Arthas was always the Lich King!
Fans were stunned afteryesterday’s announcementofWarcraft III: Reforged. Not only did Blizzard remember thatWarcraftwas once a strategy game, but they were going much farther in updating the classic than last year’sStarCraft: Remastered. This could almost be considered a remake of the quality of textures and cutscenes going on. That touch up is extending to a bit more than just aesthetics, though.
Asreported by Polygon, Blizzard’s Brian Souza and Pete Stillwell elaborated on the changes coming toReforgedin a post-presentation interview. The biggest announcement is thatReforgedwill be compatible with the original release ofWarcraft III.Even community developed maps and mods will work with the new remaster. You won’t need to buy the new version to play online, either, though doing so will obviously net you more modern visuals.
Stillwell explained the difference between this andStarCraft: Remastered. “When we went to Korea [forStarCraft: Remastered] and talked with pros and people still playing in game rooms, the overwhelming feedback was ‘Please don’t change the game.’…But with [Warcraft III: Reforged], we’ve talked with the communities in Europe and in China [who say], ‘Hey, we don’t think this game is done.'”
To that end, Blizzard will be introducing a wide range of balance tweaks and even expanding on the options available in the game’s editor. In a move that will likely be controversial, Blizzard is also working with writer Christie Golden (famous for herWarcraftnovels) to tweak aspects ofWarcraft III’sstory to fall in line with establishedWorld of Warcraftlore.
This move is being done to give, “renewed focus to a few central characters that we thought deserved a little bit more time in the limelight,” as Stillwell puts it. Stillwell then mentions characters like Jaina and Sylvanas, whose roles in the original campaign were pretty thin. He even brought up the Murloc creatures, which were basically a reskinned enemy before becoming an entire race inWorld of Warcraft.
“A lot of stuff inWarcraft IIIwas just kind of put in as ‘Hey, isn’t this awesome? This is cool,’ Stillwell recounted. “Like the Murlocs for instance. One of the artists back in the day, he came in over the weekend because he felt that there needed to be more creeps on the maps … so he just retextured what the ghoul was and he made a Murloc.”
Along with that, some of the landscapes inWarcraft IIIwill feature more defined architecture to better capture whatWorld of Warcrafthas on offer. The biggest can be seen in the trailer for “The Culling” mission, which features a Stratholme more in line with the popular MMO than the original. Stillwell mentions, specifically, that Stratholme originally had Greek columns and a small river that didn’t make a whole lot of sense for the village.
Whether or not these changes are what you want is another matter. I’m not sure how I feel about rewriting entire bits of lore, seeing as howWorld of Warcraftwas built off ofWarcraft IIIand not the reverse. I guess it would be interesting to see that backstory become more fleshed out, but nothing in WoW directly contradicts the RTS classic. This just seems like a bit of meddling to better justify the “Reforged” moniker.
At the same time, the classicWarcraft IIIisn’t going anywhere.Reforgedis based on that and while balance updates will make their way to the original, players will still be able to access that version in all its 2002 glory. You can already boot it up in HD thanks to apatch from earlier this year, so it isn’t like Blizzard is demanding you move over to the new version.
All in all, I’m not quite sure what to make of this. I’m still pretty excited since I loveWarcraft III. Those tweaks might get out of hand, though, and that wouldn’t be good.
Warcraft 3: Reforgedis more than just a remaster of Blizzard’s classic RTS[Polygon]
