Warcraft III: Reforged Developer Update

[Azmoden]

"We're sorry you were dumb enough to believe you were getting the product we were (and still are) advertising on our website."

Signed, Blizzard and their ass-licking fanboys.

[Beefhammer]

Which doesn't change the fact that outrage actually do sway companies... which is my point. You can't be angry and mad due to delays and then complain they should delay games regardless. Doesn't work like that.

If people were more supporting towards delays I'm sure we would get more delays.
Or on the other side it would make it a lot more clear if a company rush something out due to greed since it's not because of player demands...

Either way, both outcomes are better than what we currently have.

There is also the TL3 situation. Originally Torchlight Frontiers, they had this shitty horizontal progression system. Where you leveled the zone and could only equip items of that level or below from that zone. It was awful. People hated it. However, the feedback was mostly calm, reasoned, and not vitriolic and dressed up in feels. The decided to delay the game to remove the horizontal progression system, add another act and make the game play like a traditional ARPG.

Contrast that to the entitled Blizzard fan that makes threats, uses nothing but vitriol and feels, and people wonder why Blizzard isn't so receptive to make changes. Then they get massive amounts of feedback regarding the changes other than the new graphics and decide not to go in that direction and people shit all over that. Yes the game launched in a bad state. But Blizzard is in a no win situation. Keep their vision, and piss off tons, listen to the community and make changes asked for and piss off tons. It really surprises me they still engage with the community.

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You may want to go back and rewatch the 2018 Blizzcon video of Stratholme. It's exactly the same lore and dialogue as the original cutscene, and the reforged cutscene. The difference being, HOW that lore and dialogue was presented at Blizzcon 2018 vs how it's presented now.

Blizzard deliberately and willfully misled their customers with false advertisement. There is no justification to defend them on this point.

Presenting something still in development and making changes is ot false advertisement. False advertising would be if the store page still claims new lore, new cutscenes and all the changes that were reverted from 2018. Your point is akin to calling auto show concept car designs false advertising if the final product doesn't look the same

[Queen of Hamsters]

Man am I happy I didn't bother purchasing this title.

Wonder when they'll learn to stop putting their foot in their mouth.

[Rusken]

Every time they say "Wanted it to stay closer to the original" or some variation in regards to cutscenes, models, voice lines or anything can pretty much just be translated to "We didn't want to spend the money/put the effort in to it."

[Tanduita]

There is also the TL3 situation. Originally Torchlight Frontiers, they had this shitty horizontal progression system. Where you leveled the zone and could only equip items of that level or below from that zone. It was awful. People hated it. However, the feedback was mostly calm, reasoned, and not vitriolic and dressed up in feels. The decided to delay the game to remove the horizontal progression system, add another act and make the game play like a traditional ARPG.

Contrast that to the entitled Blizzard fan that makes threats, uses nothing but vitriol and feels, and people wonder why Blizzard isn't so receptive to make changes. Then they get massive amounts of feedback regarding the changes other than the new graphics and decide not to go in that direction and people shit all over that. Yes the game launched in a bad state. But Blizzard is in a no win situation. Keep their vision, and piss off tons, listen to the community and make changes asked for and piss off tons. It really surprises me they still engage with the community.

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Presenting something still in development and making changes is ot false advertisement. False advertising would be if the store page still claims new lore, new cutscenes and all the changes that were reverted from 2018. Your point is akin to calling auto show concept car designs false advertising if the final product doesn't look the same

in fact, they DO show things on their homepage that are NOT in the game, so it IS false advertising

@Flurryfang: the year is 2020 and we are still forced to edit the keys in a textfile this fact alone says everything that was necessary

[Flurryfang]

I think players also have some responsibility and not start frothing at their mouths when delays are announced... it's a big reason why and production costs ofc that makes early releases.

It's funny though how CDPR fans are mostly ok with delays, but other companies who delays it's a rampage.
I guess even communities fall into the perceived image of the company AND community.

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To be fair, that's just false... do I think they will manage to get there? Doubt it... If they work on updated cinematics, make animations not be locked at certain framerates and make updates in general performance it could become the reforged most of us wanted.

I am however skeptical in that framerates on animations might be due to backwards compatibility and cross play with original wc3 so no idea if it can be fixed tbh.

I just believe that the design and animation of the models in Reforged are completely wrong. Unless they do a redo of the core aspect of the design, its still a disappointment and will have a hard time winning over the old, expressive and fluent models of old WC3.

The game is also not adding anything to the game really. What Quality of Life improvements have been added, where are the improvements to the areas lacking from the original game and what reason is there to justify the buy?

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Which doesn't change the fact that outrage actually do sway companies... which is my point. You can't be angry and mad due to delays and then complain they should delay games regardless. Doesn't work like that.

If people were more supporting towards delays I'm sure we would get more delays.
Or on the other side it would make it a lot more clear if a company rush something out due to greed since it's not because of player demands...

Either way, both outcomes are better than what we currently have.

Maybe i haven't been completly observant about it, but what games have received backlash from delaying the game? From what i hear, when a game is delayed for polish, most buyers seem pretty okay with it. Aslong as the reasoning is good, i haven't really seen any outrage when delays are announced.

[Beefhammer]

in fact, they DO show things on their homepage that are NOT in the game, so it IS false advertising

Like what? And that would be false advertising. Not a game in development with content subject to change Blizzcon showing that changed over a year later to a massive outcry of negative feedback.

[vashe9]

What's the point of doing a "reforge" if it's to "be close to the original"... It's not like Classic Wow where the original game (vanilla) was not legally playable. I didn't bother with that game because I already got an infinite backlog but I still don't understand why PEOPLE were mad when they announced story changes... They say they "listened" to the hardcore fanboys but in reality it was just a budget/time problem... Remasters that claim to be more than just upgraded resolution to 1080p/4k (and are sold 30€) should bring more to the table...

[Belize]

Like what? And that would be false advertising. Not a game in development with content subject to change Blizzcon showing that changed over a year later to a massive outcry of negative feedback.

They're still using the old changed cutscene to advertise the game though. On the W3:R website.

If it's not in the game, take it off the website.

[Milfshaked]

Like what? And that would be false advertising. Not a game in development with content subject to change Blizzcon showing that changed over a year later to a massive outcry of negative feedback.

I cant speak for US law, but I am a lawyer working within the EU and I can atleast tell you that "game in development with content subject to change Blizzcon showing that changed over a year later" would be considered false advertisement within the EU. I personally doubt that the laws regadring false advertisement is any different in the US, or any other western nation, but could be wrong there as that is not my area of expertise.

[Orby]

You may want to go back and rewatch the 2018 Blizzcon video of Stratholme. It's exactly the same lore and dialogue as the original cutscene, and the reforged cutscene. The difference being, HOW that lore and dialogue was presented at Blizzcon 2018 vs how it's presented now.

Blizzard deliberately and willfully misled their customers with false advertisement. There is no justification to defend them on this point.

You are right they did, but don't forget before they promised this they advertised this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oVk9G53LP8


Not trying to defend Blizzard for cutting stuff because you are right, and I am pissed off too that stuff was cut but I aint even mad, maybe because also they told us this back in November they were reversing some stuff. So we were warned months ago. I blame a lack of an official response on their own site personally, they went to a magazine but I haven't found any blue post telling us what they told PC Gamer...

https://www.pcgamer.com/warcraft-3-r...-voice-actors/

Not saying you shouldn't be pissed but Blizzard did fail to communicate better, if I knew about this article back in November and no one else did then thats not your fault that you didn't see the article but Blizzards for not telling their community outside of the interview, Blizzard shouldn't expect everyone to read other publications.

I ain't mad that they cut stuff, I m more mad about how badly they communicated it. Because its very clear a lot of people didn't know :P

[Onikaroshi]

You are right they did, but don't forget before they promised this they advertised this

Not trying to defend Blizzard for cutting stuff because you are right, and I am pissed off two that stuff was cut but I aint even mad, maybe because also they told us this back in November they were reversing some stuff. So we were warned months ago. I blame a lack of an official response on their own site personally, they went to a magazine but I haven't found any blue post telling us what they told PC Gamer...

https://www.pcgamer.com/warcraft-3-r...-voice-actors/

Not saying you shouldn't be pissed but Blizzard did fail to communicate better, if I knew about this article back in November and no one else did then thats not your fault that you didn't see the article but Blizzards for not telling their community outside of the interview, Blizzard shouldn't expect everyone to read other publications.

They talked about it at blizzcon so I guess they thought that that was info enough and it would be spread around. But people were more worried about release dates, the changes got buried.

Still could have been a post on site, but apparently the classic team and the website devs don't communicate much.

[Orby]

They talked about it at blizzcon so I guess they thought that that was info enough and it would be spread around. But people were more worried about release dates, the changes got buried.

Still could have been a post on site, but apparently the classic team and the website devs don't communicate much.

Didn't they also lay off lots of people in the community sector at Blizzard? That would explain things :P

[KrayZ33]

It's such a shame, considering that the chinese basically got reforged years ago.
And shown by the SC:Remastered release, any promise about them adding X or Y or changing something is basically worth nothing.

I'm pretty sure that it still does not feature 2on2 matchmaking. ("because the population is not big enough")

[GreenJesus]

People keep throwing this one around like ANY of them actually has the capability of creating something new and refreshing...
One or 2 perhaps do, but for most of the outraged crowd it changes nothing.

Its literally the worst terms in the entire industry for mods. Not even Bethesda (elder scrolls developer) claims ownership of all mods created in their games.

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They talked about it at blizzcon so I guess they thought that that was info enough and it would be spread around. But people were more worried about release dates, the changes got buried.

Still could have been a post on site, but apparently the classic team and the website devs don't communicate much.

Website dev's got laid off.

You can look at the list here of all laid off positions. It was a letter to the irvine mayor of the positions they removed.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/401389...zsTyPm8t95vdMf

[Beefhammer]

I cant speak for US law, but I am a lawyer working within the EU and I can atleast tell you that "game in development with content subject to change Blizzcon showing that changed over a year later" would be considered false advertisement within the EU. I personally doubt that the laws regadring false advertisement is any different in the US, or any other western nation, but could be wrong there as that is not my area of expertise.

Personally that seems ridiculous and restrictive from a creative process. Would you still slap a false advertising suit on car manufacturers for showing a concept car in 2019 and in 2020 it's released looking slightly different with different components/features?

From a creative and development standpoint, shit happens, a design doesn't work, the flow of a zone doesn't work, a story Idea doesn't work. By the EU law a dev cannot fix ornimorive a game once an early in development snipit is shown.

[Nobleshield]

I personally haven't found anything TOO egregious about WC3 reforged (anything that I was really interested in, which is basically the Campaign and nothing else).. except that whenever I play it like... I don't know, overheats my PC? It shuts my computer (or maybe monitor, I'm not sure) off, the monitor swaps between Analog and HDMI and I my PC's fan goes into overdrive, and I have to hard shutdown the PC and start it back up again. It happens randomly but consistently, so I can't actually play much of the damn game!

[Daedius]

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).

What a load of bullshit... lol.

[Ielenia]

Its literally the worst terms in the entire industry for mods. Not even Bethesda (elder scrolls developer) claims ownership of all mods created in their games.

Not defending Blizzard's practices, but you can be sure Bethesda would do the same, if not worse than Blizzard, if a mod to Fallout/Skyrim became its own, very popular standalone game.

[kranur]

Not defending Blizzard's practices, but you can be sure Bethesda would do the same, if not worse than Blizzard, if a mod to Fallout/Skyrim became its own, very popular standalone game.

Blizzard were just a bunch of stupid monkeys in the case of dota. Dota was already super popular, instead of grabbing the devs and give them a salary and resources to create a standalone version, they were just happy that it was promoting war3 which most pirated anyway.

Now don't get me wrong, blizz not getting dota was probably the best thing for it. There's no way it would have done nowhere near as good as it did with steam.

Even if someone else creates another super popular mod, if blizz claims the ownership, they will ruin it a few.months later, and that's because they have no fresh and good ideas.