Warcraft III: Reforged
Genre: Strategy
Release date: Tuesday 28th January 2020
Developer Dishonesty
Gamers on social media declared that the developers and/or publishers engaged in the anti-consumer practice of promoting and launching this game with full knowledge that it was in an incomplete and/or unfit state. This can include the game launching with missing features that were promoted in pre-launch marketing, or featuring game-breaking bugs that cripple the user's ability to play the game. Gamers on social media declared that in this situation, the developers and/or publishers knowingly lied to their paying customers in their pre-launch marketing and treated them as unpaid testers post-launch View more games with this featureBugs
This title launched with severe bugs that crippled the user's ability to play the game. These bugs could cause the game to crash, lose player progression or even potentially harm the system on which the game is being played View more games with this featureSuitable for Teen Gamers
This game may contain content such as moderate violence, mild use of language, mild sexual themes, and crude humor View more games with this featureSingle Player
This is a game features a single-player experience where input from only one player is required View more games with this featureOnline Multiplayer
This game features an online multiplayer mode in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, online over the internet View more games with this featureAt BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard Entertainment announced Warcraft III: Reforged. An updated remastering of one of Blizzard’s most popular strategy games. During the announcement, Blizzard showed live gameplay demos of the Warcraft 3 Culling of Stratholme mission featuring remodelled characters, cutscenes and graphics along with a prospective release in 2019.
In late January 2020, the version of Warcraft III: Reforged released at launch was severely downgraded when compared to what was promoted during the 2018 announcement. Critics concluded that Reforged was still an exceptional game at its core but was plagued by bugs, a lack of features, and poor design choices such as the “massive” user interface that had not been updated for modern high-resolution screens. The launch code lacked promised changes and additions, and its multiplayer features were either worse than before or non-existent.
Player response was also overwhelmingly negative. Upon release, the game was review-bombed by users on Metacritic, reaching a low score of 0.5/10 a few days after release, making it the lowest-ranked game on the site by user score. Many criticized the remaster for its absence of features promised by Blizzard at launch, technical issues, changes to the original game’s user interface among other gameplay features, and graphical changes which some felt had either not been improved enough or looked worse.
Blizzard were also criticized for their decision that, due to it sharing Reforged’s client, all existing copies of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos were required to update to a newer version, which meant that many of the gameplay changes to Reforged were now mandatory in the original. Additionally, there were complaints towards Blizzard’s announcement that they would claim ownership over all user-created content in Reforged.