I heard a few things back and forth about it.
Is it true it was not changed because the pro players would not like that?
I found the path finding bad 18 years ago and was annoyed to see it unchanged, I had hoped it would of at least be brought up to the Starcraft 2 standards.
ahahaha, after they released the bugged game with nothing more then new skins, you expect them to change path finding??? (they didn’t even add anything new to editor or the game, besides lyp sinc that is useless af.) Blizzard is dead and doesn’t really care about the community anymore, (we can see that from EULA and from what they posted in their “Non-Apology” also in the latest patch (that have so little changes that can be done in few hours). So yeah, don’t hold any hopes for something new in this game.
It was the same thing for Starcraft Remaster, the 1% decides for the rest. In Starcraft’s case it made sense, sometimes the amount of money does need to speak louder! And if you change Brood War there goes half the E-Sports of South Korea…
For Warcraft 3 tho… I don’t think it makes sence -.-
It makes very much sense… though you dont understand. See the skill in being able to block enemies and try to do it as good as a pro player and you will see why that matters.
A lot of interesting moments come from the player being creative to think of a way to go around some limitations and use them as a weapon against the opponent. And this isnt some impossibly bad mechanic, it just is like its own war3 specific mechanic.
When someone mentions like SC2 pathing I have to show my clip of -Pathing-Like-SC2-claims ownage
https://streamable.com/v74zi
And again brings me to the terrain… this terrain is so much better than what I see now and im not expecting colors to be like that but man… is that even hard to read cause I don’t have such problems.
I watch the trees of classic and again they look much better than Reforged trees… an HD version of them would be better than the slim poor quality tree models
The pathfinding in W3 is not bad, trust me, you can find much much worse. It’s just not the best that we can have nowadays.
The path finding is pretty good. Units do get to their destinations and not clip against trees mazes and the like.
StarCraft II path finding is better, but comes at a cost. Moving units in StarCraft II is a lot more computationally intensive than in Warcraft III. 1,000 moving units in StarCraft II will bring even a core I9 9900KS system to crawl, especially if they are mostly bumping into other units while moving.
I’m not crazy about this release either, but I think some people are completely not understanding what would happen if the game was “modernized” like they want:
Larger or unlimited unit selection; pathfinding, etc.
It would completely break and unbalance the game. Warcraft 3 isn’t Starcraft 2. It’s not “take massive army, a-move and win”. You actually have to control your army, just like you would in any RTS.
Is it quirky? Yes. Is it outdated? Duh, this is an 18 year old game. The entire game would have to be completely redesigned in order for these ideas to work because it would completely change how the game is played. If you want to play SC2, play SC2.
Making the pathing system not snap in half with a large amount of units wouldn’t really effect balance.
I think it got even worse, I was ordering my troops to attack and they only had to walk around some trees, and half of my group did it, and the other half simply tried to go across them, so they simply stopped walking in front of the trees. had to give the order again 3 times for them to start walking again >_>
Pathing/collision could be better, but don’t make it like SC2. SC2 has no turn rates for units, which makes body blocking impossible, and movement looks cartoony and there’s no weight to the movement.
Collision could be better/more accurate, but it would change the game too much. For instance if collision was round for buildings and units, you could still do a lot of the same things, but surrounding would require more than 4 units, base layouts would be totally different, etc. It would be like a new game.
Unit pathfinding/unit intelligence could be improved in some ways without affecting gameplay too much. It might make melee units slightly better if they are better at swarming. Moving armies around the map would be easier, and gameplay in general would be made easier if units were better able to think for themselves and move as groups and around terrain.
If they make another Warcraft game though, I really hope they make sure to have unit turn rates as a thing. It is what separates WC3 from other Blizzard games like SC2 and HotS.
It’s a gameplay change. Exactly like with SC:R, they told us from the beginning that gameplay would be unaffected. IMO it’s the right move; changing the pathing would have alienated their existing userbase and effectively made two different games.
There are not that many pro players. They should adapt and not block game improvements and development. Much more important is to interest new players, change mechanics. Pro are pro because play the same way million times. Adapting to changes should be much more important
Then why do people spend billions on the same football sport game every year?
If one wants to make something new, then one should make something new and not try to refresh something old.
If that were the case, then football players still wouldn’t be wearing helmets
They do not… (in Europe). And in any case the core rules are mostly unchanged for many decades now.
Yeah, but it took 100+ years of iterative development to get to that point.
You missed the point man.
They can leave ladder with the current rules but implement the improved pathing and unlimited unit selections to campaign and custom games(leave the map maker decide what works best for their map)
This would require parallel path finders and unit selection management to be maintained. Not something trivial to implement and possibly something they may already be looking into.
One might think the unit selection limit is a UI thing. But it might be much more. For example the order packets used to synchronize orders in multiplayer might only support groups of 12 units. Changing the member length to support more might cause buffer overrun errors as internally the game is not designed to handle packets of such length. Fixing these buffer over run errors could cause some other error or bug, etc…
First time for once have I encountered a stuck forest-tree-block path finding issue (on classic), and only after the reforge changes. Before that, I have NEVER seen any path issues people keep complaining about.
the path finding and AI is horrifying in WC3, its painful to watch in reforge. while I have no idea why the 12 unit selection limitation and path-finding is still there. it is true that many long-term WC3 fans encouraged keeping those because they are part of the charm and experience.
once you get a meat ball of units they will start bumping into each other, blocking each other, learning how to make your army not move around like a goof ball take a skill of it own. 
Edit: here is 2 of my favorite AI.
In one mission i had a siege unit (human mortar) over a cliff, with another unit giving them vision to an enemy tower, the mortar can easily attack the tower from high ground. I told the mortar to attack, and it decided to go all the way back because it was too stupid to move forward one step and start shooting, I had to manually position the dumb thing.
another beautiful AI behavior, once you get a unit blocked by your own unit, say a hero surrounded by 4 units of your own army, and you want to pick that shiny new item that just dropped. in starcraft 2, Idle units get shoved, in C&C Genearls a game from the same time, Idle units start moving away by their own well because they know the unit trapped want to move. In Reforged … The hero start counting the clouds.
in starcraft 2 units move butter smooth because of no turn rates and the unit being able to shove each other. there is no way units in WC3 being that smooth.
letting us select more than 12 units should not affect game play, the pros can move all their army together in split seconds, its called giving us quality of life improvements.
Body blocking exist in starcraft 2, but its tricky because units in starcraft don’t have slow turn rates like in warcraft 3. its when your own units start working against you, that is frustrating AI there.
I still have no idea how making us select all units, or make the AI slightly smarter break the game balance.