Please don't change the story!

General Discussion
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In several interviews, both with Polygon and now with GameInformer, you’ve stated that you are going through the story, making changes here and there. The dialogue is being looked at, ‘smoothed out’ as you said, and greater prominence is given to characters like Sylvanas and Jaina.

Please reconsider this. Warcraft 3’s story is iconic for a reason - indeed, it’s success is what spawned WoW to begin with, and now you’re changing War3 to correspond more with WoW’s story - see the irony? Warcraft 3 is timeless, which is why it’s enjoyed even now, and many people, especially Warcraft 3 fans, would argue that WoW’s story-telling and writing is significantly worse.
Having the WoW writing team take passes at ‘smoothing’ out the dialogue of the campaign is a very ill-considered move.

Christie Golden wrote the Arthas story, some of which is being used as a base for altering the story I understand. Please respect that many of us heavily dislike the Arthas book and where its focus lay. We don’t need to know where Death Knight Arthas got his horse from, because it does not matter.
Golden states that she came up with the idea of his horse dying as the reason for why Arthas cared so much for his people and did not want to fail them. A much simpler (and better) reasoning, could simply be that he is the prince, and they are his people, and they are being mercilessly killed by the worst of enemies. When you have a responsibility for someone, like Arthas did to his people, and get pushed for so long, you make desperate choices.

You’ve stated that you are re-recording all voice-lines, so that they correspond more with the WoW voice-actors. However, you have also said that we will be able to use the old voices if we so wish, which is reasonably.
However, if you are going through the story and changing bits of dialogue here and there, then the old voice lines won’t work any more, and seeing as you will not rehire Justin Gross to play Arthas, then this means that the loyal fans of War3 will be forced to play the campaign with dialogue and sound at odds with their love and nostalgia for the game.

Furthermore, catering to the WoW crowd in place of the hardcore fans of War3 seems counterproductive, as the War3 fans are the ones who have kept the game going for all of these years.

Please reconsider changing the story and dialogue. The dialogue is fine, the story is already perfect.

Sources: Polygon: Warcraft 3: Reforged is more than just a remaster of Blizzard’s classic RTS
GameInformer: How Blizzard Is Updating Warcraft III’s Fiction For Reforged

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100% dead on. WoW is a fun game, but the story is a mockery of Warcraft III. The two shouldn’t even be tied together. Let WoW exist in a bubble.

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I don’t agree. The production lead stated that over the years they have learn much more about making games and considers that there was a lot of missed opportunities with WC3 that they would like to reengage. This is a reimagining of WC3. If you want iconic WC3 you are free to play 1.28. It’s not about catering WoW fans at all, it’s catering newcommers to the franchise that deserve the best experience that blizzard can give them so they actually embrace WC3 and stay and don’t drop it after a week because it feels outdated and there’s no feeling of nostalgia. Why should they cater newcommers and not WC3 hardcore fans? because the amount WC3 hardcore fans does not justify this investment and they were already fine playing the ‘perfect’ game.

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they had a lot of missed opportunities with wow, like giving it a good, also fleshing out scourge and legion into actual playable factions, but that was too much work.

Leave wc3 story as it is.

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I’m pretty sure it is up to them to judge what is too much work or not, and they decided it wasn’t, so yeah. Keep up the good work.

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Just because someone says something does not make it true - I believe most players would consider WoW’s story vastly inferior to Warcraft 3’s.

And it is exactly about catering to WoW-players - something they literally said they’d be doing, and the reason for including Sylvanas and Jaina more, and for re-recording all the audio so WoW-players would recognize the voices.

Furthermore, very few War3 players considered the game ‘perfect’, which is why a lot of us are excited about Reforged. The story, however, is damn close to being perfect, which is why so many of us are against it being changed.

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(Imagines Reforged cutscenes involving either Jaina or Sylvanas.)

Regardless of who, when or where speaks the camera is centered exclusively on either character’s face = imagine the cutscene where Thrall and Jaina are both meeting with the “Oracle” and while Medivh gives them his speech about fighting for life the only thing you can see is Jaina’s face in an extreme closeup as she listens with a confused expression and the camera just stays on her face during the entirety of the cutscene. xD

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I fear we are gonna see Jaina step in, trying to stop Arthas at Stratholme.

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Uhh didn’t they show the Stratholme cinematic already they made and they kept Jaina’s part exactly the same. They aren’t going to make characters do something that would change the story. They are just trying to flesh out motives, backstory, and etc…

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That cut-scene almost certainly was not done - the animation was janky, the cuts were weird, and they did not use the new audio. They said they were out to better flesh out the characters according to who they are in WoW now, and WoW Jaina, combined with the fact that they want her to have a bigger role, might very likely step in and have additional dialogue. As long as she is unsuccessful, the story doesn’t change.

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Why would they do that? They are not going to change the characters’ personalities.

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Would that be changing her personality, or conforming it to the strong woman she is in WoW?

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I think this is an overreaction because Culling of Stratholme in WoW uses the same lines I believe (Haven’t done it in quite a while) They aren’t going to change that in WoW and they aren’t going to change that moment in WC3. It is literally way too iconic of a moment.

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Regardless, that example wasn’t meant to be taken literally (although I still fear it may happen), but came as a reaction to reading how they are going through every line of dialogue, updating them and increasing the prominence of some characters, such as Jaina.

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But it would change a lot of her character arc. Se may be a powerful and strong in WoW, but back in WC3 she was just a young apprentice sorceress.

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I agree with you, and would really prefer the story and scenes stay the same - I am just trying to convey to that to Blizzard.
But the fact of the matter is that they said they would give her an increased role, because of her WoW portrayal.

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I have faith in Christie Golden. She has done good novels and seems to be quite good with Warcraft lore.

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Christie ‘retcon’ Golden butchered WoW lore… Just check her last book to see how she now tries to destroy another built up character: Sylvanas

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That’s where we disagree - I thought the Arthas book read like bad fan-fiction.

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Well I haven’t read the Arthas book. But I guess we’ll see then… :grimacing: