I remade Brood War campaigns in Starcraft 2. Here are my thoughts on Reforged

General Discussion
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Greetings! Have a seat, wall of text incoming.

  • What do you mean, Brood War in Starcraft 2?

I am one of the authors of the "Starcraft: Mass Recall" mod, a fan-made recreation of the original Brood War campaigns in the Starcraft 2 engine, complete with the original map layout, objectives and dialogs. We published the maps from 2011 to 2013, and kept improving them until Starcraft Remastered was announced. It worked well: we sit on over 100,000 downloads in the past two years and an official acknowledgement from Blizzard.

  • Why am I writing this?

This post is prompted by a quote from a Polygon interview: Warcraft 3: Reforged is more than just a remaster of Blizzard’s classic RTS - Polygon

Writer Christie Golden, who has worked with Blizzard on multiple novels set in the Warcraft universe over the past two decades, is helping to bring “parity” to the stories of Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft , which will require retconning some of the strategy game’s story. Those changes will bring “renewed focus to a few central characters that we thought deserved a little bit more time in the limelight,” Stillwell said.

“There’s been 16 years of evolution of this franchise outside of this game,” Stillwell explained. “Some of that, especially central characters like Jaina and Sylvanas, these people who mean so much more to the world now who didn’t get as much focus [in the original Warcraft 3 ] because we just didn’t know where they were going to be.”

Perhaps this article is misleading in some way, and the changes are less drastic than they sound. In which case, take the following as feedback offered in good faith.

I’m not going to argue for #nochanges. That ship has sailed. If the developers are not just targeting Warcraft 3 fans, but also want WoW players to feel at home, I will take that as a given. I write as both an old Warcraft fan, and a modder with a somewhat relevant experience; I would like to offer my thoughts on what, exactly, makes the lifting of an old game memorable.

  • Down the memory lane

A Mass Recall player once quipped that a re-take on an old game is successful when you remember the original game looking like that, even though it didn’t.

By any metric, our mod is a different game. It fully embraces the Starcraft 2 engine: you can hotkey multiple buildings and have Zerglings automatically swarm around their target. The story is told in 3D cutscenes inspired by Warcraft 3 (rather than the old isometric view) and even models are in the distinct Starcraft 2 style. And yet an overwhelming majority talked about it like it was Brood War, even though it is better described as Starcraft 2 with Brood War stats. Why was it?

Our player had it right: because this is what you could remember the Brood War campaign being like. The voices, the objectives, long-forgotten numbers on units, all this re-creates the atmosphere of 15-20 years ago. Maybe someone never played the old game before, but it is still the original experience as far as the story is concerned. You know as a matter of course that the new player experienced the same thing as you.

One thing I learned from Mass Recall is that you can change a surprising amount, as long as you get the atmosphere right and make it so it doesn’t feel like a change. There is a point in the last campaign where an ostensibly combined force of Zerg, Terran and Protoss attacks Korhal, but this being a Zerg campaign, only the Zerg are playable in the mission. What we did was to add an entirely new cutscene showing a space battle involving Terran, Zerg and Protoss. The collective reaction was "it makes sense, it shows what happened off-screen", no one ever called us on the fact that it was not canon.

On the other hand, had we put Terran or Protoss in the mission proper, it would instantly have fallen apart. People would have been "there were only Zerg in this mission, why is it different?". And even if a first time player liked the mission, there would always be someone to say: "well, in the original map…". And then the dedicated fan would wonder what that old map was like, which completely defeats the point of re-creating the game.

The bottom line is: players old and new should feel that’s the game they know. You can get away with a lot if you achieve that.

But what about Warcraft Reforged?

Here are some concrete examples:

  • I applaud the idea to let the player choose between the original dialogs and those re-recorded by WoW voice actors. "Came for Warcraft 3? Enjoy your 2002 sounds. Came from WoW? We have something you are familiar with." That’s exactly right.

  • One thing in the demo struck me more than the others: no Stratholme zoo in Reforged. It’s one of those unique map features that seem to have little reason to exist, but really stick in a player’s mind - especially if you took the time to use an AoE on that bloody rat who dodges everything and looted a Talisman of Dodge. If I had seen the zoo, used a mortar and found the talisman, my gut reaction would have been "same map". The base is in the south, the plagued house are shuffled around - but still, same map. From a different perspective or something.

  • The fans will notice a seemingly insignificant point. I instantly saw that the houses in the demo dropped 5 villagers instead of 4, that the Jaina icon flashed in the top left corner at the start (like it did in the original), and someone quickly pointed out that Arthas was standing on a hill when he dismissed Uther and his knights. Does it matter? It does somewhat. You don’t have to get every bit right, but it’s those small details that build the familiarity when you nail them. It makes the difference between “Warcraft 3” and “a reboot of the 2002 game”.

It is hopefully clear that I’m not a Warcraft 3 purist. However, there is such a thing as going one step too far, and that brings me back to the article I quoted at the top.

  • Retcons and why they should not appear

The article implies that popular characters should have more time in Warcraft 3. I think that’s getting it backwards - literally: the characters became popular because of the story shown in Warcraft 3. Giving Jaina and Sylvanas more lines (or worse, changing their lines) would not make them better characters, it would hack away at what made them popular in the first place.

I’m quite willing to see more of these characters - but in a separate map, campaign or media. This would make me feel Blizzard is building upon Warcraft 3, rather than turn it into something it wasn’t. Of course Reforged is something Reign of Chaos wasn’t, but there is a world between a mute cameo and a dialog that screams “I was changed because of WoW, am I not cooler now?” The answer is no, because I definitely remember Warcraft 3 being different - ‘remember’ in the sense I described in previous paragraphs.

Take Muradin: he ostensibly dies in the Frostmourne chamber, other dwarves say he is dead, but he returned later in World of Warcraft. However, I don’t think changing the cutscene is the way to go. It would be a giant poke in the eye of the War 3 fans, far more than a zoo or a map layout. The whole scene would feel different if he was shown to be alive. Besides, I don’t think it’s the best solution for a WoW player either. A WoW fan can put two and two together and realize that something more happened. Maybe he will guess that the story changed (as it did). Or maybe he will Google “Muradin Bronzebeard”, find the wowpedia page, read the answer and learn more in the process. That would be a feature, not a bug.

I’m confident that I speak for most Reign of Chaos fans when I say: let the original lore stand. Our presence here, sixteen years later, is testament to its strength. Add visual references to the MMO or alternative voiceovers if WoW players should also feel at home, but if there are more things you want to say about the Third War, this can surely be done in additional maps - or a novel.

TL;DR: What matters for a campaign is not cut-and-paste conformity, but the accumulation of details that make the players say “yes, that’s the way it was”.

If layouts and models are to be more like WoW, Reforged should go out of its way to reproduce the “smaller things” from Warcraft 3 (easter eggs, creep camps…)

Retcons should not be ported: if one thing is expected from the single player, it’s the Warcraft 3 story. Better put the rest as additional content.

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First off, thanks for Mass Recall, i finished it twice even tho i never played the original which nowedays feels just too clunky for me. I loved your remake and love that i could get to know the lore before sc2.
On your point - i care to disagree. Honestly, as far as i know the graphics is suppose to be just swapped from the old one to the new one with a click of a button, so i would honestly love to have a new “reforged” wc3 campaign which would fix some lore holes. They could just add a seperate tab for a legacy campaign in which you play the original campaign only with updated graphics. I don’t see a reason why this would not be possible.
And to back my point. I played wc3 campaign probably around 6-8 times. I know pretty much everything about it. Every easter egg, where is what on each map. Each dialog. Each cutscene. And as much as i love it, i would like something new. Something that would give me the feeling of exploration again. And I would love if they set the lore straight so maybe later they could add some additional campaigns or other content like that which expands the lore. And i daubt they would like to keep expanding original wc3 lore which contradicts wow and the books in some cases.

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I’m fine with adding some new quests or exploration, as long as the original bits are also there.

I must point out that if we tried to “set the lore straight” in Mass Recall, it wouldn’t have a tenth of its popularity. There is a parallel, not between the projects, but in the reasons people are drawn to the game.

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Great points! The piece about the zoo and stuff is very insightful, I noticed a lot of comments about it.

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WC3 Reforged is already dead if you care about the campaign. It’s all about the custom games. The campaign is made for WoW fans, not Warcraft fans.

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Jeez, can we tone the emotions down a bit? Let’s bring more arguments to the table aye?

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my suggestion: Keep lore original with hints to current one
maybe muradin’s finger would be secretly shaking randomly when he is lying on ground so everyone thinks he is dead but he isnt.
or this time we can return to place we took frostmourne but when we return there corpse might be disappeared while there are bloody foot steps toward mountains or a cave?

I mean in cinematics etc: everything will be same. but there will be just points telling us “this is actually what happened” that we can only notice if we look carefull.
about that hill… I dont mind it. but also I dont mind if they make scene with hill instead?
I would like to see zoo too? maybe they didnt add it yet since its an easter egg that is supposed to be secret and scared that players who testing alfa will stream it alive instantly breaking secret? :smiley: (I HOPE SO)

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What worries me is that the minor retcons are put into Warcraft 3. Minor things like Arthas’ character during the Rise of the Lich King campaign being retroactively put into Warcraft 3. Or Illidan being not quite as insane as he was in Warcraft 3 to make him more consistent with Legion. Things that don’t actually need changing for the story progression to still occur the same way, but which are inconvenient for Blizzard.

Warcraft 3 isn’t a living document. It’s a product of it’s time. For example, the way that I experienced the final cinematic is that Arthas willingly walked to his doom and in the moment that he ‘fused’, he became the new throne. He became just a fixture for the Lich King to sit in. His essence snuffed out and used to tie the Lich King’s soul to it’s phylactery and nothing else. And that Arthas knew all that and that it was okay to him, because at the very least, he would be king.

That got explained in the novel. But I don’t need explanation. I want to show other fans of the game to experience it the way that I did. Some things can’t be experienced the same way, but hell, a lot of people never played through Wrath of the Lich King, so they never knew the Lich King in the first place.

Or when Tyrande killed the Watchers. Or when Tyrande killed humans and orcs without question. Or when a polygon-y child got sacrificed on screen. Or when an orc pulpified several villagers.

These are all things that would be subject to change, I feel. And that does worry me. As long as I can tell people to play the game with the old settings, though, I won’t worry about it.

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Totally agree with this post, it’s crazy how exciting the idea of getting to re-experience Warcraft 3 is.

At the same time the idea of this new game not being Warcraft 3 in the ways that matter is pretty nerve wracking.

I’m really hoping the devs can faithfully recreate the legend that is Warcraft 3…

And then after that is when I want them to explore new ideas in Warcraft 4!

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Couldn’t agree more. It’s about time we get new content. Don’t get me wrong, i’m very,very happy about everything, but i too played the campaign 6-8 times and know pretty much everything. I want to be surprised with new things and more story. Muradin’s scene for example:

8-10 years old me was shocked as hell when Muradin died. How happy would i be in seeing this scene again in HD adding on a split second part with Muradin’s finger moving or in a post-level cutscene the dwarf waking up all wounded saying something like “Dammit boy, you should have listened to me…”

Anyway, i just want this reforged (not remaster, but reforged) game to be the start of a new era. Never got to play WoW, would love to know more about it’s story playing it in a RTS Warcraft game, either it being oficial Blizzard or fan-made. I just want more and more story material, meaningful fights, expanded lore and stuff. After all, it’s all about some epic battles and scenes!

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totally agree, for the original fans that still are here after more than 2 decades these stuff matters,important thing you said there,and that is,we love this characters because of warcraft 3 not because of wow…and for a great deal of fans, warcraft lore ended with the frozen throne. if they want to remaster warcraft 3,I applaud that,but please do not change the lore to fit,the terrible story lines we’ve gotten ever since WoW, because wow is a great game,no doubt on that,but its story is a different story,wow latest 3 expansions are a big lore plot hole.

another thing to say,most people claiming these are welcomed changes,because they want something new…I get it…a lot of people here wants Warcraft 4…Count me in! I’d love to see a warcraft 4,and i hope this remaster is good enough to make it happen,but please remember this is not warcraft 4,or a reboot…this is called warcraft 3 and being faithful to what it was,its key…ADD without CHANGING.

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Played many hours and iterations of Mass Recall and followed the Team Liquid thread for years. Loved the mod!

Now it is expected that custom mods will work in Reforged if they use the original art and assets. With that said couldn’t some body rip the classic campaign maps from the mdq (or whatever its called) and re upload into reforged? That way we could truly pay the original experience. Some of the campaign mechanics will need to be remade however like the menu screens and such. Seems like a fun project for some one.

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It’s doable, back in Starcraft 2 Blizzard made a copy of the campaigns map directly accessible from the editor.

Hopefully it won’t be necessary. Can you imagine a thread “I recreated the Warcraft 3 campaigns in Warcraft 3”? Sounds like it should have been there in the first place.

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Thank you for your extremely well argued post and opinions. This is what the conversions should be like here. However, I would still like to disagree.

While I agree that the little details need to be same, yes - that is essential. This, however, doesn’t in my opinion mean that there shouldn’t be anything new either. Indeed, make a hybrid of these two perspectives: keep the things that made Warcraft 3 Warcraft 3. The little details, easter eggs and the feeling, but fix the (very minor and few) retcons that are there and I would really like to see something more from the few popular characters, like Jain and Sylvanas. I’d also like to see new characters who weren’t shown in the game, but were there off-screen in the lore, like Varok Saurfang. This would make the game still feel new and exciting even for long time fans, like myself, as well as new players would get to experience the same stuff + with little extra.

And about the Muradin case: I’d say just don’t do anything to it. We didn’t know back then that Muradin survived, and I think it was essential for the story. So we don’t need to see him survive in Reforged either - it’s enough that we already know the future. And if one does not know, the scene’s even more powerful. This is one of those rectons and aren’t really a retcon from Warcraft 3’s perspective and don’t need to be “fixed”.

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first off, I would like to thank you for your great mod “Mass Recall”, It was well made and balanced and totally felt like the original…

as for the rest of the your notes about WC3 lore, we totally stand with you, you have very valid points and I hope the developers take note.

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Having read all this, I’m now curious… Would you be willing to do a recreation of the original Warcraft 3 campaigns if the demand for it was big enough?

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Well first thank you for doing reforged even though I still did not complete it because the way you changed the ground difficulty away from original to harder to balance out the easier making of the SC II gameplay defeated in my opinion the point to remaster it in SC II. About remasterings about the example of Muradin in my opinion they should change it they way it really happened back then. So he is still “dead” but Arthas just use Holy Light on him before he go like in the Novel. About the thing with Illidan, well this shows how different opinions can be. For me he never seemed insane rather willing to do methods no other is daring. Like using the ancient artifact to let the frost throne sink under stone and ice but hurting the land with it as a sideeffect too.

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This should be the #1 post on this forum from now until the game’s release. Pin it, sticky it, upvote it, whatever it takes. Thank you for taking the time to write it, I agree with most every point. It’s still a game that needs to feel like fans remember it, even if there are adjustments. I don’t think that WoW fans will lose too much from experiencing the original game.

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I loved mass recall :slight_smile:

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Dear Blizzard,
please go Retcon WoW and leave WC3 as it was the original :slight_smile:
Thank you!

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