Today I completed the RoC and TFT campaigns on Hard difficulty (except Rexxar campaign, haven’t started that one) I want to report a few issues I noticed. I would also like to ask people reading this to share their experiences as well.
First, this bug has been in the game for as long as I can remember, going way back, probably more than 10 years - in the Blood Elf campaign Kael’thas’ Mana Siphon does not work on friendly units. I think in order to fix it you just need to enable the option for it under gameplay constants in the World Editor for each mission.
Now I’ll try to keep these in chronological order:
Thrall refers to Grom Hellscream as “Hellscream” and not “Grom” like in the original during multiple cinematics.
March of the Scourge - this mission was absurdly easy. The Undeads did not send their Liches to attack me, even at the very end of the mission where they’re supposed to constantly send units into my base. I replayed this mission again and was able to destroy all the Undead bases, including the orange one, since I let them take the top right gold mine. With my skill, I could never pull something like this in the original Warcraft 3. Also the mission is supposed to end if you destroy the Undead bases before the timer expires, although I did leave two Spirit Towers alive in green’s base, so maybe that’s why it didn’t end.
In Dissension Muradin can’t use Storm Bolt on the ships.
In Digging up the Dead the opening cinamatic is missing Arthas saying “What the hell is that?” referring to the Meat Wagon.
The Siege of Dalaran missions was way too easy for Hard difficulty. The attack waves that were sent to my base were ridiculously weak. I know this mission has been heavily reworked, but it’s too easy on Hard difficulty.
By Demons Be Driven is now a lot harder, because unlike before, Jaina is unable to hold on her own when the Infernals start raining down and that’s mostly because when she dies, the AI does not resurrect her despite having the resources and supply to do so. The mission being harder is fine in my opinion, but the AI not reviving her is a bug.
Twilight of the Gods (UPDATED) - I tested this mission on Reforged and on RoC 1.27 (Hard difficulty for both). Here are the issues:
According to the AI script file I have from before Reforged, there are 11 waves (some are repeated) sent against Jaina and Thrall’s base, and 13 waves sent against the player. The last 3 waves (wave 9, 10 and 11 for Jaina and Thrall, wave 11, 12 and 13 for the player) are looped. For Jaina and Thrall, those 3 final waves consist of:
9th Wave (11th if target is the player’s base):
Pit Lord Azgalor
3 Necromancers
3 Banshees
3 Frost Wyrms
7 Felhounds
3 Doom Guards
2 Meat Wagons at least
Additional 30 seconds pause before the next wave here.
10th Wave (12th if target is the player’s base):
Dreadlord Anetheron
6 Crypt Fiends
3 Necromancers
3 Banshees
5 Abominations
3 Infernals
2 Meat Wagons at least
Additional 30 seconds pause before the next wave here.
11th Wave (13th if target is the player’s base):
Pit Lord Azgalor
Lich Rage Winterchill
3 Necromancers
4 Banshees
3 Frost Wyrms
5 Felhounds
3 Infernals
4 Doom Guards
3 Meat Wagons at least
The same waves are repeated for the player’s base but without the increased time interval between them.
Now, the issue is during Wave 11 (13 for the player’s base), the Lich Rage Winterchill does not show up. Not only that, but on the next wave, which is Wave 9 (11 for the player’s base), and which is suppose to include Azgalor in it, the Pit Lord doesn’t show up either. He shows for the first Wave 9, but once the final 3 waves enter the loop, Azgalor does not revive and join in after the 11th Wave. He’s suppose to participate in 2 back to back waves (11 and 9 for Jaina’s / Thrall’s base, 13 and 11 for the player’s base) always.
Here are 6 screenshots of my testing in RoC version 1.27:
https://imgur.com/a/U4SDan2
Additional problems with the mission: Archimonde is level 1, does not have nor train abilities, he’s supposed to be level 10 and use Demonic Gate, Rain of Chaos and Finger of Death when he’s aggroed. His items are missing from his inventory and he’s suppose to be facing in Jaina’s base direction, not turned towards his own base.
Dreadlord Anetheron’s Rain of Chaos ability should summon 3 Infernals on Hard difficulty (level 2 Rain of Chaos). I am not 100% sure if this is not the case in Reforged. Will have to check again.
2 problems with the cinematics:
First - in the cinematic with Thrall and Archimonde, Thrall is supposed to hit Archimonde with Chain Lightning. This is not the case in Reforged, and the reason behind it is the invisible dummy units, used as Thrall’s target for Chain Lightning, are invulnerable in Reforged. A simple removal of their Invulnerable stat in the Object Editor will fix the issue.
Second - in the final cinematic Archimonde is supposed to stop infront of the player’s base, play his Rain of Chaos cast type animation, blow up the buildings that stand in his way to the gate, and then move forward. In Reforged he just walks around the buildings as they explode.
Also, a trivial issue - Anetheron should use the standard Dreardlord model, not Detheroc’s. Anetheron is a Dreadlord participating in direct combat during the Battle of Mount Hyjal, he’s supposed to be fit, compared to Detheroc, who’s personality implies he’s the type of brain washer sitting behind the curtains. Having an overweight Dreadlord climbing a mountain, while simultaneously fighting, just looks silly and ruins the old memories from playing this mission back in the day.
Shards of the Alliance - In the final cinematic, Tyrande falling from the bridge is not animated. She just directly appears underwater.
The Brothers Stormrage - OK, this one was really weird. After I killed the troll to break the dam and then attacked the Undead, while I was macroing in Malfurion’s base I hit escape to cancel a unit from the production queue, this teleported my camera to the troll location and I sort of like entered cinematic mode for a split second with Malfurions portrait in the bottom left flashing. After this happened I think the AI stopped functioning. Tyrande was no longer getting attacked and neither were Malfurion nor Illidan. This made beating the mission extremely easy.
The optional objective to secure a gold mine in A Dark Covenant does not work. I first expanded in the South through a Tiny Castle. Later I expanded in the North by building a Town Hall, but the objective did not get completed.
The secret “Little Timmy” area in King Arthas is not really a “secret”. The type of trees used to hide that area have been changed in Reforged and the purpose of having Little Timmy as an easter egg is ruined.
A New Power in Lordaeron was extremely easy compared to the hell it used to be before. I am assuming some trigger regarding difficulty setting is not working properly in this one. I was able to destroy the orange and green Undead bases before I even did the optional objective and finish the mission. I don’t even know where to start. First I got attacked (Sylvanas base) only once throughout the whole game by a small wave of Gargoyles from the orange AI. That was it for the whole game. Garithos’ base got attacked multiple times by the purple Undead (like it’s supposed to be) but it never got attacked by the green Undead. Not even once. If I was someone playing this mission for the first time, I probably never would’ve learned there is a green Undead in this mission unless I intentionally scouted his base. Balnazzar (purple Undead) never attacked my base (Sylvanas). I noticed there are 2 gates preventing access to Sylvanas’ base that separate it from the orange Undead and the purple Undead. These shouldn’t be there, at least not on Hard difficulty. I played the mission twice, and the second time I literally beat it by just sitting in base, not getting attacked (only Garithos was getting attacked by the purple Undead), massing Frost Wyrms and Knights and then with a 200 food army (both Sylvanas + Garithos) I attacked from 2 sides and destroyed Balnazzar’s base. Didn’t even have to micro. The massive flood of Knights and Frost Wyrms was too much for the AI to handle.
The Forgotten Ones and Ascent to the Upper Kingdom also seemed pretty easy to beat. I remember when I played them the last time 1 year ago I could barely beat them. Especially the second one.
A Symphony of Frost and Flame is a lot more challenging and I’d say better now that the earthquake triggers have been enabled. Since I haven’t played it on Normal nor Story difficulty I don’t know if the earthquakes occur after an obelisk is captured. But my request is you keep it that way at least for the Hard difficulty since it was intended to be like this when the mission was first created 17 years ago. The only bug I found was when I replayed the mission later today a second time, the music (Arthas theme) did not play in the opening cinematic. It did when I played the mission for the first time but now it does not, and yes, I do have music enabled and turned on to 100%.
Thank you for reading, good luck!
EDIT: Added March of the Scourge after replaying it.