Hey there.
It’s been two months since Warcraft: Remastered has received its latest patch. Seeing that you recently updated Warcraft 2: Remastered with a small patch, it shows that you still have people looking at these games. This is very good because there’re still a lot of work ahead of you that needed to be done in order to get this remaster in a state it really should’ve been on release. I already wrote some general list of observed issues and suggestions for War1R back in November 2024, but that list wasn’t as detailed as it could’ve been.
This time, I would like to demonstrated revised list of crucial issues and additional ideas for the remaster of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. These issues and suggestions were observed and written based on my observations of playing original Demo/Shareware versions and watching gameplay War1R videos on YouTube + some personal delusions.
Note that this is a ‘short’ list without detailed notes that would offer collaboration where needed. It was done this way not only to avoid an overly long topic that would be even easier to overlook, but also because I still don’t have access to posting links that would be required to offer much needed context. Unfortunately, you would just have to take my word for it or boot up War1R yourself and compare it with the original War1.
It would also be very nice if someone would be able to elaborate on a more illusive points I wrote (the ones I couldn’t verify with available options and were included due to my own hunch):
Introduction & Main Menu.
- Introduction cinematic should be replaced by its original version with increased resolution in order to offer more faithful player experience.
- Suggestion: “Low-end” version of introduction should be added into War1R with an ability to choose between the two in Options.
- Main Menu should highlight shortcuts for its every selection. If the functionality is missing, it should be brought back from the original.
- Bring back “Replay Introduction” button from War1 that allows players to watch game’s cinematic at any point.
- Ensure the presence of the autoplay function that replays the cinematic and four demos from the original game when players are idle on the main menu for ~15 second. With an ability to toggle it on/off in Options. Also let them switch between two graphic modes when demo is played.
- Suggestion: Add “Credits” button in order to allow players to view War1R’s in-game credits at any point, similarly to Warcraft 3 and all versions of Warcraft 2.
- Ensure that in-game credits don’t leave out the developers of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and, if they’re present, place them right after War1R team and people involved with this project.
- Suggestion: Make in-game credits more dynamic by including all briefings and endings visuals as part of the background that would be switched alongside War1R’s key art after a certain amount of time.
- Suggestion: Remove all “The” from mission titles and rename a few of them after the existing places from World of Warcraft, pivoting away from current names given by fan wikis.
- Suggestion: Add default and player’s high scores for each mission in Campaign menus.
- Add “Victory for the Horde” & “Victory for Azeroth” (Orc & Human Campaign Endings) to mission selection screen in Campaign menus.
Options.
- Suggestion: Implement hotkey customization option similar to Warcraft 3 to let players play the game the way they want to.
- Suggestion: Add Grid input option that’s currently present in War3 and was added into War2R with a post-release patch, fixing an oversight of not implementing them earlier for War1R.
- Suggestion: Add an option for manual selection of game’s resolution regardless of its Display Mode.
- Bring in “Borderless Windowed” Display Mode option or a proper “Fullscreen”, depending on which one is actually missing from the game.
- Rework War1R’s Options by making them more organized & similar to how they’re in War2R. This includes separate all settings into different categories, as well as bringing over addition options that are currently exclusive to sequel’s remaster.
- Reintroduce the original mouse controls as a toggle for players to switch over from the updated ones. All versions of Warcraft 2 have it, even Remastered. Come on.
- Reintroduce the original unit selection limit with Classic HUD as a toggle for players who want to stay closer to the original War1 gameplay experience while keeping other additions from remaster.
- Suggestion: Add General MIDI soundtrack as an additional option for “Music Version” setting.
- Add a setting to easily select preferred language in-game.
Briefings, Victory/Defeat Screen & Endings.
- There’s no original version of briefings, victory/defeat screen and endings. They should not only retain the same font, text spacing and scrolling speed, but also have its visual assets extended to widescreen similarly to recent DOOM & DOOM 2 re-releases.
- Suggestion: Add an option to hide the darkened window (“fancy rectangle”) where the text is displayed in briefings and endings for an original-like experience.
- Text’s size, spacing and scroll speed in briefings and endings should be brought in line with original War1 to make it feel less weird and better looking.
- Bring back the consistent usage of word “Magiks” (Sunnyglade and Northern Elwynn Forest) , write “Hordes” with capital letter (Black Morass and Stormwind Keep) and fix the typo in “nights” (The Deadmines) in texts of Orc Campaign briefings.
- Revert the changes made to briefings text in The Temple of the Damned & Rockard and Stonard in Human Campaign briefings. Change “Grand Marshall” and “Field Marshalls” back to “War Leader” and “warchiefs” respectively.
- Restore the apparent randomization of animations for characters present in Remastered briefings where each character present can preform their animation 1-4 times instead of set amount of times like they currently are in remaster.
- Extend the effect of “Render using non-square pixels” option to briefings, victory/defeat screen (after their rework) and endings.
- Bring back the 3D render of classic Kingdom of Stormwind map and a zoom-in to its specific region for every briefing.
- Bring back the original layout of victory/defeat screen from War1, including an animated scene that depicts a treasure room of Blackrock Spire and devastating ruins on battlefield respectively for both Classic and Remastered modes. Also ensure that the high score loads in similarly to how it does in original War1.
- Ensure that the music is properly looped on victory/defeat screens, including the unique way it works for the Orc Victory where it loops only a fragment of the track.
- Restore the celebration scenes for each ending with animations and accompanying sound effects in their first half: burning fire for Orc and firework explosions for Human.
- Reimplement a five-second pause between two parts of each ending with a quick and smooth fading effect for changing the background.
- Bring back the animated torch flames on the throne for Remastered Orc ending.
- Ensure the presence of original credits at the end of endings as they were in War1 for both Classic & Remastered versions.
Gameplay, Visuals & Audio.
- Keep addressing all performance issues and game crashes that are reported on forums and elsewhere. Specifically, deal with issues that result in War1R having fatal errors on specific campaign mission or not being able to launch in the first place.
- Make unit portraits clickable like in all versions of War2 with similar behavior to center the screen on lone unit or target the specific one from the selected group.
- Using “Show Healthbars” setting reveals the location and movement of enemy Human units hidden by Cleric’s Invisibility spell, allowing players to target them and changing it from “an annoying surprise” to completely useless.
- If you select enemy building while it trains a new unit or researches an update, you can see its “% Complete” bar.
- Suggestion: Rework the tooltip window from “fancy rectangle” to rounded square like in War3.
- Modernized font gets stretched when “Render using non-square pixels” setting is active, making it look weird. This is clearly an oversight from its implementation.
- There’s a lack of HUD frames on top, right and bottom parts of the screen for Remastered visuals with no option to enable or hide them. Only way to have them is to play in Classic mode.
- No setting to change the alignment of mission objectives from upper left corner of command map to the other three available corners when “Hide Objective HUD Display” is inactive.
- Ensure that “Hot Keys” screen is present for both Classic & Remastered modes and every function it lists are properly supported in War1R. Those functions are “Unit”, “Economy” and “Score Objective” that displayed revealed information in place of minimap.
- Bring back “Full Repairs Will Cost ? Gold & Lumber” message that appears in game’s info text when a damaged building is selected. Same implies to “Training a ???” and “Researching Weaponry/Armor/New Spell” messages for selected buildings displayed during stated action.
- Suggestion: Add detailed health points, magic and summon parameters (numbers) as a toggle.
- When playing in Classic mode, War1R displays Remastered version of “You Are Victorious!” (and “You failed to achieve victory…”, most likely) prompt instead of the one from original War1.
- When playing in Classic mode, War1R’s pause bar (unlike the current version of War3) doesn’t change its visual appearance to match the menus from original War1.
- Ensure that War1R can support widescreen view for Classic mode with “Classic” UI Scale. “Use Window Aspect Ratio” may overwrite game switching to 4:3/16:10 aspect ratios. Add a more obvious setting in Options for how the game should treat aforementioned combination.
- Remastered version of Water Elemental’s sprite and icon should be redrawn to match its original feminine form.
- Remastered versions of Necrolyte, Raise Dead, Unholy Armor, Cleric, Invisibility and Flame Elemental’s icons don’t exactly match their original versions.
- Clarify the source of difference in resolution between original icons in War1 (27x19) and Classic icons in War1R (29x21).
- Fix an issue from the original War1 where Wounded unit in The Deadmines of Human Campaign doesn’t use its own icon, displaying the Archer one instead.
- Ensure that a road placement for player on Swamp 1 map is fixed.
- Suggestion: Reimplement Ogre’s death animation and sprite from Beta version of War1.
- Suggestion: Add a new “Information Purification” cheat code (reference of Apple’s 1984 commercial) that toggles filtering for Classic mode, mimicking visuals of Macintosh version of War1.
- Separate all in-game’s voices from the rest of Sound Effect with a dedicated setting in Options to regulate its volume independently and backport additional sound settings from War2.
Multiplayer.
- Despite being present in original War1, multiplayer was cut in War1R. This is bad.
- Bring back War1’s multiplayer intact with the support for local area network and internet connection as options. Ensure that its foundation remains true to the original game.
- Suggestion: Remove the requirement of being logged into Battle.net account for launching the game, instead tying it to gaining access to playing multiplayer online as a lesser evil.
- Ensure that War1R can be played offline and make it DRM-free properly.
- Suggestion: Implement an in-game chat for multiplayer lobby across all menus with settings for enabling profanity filter and muting opponent. Just in case.
- Suggestion: Add a simple matchmaking system and private matches for online multiplayer. With matchmaking working a bit differently from original War1’s setup, opting for a determined number of units for Forest/Swamp and Dungeon maps, map randomization, but leaving the selection of race with an inclusion of “Random” option.
- Suggestion: Add a minimap preview for “Set Map” menu, giving players a better idea of what selected map is like.
- Suggestion: Bring over additional six team colors from War2 as multiplayer-only option for selection.
- Suggestion: Add an observer for 1-4 people to watch two players duel each other.
Bonus Suggestions.
- Suggestion: Add new “Museum” accessed from Main Menu that would serve as a dedicated collection of development material, insights and details for original Warcraft. From concept arts and unreleased content to playable fragments like last missions with unique briefings and ending from Demo/Shareware versions.
- Rewrite the “A Preservation Of Gaming History” segment in Product/Game Features of War1R’s store page that misleads people into believing that game shows original “never-before-seen” that in fact is a map from War1’s manual.
- Fix noticeable artifacts on images used for “Classic Gameplay, Modern Controls” and “A Preservation of History” segments in Product/Game Features.
- Suggestion: Make Warcraft: Orcs & Humans’ manual publicly available in browsers for viewing from your servers similarly to manuals for War2 (Battle.net Edition), War3 (Reign of Chaos) & WoW (Original).
- Add Blackbird Interactive to “Developed By” section of War1R’s store page alongside Blizzard Entertainment in order to give them proper credit.
- Suggestion: Create special “First War Bundle” that puts together original War1, War1R with thematic pets and mounts based on units from Orcs & Humans in order to boost sales.
- Put War1R for sale on Steam, GOG & Microsoft Store alongside eventual PC Game Pass offer.
- Bring back War1 onto GOG and release it on Steam and Microsoft Store for PC Game Pass as either standalone purchase or as a bonus for buying War1R.
- Suggestion: Make original War1’s source code public as open source.