Warcraft 1/2 have had a less than stellar remastered launch. Warcraft 1 has ZERO multiplayer, Warcraft 2 has ZERO multiplayer features. Most people that play Warcraft 2 online, do so on a private server of the OLD game - that’s how bad the remastered is. People that love playing the game would rather play the 30 year old version of it.
The original warcraft 1 had multiplayer, you released the ‘remastered’ version with LESS features than the original game. Warcraft 2 had battle.net , which allowed for ranked play, custom map downloads, chat rooms, etc. Again, you released the ‘remastered’ version with LESS features than the original game.
As I’m writing this, I have my screen zoomed in at 150% because I am literally blind. So if you’re a blizzard employee, I want you to consider that a blind man that just microwaved his cup of coffee for 23 minutes to heat it up has and is accomplishing more for a game that you’re literally being paid to work on:
I have built a google-maps upload/download map feature for warcraft 2. It parses the information of the pud file uploaded, displays overlays of player starting positions, gold mine/oil patch positions and amounts - displays a summary of the author, amount of players, you can pan and zoom in the maps etc. I have also built a fully functional MMR based ladder system that links social media accounts to player accounts, let’s users’ add players to their ‘barracks’ and each player has an overall ranking, and a ranking specific to every single map in the game (Atlas) very similar to starcraft, except more advanced. Currently requires manual reporting with an upload screenshot feature and currently working on a native Wails app in go that reads memory and attempts to record game results. It currently allows users to launch battle.net. open the maps folder in their game folder, and im still experimenting with memory addresses to discover the results of games and send that to a server to calculate their rankings.
So here’s my proposition. I will give you all of my code for free and I do not want any recognition. It’s yours. Just implement it, change it, I don’t care. The fact is that this would be MUCH better if implemented by YOU than me (a blind man) paying server fees, asking for donations, etc. THIS IS YOUR FLAGSHIP GAME SERIES!!!
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It is a noble effort, lets hope they implement at least one fix in the next year…
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You cant control the integrity of a business. They are in it for the money. But at some point of critical success you would recognize brand recognition the problem is due to lack of a threat, they perceive no threat and no integrity.
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Since the launch of Battle.net, Warcraft II has been reliant on the community to build the tools and features Blizzard has no incentive to develop. This is a legacy title that generates no meaningful revenue, and there is no economic reason for Blizzard to invest in improving it.
The people who originally built and cared for this game are long gone, and the Blizzard of today is fundamentally different from the Blizzard that created Warcraft II. Even historically, Warcraft II was never meant to be endlessly maintained, it was designed, shipped, and then superseded by StarCraft.
A good example of this neglect is Bloodlust remaining bugged for decades prior to Remastered. That alone should set expectations: meaningful fixes or feature work are not a priority and never have been.
RTS as a genre is now niche, particularly among younger players, and it does not translate well to mobile platforms. From their perspective, there is little upside in revisiting a game like this beyond IP preservation.
Because of that, asking Blizzard to meaningfully improve Warcraft II is a dead end. The only real progress this game has ever seen, and will continue to see, comes from the community itself.
If people want new features or a modern evolution of what Warcraft II represented, the realistic path forward is not waiting on Blizzard, but building it themselves. You do not need a large publisher to do that, just a group of passionate people willing to create something inspired by the gameplay they love.
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Well these are remasters they never wanted to make. They said so themselves. It’s clear they only did this because Microsoft came along and forced them to do it. I’m thankful for what we got, but they could have been much better.
- Can’t properly rebind keys like WC 3. This should have been one of the highest priorities for a remaster.
- WC 1 intro only plays on the 1st launch, with no way to ever play it again. Probably the first time I’ve ever seen an issue like this.
- Skirmish mode is bare bones in both games. There’s no way to do team matches with computer allies. That probably killed skirmish for 99% of players. The much older SC 1 remaster allows you to do bot team matches FYI.
- Gold mines do not count workers like WC 3. It would not have been difficult to put a number on the mine that shows how many workers you have using that mine.
But I’m not going to complain too much for what I only spent about 12.5$ on. I’m just pointing out ways this could have been “great” instead of “good.” (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhTNBapwAZDjeqqOhcuV2uLU88KW5bK7W)