Once per month, when the 30 day login requirement expires, Reforged has its time of month when the World Editor test button stops working in the manner you describe. To resolve the issue, click on “Play Game” on the Battle.net launcher, which will create the cookies for the dumb browser web page menu, and then allow “Test Map” to work more closely in line with what a user would expect instead of being obviously broken and presenting the user with a login prompt that doesn’t work properly or whatever. Side note: I’m describing the behavior from 2020 to 2022 and didn’t try recently, so it’s possible that the latest off-shore studio this game was farmed out to might have slightly improved the situation, but I’m not sure.
Data is king. The purpose of Reforged is to convince the user that Reforged is Warcraft III, so that regardless of whether the user experience is better or worse the experience shall be monitored and reported by the Battle.net application, because data is the manner in which to profit adequately off of the user. This is my opinion and personal speculation, and does not reflect any official statements made in the past.
Insiders have reported that Diablo Immortal and Warcraft Arclight Rumble make billions of dollars per month or something, because of all the suckers who buy into the mobile gambling mechanics. Whether you like it or not, this revenue stream is so tremendous and dwarfs RTS games to such a large extent, that on a fundamental value the value of the Warcraft name is not likely to be a strategy game or RPG or MMO RPG in the future, but rather the value will be its opportunity to profit off of the mobile money mechanisms. If you think about how this works, given any developer who could make fixes or patches to a game, or make a game, he can do basically the same work in either case but in the “RTS case” he probably earns back let’s say $1,000,000 if 33,000 users each pay $30. But if 33,000 users each pay nothing, except for 1,000 users who each pay $100,000 in a gamble mechanism for a chance to win the best items, then this produces $100,000,000.
So, any developer who chooses to like RTS or prefer to update what you enjoy or care for the other 32,000 users in this example is an active hostility to profit margins, who is effectively costing the company $99,000,000 in opportunity cost because of their bad decision making caused by their feelings or whatever.
So, if we run the numbers like that and ignore your feelings (and the feelings of 32,000 / 33,000 of the users) we realize that immense financial pressure to destroy Warcraft as you know it. The value of the brand is to see how many folks like you can be convinced that a mobile game is the Warcraft, and on the side if it’s possible to make you feel like there’s no hope for the RTS so you have to play mobile, if it can be done in a legal way, that would surely just be icing on the cake to ensure the higher profit margins.
Actually, I am personally convinced that if you used the CD version of the game but applied an HD mod to that game, it would not steal your data in the same manner as Battle.net and would not call home to report your activities. I got into an argument with someone on Discord claiming to be an Activision insider who said that I am wrong about this difference, though, and that “they will know” when you execute the game binary in either case. So, you can make of that what you will. But my family had a dial up modem when we first got that game, if I recall, and I don’t recall hearing the dial sound when I would play the game. And the same binary from the CD still plays fine on my Windows 10 computer if I buy an external CD drive, so Reforged is only necessary for the multiplayer.
For the above stated reasons, there is not. The rumor is that the opportunity cost is too great. Rather than update Reforged, the corporation decided to discontinue updates on Starcraft 2 and on Heroes of the Storm because these games are also not the mobile game monetization system.
Some of the folks making Reforged could tell, and probably imagined that they would sell skins inside of Reforged [hence the “Collections” tab], but no skins have ever been put on sale other than the preorder bonus skins despite the system being functionally in place, so after preorders failed to make billions the system was probably ditched. If Reforged starts selling skins, I would imagine that might be a good sign that someone at this company sees the game as a meaningful revenue stream again, since the Reforged client literally has different skins internally for heroes who had only one skin in the old game, as if to try to sell them. For example, in the new graphics Anub’arak looks different than the standard Crypt Lord in the new graphics, Maiev looks different than the standard Warden, and Kael’thas looks different than the standard Blood Mage. And there are many more examples than just these three. This would easily lend itself towards selling a skin version of each hero for the melee versus mode. However, because a system like that would not change the tremendously financially bad opportunity cost of spending time with this game instead of mobile games, such skins were never made available.
The hope for future generations has always resided in mortal hands. If you want something new and different to emerge, maybe you will have to make it yourself. If you have that kind of technical skill, of course, then by making such a game you will be again costing yourself that $99 million from my example, and so it would be like a form of financial self harm for you to try to create your own game inspired by this one, but the option exists for you to try technologically (if you learn how to use a game engine, etc).