But in 2020, we're well past the original game's resolution maximum of 1280x1024, and that means Blizzard had serious work to do for one of WC3:R's selling points: scaling up to arbitrary monitor resolutions and looking good when doing so.Īlas, the updated EXE launched with a forehead-smack of a failure on that sales pitch: broken ultra-wide monitor support. As a zoomed-out real-time strategy (RTS) game, 2002's WC3 could get away with some decidedly rough 3D designs, particularly for Blizzard's first foray into fully rendered 3D characters. It's easy to grab screens of the game's original 2002 characters, then place them directly next to their updated, higher-polygon versions, and give the 'Blizzard Classic' dev team an unadulterated high-five. Pardon my English, but, what in the freaking world is going on, Blizzard? Beautiful new visuals-but not applied evenlyĪ surface-level review of WC3:R may make you wonder what all the grousing is about, especially if you just want to play the game's single-player campaign.

Worse, between a new Terms of Service requirement and a number of features removed from the previous version, it looks like the game's online ecosystem-the very thing that kept the game afloat for decades and earned a glowing retrospective from us only days ago-may be gone for good.

Anyone who already owned an official WC3 license is prompted by Blizzard's default game launcher to download the new 26+ GB version to play online, whether or not they pay an additional $30 for its GBs of 'reforged' content. The original code base, which has remained roughly 1.3GB in size after an expansion pack launch and years of patches, has been pushed aside. What's more, the uneven and problematic changes to this 'reforged' 2002 game come with a bold, new step for Blizzard: the official sunsetting of a classic game's client. Further Reading How Warcraft III birthed a genre, changed a franchise, and earned a Reforge-ing

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