The most disappointing games of 2020, led by Blizzard’s WarCraft III: Reforged

Enlarge / Is there a chance WarCraft III: Reforged could receive another reforge this year?

You may have heard that 2020 hasn’t been the best year – an issue we try not to highlight when covering the fun and escape of video games at Ars Technica. But “disappointing” games are different from bad ones, especially at Ars, where we do our best to be cautious and skeptical before a game is over. In our case, when a game fails us, especially in a year like the last, the results sting even more.

As the dust settled in 2020, a match –WarCraft III: Reforged—Simplified as the most astonishing and baffling disappointment of the year. Unlike other obvious candidates for the disgusting 2020 designation, he did so with a full 12 months of opportunity to right his own ship. So I’m going to focus on this game to begin with, and then come back to the other disappointments at the end of the article.

WarCraft III: Reforged: Customs violation

One of the gems of the real-time PC strategy era of the early 2000s, WarCraft III entered in 2020 again backed by a dedicated modding community and an anti-ladder fan base. It didn’t burn the graphics at all, but WC3 continued to benefit from a hearty online population, fueled largely by the goodwill of a community.

Three weeks in 2020, game managers at Blizzard burned off most of that goodwill … then spent the rest of that ridiculous year staring at the wreckage and occasionally poking the ashes with a stick.

WarCraft III: Reforged didn’t just launch as a brand new version of the game; it also overwrote existing licensed copies of the game and forced all players to download a bloated 26GB version of the game instead of the original 1.3GB package. Once this was installed, gamers found that ‘a ton of the game’s original popular content was missing, including scale-based matchmaking, custom campaigns, and local network support. The newly remodeled 3D assets turned out to be patchy and underwhelming, and they landed with a thud as they missed the forge for the trees: the combination of characters, terrain, shadows, and color treatments, seen from the eye of the god perspective inherent in RTS games, had become Stronger to analyze the questionable changes in Blizzard.

Fans who didn’t pay for the upgrade had to wait for Blizzard to bring the game back to a tolerable state, as the 26GB version botched some of the game’s “original” graphics. In good news, those graphics have finally come down. been fixed, as well as some problems on the visual “reforged” side. Blizzard also eventually revived LAN gaming and made custom games work again – although a newly oppressive EULA killed that scene to some extent.

“Custom games”, for the uninitiated, are essentially WC3The modders’ playground to create new types of RTS games and rule sets, and it has become a particularly ripe factory of fun and experiences WC3The mix of standard RTS elements and super powerful “hero” leaders. (In other words, you could do a lot with a system that combines resource management, troop deployment, and Diablo-like butt-kickers.) This is where the original, mega-popular mod Defense of the Ancients was born before evolving into brand new games like Dota 2 and League of Legends. (History lesson: Blizzard had six years to recognize and reward this mod’s popularity before Valve stepped in and did it instead.) Blizzard’s lawyers considered cracking down on intellectual property a full 17 years later. dotaThe original launch of was a wise call, and it apparently criticized WC3 community mod creation stopped.

Regarding custom campaigns come on, they still don’t work. WC3: R smashed those with no sign they will ever come back. And if you’re playing a smaller custom game and want to pause it for some reason, hard cookies: WC3: R players again cannot save their progress.

Works again not finished

The fans were waiting all a sign that the game may return to no-Reforged level of functionality of the version, not to mention the hope that the graphics of the game could be smoothed to the level promised by Blizzard at BlizzCon 2018. On the feature side, in July and August, Blizzard described how his team would restore the matchmaking based on scale and player profiles, respectively. Neither came to fruition, and in December Blizzard released a terribly brief update: “We want to point out that a new version of the current version of Warcraft III: Reforged has just been made available. This update addresses a server issue and does not contain any player changes. Reddit’s responses to this official newsletter – which did not acknowledge anything about the team’s month-old promises – were far from polite.

Fed up, the WC3 community has built its own system to manage online matchmaking seasons and player profiles Reforged customer. This requires installing an additional EXE and registering on W3Champions.com. The community seems quite happy with this system, as it allows them to go back to the game’s original ruleset and codebase and just play games. WC3 matches. (Which means community members have found their happiness in rejecting every iota of updated content.) But it’s unclear if or when Blizzard might break the community hijacking solution.

That much, WC3: R seems to exist only and entirely due to somebodythe pride of Blizzard. Remastered graphics are tolerable at best in a pinch – though they’re notoriously turned off on just about every WC3 streamer’s Twitch or YouTube stream. And Blizzard’s reasoning for smashing the game client and removing beloved features continues to elude anyone with a vested interest in the game. Why did they bother? Was it really worth throwing almost 20 years of fandom in the trash to sell special items and add-ons for other Blizzard connected games? (WC3: Rthe $ 40 version gave World of warcraft players a mount and Diablo III players a pet.)

A better company would have canceled everything and refunded the players, or they would have to less left intact the original functional client. Blizzard is clearly not that “best company” in 2021.

Best option: Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection (Windows PC). This’ 90s blast costs $ 10 less, includes every campaign mission imaginable, and has had robust online support and developer transparency. (These upgrades, among others, meant that the developers added potentially controversial quality of life updates, as the community put them in.) The result was easily EA’s best product of 2020.