Fan does Blizzard’s job, releases remastered WarCraft III campaign files
job’s done? —
Sam Machkovech
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Enlarge / A cinematic intro to the WC3 human campaign? That’s cool. Too bad fans had to step in to create this, since Blizzard doesn’t appear poised to add anything substantial to WC3R ever again.
InsaneMonster
WarCraft III: Reforged has not received a patch or official announcement since April 2021, and the game’s handlers at Blizzard have remained eerily quiet about anything previously announced for this so-called «remaster» of an RTS classic. Official matchmaking ladders, leaderboards, and user profiles never came to pass, prompting the game’s remaining community to cobble together its own solution—and that’s on top of the re-release’s utter lack of single-player updates. (To date, custom WC3 campaign files still aren’t formally supported.)
Thus, just as fans previously built their own online gameplay updates in the form of WC3Champions, so too has the game’s remaining community stepped up to make the single-player campaign better resemble Blizzard’s initial pitch for the project.
WarCraft III: Re-Reforged 2022 update.
WarCraft III: Re-Reforged is a fan-made project apparently led by a single designer who goes by the handle InsaneMonster. It received its second substantial update on Saturday, following its original January 2021 launch as a downloadable pack of WC3R campaign files. The project is now up to 10 in-game chapters: the five chapters of WC3‘s Horde-specific prologue, which already launched last year, and the first five chapters of its human-focused first act.
You can now access both parts of Re-Reforged as free downloads at Hive Workshop (part one, part two).
Like the prologue portion, this week’s fan-made patch includes custom camera angles for cinematic in-game content, not only between missions but also for important mid-campaign conversations. These shots much better resemble the originally teased version of WC3R, and they include pauses and careful camera framing to better showcase Blizzard’s original campaign content. Additionally, InsaneMonster has remixed the affected campaign maps without changing their primary objectives or flow. Some changes emphasize a cinematic moment, while others reflect lessons learned from the campaigns in Blizzard’s StarCraft II and guide brand-new players more nimbly through how the game works.
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The patches also add instructions and lore as new, front-and-center on-screen text between objectives. These popups are handy, especially since WC3 laid the groundwork for years of lore and character-based plotlines in World of WarCraft.
If you’re a WC3 novice who wants to see how this game connects to the WarCraft universe at large, InsaneMonster’s patches take considerable steps toward delivering that information.
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A quick peek into WC3RR‘s opening minutes of the human campaign. Look: Cinematic conversation camera angles! Blizzard originally promised these, only to remove them once its version launched.
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More prominent tip text appears throughout the campaign.
The further you get, the more these tips include useful, compelling snippets of lore. -
An example of a campaign moment that was originally a quick piece of dialogue. The scene now zooms down to the character to emphasize her mid-mission request.
In a 2021 interview, InsaneMonster expressed his surprise and dismay at discovering how much proper lip sync was applied to WC3R‘s full cast of characters—yet, for some reason, it was hidden from obvious player view.
He didn’t have to rig any brand-new animations with his patch; instead, he simply coded custom camera angles and timings. InsaneMonster does add custom visual files to his patches, to be clear, though these revolve around colors and textures that better resemble the clearer paths and battlefields found in the original game than in the retouched WC3R versions.
The project may very well continue beyond these 10 campaign levels, though its creator says that future progress is contingent on Patreon support. You’ll need to mind InsaneMonster’s instructions to get the patched campaign to load properly—and make your peace with prerendered cut scenes not playing at their expected times, since Re-Reforged is working outside of the game’s intended mod ecosystem.
Today’s news follows a Twitter outcry over Blizzard Classic’s other recent major release, Diablo II: Resurrected, as more users are running into one of its more curious restrictions. The game’s console versions require an online check-in with Activision’s Battle.
net service every 30 days, even if you play the game exclusively offline.
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Reforged is a Full HD Remake of Blizzard’s Classic RTS, Out in 2019
BlizzCon 2018 kicks off today, and the show’s opening ceremonies included a major announcement for the studio’s old-school fans – Warcraft III is making its return. A Warcraft III remaster has been rumored for some time, but it Blizzard is going a step further, as Reforged will be a full remake, featuring a complete visual overhaul, redone cutscenes, and new Battle.net online features. You can check out an epic Warcraft III: Reforged cinematic trailer, below.
Warcraft III: Reforged will include all the content from the original game and it’s expansion The Frozen Throne.
Here’s a quick peek at the Reforged version of one of game’s most iconic missions, The Culling.
And here’s a bit more gameplay for you…
Here’s the full Warcraft III: Reforged rundown, courtesy of Blizzard:
The founding of Orgrimmar. The fall of Lordaeron. The reign of the Burning Legion. The rise of the Lich King. Veterans and newcomers alike will experience these pivotal events in Azeroth’s history like never before in Warcraft III: Reforged, from the points of view of four distinct factions: the mighty Orcs, the noble Humans, the ancient Night Elves, and the insidious Undead Scourge.
Every character, structure, and environment has been recreated to emphasize the depth, dimension, and personality of this rough-hewn world. The Warcraft III saga, which spans more than 60 campaign missions, enjoys an epic retelling in Reforged, with over four hours of updated in-game cutscenes and rerecorded voice-overs that breathe new life into the earliest renditions of key characters like Sylvanas Windrunner and Arthas Menethil.
- Reforged Visuals — Vivid recreations of every hero, unit, building, and environment.
- Legendary Campaigns — Command Azeroth’s greatest heroes and villains over 62 missions that span the continents.
- Exhilarating Gameplay — Play four diverse races, each with unique strategies, units, abilities, and champions.
- Limitless Custom Games — Discover an endless universe of player-created games, including MOBAs, tower defense, and more.
Warcraft III: Reforged hits PC sometime in 2019.
The game will come in two version – a $30 standard edition, and a $40 Spoils of War Edition, which comes with four unique skins and various Warcraft-III-themed goodies for other Blizzard titles.
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graphics comparison of the original Warcraft 3 and Reforged — DTF games
The new visual style of the famous strategy looks ambiguous.
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By the end of this year, Warcraft 3: Reforged, a global rethinking of the iconic RTS from Blizzard, should be released. There are a lot of changes: improved technical part, corrected balance, Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne story campaigns expanded with new elements — the old stories will be updated and corrected to suit the new World of Warcraft canon.
But the most important thing is, of course, the new graphics. 4K resolution, models with a large number of polygons and increased detail. But if the rest of the innovations sound intriguing, then questions arise with the visual style — so far the game looks ambiguous.
A design feature of Blizzard games is a balance between cartoony, bright graphics and gloomy cruelty, characteristic of the setting of the Warhammer FB and Warhammer 40,000 universes. with large heads, broad shoulders and bright armor.
In general, if other strategies like Total War or The Lord of the Rings games try to show units as realistic as possible, then the classic Blizzard RTS stick to the «toy» style. And, quite recognizable: looking at Warcraft, Starcraft or even Heroes of the Storm, you immediately understand that this is a Blizzard game. But with Reforged, this effect does not occur — for a number of reasons.
In this compilation, we will compare the new graphics not only with the original visual style of Warcraft 3: units from the famous RTS appeared in other Blizzard games as well. For example, all Warcraft 3 models have been converted to HD and moved into the Starcraft 2 map editor to create custom levels. Plus, Horde and Alliance warriors are completely modeled from scratch for the Heroes of the Storm themed map — we’ll take a look at them too.
What Reforged could be
Warcraft 3: Reforged could well have been a regular re-release: according to the developers, the game is fully compatible with custom maps and resources from the original Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne. It was similar in Starcraft: Remastered — technically the game was not changed, but only updated its visual part, completely redrawing the game assets in HD.
In addition, Blizzard has long built in HD-quality models from Warcraft 3 into the Starcraft 2 map editor. With their help, fans create their own mini-remakes of both regular locations from the game and popular modes like Tower Defense or MOBA. Blizzard could well have limited itself to re-updating old models.
HD-models have added polygons and corrected small details, without deviating one step from the original style. Unless the pandas disappeared from the Blades of Azinoth, owned by Illidan
However, Blizzard decided to go further and completely update the content in Reforged — but at the same time leave compatibility with a huge library of amateur maps so that the work of the fan community has not sunk into oblivion.
So for those who, for one reason or another, do not like the new design, Reforged will become a big paid patch: you can play your favorite “custom games” and in normal PvP without problems with connection and additional programs, for which they have also corrected balance.
What Reforged looks like now
Official beta version of the game is not yet available: it is likely that it will open at BlizzCon 2019 or after the exhibition. However, dataminers have already been able to pull icons and models from the game client in Battle.net and even record videos with the gameplay of a regular battle. From them it is quite possible to judge the future appearance of the game.
Start with icons for abilities and units. The first ones were made with high quality: the artists redrawn old images from scratch, retaining style and recognizability.
Icons from Warcraft 3
Icons from Reforged
Icon from Warcraft 3 \ Icon from Reforged
But the unit icons are just snapshots of the 3D model, while in the original some of them were drawn separately.
But those creatures that used the same model (for example, different types of murlocs) were given different icons and appearances.
Icons of units and heroes from Reforged
Unit models have received more details: the once «naked» horses and wolves of the heroes are dressed up in armor with many small elements, and ordinary units now look more like some kind of MMO raid bosses. The decision, on the one hand, is good — the original models did not particularly shine with elaboration of details.
On the other hand, the design feels somewhat overloaded: an ordinary infantryman does not differ much from a heroic paladin in terms of detail. They both have absurdly oversized armor and a lot of little design detail that visually clutters up the picture and can confuse units in the heat of battle where visual information is very important.
Archmage from Warcraft 3 and Archmage from Reforged
Proudmoore from Warcraft 3 and Proudmoore from Reforged
Samuro from Warcraft 3 and Samuro from Reforged
In addition, there is a discrepancy with the original style of play.
Now everyone has proportional bodies, long limbs. But at the same time, the absurd epic inherent in Blizzard’s strategies remained — as a result, elements of realism constantly conflict with style.
Take the infantryman, for example: he does not look like the original model of a simple ordinary soldier. Obviously, the designers were guided by the old concept art from Chris Metzen, known for his love of the grotesque, which was later adopted by Warcraft and Starcraft. However, even on him, the fighter does not have nearly such huge shoulder pads as they turned out in Reforged.
Infantryman from Warcraft 3, Reforged and original concept art
It is noteworthy that Blizzard has already reworked this unit: in Heroes of the Storm on the themed map dedicated to Warcraft, you can see brave soldiers who replace regular creeps. And they look much closer to the studio’s style: petite proportions, stocky build. And at the same time, they also look like the original infantryman art.
Warcraft 3 Infantry and Heroes of the Storm
Infantry
And this is just one example: the inconsistency with the ideas of the Blizzard artists in Reforged is noticeable everywhere. It can be assumed that the Warcraft 3 remake was outsourced to another studio in terms of graphics: the models not only look different, but also quite cheap.
This is clearly seen in dwarves. Their Reforged version looks more like downsized humans. Dwarves are shorter than humans, but for some reason they have proportions like humans — long arms and legs. As a result, the same Muradin, the leader of the dwarves, looks more like a human Viking than the commander of undersized fantasy creatures. And, again, in HotS, his image was redesigned much better and closer to the original.
Muradin from Warcraft 3, Muradin from Heroes of the Storm and Muradin from Reforged
Possible reason: the designers simply didn’t bother and used the skeleton of a human model to create the dwarves — they just slightly reduced the height.
It is enough to increase the model of the king of the dwarves in size — and he will pass for a human hero
The High Elf Spellbreakers in the original were frightening with their frozen grimace of horror on their faces. In Reforged, it was removed, but instead they added a strange-looking chest cutout and a smaller head, which caused the magic hunter to resemble Gumbo from the unsuccessful film adaptation of Mario Bros.
The humanoids in Reforged generally have some kind of design problem: either a too small head or a long neck. It was as if completely different people were responsible for the models — some look great, while others hurt the eyes.
For example, Chen, a brewer from Pandaria, looks really good: the new model is rich in details and is similar to both the version from The Frozen Throne and its variation from WoW.
Chen from Warcraft 3, Chen from World of Warcraft and Chen from Reforged
But the demon warrior looks just ridiculous.
The original unit didn’t have a very big head anyway, but the Reforged version doesn’t have one.
Demon from Warcraft 3 and Demon from Reforged
The problems of the new design are clearly visible in comparison. The fan-made modification of Armies of Azeroth, which was once done by enthusiasts from the Warcraft community, looks much nicer and closer to the original source. Working with lighting, proportions, color palette, and classic Blizzard design rules is much better here.
And this despite the fact that Armies of Azeroth is just a mod on the Starcraft 2 engine from fans, which, unfortunately, closed: after the announcement of the official remake from Blizzard, the need for fan work disappeared.
Armies of Azeroth
Of course, many things are subjective — the same overload of details may seem like a plus to someone. But all the new finds in the design move Reforged away from the original style, which is not typical for Blizzard — they have always been true to themselves.
Starcraft: Remastered and WoW: Classic are some of the most correct and authentic return of old games. And it’s amazing to see such a huge difference between Warcraft 3 and Reforged, while for the sake of the authenticity of the same WoW Classic, the studio arranged entire polls on the forum.
Undoubtedly, the visual part of Reforged has its advantages: demons, monsters and other non-humans look more impressive due to more details and better elaboration of small things. And different units that had almost or completely the same model (for example, the skeleton orcs from The Frozen Throne) received a unique appearance.
Orc Skeletons from Warcraft 3
Orc Skeletons from Reforged
But on the other hand, there are many minor flaws. Weird lighting, proportion errors, stiff and jarring animations, varying model styles, and most importantly, the new version doesn’t feel like Blizzard design at all. It’s like Reforged isn’t her game.
However, it is worth remembering that so far all these comparisons have been made only on leaked screenshots and gameplay of beta versions. Perhaps the situation will get better by the release, and some of the comments from this collection will remain in the past. Blizzcon 2019starts on November 1, so maybe we’ll learn something new there.
Fan-made remake of Warcraft III: Re-Reforged received the first act of the Alliance campaign
In 2018, Blizzard announced Warcraft III: Reforged and inspired the community. However, along the way, the updated strategy lost all its charm and a number of promised features. One fan of the series could not come to terms with the deception of expectations, so he set to work on a remake of the re-release. Recently, the first act of the Alliance campaign was released for the mod.
The author of the modification InsaneMonster dubbed his project Warcraft III: Re-Reforged . He intends to recreate the game’s art style and interface as seen in the 2018 demo of the Stratholme Scouring map.
To create the promised strategy, the crafter does the following:
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Updates in-game cutscenes and models to be close to the BlizzCon 2018 version in camera work and art style.
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Rebuilds quests and maps and adds more significant events that will affect subsequent missions. According to the author, the changes make the quests less monotonous.
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Expands the lore with references to events in World of Warcraft .
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Makes gameplay improvements, overhauls AI, calibrates difficulty levels and fixes bugs.
InsaneMonster published the prologue of the Horde Exodus Ork campaign in the summer of 2021, and in January 2022 finished work on the Fall of Lordaeron human campaign. Modifications support several languages, including Russian.
An enthusiast wants to completely update the game, but understands that it will take a huge amount of time. Community support can affect the process — InsaneMonster accepts donations on Patreon, and also invites everyone to help in development.
