When Reforged was announced, I was excited. Absurdly, punching-the-air excited. Warcraft III is my favourite game of all time, and bringing it into the modern era with improved graphics is a dream come true.
But the more I hear, the more worried I get. I keep hearing about how they’re changing things to be more in line with WoW, and it’s starting to feel like this is being made for WoW players who never played the strategy games, not fans of the original.
If they want to tweak the maps to bring things more in line with WoW, fine. I don’t love the idea, but it’s just a cosmetic change. But changing the story? Rewriting the dialogue? Replacing all the voice actors? No, sorry, that’s not what I ever wanted from a Warcraft III remaster.
And don’t think I’m on the Christie Golden hate bandwagon, either. She’s a very talented writer whose work I greatly admire. But they just can’t improve on a classic. Doesn’t matter how good of a writer you put on it. Changing things will still be a bad decision.
It’s at the point now where I’m not even sure I want to buy Reforged. This just isn’t the game I wanted. They can tweak the game mechanics; I don’t mind that. But I want the original campaign, with the original story, and the original actors, not some bastardized “special edition” designed for people who never played the original.
They are not changing the story. They are not rewriting the dialogue. Adding a few lines does not do either of those.
Also, if it’s so horrible, nobody’s taking the old campaign away. You can always play that, most likely even with the new graphics. You don’t have to touch the new campaign at all, if you don’t want to.
The campaign and dialogue changes sound like they’re optional. I imagine if the switch flipping isn’t at the campaign select screen, it’ll probably be under the general ‘Gameplay’ tab in the options menu.
Yeah, actually, it really does. Even a few new words here or there can completely change the tone or message of a story.
Seriously, try telling Star Wars fans how little Greedo shooting first matters. That was a very small change.
People keep saying that, but I’ve yet to hear that confirmed by an official source. Offering players that kind of choice is very much against Blizzard’s philosophy these days, so I’m skeptical. Even if true, it’s still a problematic situation. The “old” campaign will likely lack the new cutscene style, which is one of the things that made me so excited about the remaster initially, and then you have the inevitable fan flame wars over which is the “real” story and which is better and all that mess…
They’re opening up a huge can of worms here that could easily be avoided by just not messing with a classic.
Well, yeah, I guess some are that petty then… I just don’t get how people can take so little things so seriously.
The Classic Team has a pretty good philosophy on this. Just watch any of the interviews and every other sentence is something like “we don’t want to break the game”.
Also, it’s like 99% confirmed, as they said that basically any map can be opened in Reforged WorldEdit. So even if for some very strange reason they didn’t allow to play old campaign with the new graphics, you could just open all the maps in Reforged map editor, save them as… and then play them with the new assets.
“Petty” would be complaining about things like how the new paladin model doesn’t look much like the old one. Which, yes, I know some people are doing, but that’s not what this thread is about. I’m talking about substantive story changes, not simple cosmetic tweaks.
With story-telling, even small changes can potentially have big ramifications. For example, in WC3, it was established that Jaina and Kael were a couple, but that she left him for Arthas. In later novels, this was retconned to Kael being a creeper who was basically stalking Jaina. This was presumably done to support his retcon as a power hungry-lunatic, as opposed to the conflicted but noble character he was in Warcraft III.
I fully expect the dialogue will now be changed to support the new version of Kael’s character, and that changes him and his story in a very meaningful way. He’s not going to be the same character I loved as a kid anymore. That may not matter to you, but it does matter to me, and it’s just so unnecessary. Why make a remaster if you’re not going to be faithful to the original? We wanted Warcraft III remastered, not a mangled prequel for WoW players who never played the RTS games.
And yet that’s exactly what they’re doing. They changes they’ve already announced clearly illustrate they’re not interested in staying faithful to the original.
Do you know how people reacted against the changes to WoW Classic? Btw I was wanting a HD classic with new models but Blizz realised even that would have an epic backlash
The primary market is people who have continued playing competitive WC3 multiplayer or arcade maps all these years. The secondary market is WoW players who aren’t very familiar with the RTS campaigns and can play through it as a prequel. It’s an odd decision as Starcraft Remastered wasn’t primarily made with campaign and lore players in mind but they limited things to new graphics and some new artwork in the transitions.
It’s made for a weird time for Blizzard fans, with Diablo Immortal’s primary audience being mobile gamers in the China and India markets who gave a good response to the localizations of Diablo III.
As for Christie Golden, she’s no stranger to rewriting things that happened in Warcraft games dating all the way back to her novelization of what was supposed to happen in the cancelled Warcraft Adventures. She’s a very good writer who cares a great deal about the properties she works with. More importantly though, the stories she’s assigned to script are not necessarily her original drafts or her decision.
I’ll give the new campaign treatments a playthrough but anything I do after that will be back on the original version.
Well it’s hard to explain how and why people feel so strongly over seemingly trivial things when you don’t have a personal frame of reference. Perhaps you don’t invest yourself too deeply in entertainment to care about changes, but I think it’s important to at least try to respect how people feel and react to things they are passionate about, even if it’s not easily understood.
Emotions flare because people care about the details. No need disregard it as being petty.
I can understand peoples fears, there is a thread on this somewhere with hundreds of views…
Its highly unlikely and by Blizzards own admission this game won’t stray drastically from the Original. Yes, we will see some map corrections, maybe a couple of changes to the story to make it WoW compatible, a few new conversations and quite a few balance changes for multiplayer and a host of new map editor options.
That’s probably as far as it will go. In reality this game is a merging point for three communities. The small dedicated WC3 fanbase, the much larger group that left WC3 years ago and the group that has only ever known WoW…this is an exciting time for WC3 as an RTS.
So to that end everyone needs to be open minded as there are many players interest in this game and we all have differing expectations. That said, i genuinely cannot see the game changing enough to bastardize the original. Then even if it did, you still have the old WC3 game and can play it in multiplayer…so the world won’t end either way…if your biggest fear is that Muradin is not killed by Frostmourne…is it really worth getting upset about? We all know what really happened and can relive it anytime we want…if they decide to rewrite half the WC3 story then i could understand, but there is no indication that is on the cards, not to mention the Re-Forged team dont strike me as idiots they understand the importance of what is at stake here
In some ways (IMO), having a few story changes is kind-of cool. Its like a right of passage for those of us who enjoyed and still enjoy the original Warcraft series…its creates an interesting discussion point, whereby we hold the knowledge of the true events untarnished, something we can share and pass on as veteran players of WC3.
No, chances are they’ll keep a short leash on their products. Somebody reported that the new graphics in SC Remastered is only available on Bnet. It is likely that the new “skin” is retained on the server end. If you’re offline, you can still play the game, but it would be the old version, and Reforged would no longer be an option.
There are “outrage agents” on all forums screaming incoherent baseless conspiracies and gaming news is full blown clickbait. Avoid hearing stuff from third parties if you can.
So far so great for me:
Old custom maps and editor.
Graphics are looking nice.
Campaign will either get more content or I’ll dismiss it to the WoW trash bin, the classic one is intact.
I agree tbh. The whole argument of, “Well you can just revert and play the old one,” really just implies, “There’s really no reason for you to buy this game, since you’ll be paying 30-40$ for you to revert everything to what you already have.”
Nah it is not on the server. It is in datas locked behind a server authentification. Because for unlocking the new hd skins you need only to be online during launching SC:R and can after having reached menu go offline again.
Thing is, this is not what we want. We don’t want Warcraft 3 to merge with WOW. Blizzard do. You clearly aren’t on the same wavelength as me and most Warcraft 3 fans if you think this way.
I’m fine with minor changes, if they keep them cosmetic (leave the characters untouched, maybe add a couple lines for those that didn’t get much screentime and one or two named characters), except for two things. High Elves eyes must be kept blue during RoC while Blood Elves eyes should be without light till certain point in the campaign, AND Broken Isles, scrap that horrendous thing Bliz made on Legion, upscale the old sunken ruins tileset with new graphics.
![:slight_smile:](https://dou48tnq0ocoa.cloudfront.net/en/warcraft3/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")