Player vitriol won this campaign. After it stumbled at launch, Blizzard has fixed game-breaking bugs and updatedWarcraft III: Reforged. The game’slatest updateaddresses several issues that could stop players from progressing as Blizzard works toward rebuilding trust with its audience — provided they haven’t already receivedfull refunds.
The latestWarcraft III: Reforgedpatch was released on February 6 and makes improvements across the entire game. It fixed a significant campaign bug that caused a failure screen to appear when players loaded into a mission.Digital Trendsran into this bug whenplaying the game for review, and had to reboot it.
The patch tweaked animations, including those in cutscenes, and added the game’s “fog of war” system to armies in starting locations. The interface received criticism early on for not being up to par with Blizzard’s usual standards, and was improved to show senders’ names in “whisper” messages and better keep up with the latest chat messages. There is also no longer any crossover between menus in the “Classic” and “Reforged” graphic settings. Additional features including leaderboard support and clans will be added as part of a larger patch in the future.
Progression-limiting issues in certain missions, dialogue audio level, and a problem that caused the save file folder to change after disconnecting were all resolved as well.
It’s a substantial first step toward improvingWarcraft III: Reforged, but player reception remains mixed, with some fans disappointed that the remastered cutscenes were not as substantial as they were expecting. However, Blizzard explained in anapology postearlier this week that it wanted to preserve the “true spirit” of the original 2003 game.
Players don’t seem to buy this explanation, which is evidenced by the game’s dismal 0.5/10 user score onMetacritic. Reviewers aren’t particularly high on the game, either, with only a 60% average. The firstWarcraft III isconsidered one of the best real-time strategy games ever, and Blizzard has a long road ahead of it in order forReforgedto live up to that standard. With the studio apparently taking players’ feedback into account while it provides updates, that is certainly still possible.
