Please add Warcraft 1 Remastered multiplayer!
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i agree that they should add it. due to no cross system play, they could just add lan play. though they could also add it to battle.net.
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I agree this should be added. Nobody asks for online MP, but at least LAN (which can be manually turned into online by players via a network tunnel)
Yes, this is a feature not many players would use. Yes, it would mean a lot of work as the original IPX protocol is extinct, so the netcode needs to rewritten into UDP or translated from IPX into UDP like Dosbox does it.
But it’s part of honoring the legacy of Warcraft 1 and not adding multiplayer kinda lessens that legacy. Some younger players don’t even know that Warcraft 1 had multiplayer at all and thought that it all started with WC2 and it’s more prominent lobbies and Battle.net integration. Ripping multiplayer out of the WC1 Remaster doesn’t help that.
Despite often wrongly seen as a Dune 2 clone, Warcraft 1 had so many innovations over it and one of them being multiplayer. Yes, technically the Herzog Zwei split screen PvP mode was first, but Warcraft 1 was the first proper modern RTS with network-based multiplayer making it one of the pioneers of that early era along with Doom deathmatch. That’s an incredible achievement at the time that should be honored in a remaster.
BTW: The Herzog Zwei remaster from M2 and SEGA for the Nintendo Switch actually has full working online multiplayer even though the original game only had split screen PvP on a single console. And while Herzog Zwei is the grandfather of the RTS genre, it’s very very niche - but they added proper multiplayer anyway in the remaster even though nobody even dared to ask for it. Just to honor the original game.
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I don’t consider Herzog Zwei to be an RTS since you don’t directly issue orders to your units, you just build them and control a “hero”. So it’s closer to a MOBA. Dune 2 = first RTS, and Warcraft = first RTS with multiplayer.
All that is to say, yes, adding multiplayer back would be good. Online lobbies would be amazing.
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Why they removed multiplayer in warcraft 1 ? I like the remaster, but why no multiplayer 
I hope there will be a patch and they’ll add it
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there is a free ipx wrapper. they could technically just keep the old net code. though they might add it later. warcraft 2 already had battle.net but, warcraft 1 never did so, if they want to add it they have to work on it.
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I used to play the original Warcraft 1 over Serial COM2 port and LAN with coaxial cables using the IPX/SPX protocol. It was always 1 vs 1 since that was the only way to play at the time. Today, you can still play Warcraft 1 online through DOSBOX, which enables IPX encapsulation over TCP with the right configuration.
It’s a shame that the remastered edition doesn’t include a LAN party option—it would have been a fantastic way to honor the original experience.
The GOG version of Warcraft I (which, thanks Blizzard, is about to be removed from sale) even includes a little tool to host and join a game over TCP/IP and automatically sets up the game to connect. You can do it yourself with DOSBox but it’s cool that they figured out the config and wrote a little UI. RIP.
For people saying there’s an IPXWrapper: that wouldn’t work for Warcraft 1 (at least not easily). Warcraft 1 was originally a DOS game, so while it used IPX, it wasn’t using the Windows IPX API which is what IPXWrapper would be wrapping. That’s why playing classic WC1 over TCP/IP is done via DOSBox’s IPX emulation, not IPXWrapper.
The new game is Windows, so they’ve obviously taken the source code for the DOS version and got it working on Windows. That means they had to rip out the IPX code, which would have been using some ancient DOS driver. Getting networking going again in the new client would need adding new network code (there’d be no point getting the IPX code to work in Windows because it would be just as much work as just porting it to TCP/UDP).
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What you are saying makes sense, but given that it is a remaster the addition of a new and better working multiplayer is obligatory.
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Ditto.
I’m not purchasing War 1 unless an online MP is added.
1 Like