What a debacle!

Blizzard stands by the quality of our products and our services. Normally we set limits for refund availability on a game, based on time since purchase and whether it has been used. However we want to give players the option of a refund if they feel that Warcraft III: Reforged does not provide the experience they wanted. So, we’ve decided to allow refunds upon request for the time being. You may request a refund here on our Support Site.

I haven't tried to play Reforged yet, but I was tempted to go back to the well just because I liked WCIII so much. I don't play RTS' online so a lot of the stuff that they clipped out of Reforged wouldn't matter super much to me, but the word of mouth turned me off of giving it a whirl. Sounds like Blizzard might just be writing it off, but it's at least nice of them to offer refunds for people who thought it didn't live up to the expectations.

That's cool, but I heard that it also messed up the original game as well so I'm not sure people can even go back and play the original how it was when they bought it?

@oursin_360: Yeah that's true. Unless you download it from the original CD and stay offline, it will automatically download the new 30 GB client that houses both versions of the game (with a toggle in the menu to switch between the new assets & the old assets). The old battle net servers that came with the clan support and the automated tournaments and the profile pages and what not are no longer there. Everything online is consolidated to this new client. Let's hope the updates restore the functionality over time. Seeing that they don't mention the profiles at all is quite worrying though. Being able to see how well you performed at the different races was like half the fun of playing War3 online.

“We did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game,” Blizzard said. “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 was pretty funny to read though. I watched the quicklook and they changed the Frostmourne scene to fit the WOW story. No longer is Muradin getting smacked by the ice shard as a sacrifice for Arthas to wield this evil weapon. Instead, some glowy particles are sprayed on him and he falls down. It makes for a much less dramatic scene. And completely unnecessary because no one would bat an eye if he didn't die from the shard. This is a magical world where heroes revive at altars, drink invulnerability potions and have a bunch of healing potions & spells.

It also seems like they messed with the visual language of the war3 campaign from what i saw of that cutscene. Whenever a hero interacts with a magical artifact in war3, he holds his weapon high and this magical glisten effect appears to show that he's actively using this magical artifact. That is gone in the Frostmourne cutscene and it just looks like Arthas is standing around speaking to the environment.

The thing for me is, if this was just them releasing a sub-par remaster it wouldn't be such a big deal. It would still suck, but it would be a mundane sort of terrible that most people would eventually move on from.

Nostalgia is one of the few things Activision-Blizzard still has to cling on to (look at the jump in WoW subs after Classic) and they somehow found a way to mess with that in spectacular fashion here. Not only did they release a poor remaster that they are continuing to falsely advertise, but they messed with the fond memories their fans may have had by intentionally and irreversibly changing the original Warcraft 3.

Like, it's mind blowing to me how badly this has been handled, and I'm not even a huge Warcraft fan. I can see how some of this stuff makes sense on paper strictly in a corporate environment, but holy heck should it not have gone down this way.

Warcraft III's a classic game, so seeing this thing be a disappointment is something I never expected.

I remember a few years ago,there was a corporate mandate for Blizzard to release more stuff more often. Which seemed like a great concept but I guess Blizzard became who they were by slowly refining their stuff to a polished sheen.

Ah well, at least GoG has Warcraft 2.

@csl316: Is that mandate to release games more often a thing? Because, yeah, since Diablo 3, their release schedule has been real weird. It's:

• Diablo III (2012)
• Hearthstone (2014, this is well made but can't possibly be considered a big project internally, it's largely a mobile game and must have a pretty modest art team)
• Heroes of the Storm (2015, this is well made but surely they've been reducing the team size as it continues to not draw in enough players to make much money)
• Overwatch (2016)
• No major release (2017-2019)

I'm leaving out WoW expansions, the 2 Starcraft II expansions, and the Diablo 3 expansion, but maybe they deserve some mention.

It feels like in recent years, Blizzard is kinda bogged down with ongoing support of WoW, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, and the only thing they've really been doing post-Overwatch is pooping out HD-ifications of Stacraft 1, Warcraft 3, and then the nostalgia victory lap of WoW Classic. It's honestly been kind of a weird 3 years for the company; they really haven't offered any major release to dazzle people with since Overwatch. This feels like when a musician doesn't feel like making new albums for a record label, so they just release a couple Greatest Hits albums so they can finish out the contract and go do something else.

I do not think it fair to discount expansions of existing games, as it likely ties up a lot of personnel. The Starcraft 2 expansions may have had a lot of old assets going into them, but there was still a lot of both new stuff, and old stuff that had to change.

Was also thinking that this whole Warcraft III-debacle and Diablo: Immortals sounded like corporate decisions, instead of creative ones. How do we increase revenue? How do we do that while not spending too much money?

It increasingly sounds like the Warcraft III team had a vision, but budget and time constraints put dampers and limits on a lot of it.

@rahf: Even if I count expansions, the only things Blizzard has released since Overwatch are:

• WoW: Legion (2016)
• Starcraft: Remastered (2017)
• WoW: Battle for Azeroth (2018)
• WoW: Classic (2019)
• Warcraft III: Reforged (2020)
• 3 Hearthstone expansions a year (Every year)

They've been evenly spacing them out, but this feels like the definition of kinda treading water for multiple fiscal years. The only drought worse than this was when Blizzard pretty much only released WoW-related things from 2004-2009 (creative drought; monetarily this was probably an incredibly good time period for the company).

But yes, overall I agree that the Starcraft and Warcraft III remasters are a way for them to get some easy nostalgia revenue while requiring minimal effort from the devs. No idea what the development budget is like for Diablo Immortal, but yeah, I'm sure Blizzard would like another mobile game revenue stream as Hearthstone gradually loses momentum. Not really seeing any big creative push from Blizzard post-Overwatch 1, so hopefully Overwatch II's "campaign" thing is good, and hopefully Diablo 4 is good.