Warcraft 2 remastered is NOT Warcraft 2

Warcraft I & II General Discussion
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I am sorry but I played Warcraft 2 a lot with my dad and this “remastered” you released is NOT Warcraft 2 at all. Very sad to see this happening. This remastered is some AI experiment forced by activision management. Remember these are same people who said Warcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 are fosils and should stay dead and won’t be added to Battlenet app. Then they saw how much money wow classic was making and decided all games must now get remaster. They have no passion and dont care what makes these games great, they only want money.

The Starcraft 1 remaster was perfectly done by blizzard and was done with passion, both Starcraft 1 classic and Starcraft 1 remastered combined into one game to keep the community alive. They made Starcraft 1 free and Starcraft 1 remastered optional at a small price tag. But what did they do with Warcraft 2, they did NOT make Warcraft 2 classic free and then decide to release Warcraft 2 remaster as separate game to maximize profits. You completely killed the community by having warcraft 2 classic and warcraft 2 remastered as separate games which totally kills the chances of this being widely popular and played in the future. The remaster is rebuilt from scratch as separate game introducing nightmarish gamebreaking bugs since game was not even tested before released. I don’t understand why you don’t just combine the 2 versions into one game and make Warcraft 2 classic free to play. I am very disappointed.

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is it possible for warcraft gamers to seethe any harder about a 25 year old game?

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Starcraft Remastered also had its problems at release, and War2R was possibly made separate from War2 Bnet Edition to prevent War3 Reforged nightmare which destroyed War3 Classic Bnet, from happening again. (like for D2R vs D2 Classic/LoD)

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If you think remasters “dont have passion” then you can start taking a look in Mods a couple of guys have been making since like 5-6 years ago already in War2 classic (Combat).

Over 20 mods with actual AI improvements and many quality of life features added up to War2.

Also, widescreen exists on W2 since like 5 years ago already. By fans for fans.

But that content gets very little acknowledgement and advertising, yet its still out there. Just have to check out youtube for that…

Or wargus project, which is about 10 years old and still gets very little attention from people… If talking about passion, of course.

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Remember when Blizzard games were made by people who played games? Now it’s just interns managing outsourced nostalgia.

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You must do the same for Warcraft II as you did with Starcraft 1.

Step 1: Merge “Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition” with “Warcraft II: Remastered” into ONE game. Where you can change between classic graphics and remastered graphics.
Step 2: Make “Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition” free to play same as Starcraft 1. And “Warcraft II: Remastered” 10 or 15 EURO/dollar price.
Step 3: Everyone is happy, community is alive and people will still play Warcraft II many years from now!

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@Dani-2192

I get where you’re coming from, and I totally understand the frustration with the Warcraft 2 remaster. It feels like something’s missing compared to the magic of the original, right?

However, I wanted to share some insight into Blizzard’s development teams and the situation surrounding these remasters. The Classic Games division, which was responsible for restoring and remastering Blizzard’s older titles, was created around 2015. This division, which worked on StarCraft Remastered, Warcraft III: Reforged, and other remasters, was originally staffed with people from Blizzard’s Mac division. Their goal was to preserve the legacy of Blizzard’s classic games, but as we saw with Warcraft III Reforged, things didn’t always go as planned.

When Blizzard reorganized and started pushing more aggressive timelines for their remasters, Classic Games lost a lot of its independence. Warcraft III Reforged is a great example of the team’s struggle to meet unrealistic deadlines, and by 2020, the division was essentially dissolved. This, combined with the increased control from Activision over project directions, led to less passion in the remaster process and a lack of communication with fans.

It’s really disappointing that the community didn’t get the unified experience we were hoping for. It seems like the focus shifted more to profit than preserving the core essence of these games. But hopefully, with time, Blizzard will be able to look back and realize what made the classics special and maybe do better in future remasters.

I hope this helps shed some light on the situation!

Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together regarding Team 1 and Classic Team:

Team 1 developed Starcraft II under Dustin Browder. After starting development as an SC2 arcade game, Heroes of the Storm became its own title while still using the same game engine and also being developed under Team 1 with Dustin Browder moving to that title and Tim Morten taking over Starcraft II and working on finding new ways to monetize it.

Classic Games was created around the time Legacy of the Void released. The original focus was to patch Starcraft: Brood War, Diablo II, and Warcraft III to make them compatible with modern systems and networks. As that moved along they started working on remastering those titles with Starcraft Remastered releasing first. They ended up taking over continued development of Diablo III after Rise of the Necromancer and handling things like new ladder seasons and cosmetics. Team 3, which was involved in development of Diablo Immortal and Diablo IV ended up taking Diablo II and III under their group later. Meanwhile, Team 1 became part of Classic Games leaving them with Starcraft Remastered, Warcraft III, Starcraft II, and Heroes of the Storm.

Warcraft III Reforged was announced a couple years ago just as Blizzard was reorganizing(and its developers were losing a lot of independence). Activision Blizzard was rushing to appease its shareholders by announcing more titles. When Reforged was announced, Classic Games had no idea that preorders would go up immediately with the release promised before the end of 2019. They had to immediately abandon much of the content they’d just announced and speed up development to an unreasonable rate. The release missed 2019 by a month and still had a lot of bugs and missing features.

By this point a lot of big names were already leaving Blizzard due to the lack of control over their projects and the many public controversies. Classic Teams was hit especially hard with the failure of Warcraft III Reforged and the clear fact that Blizzard was not interested in developing another RTS title. This was also over a year after Heroes of the Storm saw its esports shut down with no warning and its development team decreased in number and budget.

Starcraft II esports had been handed to ESL, DreamHack, and AfreecaTV as Tim Morten left the company. The 10th anniversary and Patch 5.0 were big events but Kevin Dong and Ryan Schutter left shortly after that to form Frost Giant with Morten and other former Blizzard developers. The mantles for esports and content creation had been passed onto people outside of Blizzard as some of the last big RTS leaders parted ways with their employer. It was announced that there would not be any further Starcraft II paid content, although new ladder seasons, game fixes, and possibly more balance changes would still be supported.

Recent insider news indicates that the Classic Games team has been slowly dissolved since that announcement. Some members have quit, some interviewed for positions with other teams, and some were terminated. Heroes of the Storm got a new hero a couple months ago and just received a new balance patch so there is definitely some development going on there. Starcraft Remastered development has been quiet aside from ongoing attempts to find alternatives to Mac OS tools that Apple has ceased support for. There has also been silence from Warcraft III Reforged despite reports stating that they are still dedicated to adding previewed features such as profiles, leagues, and clans to the game, although its theorized that the rest of this work might be outsourced(no rumblings about where balance support would come from). Activision studio Vicarious Visions has been confirmed to have become dedicated to supporting existing Blizzard titles. Lots of reports point towards “Diablo II Resurrected” as their main focus and a few people believe they’ll be taking over at least some of the support for the four Classic Games titles(seems like a stretch considering the lack of experience the studio has with RTS or MOBA titles).

Hopefully there will be more hints towards the future of these games coming up either through more insider support or some official statements as BlizzConline nears. Either way, we’ll learn something when we find out if next week’s Starcraft II ladder season starts normally or if it turns out the lights are on but no one’s home. We already had a holiday season with no XP bonus but ongoing ladder seasons is something that was promised in the news blog and promotions are already locked despite no ladder map previews so far.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/l4764z/team_1_classic_teams_and_what_happened_to_them/

This is a post from reddit 5 yr. ago

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I personally don’t need any of those steps. Remaster is cheap enough.

What this version really needs is the map sharing function and a lobby to meet online before hosting a game. An active player number and game count, so we know if people are online and playing or if we are just alone.

Leaderboards, observer mode etc would be great. Also an option to share and play modded versions could bring in some players.

War2 is a great game and the balance changes didn’t mess up the game and made it a bit easier for newer and returning players. Graphics are fine. Only things missing are for multiplayer and community features. It always feels empty if you don’t rely on discord/warcraft bnet groups or twitch streamers.

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You are quite good at misrepresenting what was said in that article, or you have terrible reading comprehension.

First, ONE high ranking employee, not employeeS, said that he personally didn’t find it fun. One person’s opinion.

Next, he was the chief development officer for the whole company who oversaw the development plans for all the games. So he should get a new job because he doesn’t think ONE of the many games, antiquated games no less, was fun? What?

Next, after he said it, another high ranking employee made sure to clarify that the choice to not remaster was just at that time, not never.

Next, added it to some random webste? GoG? The premier place for upgrading old games? What? Are you delusional? I think you knew that but intentionally misrepresented it as “some random website” to purposely make it sound bad so that it would falsely make you argument sound better. Well it doesn’t. For those that see through your generalizations, it actually makes you sound worse.

Id like to counter your generalizations in your OP as well, but that would make this post a mile long.

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Mods for War2 combat already exist. But people dont give attention to them, because they’re not official content.

Also, there’s a very hidden fan-made project for War2 that is like a chess game but no one gave attention to.

And there is Wargus - War1gus, yet get so very few people into their community. The content is there, but people dont give attention to it and instead just complain about War2 remaster like if its the very only WAR2 stuff that has existed for almost 30 years without being touched by Blizzard

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I know, that’s why official options in the game client would be great, so people can enjoy the content without being worried about malware and scams. Just look at steam workshops and all the games with mod support. It allows so much more extended fun with the games, especially for single player gamers.

Also look at all the great player made maps which were easily shared on war2 and BNE and ru… now we have to use workarounds to distribute them…

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The still never fixed the broken colors on the original graphic portraits and it sill looks terrible. sc1 remaster was prefect.

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