I really wanted WarCraft 4 or what I like to call “Armies of the Storm” : the next great RTS. We did not get it this year. Instead we got Reforged, and as someone who has predominantly been single player, it is at least kind of interesting as to how they are updating the campaign.
However, I want to try and look on the bright side in this post. While Reforged might be just a remaster with some light campaign changes and reskinning, it could be more, right? This game could be a platform for projects that might not have made as much sense for a very old game.
Another thread suggested something like Co-Op Commanders from SC II, and that could probably find success. But I want more traditional stuff as well.
Could we see campaign expansions for Reforged in the vein of Nova: Covert Ops? I do not think at this point we could ever see a real expansion like TFT. Trying to make new unit models that stylistically matched both Classic and Reforged would be really challenging, and the whole project could easily wreck the competitive scene. But single player story telling could be done without disrupting anything. And it has been done. In fact, this only occurred to me because I saw that there have been multiple expansion for Age of Empire II HD, something I am sure Blizzard is quite aware of as well. (If you have been around literally forever you might remember Shlonglor’s WarCraft II page and how he went on to making a page for AoE 1 before eventually ending up working for Blizzard.)
What I really would like to see though is a renaissance in map making and game types. I mentioned “Armies of the Storm” at the beginning of this thread and that is what I want to see: I want to see them try and make a proper RTS version of a MOBA - with objectives!. I do not know whether they can do that properly in the current engine or whether it would require a whole new game, but I would like to see them try. Objectives are what really separated HotS from Dota2 and League, and I think they might be the magic that could make RTS a serious genre again. So I really hope that Blizzard finds a way to at least prototype that in Reforged.
Some of these are obviously not “launch products” for Reforged. The game may have to perform to certain expectations before it would be feasible to concentrate more resources on it to do new things, especially since once the Reforged is initially launched there will be pressure for the team to move onto the Diablo II remaster. But there are so many possibilities for this project beyond prettier graphics and regularly balance updates. I hope we see some of them come to light.