Return back the classic game

Blizzard, it’s no shame to go back to classic Warcraft III. Listen to your community, learn from WoW Classic. It’s never too late to do the right thing.

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I can just see them reeling in their seats reading this. They want to give you what you want, but they don’t know how. Reforged changed too much over too long a timespan, while not becoming a totally new codebase. So unravelling the patches to the “classic” graphics mode and patches to the engine to reach an arbitrarily defined point when you felt good about the game is just too hard. You think it makes sense, but as a developer it doesn’t make sense.
And so they just suffer.

We have to ask for something technical and specific, such as, “revert the game to using 3D, FDF template based menu screens.” This would be a very technically straightforward change that they could give us if everyone demanded it in unison.

Once they did that, though, it would be the end of w3champions. Their hands are tied in every which way.

No. We just want them to get rid of Reforged altogether and reinstate the original game (Patch 1.31 at the latest, though 1.30.4 would be ideal) until such a time as Reforged is actually a complete product.

And even when/if it is, do NOT take away the option to play with the original client.

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I’m pretty sure Patch 1.27-1.31 were all made by the Reforged team as prepatches to slowly update the game into being Reforged. Why would everyone agree with your arbitrary choice of 1.31? Wouldn’t some people want 1.26? The notion of a specific patch being “the classic” is imaginary. And Patch 1.26 and below are a security hole.

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It’s not imaginary, it’s facts. Anything before 1.32 is Classic.

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Because 1.27 is still as a standalone Patcher available. There is still over a special side service the option to download the game Classic Warcraft III --- Official Installers - Official Patches
and it is in 1.27 The problem is, 1.28-1.31.1 where made with the new patching system so there is no option to download it anymore because you will be instead lead to Reforged. They even took down the option to still download patch 1.31 from the PTR Server.

Technically the current build running with classic graphics is classic…

Stop with the misinformation.

It’s not Classic, at all. It’s an incomplete POS that’s pretending very badly to be Classic. Classic had custom campaigns and a true offline mode. Reforged-pretending-to-be-Classic does not, and at this point never will.

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And old voices. And campaigns progress and saves that did not got brocken every patch. And better after battle screen.

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It’d be possible to do that by just rolling back patches, or providing a previous version of the game for players to install and having that become the official client. They probably have backups of previous versions, but even if they don’t it’s very easy to get previous versions of the game up to 1.27b. They could probably get 1.28 - 1.31.1 from somewhere too. They could continue patching the game after that as needed. So from a developer standpoint, in order to undo the least amount of work, the best patch to pick up from would probably be 1.31.1.

But I think they just don’t want to do that or think that’s too drastic. It would mean undoing Reforged and it’s subsequent patches, and giving refunds or credit to anyone who purchased it (and had not yet refunded). Also they’d have to justify it both publicly and within their company. And what would happen to all the Reforged models? Would they make it an option in Classic Warcraft 3, put them in another game like Starcraft 2 or Warcraft 4, or just get rid of them?

That’s Classic Mode not Classic Game. Even if you didn’t buy Reforged it doesn’t change that, it just means you’re stuck in classic mode within the Reforged Client. Classic Game on the other hand refers to the Classic Client. “Classic” alone could refer to either the mode or the game client, depending on context. When talking about game versions in a thread asking to bring back the classic game, it’s clearly referring to the game client and not the graphics mode.

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This has always happened as saves are not compatible between versions.

Technically what people are asking for are “legacy” versions since they are unsupported and old but people want to use them.

Nah it has been from all the patch notes back then only three times where saves got brocken and mayby campaign progress got brocken too. But three times out of 27. That is 10%. Here it is if we are optimistic only every second patch.

The issue with saves is caused by changes in how data is stored internally. Instead of trying to load and then running the risk of crashing/erroring, they use hard version numbers. Given how much work they still have to do, this is to be expected.

StarCraft II was pretty much the same. Very few games support loading saves from older versions, and those that do require the developers spend a lot of effort adding migration logic just to handle the case. Such games usually have saves that run up days of playtime each, rather than campaign missions which can be done in a few hours max.

Yeah but not loading a save from a started campaign mission if it is not the bonus campaign is not a big thing. You just play this mission again or end before the patch and play then the next. The Rexxar campaign is big enough that playtime for first and second mission can be days. But the main problem is, that it is just such a big deal to again and again and again start from defendance of Strahnbrad even if you are already short before the last battle on Hyjal. Then you should get a bonus character picture if you complete the whole campaign on hard which is despite now getting in RoC the TFT balance not easy. But with all the wipes now the progress for this pictures get wiped too. But yeah last thing is not part of Classic game but more ranting on “Reforged is not the new campaign experience that whas promised.”

As I mentioned in another thread many months ago. What they need to do is store more mission state in game caches for the Rexar campaign. They could then add an option to continue playing that rebuilds the mission state from game cache rather than relying entirely on save/load.

The campaign was made back in a time where maybe 1-2 updates in a year would happen, with quickly the interval increasing. This is not suitable for regular updates like we get now.

Legacy is another word for it but people also call it “classic client”, “classic version”, “classic game” or “classic Warcraft 3”, or just “classic” for short. There’s no rule or definition stating that a product still has to be supported or so designated by its creator in order for it to be called classic, or that it can’t also be legacy at the same time.

I know that owners of the legacy version were given the Reforged client and the classic graphics/campaign mode within it, which might be called “classic” for short which can make it a little confusing. But think of it like this: The Reforged graphics and “new campaign” are effectively just paid DLC for legacy owners; they already have all the other aspects of Reforged in the client. Anyway like I said you can usually tell whether people are referring to a legacy version or the mode in the Reforged client.

Are you sure it was every version or just “major game revisions”? Because previous patch notes used that term in notices about replays and custom saves for several patches, but not every patch got such a notice. For example: “Replays are incompatible between major game revisions. (1.16 replays cannot be viewed with the 1.17 version of Warcraft III)” When it said this, it was often, but not always, followed by a similar notice for custom save games. In this example: “Custom save games will not load from version 1.16” But they didn’t put such a notice for version 1.18. Why would campaign saves be any different? It could just be that now, every or almost every update is effectively a major game revision, along with happening more frequently.

Anyway you could just disable automatic updating until after you finish a mission.

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Look, 30 gigs would be silly to complain about if you were downloading the lastest Rockstar or Rocksteady game. But look at it from the classic player’s perspective, maybe they ‘opted’ out by never purchasing the game, saying there’s nothing in it for me, I’ll just keep my classic version. Well those people had a forced migration to the new client where they lost features like clans, tournaments, profiles, ladder, etc AND they have to download all these new art assets they didn’t want in the first place.

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I would suggest Blizzard to bring back PTR versions of 1.31.1 and 1.29.2 so we can test things around. i hardly think it would be an issue to maintain. and it would astronomically help with bug hunting, we can directly know what works and where it works and how its all reflected to the retail version.

While they focus on returning Classic Mode to being a real Classic Mode. old 3D animated backgrounds back, the menu coloring and theme switched up alongside the logo to look more like Classic. (There is no real need to change button positions from retail Reforged, just the art and logo when we switch to CM).

Potentially overhaul the entire main campaign series main menu to include all the original animated backgrounds when we switch over.

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Custom maps made in newer versions will not work out the box in older versions.

The backgrounds are locked to 4:3 aspect ratio. People hate that and wanted them removed. Yes people were complaining a ton here in the forum about the “black bars” (pillar boxes) that were needed for those old animated backgrounds to function properly. I am sure if they added them back people would be right back here complaining again that there are black bars…

Very good point, but i’m confident enough to say the majority of mapmakers are still on older versions. even if not. one could easily re create and test things on PTR versions of older patches. then the same on their new maps. overally it’ll be a great help i think.

I’m actually not advocating to bring back the older menu exactly how it was.
However i am saying the people preferring to play Classic certainly deserve a better treatment. and there is no excuse that i’ll make for Blizzard in regards to that.

The menus when we switch back to Classic mode should have the old 3D animated backgrounds back, this is not related to the custom campaigns since i know they’ll do something about that.

They can even take a 10-20 seconds video from the older menus and fit it in the Classic Mode. and i am indeed suggesting they should actually do new art specifically themed for the Classic Mode for the menus, if you read my quote suggesting the position of the Reforged buttons don’t need to change, my point was rather self evident.
i hardly think it would be much of effort or cost, and its easily within the bounderies of Blizzard to provide for the Classic Team.

On top of that the Warcraft 3 Reforged logo on the top side of the main menu should change to a newly created logo named Warcraft 3 Classic. or just the empty Warcraft III orange logo. their choice.

The menu buttons and surrounding menu art all should have their visuals in terms of color and art slightly changed to look more closer to the vanilla version.

So more raw blue and yellow texts for the buttons for example, while in Reforged there is this… rather modern hue to it with orangier text.

The main Campaign screens are also very important, they should totally allow us to see the older campaign menu screens for Classic Mode as it was.