by at least 10-15k people, since there are 23k user ratings on metacritic. 

 

I highly doubt this. In fact, I would be surprised if the original game had more than 1000 active players, and suspect it probably had a couple hundred at most. 

 

For comparison, other classics from the same time period such as Quake III Arena only show a few hundred daily players on steam charts. Even the legendary Counter Strike 1.6 only shows 5-6k daily players worldwide. 

 

There's simply no chance that the majority of those 23k metacritic user ratings were left by people who have been burned by the discontinuation of classic WC3. 

 

Also, classic StarCraft & Brood War are still available at the Blizz store, and were unaffected by the release of SC:Remastered. This further implies that WC3 was a mostly dead game which is why Blizz decided to pull the plug on it, whereas classic SC is still being played which is why they kept it. 

[RyomaSJibenG]

blizzard team is actually pretty fast at dealing with issues

there's a recent patch in SC2 somewhere after blizzcon i believe, which broke ramps and affect everything, (maps, campaign mission, etc).

 

all hell broke loose for awhile but in a week or so it is patched and solved just like that and people just went business as usual

 

Same thing for the balance team though they could use some more improvement due to a zerg caster spells currently is useless and nobody uses it. it was very very bad. Not sure when they going to address this again though

 

still. its hard being SC2 fan right now with the direction of blizzard. Even the last blizzcon, the recap doesn't even mention SC2 tourney at all. which is really really sad....

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, Jack_of_all_Trades said:

 

Did you by any  chance try to research or even google for like a minute before writing ?

 

Well unless there was some apocalyptic event in the game balance, records for which I cannot find, lets check out some actual statistics:

 

From a year and a half ago and from only one official server mind you:

 

https://warcraft3.info/articles/177/battlenet-statistics-part-1-how-many-active-players-are-there-in-2018

 

 

More recent data from about half a year ago on amount of games played on a single patch:

 

https://warcraft3.info/articles/278/battlenet-statistics-1304-winratesnull

 

What can I say, those 1000 people must've played day and night, oh gosh.

2010 it was still all the rage in highschool. During breaks (and a few boring classes) we'd have pretty much LAN parties with WCIII, same for Halo 1 and the BF1942 demo.

[Giganthrax]

5 hours ago, Jack_of_all_Trades said:

 

Did you by any  chance try to research or even google for like a minute before writing ?

 

Well unless there was some apocalyptic event in the game balance, records for which I cannot find, lets check out some actual statistics:

 

From a year and a half ago and from only one official server mind you:

 

https://warcraft3.info/articles/177/battlenet-statistics-part-1-how-many-active-players-are-there-in-2018

Whaaaaaaaat? Almost 40k different accounts playing in 2018? O.O

 

I'm genuinely surprised by this data, and am now even more surprised that Blizz decided to kill this game while leaving classic SC:BW around. 

[xAcid9]

10 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

Whaaaaaaaat? Almost 40k different accounts playing in 2018? O.O

 

I'm genuinely surprised by this data, and am now even more surprised that Blizz decided to kill this game while leaving classic SC:BW around. 

Doesn't surprise me tbh, original WC3 is still pretty popular game in internet cafe around SEA region. Even in my small town i can still see people playing it, from young kids to adults. I don't think they play ladder though, lel. 

[Giganthrax]

So Blizzard gave a response:

 

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/warcraft3/t/warcraft-iii-reforged-developer-update/18425

 

TLDR: they're going to fix the bugs in upcoming patches. Also, automated tournaments and RoC balance have apparently been out of the game since mid 2019, so people who complained about that were really just clueless.

 

As for this part:

Quote

Related to that, as we talked about last year at BlizzCon, we did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game. We went a little deeper into the thought process behind that at the show, but the main takeaway is that the campaigns tell one of the classic stories in Warcraft history, and we want to preserve the true spirit of Warcraft III and allow players to relive these unforgettable moments as they were (albeit rebuilt with new animations and the higher fidelity art).

This may or may not be an excuse not to do more work on the cutscenes, since they did in fact modernize quite a few cutscenes (for example, Arthas killing Malganis). 

 

People in the comments are complaining that the game is a reskin, which just goes on to show that quite a few players had unrealistic expectations of getting WarCraft 4, and not exactly the same type of remaster that classic Brood War got (which is what was promised from the start). 

[TechyBen]

9 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Good - I find it incredibly annoying when people complain about bugs but don't bother to inform the devs about said bugs.

 

If they've been reported, I would trust that fixes are on the way. They released a zero day patch on the 28th along with the release of the game. They'll almost certainly release a new patch within a few days or a week.

 

To anyone else who has encountered bugs: Ensure you've reported them! Devs can't fix what they don't know is broken.

"But don't bother to inform devs" , when said bugs are on youtube, twitter, reddit, and acknowledged by the devs.. but k, whatever

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, TechyBen said:

"But don't bother to inform devs" , when said bugs are on youtube, twitter, reddit, and acknowledged by the devs.. but k, whatever

If you experienced bugs but didn’t personally report them, you’re exasperating the problem. 
 

A dev seeing a YouTube video complaining of the bug is one thing. Them seeing the same video plus 3000 bug reports is much more effective. 
 

If you’ve informed the devs, then there’s nothing to worry about here. 

[WereCatf]

19 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

The entire hate storm surrounding Reforged is shocking to me. 

 

The game is literally the same type of remaster as StarCraft: Remastered, ie. new graphics and game updated for newer systems, and that's it. It's precisely what was advertised from the start.

Does the Starcraft-remaster include the same kind of EULA as WC3:R? I mean, WC3:R contains language whereby Blizzard gains all rights to any content you make for the game's custom-modes, including sounds, graphics and gameplay-elements, and they can from there on use it all however they like and won't even need to give you any credit for any of it. Personally, I find such terms exceedingly distasteful and disrespectful. (though, I don't have a personal cow invested in this matter as I don't play WC3)

[Giganthrax]

6 hours ago, WereCatf said:

Does the Starcraft-remaster include the same kind of EULA as WC3:R? I mean, WC3:R contains language whereby Blizzard gains all rights to any content you make for the game's custom-modes, including sounds, graphics and gameplay-elements, and they can from there on use it all however they like and won't even need to give you any credit for any of it. Personally, I find such terms exceedingly distasteful and disrespectful. (though, I don't have a personal cow invested in this matter as I don't play WC3)

Nah, not really. The map editor is a part of the game, and Blizz already owns the game and everything within it. If you really had full legal rights to the maps and mods you made, you'd be allowed to sell them for real money, but I don't think that's legal. 

[ARikozuM]

2 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

Nah, not really. The map editor is a part of the game, and Blizz already owns the game and everything within it. If you really had full legal rights to the maps and mods you made, you'd be allowed to sell them for real money, but I don't think that's legal. 

That actually is legal to do. You can't sell parts of the game, but the developer/publisher cannot infringe on your own creative work [regardless of what the EULA would have you believe]. 

[Giganthrax]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

That actually is legal to do. You can't sell parts of the game, but the developer/publisher cannot infringe on your own creative work [regardless of what the EULA would have you believe]. 

You can make a map in WC3/SC2, put it in an online store, and sell it for cash on a 3rd party website?

 

I know you can sell SC2 maps on an in-game market similar to Bethesda Creation Club, but that's approved of and ran by Blizzard and they obviously take their cut from it. 

[ARikozuM]

39 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

You can make a map in WC3/SC2, put it in an online store, and sell it for cash on a 3rd party website?

Yes. It obviously becomes more difficult finding or informing people of a third-party website, but it is possible. Most people don't sell their maps/mods though and only ask for a kind donation. 

39 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

I know you can sell SC2 maps on an in-game market similar to Bethesda Creation Club, but that's approved of and ran by [Bethesda] and they obviously take their cut from it. 

And the cut is far too high (last I checked it was 12% for Fallout) for the amount of work some people put into the mods, but the modders seem content so the market seems to say that 12% is a good deal. 

[Thaldor]

9 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

You can make a map in WC3/SC2, put it in an online store, and sell it for cash on a 3rd party website?

 

I know you can sell SC2 maps on an in-game market similar to Bethesda Creation Club, but that's approved of and ran by Blizzard and they obviously take their cut from it. 

Legally, yes just like you can take a picture with Canon camera, edit it with Photoshop and put it out for sale and Canon or Adobe have zero legal right to ask royalties or anything else than their license fee from the sales of that image.

 

With WC3:R things get interesting I would really like to see someone to mod the hell out of WC3:R, put that up for sale and completely use Blizzards EULA as toiletpaper here in EU where EULAs generally are legally toiletpaper with no hold in courts, especially if they include something that is legally impossible, like WC3:Rs EULA has. By EU directives and so in almost every EU country you as a creator of copyrightable material have "creator rights" over your creation and you cannot transfer, sell or give away those rights even if you wanted, you can ignore them but then it's your loss. Generally these untransferable rights are the moral rights (Blizzard must credit you for your map, no matter what kind of license they make you give to them and they cannot get around this by only making some editing to the map and then release it as theirs) so as WC3:Rs EULA includes a part where you wave goodbye to these rights as you "give Blizzard complete license with all of your rights over mod/map without any compensation", well that's borderline illegal and usually the whole agreement is toiletpaper after that, especially when we talk about agreement between a business and a consumer.

[RejZoR]

@dalekphalm

Just to chime in on how remasters should be done. I've just entered Xen in Black Mesa and W O W. Granted, graphics in 1998 were pretty basic and Xen didn't look like much and was just weird and annoying. But now it's almost the most beautiful part of the whole game. Devs have really gone wild with imagination. They made parts I don't even remember ever seeing in Xen, like whole mobile dome labs, gorgeous dream like paradise scenes and they backed it all up with skin crawling music. And the Jump assist thingie feels much more controllable and just normal, where in original it just felt weird. Played it for a while and it's really cool. It just feels nothing like old Xen we used to know. And there are few more really cool things I don't want to spoil for you. You have to try it.

 

Now I wish these guys would also do a remaster of Opposing Force. I loved that game too and I an only imagine how they'd remaster and reimagine it. Especially that intro scene in the VTOL's as you're flying towards Black Mesa Complex and before you regain control. Man, I'd gladly pay for that like I have for Black Mesa.

 

This might sound off topic since it's about Warcraft 3 Remaster, but really isn't. Remasters aren't just about "we'll toss in some better models and textures and call it a day". That might be called "HD Remaster" or "HD Edition". Black Mesa is the perfect definition of what "remastered" game means. When you update all the characters, enemies, weapons, modify sounds for them, literally entirely reconstruct whole levels to a point they feel familiar, but at the same time so different it feels like you're playing another game and not just stopping there, they even gone few steps further and added few physics based puzzles here and there that didn't exist in original game. That's what Reforged should've been. Base game taken as foundation and inspiration and then rebuild everything from scratch. When game feels fresh, but familiar at the same time, that's when you succeeded. Black Mesa does, Reforged feels more like an insult to everyone's intelligence. Rushing the shit half baked to earn some quick bucks. It's why Black Mesa will be remembered in history as one of the best remasters and WC3 Reforged will be remembered as a very bad joke.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

@dalekphalm

Just to chime in on how remasters should be done. I've just entered Xen in Black Mesa and W O W. Granted, graphics in 1998 were pretty basic and Xen didn't look like much and was just weird and annoying. But now it's almost the most beautiful part of the whole game. Devs have really gone wild with imagination. They made parts I don't even remember ever seeing in Xen, like whole mobile dome labs, gorgeous dream like paradise scenes and they backed it all up with skin crawling music. And the Jump assist thingie feels much more controllable and just normal, where in original it just felt weird. Played it for a while and it's really cool. It just feels nothing like old Xen we used to know. And there are few more really cool things I don't want to spoil for you. You have to try it.

That sounds awesome. My work laptop should be able to handle Black Mesa... I'll have to redownload it.

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Now I wish these guys would also do a remaster of Opposing Force. I loved that game too and I an only imagine how they'd remaster and reimagine it. Especially that intro scene in the VTOL's as you're flying towards Black Mesa Complex and before you regain control. Man, I'd gladly pay for that like I have for Black Mesa.

Oh hell yes. I love Opposing Force.

 

Actually what I love most about HL1 + the expansions (Opposing Force and Blue Shift), is how well the devs (because I believe it was a different dev team for each game/expansion) so seamlessly wove the 3 of them together.

 

Example: You're in the Tram in HL1 at the beginning, and you see Barney slamming on the broken door at some train stop you pass because he's locked out. And then in Blue Force, you're Barney in that exact situation.

 

I'd love a Black Mesa style remaster of both OF and BS.

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

This might sound off topic since it's about Warcraft 3 Remaster, but really isn't. Remasters aren't just about "we'll toss in some better models and textures and call it a day". That might be called "HD Remaster" or "HD Edition". Black Mesa is the perfect definition of what "remastered" game means. When you update all the characters, enemies, weapons, modify sounds for them, literally entirely reconstruct whole levels to a point they feel familiar, but at the same time so different it feels like you're playing another game and not just stopping there, they even gone few steps further and added few physics based puzzles here and there that didn't exist in original game.

There are definitely different ways to do it - and Black Mesa is sort of the pinacle of how an HD Remake can be done. Because it really is a remake rather than a Remaster.

 

The difference between say, a 4K Remaster of the original Star Wars trilogy (A "HD Remaster", or the Special Editions), and 1951's The Thing from Another World vs 198'2 The Thing (A "HD Remake").

 

Both serve their purposes. But their purposes are different.

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

That's what Reforged should've been. Base game taken as foundation and inspiration and then rebuild everything from scratch. When game feels fresh, but familiar at the same time, that's when you succeeded. Black Mesa does, Reforged feels more like an insult to everyone's intelligence. Rushing the shit half baked to earn some quick bucks. It's why Black Mesa will be remembered in history as one of the best remasters and WC3 Reforged will be remembered as a very bad joke.

I don't inherently have a problem with WC3 Reforged, and what they decided to do. A lot of fans didn't want the Black Mesa treatment (even if it would have been the better game). A lot of them literally just wanted updated graphics and pretty much nothing else changed.

[hobobobo]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

A lot of them literally just wanted updated graphics and pretty much nothing else changed.

Thats largerly because changing anything else leads to a high chance of breaking existing custom maps. WC3 ladder is cool and stuff but custom games is where its at. Dota 2 customs are not really close, feel weird, esp the feature complete ports. Funny custom map inception

[SpaceGhostC2C]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

There are definitely different ways to do it - and Black Mesa is sort of the pinacle of how an HD Remake can be done. Because it really is a remake rather than a Remaster.

 

The difference between say, a 4K Remaster of the original Star Wars trilogy (A "HD Remaster", or the Special Editions), and 1951's The Thing from Another World vs 198'2 The Thing (A "HD Remake").

 

You saved me a post

 

But now I made it anyway

 

So to make it worth it: I'll add a videogame example: "X-COM: Enemy Unknown" would be a remake, "The Secret of Monkey Island" CD version, and later HD version, would be remasters, and "Civilization IV: Colonization" would be that relative we no longer talk about at reunions

[dalekphalm]

43 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

Thats largerly because changing anything else leads to a high chance of breaking existing custom maps. WC3 ladder is cool and stuff but custom games is where its at. Dota 2 customs are not really close, feel weird, esp the feature complete ports. Funny custom map inception

Perhaps - but if we're doing a full Remake, I wouldn't ever assume custom games/maps would still work on the new version.

 

Hell, sometimes custom games/maps/mods break during a simple version update.

 

Regardless, the fans wanted a Remaster, not a Remake. Bugs aside, that's what they got.

 

I'd assume most fans would rather just get a Warcraft 4 instead of a full blown remake. If you're gonna remake a game in the Warcraft universe, why not do Warcraft 1?

[Sauron]

On 2/3/2020 at 7:17 PM, Giganthrax said:

The game is literally the same type of remaster as StarCraft: Remastered, ie. new graphics and game updated for newer systems, and that's it. It's precisely what was advertised from the start.

1) the new graphics have been significantly toned down from the trailers and 2) unlike sc they completely gimped online functionality and they changed the EULA to make any user mods their property. Even if it weren't for the dozens of missing features (that were present in the original) that I didn't mention, these two things alone would be enough to call it awful.

23 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

the developer/publisher cannot infringe on your own creative work [regardless of what the EULA would have you believe]. 

Depends on the country, but either way if you want to contest that you have to sue AB, which is not something most people have the money and time for.

[Andreas Lilja]

On 2/5/2020 at 2:57 PM, dalekphalm said:

I'd assume most fans would rather just get a Warcraft 4 instead of a full blown remake. If you're gonna remake a game in the Warcraft universe, why not do Warcraft 1?

Pretty much nothing salvageable from the original version if that were the case. Remakes like AoE 2 had most of the artistical and gameplay direction to work with.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Andreas Lilja said:

Pretty much nothing salvageable from the original version if that were the case. Remakes like AoE 2 had most of the artistical and gameplay direction to work with.

With an actual remake, you don't need to "salvage" (not entirely sure what you mean there - assets?) anything from the original version. You redo everything. New game engine, new code, new 3D models, new textures, new graphics, new voice acting, new cinematics - A remake basically just retells the original story in a new game (often with tweaks and/or changes to the story as makes sense). The gameplay often is similar (but updated) or inspired by the original gameplay.

 

A remaster takes the original game and updates things while still making it the same game.