It’s actually not that hard to get the reconnect feature working. All they gotta do, is allow .MIX files back into the game, and community will take care of the rest, as .MIX was removed/replaced with FMOD in 1.30 for the sake of mindless standardisation that was grossly inconsiderate of the existing functionality, which as a result, was sacrificed for the sake of management convenience and checking the boxes with their management, so that they could check the boxes with their management and so on, all the way up to enfant, who have probably never even launched this game once, let alone played it like it really was meant to be played, with a full house and epic battles that still put even modern multiplayer alternatives to shame. But people wanted shiny icons and clans and stats and other epin hallmarks, and a faint noise around reconnect requests was like a whisper in a roaring sea of all the issues during game launch just like this thread is now, and so it never got a high enough priority as it should have.
Personally though, I have used all available fan-made disconnect protection back in the day extensively,
and I can confirm they were not “hacks”, but user friendly and very easy to learn full fledged working solutions, preventing the loss of game progress going to waste due to a random server hiccup. Back in the day, I could restart my router and still remain in that big huge WC3 game with massive armies and high level heroes like I never left. What freaking icons? I live for the action of now, that can’t be abruptly halted in its peak moment! And all self respecting games have reconnect feature ready and working in 2023 to cater exactly to that. CSGO, that moba game 2, even WoW battlegrounds will keep you in game if you disconnect for a brief minute. WC3 however doesn’t even bother to pretend you’re somebody that it used to know. All it lets you know, is that “you were disconnected”. This was, is, and will be the single biggest reason I have never bought reforged. I could forgive everything that was wrong with it during launch, which is already a feat in itself, as long as there was a reliably uninterrupted multiplayer to interact with fellow dwellers using in-game ant farm units. But given there is still no reconnect feature on the roadmap, I can’t bother investing seriously into game stats, progress icons and what not, knowing that at any time during the game I can be disconnected and have to start from scratch. Multiplayer therefore is pretty much dead to me, and there are far better single player alternatives out there. WC3 is just being kept alive as a gateway to WoW, which offers seamless and immersive game experience, while WC3 comes from a pioneer generation of games none of which had disconnection protection, and the only way I see that WC3 can get one, is if it becomes monthly subscription, which will highly likely eliminate 95% of its current playerbase permanently.