Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
If that's the case then I think this really deserves the title of worst "upgrade" of all time, since its all but removed the possibility to get a functional copy of the game outside of arcane, legally-dubious methods.
If that's the case then I think this really deserves the title of worst "upgrade" of all time, since its all but removed the possibility to get a functional copy of the game outside of arcane, legally-dubious methods.
Yep. It's a janky mess of 'upgraded' visuals that are WORSE than the originals for actual gameplay (half the ranged units you can't tell who the hell they're attacking), and they actively removed features of the original game.
We're how many months from release now? And not only do they STILL not have a ladder THAT WAS IN THE ORIGINAL GAME, they have NO PROJECTED DATE for when it will actually be in place.
This is beyond lazy incompetence, they actively destroyed the original.
Probably wrong place to ask, but anyone can suggest good mods for warcraft 3 frozen throne? I have in possession original version (not Warcraft 3: refunded, I don't want even play this garbage). I remember playing some custom maps long ago, but now I also interested in more global mods (but good map packs welcome too).
Do you think we'll eventually get a "new coke" type deal, where Warcraft 3: Reforged is so loathed and so reviled, that a grassroots movement akin to the WoW: Classic one will emerge, pleading for an official re-release of the pre-reforged client as a separate product? (As opposed to just using the older client and not connecting to battlenet). People have already asked for this in large numbers, but I have to wonder if, given enough time and interest, Blizzard will try to sneakily earn some goodwill by giving us back something we already had.
Do you think we'll eventually get a "new coke" type deal, where Warcraft 3: Reforged is so loathed and so reviled, that a grassroots movement akin to the WoW: Classic one will emerge, pleading for an official re-release of the pre-reforged client as a separate product? (As opposed to just using the older client and not connecting to battlenet). People have already asked for this in large numbers, but I have to wonder if, given enough time and interest, Blizzard will try to sneakily earn some goodwill by giving us back something we already had.
People have basically forgotten about this. Only the die-hard Warcraft 3 fans care anymore, everybody else has simply abandoned it. Reverting to Classic would require an explicit admission that Reforged was a piece of shit, and 1) they're too arrogant to ever admit that and 2) publicly admitting that you knowingly sold a faulty product could land you in serious legal trouble in a number of countries, GUARANTEEING that you would have to issue refunds to anybody that bought it regardless of time played.
Do you think we'll eventually get a "new coke" type deal, where Warcraft 3: Reforged is so loathed and so reviled, that a grassroots movement akin to the WoW: Classic one will emerge, pleading for an official re-release of the pre-reforged client as a separate product? (As opposed to just using the older client and not connecting to battlenet). People have already asked for this in large numbers, but I have to wonder if, given enough time and interest, Blizzard will try to sneakily earn some goodwill by giving us back something we already had.
People have basically forgotten about this. Only the die-hard Warcraft 3 fans care anymore, everybody else has simply abandoned it. Reverting to Classic would require an explicit admission that Reforged was a piece of shit, and 1) they're too arrogant to ever admit that and 2) publicly admitting that you knowingly sold a faulty product could land you in serious legal trouble in a number of countries, GUARANTEEING that you would have to issue refunds to anybody that bought it regardless of time played.
I'm not really talking about an outright rollback, so much as a "hey you know that thing you asked for, here is is!" but, in retrospect, you are right. I don't think enough people outside of competitive WC3 players would care. All the people casually checking in on an old favorite already left.
Based on how long people were clamoring for WoWClassic (pretty much as soon as Cata launched iirc), and assuming that the rumors of animosity and resentment between the Classic and "Current" WoW teams are true, there's no way this debacle is getting fixed anytime this decade. Only way it'll happen is if Winne-the-Pooh flexes the might of Beijing to lean on Blizzard; then it will happen instantly.
Based on how long people were clamoring for WoWClassic (pretty much as soon as Cata launched iirc), and assuming that the rumors of animosity and resentment between the Classic and "Current" WoW teams are true, there's no way this debacle is getting fixed anytime this decade. Only way it'll happen is if Winne-the-Pooh flexes the might of Beijing to lean on Blizzard; then it will happen instantly.
The big difference is that with Classic, the state of WoW that necessitated that movement was slow and gradual. The game did not become functionally "broken" or have the lowest metacritic score ever, it merely moved away from its original design philosophies over the course of a decade. Warcraft 3 was actually wrecked in the space of a day.
It’s been too long since we’ve shared an update on our team’s progress. After a challenging launch, we’ve been regrouping, listening to your feedback, prioritizing the things we need to do for the game, and building a plan to deliver on our next steps. While we’ve been quiet these past few months, know that there is a dedicated and passionate team that’s been hard at work on Warcraft III: Reforged behind the scenes. As our team works toward a roadmap that we can share in the near future; we’d like to start communicating more frequently and meaningfully about our plans, and what’s coming next for the game. Let’s kick that off right now, with the first in a series of articles diving into what the team is focused on.
Ongoing Updates: Bug and Desync Fix Patches
Since launch, we’ve delivered a series of patches in an ongoing effort to continue fixing bugs and making quality of life changes across Warcraft III. These updates have come at a rate of at least once a month, and include fixes and improvements to art, gameplay, systems, and features across the game, including Campaign, Custom Game, and Versus modes.
Some of our most impactful bugs since legacy Warcraft III involve desyncs which occur when two or more players’ game clients get out of sync and force their game to end prematurely. Due to how disruptive these desyncs can be, a heavy emphasis will continue to be on finding and resolving the most common issues that are causing desyncs. In addition to actively approaching desync issues from different angles, we’re also developing a tool that will better arm us against future desyncs.
Balance Updates
As with other Blizzard games, our team will also be releasing balance updates for Warcraft III. Our goal is to preserve classic strategies where possible while promoting increased strategic variety. Warcraft III is a hero-focused RTS (Real Time Strategy game), and we want to celebrate that by providing opportunities for players to open with different Heroes while retaining the unique playstyles inherent to each race and the asymmetry between races.
Each of our balance patches will aim to ensure competitive integrity at the professional level while providing a variety of different strategies for new and returning players of all skill levels. Our first balance patch since launch will be coming to the Public Test Realm (PTR) for testing this week and will feature a bevy of updates. Check out the patch notes soon for all of the details, and don’t forget to provide your feedback once you’ve had a chance to play the changes on the PTR.
Upcoming Features
In parallel to these ongoing bug fixing efforts and balance updates, we’re also working to deliver features to the game, including Improved Matchmaking, Ranked Ladders, Profiles, Custom Campaigns, and Clans. While we’ve mentioned before that these features are in development, we wanted to start providing more details on the direction we’re taking with each, share some additional insights, and give players an opportunity to provide feedback. Up first, let’s talk about our ongoing improvements to Warcraft III’s matchmaking.
Matchmaking Reforged
Matchmaking is the system we use to find and match allies and opponents of similar skill. To support this, player skill is tracked using a numerical representation called a player’s Matchmaking Rating, or “MMR” for short. A higher MMR reflects a more skilled player, and matching players with others of comparable skill using their MMRs keeps games as fair and fun as possible.
A player's MMR gets updated at the conclusion of each match, with the amount of points received being dependent on several factors that serve to determine their predicted win chance and an internal value called “variance.” We use variance to represent how confident our system is that a player is rated at the right skill level. When starting out, variance is high because the system doesn’t have enough information yet. Over time, as more games are played, this number will decrease. Higher variance means that there are larger swings in how MMR is adjusted after each match, while lower variance results in smaller MMR changes. Initially, our system will make large changes to MMR to get a player near their proper rating and then refine over time with smaller changes as more games are played. Consistent performance over time will allow a player’s MMR to move up (or down) as they win or lose games.
In a departure from the legacy version of Warcraft III, Reforged now has a per-race MMR in all modes except Arranged Teams which allows for more competitive matchmaking while freeing players to play their favorite races or learn new races without fear of impacting their overall MMR.
Also new, Reforged now features Global Matchmaking for all modes, which allows players to test their mettle against the best Warcraft III players around the world. While this addition is an exciting feature, we are aware of community concerns surrounding latency with Global Matchmaking. In reaction to this feedback, the team has begun rolling out a series of server updates which have reduced the number of high-latency games by over 60% since the week of May 4th. We will continue working to further reduce the occurrence of these high-latency games by implementing additional fixes in the coming weeks, so please continue to give us feedback on your experience.
Warcraft III has three primary matchmaking modes: 1v1, Team Games (2v2, 3v3, 4v4), and Free-for-All (FFA). The goal for all modes is to match players in a way that provides the best games possible while doing so in a reasonable amount of time. To accomplish this, the system starts by looking for a perfect match and slowly loosens its requirements over time if it can’t make that match. The parameters for finding matches and the way these restrictions are relaxed are different for each of the matchmaking modes, so let’s dive into each of them.
1v1
Among the three matchmaking modes, 1v1 will have the most stringent matchmaking parameters as this game mode is all about individual performance. Reforged to further enable players to find the best and most competitive 1v1 matches. As part of these changes, the matchmaker will now adjust search parameters specifically for higher MMR players to find the most competitive matches, even in exchange for longer queue times. Regardless of MMR, the matchmaker will slowly loosen the search parameters as time goes on in order to find a match. This adjustment will take longer for higher MMR players in order to continue prioritizing finding the most competitive matches. We believe these changes will allow the most competitive 1v1 players to find the best matches that most closely mirror their skill.
Team Games (2v2, 3v3, 4v4)
For team games, the system is slightly different to account for the fact that the outcome of a team game is not solely tied to the performance of an individual. Team Game players who watch MMRs closely will notice that it takes more games before their MMR settles into its proper range, and they’ll see larger MMR adjustments per game—and for more games—than in 1v1. Since the outcome of the game is influenced by others on the team, the system takes longer to dial in on an individual player’s skill.
In recognition of this, Arranged Teams consisting of a full team of self-organized players are now tracked separately using the team’s MMR rather than a player’s individual rating. Playing games as an Arranged Team does not affect your individual MMR for that game mode or race, so you can switch races freely while within an Arranged Team and not worry about affecting your outside ratings. Since Arranged Teams are tracked separately, they will also have separate leaderboards once Ranked Play arrives to better gauge overall performance.
One of our goals is to provide as many options as possible to allow players to play alongside their friends, and this means minimizing restrictions for party size and MMR. In service of this, players of any MMR can party up together so that—no matter your skill—you can always bring along a friend to play with. Players can also group up as a partial team, allowing friends to queue up together while the matchmaker finds other players to fill the remaining slots to complete the team. Players assembling partial teams will be rated by their individual MMR rather than their team’s MMR.
For the first time, the system will allow Random Teams to be paired against Arranged Teams. This is a departure from the precedent set in the legacy version of Warcraft III, so we wanted to share our thoughts behind this change. Pairing Arranged Teams solely against other Arranged Teams often resulted in very long queue times, especially for highly rated teams. These extended queue times often led to poor quality games, since teams would be matched against any available opponent once enough time passed. This change will help make more closely matched games more often, and we’ll be keeping an eye on things to ensure the right balance of match quality versus queue time.
Free-for-All (FFA)
Free-for-All (FFA) has historically had the most unforgiving matchmaking system as there could only be one winner and three losing players. This system felt inaccurate given that the “losing”’ players are issued similar penalties despite some surviving longer than others during a match. Victories also resulted in a single player gaining a lot of MMR, but all opponents’ MMRs decreasing. This tended to cause a disparity in MMR ratings which made it more difficult to match players up and resulted in increased queue times for everyone. With these challenges in mind, we have completely redesigned the way MMR is calculated for FFA games.
Instead of having one winner and three losing players, Free-for-All games have shifted to a placements system of 1st through 4th places. At the conclusion of a game, multiple calculations are run to determine how each player’s MMR will change based on both placement and the MMR of the other players in the game. This results in a more nuanced change to each players’ Free-for-All MMR which should keep players of similar skill levels closer to one another in MMR. These updates help inform more accurate adjustments in MMRs and cut down on player queue times by keeping players grouped better with competitors of equal or similar skill.
Moving to a placement system can raise concerns of potentially incentivizing players to prolong their play with unsportsmanlike tactics such as hiding buildings as an attempt to stay in the match longer. These problems have been inherent in Free-for-All since its inception and are challenging to directly address. Overall, we believe that by tying Free-for-All MMR changes to a placement system, we are actively encouraging players to finish off weaker ones, as each opponent defeated directly translates into higher MMR gains or reduced losses. As with all our other changes, we’ll continue to test and monitor these new systems to ensure that they work as intended and achieve our goals.
To Be Continued...
We’re excited to continue rolling out these matchmaking improvements, and moving forward, players can expect ongoing communications from us at regular intervals as we release patches. As part of those communications, we’ll have a series of feature deep dives and development updates like this one, as well as lighter looks at other aspects of the game and community. Our next feature deep dive will be focused on our upcoming Ranked Ladder system, so keep an eye out for the details on our plans in the coming weeks. We plan to provide a roadmap for our future releases as our work progresses, but in the meantime please continue sharing your feedback and know that our team is working hard to deliver features, bug fixes, improvements, and balance updates as we strive to make Warcraft III: Reforged better with each release.
For those interested, the wc3 community made its own ladder since blizzard couldnt figure out how to do this before launch https://www.w3champions.com.
It's also called Pad's ladder because it has largely been coded by one person: Pad. Yes, one guy decided to code his own ladder to keep the European community alive accomplishing what blizzard couldn't.
It comes with match histories, stats and rankings for each player and the game modes are divided into numerous divisions according to your skill level, ranging from bronze to grandmaster. For now only 1v1 and 2v2 is supported, but FFA is currently being worked on. It's still very much an ongoing project, and Blizzard will never make an integrated ladder which comes anywhere near the quality of wc3champions.
As our team works toward a roadmap that we can share in the near future; we’d like to start communicating more frequently and meaningfully about our plans, and what’s coming next for the game.
I've been playing Warcraft 1 casually lately and the atmosphere is great. Since there are no control groups it's kinda hard to micro manage spells but other than that it's surprisingly playable (with a mouse-helper program that allows you to use your mouse like a "modern" RTS). It's a pretty good little game and it's tragic how the mighty have fallen.
I've been playing Warcraft 1 casually lately and the atmosphere is great. Since there are no control groups it's kinda hard to micro manage spells but other than that it's surprisingly playable (with a mouse-helper program that allows you to use your mouse like a "modern" RTS). It's a pretty good little game and it's tragic how the mighty have fallen.
It's a good game. Much more worthy of a remaster than WC3, in my opinion. WC3 is still mechanically "modern" by RTS standards. It has a very particular textured/low poly look that wouldn't be preserved without enormous care, as we've seen. Warcraft 1 (and 2) on the other hand, much like Starcraft, is a game you could remaster while preserving its feel, while including little unintrusive QOL changes here and there if that's the way you wanted to take it. Though given what has happened, I think the treatment GOG gave it where they just added functionality like borderless windows and other modern features, while leaving the game itself untouched, that's how you really ought to treat old games now.
I don't know how a remaster of WC1 would look like. The pixelization is part of the charm, if they give it the SC1 remaster treatment it's just going to look like WC2 probably. WC1 is less silly though, so it depends on whether they'll keep that vibe I guess.
If I were Blizzard, I'd do a hard reboot of this franchise. WoW can go on with the current universe due to its undead-like properties and many people's decade-long commitment, but the RTS should go back to Warcraft 1 and do something else with the plot. That way they can do a WoW2 too and get out of this mire they've been in for almost a decade that keeps getting worse and worse.
If I were Blizzard, I'd do a hard reboot of this franchise. WoW can go on with the current universe due to its undead-like properties and many people's decade-long commitment, but the RTS should go back to Warcraft 1 and do something else with the plot. That way they can do a WoW2 too and get out of this mire they've been in for almost a decade that keeps getting worse and worse.
Rather than rebooting back to the state of WC 1, they could just create a new fantasy franchise, (called, to keep the naming convention ConflictForge), with green gnomes fighting against humans. Because the decisions on what to keep and what to throw away from Warcraft will never please everyone, so they could just start over from a blank slate.
A reboot of this franchise would come with quite a big PR bonus, though. It also needs cleaning, they've written themselves into a corner and there are no believable or exciting conflicts anymore. It would even be a good way to divert attention from this disastrous remake. If there's any attention paid to it anymore. They have to remove any cosmic forces at play because that's what drags it down, the constant scaling up of villains to fight. There shouldn't be villains against whom everyone can ally and in turn castrate the whole war part of Warcraft. The demons can still be a faction, but not embroiled into the whole "titans vs Sargeras" thing, the old gods should be done away with too. The minions can still be a faction, but again no cosmic-level shit. Maybe not factions, more like mysterious creatures with unknown motivations and no formal command/social structure. Something should be done about the night elves too, no 3edgy5you bad-anime-tier characters like Illidan, no aloof immortal smugness, no weird plotlines like the well of eternity thing. Thrall should be mercilessly incised too, this franchise doesn't work when everyone is working towards peace.
A reboot of this franchise would come with quite a big PR bonus, though. It also needs cleaning, they've written themselves into a corner and there are no believable or exciting conflicts anymore. It would even be a good way to divert attention from this disastrous remake. If there's any attention paid to it anymore. They have to remove any cosmic forces at play because that's what drags it down, the constant scaling up of villains to fight. There shouldn't be villains against whom everyone can ally and in turn castrate the whole war part of Warcraft. The demons can still be a faction, but not embroiled into the whole "titans vs Sargeras" thing, the old gods should be done away with too. The minions can still be a faction, but again no cosmic-level shit. Maybe not factions, more like mysterious creatures with unknown motivations and no formal command/social structure. Something should be done about the night elves too, no 3edgy5you bad-anime-tier characters like Illidan, no aloof immortal smugness, no weird plotlines like the well of eternity thing. Thrall should be mercilessly incised too, this franchise doesn't work when everyone is working towards peace.
But if you do all of that to the WC franchise, you're removing most of the well-known parts of the lore (WC 3 + WoW), so better just start as a new franchise. Maybe you don't care about all this, but for most people into WC, it's all they know, so such a reboot wouldn't work. A new franchise wouldn't be hamstrung by having to sort among all the crap and then having to deal with the whining of idiots because their favorite character had been removed.
Ah, music to my ears. Really, though, you'll just have to rewrite a few things to tell the same story, just better. Nothing is stopping the Lich King from becoming that without the involvement of demons. You don't need that extra motivation for Arthas, he's already down for the slaughter from day 1. The undead could assault mount Hyjal on their own. You'll just remove Illidan basically and every mention of demonic hierarchies. Kel'Thuzad could just be summoning a mass of demons without being forced to by the demons themselves. The characters need their own motivations without external puppetry. The first game in this hypothetical reboot would be a retelling of WC1 and 2. That way the groundwork can be set up to change the story of WC3 a little bit. I honestly think this is their best option going forward. A new IP is not Blizzard's strong suit atm, Overwatch is garbage as a setting/universe for example.
