Reforged menu system still unworkable on low-end hardware

Well, it’s now a year later from my original report, and I’m trying out the latest Warcraft III Reforged patch on the same Asus 4GB X102BA laptop that I reported on previously. laptop was released 2014, includes graphics, plays the 2002-game easily. but…

The Reforged menu interface is still as slow as molasses. CPU is maxed out at 99%. Two instances of Warcraft III and two insrances of the Blizzard Browser are reported in Task Manager- that’s three processes (two BB and a W3) under the parent W3 process. One might wonder why, and why the old non-reforged game ran as a single process.

And I haven’t even started a game yet, because the menu system is sooo slow.

Developers need to stop tweaking game stats, and start working on why the game can’t be played on all the hardware more than capable of it – because the intro/menu system is so poor and resource hungry. And slow.

Process count does not really matter or directly affect performance. Multiple processes can be used to have separate virtual memory address spaces for different parts of the application, something that enhances security. There are other less common reasons to use multiple processes as well.

When you get in game the menus should no longer run so performance should go back to normal. Mostly the poor menu performance is due to issues detecting GPUs and so possibly falling back to software render. This seems especially common with systems with multiple GPUs such as laptops which have both an integrated GPU and a discrete GPU.

I have this menu problem as well. AFAIK, it’s present only on laptops with switching graphics cards and that means a laptop with an Intel CPU. I didn’t find a solution for this. Blizzard is so lame now, that they can’t even make a GAME MENU work properly.

Did you try setting BlizzardBrowser.exe to run on the dedicated graphics card in AMD or nVidia settings? It runs default on integrated graphics.

Problem on low-end hardware, you say?

How about this: I’ve got an NVIDIA RTX 3080 and an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, and Warcraft 3’s main menu is still laggy to the point of being near unusable.

But only in 4K. As soon as I drop the resolution to 1080p, everything fixes itself. In-game is also fine. It’s just that menu that’s being software rendered for some reason.

Now, I happen to know that they’re using Chromium under the hood, and I also happen to know that Chromium does support rendering the whole lot of it on the GPU, but I also happen to know that it’s a flag that’s turned off by default, and all you have to do is switch that flag to true, and it’d be fixed.

I know how to do it with Brave and Chrome and other browsers like that - but I do not know how to do it for Warcraft 3. It is, however, ridiculous that Blizzard haven’t done it.

Explanation: in Chrome you got a flag that you can switch for forcing the gpu rendering. It is very easy to turn on or off this feature.
Some smart genius at Warcraft Underdevelopment Team (let’s not call it Blizzard) decided t hardcode it.
So, no flag for the Blizzard Browser.
Adding the process to the list of programs in your GPU settings doesn’t take any effect if it simply reverts to software rendering.

That’s all^^

Force disabling GPU rendering in a high definition 3D video game is just… weird. Like… there is a capable GPU there. That is known. So why?

We may never know…

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Your menu is lagging because some genius thought it would be a great idea to use a web browser for a game menu and then disable GPU acceleration facepalm

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Having a simple configuration file or a register entry would have solved the problem for many people…

I am fairly certain GPU acceleration works for some people. For example at 1080p it barely taxes my CPU which can only be the result of GPU acceleration. The issue is more why it is not working for other people rather than the feature being disabled or out right broken.

The default status sadly is “disabled”, you can check it in the guide. Then, if a supported gpu is found it goes with the gpu. That’s the reason of the force gpu flag…

they hired an incompetent person to redo the menu and now its like 4gb of memory to show a 2d screen because its done in chrome. they used to have a talented developer who would program a 3d menu and it would use like 2mb of memory, but they all left the company. why are the new developers so bad? well think about it, HR department. this is the decline and stagnation which happens at all big gaming companies. it becomes less about merit over time and more about something else

It also looked like something from the early 2000s, which kind of defeats the purpose of “reforging”. A high quality real-time loading screen would need at least 100 MB of memory, assuming 10 odd 4 MB thigh resolution textures (and all their 2-3 layers)…

Not only Intel with discrete graphics cards are affected. The Asus X102BA has AMD A4 with integrated graphics…