I have been watching lot of news, reviews and forum posts about Warcraft III: Reforged lately and I must say i’m looking forward to it’s release.
However, I have noticed people have tendencies of bringing up similarities, or rather dissimilarities with Warcraft 3 original game in a way, that reminds me of #nochanges vanilla movement. (don’t get me wrong, WoW classic is different project for different people and i play it aswell)
“best way to enjoy nostalgia in a game is to play that game like you did back then”
Risor - 2019
So let me explain my view on all this !@#$%^&.
I see Warcraft III: Reforged as new 2019 game that builds on story and gameplay mechanics from Warcraft III but uses completely new graphics and UI to make it friendly to play to new players and give new life and new way of looking at the game for the old ones.
That means I don’t really care about nostalgia or being familiar with things. If that was important to me, i would play the old version. Honestly i’d like it to be the opposite.
I’d like Warcraft III: Reforged to bring me a way to look at Warcraft III as a new game that i have played, but never seen before and enjoy the feeling of exploration, paying attention to every new little detail, rather than looking at the models thinking they look the same only to realize they really look better and different just after comparing them to the old ones side by side.
“professional players almost always tune-down their graphics settings to see more in game, so they don’t really care if the game is pretty or not.”
Risor - 2019
So to get to the main points of #NOnochanges
Definitely new UI (currently the beta is running one looking too similar to old one, not sure if that’s planned to be only one for release tho)
Be free with any changes to the models as long as they make them look BETTER.
Make terrain look “great again”
Thank you for reading this post and look at this as a way to express “way of thinking”.
If you agree with this way - #NOnochanges in comments
If you don’t, feel free to comment, explain or even hate
We need to sticky this post because Blizzard keeps listening to the wrong crowd. Remastered games should not be hindered by people’s nostalgia and this is coming from someone who owns this game since 2003.
Thank you, i had the same feeling so I decided to write about it.
I have had beautiful moments with original game as well but i believe it’s important not to hold on to past too much.
I would also agree with slightly changed mechanics. I see reforged as kind of game reboot which IMHO should bring completely new look to the game regarding models and mechanics.
Responding to feedback from people saying it would hurt pro players who spent great amount of time practicing, there are many games where rework( LoL, DOTA2, etc…) make esport community learn the concepts of reworked content from the start. I think especially pro players are able to adapt to new mechanics, build orders, as it is their goal to be the best and win tournaments showing their skills as well as flexibility to adapt.
For casual players it doesn’t matter whether you can block units the same way like in old W3 or whether colors make units less and more recognisable.
If Blizzard wants to show us new fresh look for the game once created but think would like to do it differently, I’m all in with every change even new playable naga race (I wish…)
As a very old player of Warcraft 3 which has always been my favourite game, I agree with you!
But only for the matter of graphisms.
I think the game must to keep the same story as before, with more details (like Anesterian…) but without stupid retcons which feel like fan fiction. (broken isles, Suramar, Arthas’ goals on Old gods, Illidan hero of light…)
Reforged campaign will have new things in it to keep up with the current lore bits in the world of Warcraft(not the game), but you don’t have a gun pointed to your face and forcing you to play it.
I doubt there will be any really drastical changes, but there will be some.
About the OP post, i kinda agree.
I won’t join any hashtags, because i don’t like this type of ‘‘movement’’, but yeah i prefer to be surprised and see new things than having everything 1:1 with classic version of the game, that is still there for classic enthusiasts.
We are yet to see what Warcraft III: Reforged gives us story wise. It’s future depends hugely on it’s success and it’s too soon to say if there will even be demand for such updates.
I believe your worries far from being implemented. And if, they will be up for debate for possible future of Blizzard’s RTS.
So you mean you want a warcraft 3 thats not warcraft 3 but warcraft 3 told in a different way? So you want Warcraft IV?
Don’t want to sound like a pessimist but the likelihood of Warcraft IV is very very slim. If you can get modern graphics and UI implemented to Warcraft 3, why the hell not? Look at Skyrim and the ENB graphics.
I also think Blizzard is pandering too much to WC3 pros when many do not care about the art direction other than the unit visibility(which I do agree it needs to be refined). They’re severely underestimating the number of players who play for the campaign and custom maps. See SC2.
Why you put your name at the end of your opinion?
That’s for other people to do if they quote you, doing it yourself makes you look silly. Also I don’t agree with your opinion, they promised us something and they did just that.
I agree. I kinda get the idea of not splitting the community between Classic and Reforged, but at the same time I don’t. Why not make own ladders for Classic and Reforged, just like The Frozen Throne split the community?
I think it’s just going to hurt everybody trying to go with this compromise of trying to please everyone: purists don’t like the changes made to the Classic game and people who want new are going to feel like the backwards-compatibility is just going to hold Reforged back. If we had two ladders, both would be satisfied: those who enjoy the old game could stay on their own Classic ladder and the rest can go enjoy the new features and quality of life changes in the Reforged ladder. There is even a bigger question with custom games: are we really going to leave all that potential out of the World Editor, just so that Classic WC3 can keep up?
My sincere hope is that this is just for the start. Once Reforged gets up on its feet, Classic would be slowly faded out and left behind and Reforged could evolve to become a bit more modern.
About pandering to pros:
There’s 2 types of people that since 2002 have been playing this game constantly (and arguably kept it alive). The pro scene in China and the custom games community.
Everyone knows that people who play only the campaign will put the game down after they are finished. From a business perspective, they should cater to people that invest more into it.
About telling a different story:
Retconning is terrible. Warcraft 3 came before WoW and theres is absolutely no reason for them to change the game’s lore and story to fit World of Warcraft or whatever. Now minor things like the appearance of a city (like stratholme) isn’t a big deal as long as it makes sense within that mission. But changing the events themselves is like changing the course of history to appeal to political ideologies.
Changing the appearance of certain models to fit world of warcraft HAS TO MAKE SENSE within the Warcraft 3 timeline. (A bad example of this would be Jaina in campaign having gray hair and WoW clothes.)
The models:
We’ve seen the pros commenting about how hard it is to distinguish units. I totally agree as a competitive player as well as a custom games player. Do you really want to know how bad it would be if you were to play a Nexus Wars type game where theres 8 players and the screen gets clogged with units no one has any idea who’s they belong to? There needs to be a common sense about the visibility. I bet new players would have an even harder time differentiating units than a pro.
It’s not just about throw in as much detail as possible and forget about the players ability to see or control their units.
The UI:
I like the bulky old UI. Seeing the great details of the skulls and bones on the UI when I’m playing Undead makes me feel more immersed in the RTS race that I’m playing. It also helps seeing the items better and the cooldowns on spells.
This is more of a personal prefference but Blizzard also said in an interview they are trying to give people the OPTION to mod their UI. This is very good for the custom games community.
On an end note, I want changes as long is it stays true to Warcraft 3 itself. Not WoW and not an imaginary Warcraft 4. Might as well just release Warcraft 4 then.
I understand you, it was meant as a joke way to say things everyone knows but doesn’t seem to pay attention to, although maybe not entirely appropriate.
I’m paying attention to your comments, don’t worry
Things change. It’s just what happens inevitably with as long and expanse universe as the Warcraft universe has grown to be: there are tons of books, comics, games and other stories that contribute to that one universe. As a(n amateur) writer myself, I can really see this - it’s just impossible to keep up with every little detail and sometimes some things just make more sense when they are changed a bit. Now, I’m not saying retconning is a good thing; usually it’s not, but sometimes it’s just something that has to be done. And if you think about it, Warcraft 3 basically retconned all the story WC1 and 2 established. Is that somehow more acceptable retcon?
That’s precisely what they are doing. And really, if you look it up, not much was ever retconned from Warcraft 3. It really does hold pretty well, even though there has been a huge load of more lore in the past 17 years. They are not going to change the story of WC3, because it does not need to be changed. They are just making some things that didn’t really matter in the first place to match what was later told in more detail.
That is just an optional, non-lore character skin for the melee games. She’s not going to look like that in the campaign.
