Hard to get more cult than Warcraft III! The game is a monument to real-time strategy, it laid the storyboard foundations of World of Warcraft (which itself became a monument among MMORPGs), and it downright spawned a genre in its own right, in the form of the MOBA! Under these conditions, the announcement of a remaster a little over a year ago at Blizzcon 2018 generated real enthusiasm from fans. Since then, Blizzard's communication on this project has been much more discreet, and we will see that this was not necessarily a good sign. But before addressing the angry subjects, it is worth paying tribute to what made the strength of Warcraft III in the past, and which today allows Warcraft III Reforged not to have its head completely under water. . According to the established expression, the third installment of Warcraft was the episode of maturity for the series. By integrating gameplay elements from role-playing games into the usual structure of strategy games, Blizzard has opened the genre up to a wider audience without ever distorting it.
In addition to the usual basic units, the game offers us different heroes capable of leveling up, triggering special skills, and carrying specific objects in a mini-inventory. While strolling through the maps of the main campaign, you can even come across small side quests (find a lost character, kill this or that creature, etc.) and receive a nice reward once the mission has been accomplished. All this is added to the usual concepts of RTS (creation of buildings, training of units, formation of groups…) without replacing or trampling them. The scenario is far from being anecdotal in the lore of Warcraft, since it follows the journey of Prince Arthas and the advent of the Lich King. Replaying Warcraft III eighteen years later also gives us the pleasure of finding characters who have become even more important and iconic since the release of World of Warcraft, such as Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner or Kel'Thuzad.
ZOG ZOG OR NOT GLOP NOT GLOP?
In short, you will have understood it: replaying Warcraft III in 2020 remains pleasant, the gameplay and the single-player campaign not having suffered too much from the passage of time. For the graphics it obviously could not be the same, and a good facelift was needed. And this is where the game begins to blow hot and cold (before downright freezing our bones...). For example, you can now play in very high resolutions and in a large format, which is naturally a good thing. The most drastic and positive graphic change concerns the 3D models of the units, which go from a low number of more or less recognizable polygons to a very detailed representation of the characters, which are therefore much easier to identify. We can all the same note here and there some problems of proportions, like this passage of the Stratholme massacre where Prince Arthas seems almost as big as the contaminated houses that he must purify. And the combat animations sometimes seem less varied than those of 2002. In a more diffuse way, we feel a lack of homogeneity in the artistic direction and, unlike the characters, the sets do not necessarily seem more beautiful than those of the original game. And now hang on because we're going to start rubbing the knife in the wound. First of all, the game suffers from performance problems even in its menus! For example, you feel latency when you click on certain icons. Unnecessarily confusing, these menus also offer us to "leave the campaign" or "continue" after each mission, which leads in both cases to the same screen... from which we can again leave the game or continue it.
A little tour in the options also allowed us to see that it was impossible to change the controls of the camera (just to be able to move it in ZQSD rather than with the old arrow keys.). The launch of the game is done on a black screen punctuated by a poor abandoned cursor, then continues on a small interface devoid of any sign of life and which disappears once the connection to the servers has been made. A simple animation or an informative message would not have been too much specifying what is happening in the background would not have been too much. Do you think we nitpick? Wait, it's not over. For several hours we were treated to a bug that completely prevented us from enjoying the slightest bit of the single-player campaign. Each mission launch immediately resulted in a defeat screen, even before we could see anything displayed. The lack of finish is obvious. We can also pester the user interface, which was already one of the few weak points of the original game. It has hardly been revised and therefore seems even more outdated at the present time. Most frustrating about it? On the gameplay videos presented at Blizzcon 2018, a much more discreet, modern and elegant interface was present!
BLIZZCON'S BROKEN PROMISES
While Blizzcon 2018 played a major role in the number of Warcraft III Reforged pre-orders, the real-fake interface wasn't the only broken promise. We can even speak of false advertising with regard to cutscenes. Indeed, Blizzard promised us four hours of reworked cinematics and gave in particular as an example the introduction of the sixth mission of the human campaign. We could observe dynamic camera movements, close-up shots and reverse shots and animations dedicated to this sequence. The comparison with the scene to which we are entitled in the end frankly hurts the derche, since we must finally be satisfied with an “RTS” camera placed very high and characters who waddle awkwardly in order to simulate some movements. So forget about any cinematic aspect and any specific animation for the in-game cutscenes. As for the pre-rendered scenes, they are mostly identical to those of 2002. Those who hoped that they were all redone in the style of the intro sequence will be at their expense.
We can also regret the absence of a command to switch in real time between the Reforged version and the classic version, a possibility which had not yet been forgotten in StarCraft Remastered. Here, to find the graphics of yesteryear, it is imperative to leave the current game and go through the main menu. And seemingly nothing, this command actually hides additional bad news! Indeed, owners of the classic version of Warcraft III are forced to download 30 GB of data and now have no choice but to go through the menus and the "Reforged" network infrastructure. The button to activate the improved graphics is then grayed out for them. Problem: Warcraft III Reforged underperforms its predecessor in many ways and no longer provides access to certain custom campaigns, player profiles, clans, competitive rankings and a few other features. Rotten icing on the cake: a new clause in the terms of service that nobody reads indicates that the game modes created by the players automatically belong to Blizzard (you never know that a new DOTA is born…) . In short, newcomers and old players: everyone is punished through this Warcraft III Reforged! Given the extent of the scandal (the game still has the luxury of being the lowest rated of all time by Metacritic users...), it's a safe bet that Blizzard will apologize for here shortly and provide some life-saving patches. As our friend the orc peon would say: "work, more work...".
