Warcraft III: Reforged - now with lowest user metacritic score of all time

[karoliner]

I love the Risitas meme format.

 

[Harthwain]

After Starcraft: Remastered I didn't expect Activision-Blizzard to fail at remastering Warcraft 3. How a rich company can do that - and fuck it up so meticulously - is beyond me.

The game was released during the age of early 3D. In no way the game looked any worse than other 3D releases from that time like Battle Realms or Empire Earth or Dark Reign 2 or what else was there back then, and in fact it looked better. The way the game moved, the variety in the terrain, all those little details they slapped everywhere. I remember when i loaded Battle Realms a few years ago i was shocked at how technically inferior it looked compared to Warcraft 3, where as back in 2002 they seemed comparable to me.

I always thought that Battle Realms withstood the test of time better than Warcraft 3.

 

[TedNugent]

After Starcraft: Remastered I didn't expect Activision-Blizzard to fail at remastering Warcraft 3. How a rich company can do that - and fuck it up so meticulously - is beyond me.

A lot of the "fuckups" were deliberate, greasy attempts to stick their dick in the eye of the community. Things like blocking all copyright content, claiming ownership of all intellectual property in the map editor, forcing everyone to switch over to their fucking retarded always online Battle.shit, eviscerating the chat and clan system, resetting portraits and ladder progress and integrating everything into their game launcher and global Battlenet profile were all intentional.

It's not about the game, it's about getting people on a network. They could not stand the fact that there was a popular game from nearly 20 years ago that people were playing on the old Battle.net. They want to retire that shit and force everyone into their Battleshit launcher.
Remember, the launcher is a virtual storefront where they sell digital goods, DLC, pre-order crap and other hokum and try to get you onto the global friends list so you can see what the cool kids are playing.

That's a big part of what the fan backlash is about. I doubt the game is as much of a shoddy, buggy, unplayable mess as people are making it out to be. And I frankly don't really give a shit about revamped cutscenes compared to removed framerate caps and native widescreen.

 

[MajorMace]

I wanna get off Mr. Blizzard's wild ride.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

After Starcraft: Remastered I didn't expect Activision-Blizzard to fail at remastering Warcraft 3. How a rich company can do that - and fuck it up so meticulously - is beyond me.

The game was released during the age of early 3D. In no way the game looked any worse than other 3D releases from that time like Battle Realms or Empire Earth or Dark Reign 2 or what else was there back then, and in fact it looked better. The way the game moved, the variety in the terrain, all those little details they slapped everywhere. I remember when i loaded Battle Realms a few years ago i was shocked at how technically inferior it looked compared to Warcraft 3, where as back in 2002 they seemed comparable to me.

I always thought that Battle Realms withstood the test of time better than Warcraft 3.

My theory is that they cut funding mid-development due to low pre-order numbers. Would explain the half-finished nature of the game. A huge mistake. People won't forget this.

I've been fortunate to be largely free from technical problems but even so, the game is a 7/10. Would be a 4 for sure if it kept crashing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

People won't forget this.

blizzard fans are like goldfish
remember the hong kong shit only a few months ago? Yeah.

 

[Lacrymas]

After Starcraft: Remastered I didn't expect Activision-Blizzard to fail at remastering Warcraft 3. How a rich company can do that - and fuck it up so meticulously - is beyond me.

Like I said before, I suspected they wouldn't have been able to manage because WC3 has quite a lot of different models and assets that need to be changed, while contemporary AAA 3D graphics is the thing which takes the most time in game development. I doubt WC3 is a game which can be made as an AAA company today. How long did they work on this remaster? 3 years? And it's not done, they probably needed another 6 months, or even a year, to bring it up to snuff only on the graphics front, let alone remake all the in-game cutscenes. They could've probably made a new game (like WC4) in that time that will sell better. SC: Remaster and this can't be compared at all, it's much easier and faster to make 2D sprites. Whoever decided to remaster WC3 because of the SC remaster didn't know how games are made probably. If I were them, I'd have remastered WC1 or 2. More like 1 because 2 suffers from the naval combat too much.

 

[Absinthe]

How long until Blizzard in their wisdom and benevolence disables the ability to play WC3 Classic?

You have to use private BNET servers (search "PVPGN") or VLAN and manually patch WC3 to the last version before the reforged garbage set in.

 

[Harthwain]

A lot of the "fuckups" were deliberate, greasy attempts to stick their dick in the eye of the community. Things like blocking all copyright content, claiming ownership of all intellectual property in the map editor, forcing everyone to switch over to their fucking retarded always online Battle.shit, eviscerating the chat and clan system, resetting portraits and ladder progress and integrating everything into their game launcher and global Battlenet profile were all intentional.

It's not about the game, it's about getting people on a network. They could not stand the fact that there was a popular game from nearly 20 years ago that people were playing on the old Battle.net. They want to retire that shit and force everyone into their Battleshit launcher.
Remember, the launcher is a virtual storefront where they sell digital goods, DLC, pre-order crap and other hokum and try to get you onto the global friends list so you can see what the cool kids are playing.

That's a big part of what the fan backlash is about. I doubt the game is as much of a shoddy, buggy, unplayable mess as people are making it out to be. And I frankly don't really give a shit about revamped cutscenes compared to removed framerate caps and native widescreen.

Frankly, I don't think they could've done much more damage even if they tried to actively sabotage the whole project.

If I were them, I'd have remastered WC1 or 2. More like 1 because 2 suffers from the naval combat too much.

Naval combat made land-sea maps more interesting than pure land-locked scenarios.

 

[Jaedar]

People won't forget this.

blizzard fans are like goldfish
remember the hong kong shit only a few months ago? Yeah.

I think a large part of the reason this shit is backfiring so horribly is that people do remember the hong kong stuff.

 

[Reinhardt]

Kotick should just fire everyone and rehire oldfags. Make Blizzard small again.

 

[Lacrymas]

Naval combat made land-sea maps more interesting than pure land-locked scenarios.

It added tedious building of transport ships and nothing else basically. It needlessly slows down the game, there's a reason they removed it in WC3 (it's still technically there, but outside of a few instances in the campaigns only like 1 pvp map nobody plays on uses it and the AI gets borked there). I've talked to a lot of people about this and they all basically agree the naval combat is not only extraneous, but actively detrimental.

 

[Average Manatee]

0.5 on metacritic.

After Starcraft: Remastered I didn't expect Activision-Blizzard to fail at remastering Warcraft 3. How a rich company can do that - and fuck it up so meticulously - is beyond me.

Like I said before, I suspected they wouldn't have been able to manage because WC3 has quite a lot of different models and assets that need to be changed, while contemporary AAA 3D graphics is the thing which takes the most time in game development. I doubt WC3 is a game which can be made as an AAA company today. How long did they work on this remaster? 3 years? And it's not done, they probably needed another 6 months, or even a year, to bring it up to snuff only on the graphics front, let alone remake all the in-game cutscenes. They could've probably made a new game (like WC4) in that time that will sell better. SC: Remaster and this can't be compared at all, it's much easier and faster to make 2D sprites. Whoever decided to remaster WC3 because of the SC remaster didn't know how games are made probably. If I were them, I'd have remastered WC1 or 2. More like 1 because 2 suffers from the naval combat too much.

That's crap, modern games with open worlds and shit have absurdly more art assests than WC3. On top of that you have a guide (the original work) on what the result should look like so there should be a lot less wasted time re-designing things till they look just right or whenever someone decides that they want a different unit in a faction.

The real reason is that Blizzard never wanted to give the game an AAA budget to begin with, not even an AA budget. The outsourced it to some no-name studio that was probably competent enough at redoing Starcraft because they were mobile devs or something and experienced in 2D art but wholly incapable of doing even decent 3D let alone highly stylized 3D like WC3 had.

Naval combat made land-sea maps more interesting than pure land-locked scenarios.

It added tedious building of transport ships and nothing else basically. It needlessly slows down the game, there's a reason they removed it in WC3 (it's still technically there, but outside of a few instances in the campaigns only like 1 pvp map nobody plays on uses it and the AI gets borked there). I've talked to a lot of people about this and they all basically agree the naval combat is not only extraneous, but actively detrimental.

The biggest problem in WC2 was that both navies were completely identical and had very little depth. EVERY GOD DAMNED MAP past a certain point forced you to build battleship to get across water at some point. Everyone only built battleships because destroyers sucked and subs sucked as soon as you detected them. Finally battleships were so powerful compared to land forces that they basically annihilated half the enemy bases just shooting from the water. At the same time naval did make expanding and defending those expansions a bit more interesting since you could be attacked in a lot more places rather than fortifying one single place. Its just that when you amassed 9 battleships you kind of annihilated everything.

In general I don't really see WC1/2 and Diablo 1 as being popular enough for Blizzard to care remastering.

 

[Harthwain]

It added tedious building of transport ships and nothing else basically. It needlessly slows down the game, there's a reason they removed it in WC3 (it's still technically there, but outside of a few instances in the campaigns only like 1 pvp map nobody plays on uses it). I've talked to a lot of people about this and they all basically agree the naval combat is not only extraneous, but actively detrimental.

I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason for not implementing naval combat in W3 was because otherwise they'd have to do a lot more units and maps just to make them useful.

In Starcraft you sort of do the same thing as you did in W2, but since air units can fly around any obstacle they aren't as limited in their use as are naval units, which are restricted to the body of water they were created in. Also, Starcraft had a lot more mechanics that made game more complex over W2. If anything I think it was Starcraft that inspired them to replace naval combat with air combat. That and the introduction hero units.

But I disagree with your assessment of naval combat in general. It introduces an extra layer of strategy, just like air combat does. It also prevents rushing your enemies with a few units (which was very popular strategy in W3), since you have to build the infrastructure needed to get your troops across the water and clear the coast from potential defenses that can sink your transports or kill your troops. And nothing stops you from having both - maps that are played exclusively on land as well as on land-and-sea. However, for that you need maps to support said playstyle and they should be good to begin with...

The biggest problem in WC2 was that both navies were completely identical and had very little depth.

It was problem of the game as a whole though. I think only spells were different between factions. They even tried getting away with making Starcraft into a reskinned W2, but the outrage made them completely redesign the whole game and create factions that were truly unique.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's crap, modern games with open worlds and shit have absurdly more art assests than WC3.

Maybe, but open world games aren't RTSes you have to sell to a contemporary audience, and they still have a ridiculously long dev cycle. It's obvious they couldn't finish Refunded in time, and that's with an Asian studio which more than likely overworked their employees (perhaps sent a few to a hospital, lol), so maybe you are also underestimating the sheer number of assets and animations.

It also prevents rushing your enemies with a few units (which was very popular strategy in W3), since you have to build the infrastructure needed to get your troops across the water and clear the coast from potential defenses that can sink your transports or kill your troops

I.e. needlessly slowing down the game.

The WC2 campaign is quite a grind due to this and the overall same-y-ness of objectives.

 

[DraQ]

Mario 64? What are you, some kind of Zoomer?

The game was released during the age of early 3D.

2002 is not fucking early 3D. It's when 3D graphics was already transiting to fully mature.

Besides when warcrap 3 was released all the Myths were already out, for example. Sometimes no excuse is just no excuse.
WC3's/WOW's style has always been 3D graphics equivalent of calarts.

Kotick should just fire everyone and rehire oldfags. Make Blizzard small again.

That's not how you corpo.

The biggest problem in WC2 was that both navies were completely identical and had very little depth.

Navies do need depth, yes.

 

[Suicidal]

 

[Black]

People won't forget this.

Blizztards forgot all about the fartstone fiasco when blizzard dangled ovenwatch 2 in front of them.

 

[MWaser]

Reddit when they think ruining the metacritic score of blizzard for some duration is going to change Blizzard's future business practices

Spoiler

 

[Lyric Suite]

I love the Risitas meme format.

I like how the original story he is telling is actually funnier than all of the memes.

The story of the cement stack is almost as good:

 

[Average Manatee]

The biggest problem in WC2 was that both navies were completely identical and had very little depth.

It was problem of the game as a whole though. I think only spells were different between factions. They even tried getting away with making Starcraft into a reskinned W2, but the outrage made them completely redesign the whole game and create factions that were truly unique.

Spells and a few upgrades. Thing is the spells were radically different, Bloodlust meant Orcs dominated in 1v1 combat (Holy Light was basically impossible to use to heal in combat due to APM constraints) but Humans had the best utility with hit and run attacks that use Invisibility vs. the Orc Death Knight who humans could just delete from the game with Exorcism. So there's an interesting meta there but basically nothing interesting on the sea (I think Humans could still invis transports which may have just been OP in 1v1 play).

Its a very fixed meta kind of game but at least the land game is interesting. Obviously SC is better but WC2 land is way more interesting than WC2 sea.

 

[Farewell into the night]

This is gold! hahaha

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

IN BLIZZARD TOWER

Spoiler

Master Brack on phone: "That's good, that's good. Maybe give Widowmaker a penis or McCree a Brokeback Mountain costume to really add more depth to them."

Subordinate: "Mr. Brack, Mr. Brack!"

Brack: "Hold on, some damn wiener kid from down the hall is asking for me. Call you back." turns in his DRX RACER #PRO PLAYER CHAIR "What... this better be good."

Subordinate: "There's a massive outcry on Warcraft 3 Reforged. YouTube hysteria 'content' creators are up in arms!"

Brack: "Warcraft...3...?"

Subordinate: "Yes! Reforged! There's a whole-"

Brack: "Clark. Your name is Clark right? Listen, Clark... I know about this. This... Warcraft 3."

Clark: "What are we going to do?"

Brack: "Heh..." rises from his chair, looking out the window at the dystopian hellscape that is California 2020 "Nothing."

Clark: "Nothing?"

Brack: "Yes, Clark... nothing. Do you have something to say about that?"

Clark: "But... but why? Won't this tank our public reputation? Shake our faith with the playerbase? I mean, already there are refunds coming in and-"

Brack: "Clark, shh... you talk too much for a heterosexual male. You seem to forget we are Blizzard. Do you know our playerbase? Do you know how uniformly stupid they all are?"

Clark: "You mean..."

Brack: "Diablo 3. We sold them a lemon. We took zero criticism, zero feedback, we listened to no one for over four years. People bought it. Warlords of Draenor, we didn't even know why we were making that expansion but it still sold. Why, we sold these morons a retail priced game with lootbox microtransaction freemium models in it."

Clark: "But... the ethics!"

Brack: turns around and chuckles "Ethics, ethics, ethics... such a dirty word, that ethics. We did what we did to Warcraft 3 to send a message, not to the fans but to all our former employees. Don't fuck with me, Clark. That is the message. You mess with the B-man and I will desecrate, violate, and eradicate your legacy. There won't be a Reign of Chaos or Lord of Destruction or Burning Crusade... there will be what I want."

Clark: "...Sir..."

Brack: "You look mortified, Clark. Let me explain: for the better part of ten years I have had to put up with people asking where the 'OLD' Blizzard has gone. The ones that made 'BROOD WAR' and Vanilla WoW. Ten years, every day, every minute, a nostalgia fag would bitch and moan. At first we tried to please them, hoping they would simply go away... then we became hostile... and finally, we realized no matter what we did it was never good enough for them. So I brought it up in a meeting: what if we were to modify those memories so that in time the only thing people would remember is the work we did... the work I did. Sure, you would have those that remember clearly the true past but they will die off soon to kidney failure and diabetic shock. All we need to do now is take what people thought they knew and reshape it... remake it..."

A crack of lightning cuts through the dark sky and illuminates the room brightly for a fleeting second.

Brack: "Reforge it." smirks

Clark: stands there stunned, unsure of what to say and shifting about uncomfortably.

Brack: "We will simply weather the storm right now. The Youtubers have no real influence the moment we cut off sponsors, the streamers will do whatever we tell them to or else their channel may come under a curious case of the flagged bug, and the normies... the people like you... well, you're all just collateral."

Brack stops for a moment to consider something.

Brack: "And if it escalates further, we'll just release a Diablo IV cinematic and D.Va in a bikini skin. Hah, hell, I'll even straighten my hair and issue another 'apology' if need be."

Clark: swallows hard "Okay... I get it... I will tell everyone else to not worry and to continue as usual."

Brack: "There's a good boy... oh, and Clark, before you go? Do me a favor?"

Clark: "Yes?"

Brack: grins wickedly "Go into the basement and bring me the source code for The Lost Vikings."

Clark: turns as pale as a ghost but sheepishly nods

Brack: speaking to himself "Yes... soon all the world will remember Blizzard as Brack intended. Nobody is bigger than the business. I am the business."

He helps himself to a sip from a glass of wine sitting on his table.

Brack: "And if they don't agree, they can make another DOTA 2 for all I care."

 

[Absinthe]

Reddit when they think ruining the metacritic score of blizzard for some duration is going to change Blizzard's future business practices

The abysmal user metascore discourages professional reviewer scores from giving high praise though, since they don't want to look horribly out of touch, even if they honestly are. And since a lot of videogame companies love tying performance rewards to metacritic reviewer scores, it's safe to say that it does actually inflict a dent. Most reviewers these days don't have actual standards and will either regurgitate PR buzz or regurgitate popular opinion with their prettier words, so they will probably rate WC3 reforged around 20 points lower than they would have otherwise. Someone who would have otherwise given a 90 will give a 70. Someone who would've given a 70 will give a 50. And so on. That kind of shit.

It's easy to say that user metascores don't affect company profits and that they don't give a shit about them, but the effect they have on professional review scores certainly does. And that's aside from the fact that terrible userscores do lower sales from metacritic users.

 

[a Goat]

Going to go out on a limb and guess that like most companies that deteriorate, it's filled with management that was hired because they were friends/family of talent rather than actual talent.

In case of videogames I think it has more to do with the responsible corporate adults taking over the management from nerds. For them it becomes a "product" and they don't really comprehend what makes it good.