PSA - Backing Up Campaign Progress

General Discussion
1

With the recent patches seemingly resetting all campaign progress, and several reports of progress being lost after a game crash, it might be helpful to periodically back up the files that store the campaign information. Doing so can help soften the blow if/when progress is reset.

There are a couple ways it can be done: one simpler, one more involved. Everything here is assuming Windows. Macs will need to navigate to the analogous file locations.

NOTE: This does not pertain to the loss of saved games. Those are gone for good because the files themselves become invalidated, and backing them up won’t change that, unfortunately.

The Simpler Method

This method will work for both Classic and Reforged.

Simply back up the “Warcraft III” folder located in
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\

This will save everything, all game saves and all progression.

The Specific Method

Classic mode’s and Reforged mode’s campaign progress are saved separately. I don’t own Reforged, so this next part only applies to Classic mode. I suspect that the Reforged mode’s progress is saved somewhere nearby so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

In the folder
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\Warcraft III\BattleNet\[ACCOUNTID]\Campaigns\Classic
…there are three types of files:

  • xxxxx.w3z These are the saved games. The xxxxxx is the name you gave when creating the save.
  • Classic.w3p This is where the campaign progress is saved. It stores both the unlocked campaigns and the completed missions within them. If this file is moved/deleted/damaged, the campaign selection screen resets back to default.
  • Campaign.w3v I don’t know what this does. When I deleted it out of the folder, nothing seemed to happen to the campaign progress. Perhaps it’s additional information, such as inventories, that carries over from mission to mission.

Therefore, it’s safe to say that backing up both Classic.w3p and, to be safe, Campaign.w3v will preserve progress.

If however you find all your progression lost and you don’t have any back ups, you can use the cheat codes to get back to where you were. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than starting from Human 1 again. See this post for the details:

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