Warcraft III: Reforged - now with lowest user metacritic score of all time

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

But spiders don't have breasts and their babies spent time in eggs...

MERWIND.

MERWIND.

DON'T. OKAY? DON'T.

NO.
ZIP IT.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Low contrast, high value colors (often from some neon palette).

Getting contrast right is hard. Much easier to shit out a flat turd and call it "modern". And of course the stupid masses have been taught to believe that "flat colors" are "hip" so they'll defend it as being good.

Anyway, I always thought that W3 looked like shit but damn, this remake is just... fuck. I can't imagine how someone looked at that and said "yeah, this is an improvement".

 

[ChaDargo]

The natural consequences of outsourcing your product to Asia and SJWs.

You know, we keep joking about purple haired dykes taking over creative positions in the industry, but I'm really close to believing this had a significant impact.

Cause if there is one thing these guys have in common, it is that most of their art is professionally on just the level that you can sell it, but nowhere beyond that (in other words: the perfect diversity hire).
Basically just go and take a look at some devintart profiles by the stereotypical pink haired girl in her mid-20s (the types you will now find on group photos of blizzard and other companies currently going down the drain). There is a common theme through all of them and it often finds its full realization in the cal-arts animation style (among other things):

Low contrast, high value colors (often from some neon palette).

And - I shit you not - this is a recurring theme in the texture work of WC3 reforged.

There is very little contrast, the values are all over the place, the stylization is essentially non-existent, to the point where it becomes hard to even read what's going on in some textures.

When you directly compare the old texture work to the new, you realize just how good the old artists actually were. Their stuff actually still looks pretty fucking fantastic (low poly limitations aside). It's the fact that they not only made a deployable piece of technical art, but also went the extra mile to make that stuff pop in the perspective you will be looking at it:

The lower one looks completely flat. Trees and grass had highlights painted into the texture in the original, something that, by the way, is only done by confident, well trained professionals and regularly ignored by those that believe they can hide their art under a layer of PBR maps and post processing.

The values are completly off. The value on the lower layer of grass is way, waaaaay to high. The trees have this fucking DotA gradient going on - which wouldn't be a problem if the tops didn blend into the ground - which uses the same value of green.

The remaster misses details and "exaggerations" that actually help the eye when you are looking at a scene from above. To be more exact, compare the size of the blades of grass in the original to the blades of grass in the remaster. Same applies for cracks in the mud and "small" rocks on the road (which seem to be missing - which is not a big surprise, since they are a deliberate, contrasting exaggeration in the original - something the new artists is apparently incapable of).


As an ATVI investor I'm naturally thrilled by all of this.

It looks like a high school kid remade WC3 in Aurora as a fan project. Fuck Blizzard.

 

[Olinser]

Low contrast, high value colors (often from some neon palette).

Getting contrast right is hard. Much easier to shit out a flat turd and call it "modern". And of course the stupid masses have been taught to believe that "flat colors" are "hip" so they'll defend it as being good.

Anyway, I always thought that W3 looked like shit but damn, this remake is just... fuck. I can't imagine how someone looked at that and said "yeah, this is an improvement".

They didn't.

They looked at it and said, "Yeah we can milk the Blizzard fanbois for some cash with this. Don't spend any more money just toss it out and grab some quick cash."

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

Is it shit?

 

[Olinser]

Is it shit?

In a word? Yes.

If any game in the history of games deserves to be designated 'shit', this is it.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

I was looking forward to playing a remastered version of WCIII.

 

[Average Manatee]

How much did they fuck with campaigns besides the TFT balance changes?

 

[Zer0wing]

How much did they fuck with campaigns besides the TFT balance changes?

You can't target and kill children anymore.
Classic WCIII is removed and replaced by Reforged but without new HD models so you're fucked either way
The UI is not scaled well with High Definition monitors.

 

[Danikas]

How much did they fuck with campaigns besides the TFT balance changes?

You can't target and kill children anymore.
Classic WCIII is removed and replaced by Reforged but without new HD models so you're fucked either way
The UI is not scaled well with High Definition monitors.

That's what you get for buying this shit

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

Classic WCIII is removed and replaced by Reforged but without new HD models

Wat?

 

[Zer0wing]

Wat?

One can't currently order classic Warcraft III from Battle net. Nor gets the classic game if activates the key from the disc on blizzard account, still have to download 30GB of this garbage despite not paying for this shit. Main rule is disable auto-updates and not update anywhere from 1.31... Or use the power of piracy.

 

[Average Manatee]

How much did they fuck with campaigns besides the TFT balance changes?

You can't target and kill children anymore.
Classic WCIII is removed and replaced by Reforged but without new HD models so you're fucked either way
The UI is not scaled well with High Definition monitors.

I can't tell if this is real or not.

There were actual secret items that required you to kill children in the orignal game.

 

[Zer0wing]

There were actual secret items that required you to kill children in the orignal game.

???
What items? The first mission from human campaign with Arthas and he swings his sword into children just fine. I checked. v1.28.5xx to be precise. Same with undead campaign.

 

[Average Manatee]

There were actual secret items that required you to kill children in the orignal game.

???
What items? The first mission from human campaign with Arthas and he swings his sword into children just fine. I checked. v1.28.5xx to be precise. Same with undead campaign.

IIRC there was a sort of running joke with a kid called timmy who would appear sometimes and he dropped stuff if you killed him. Really can't remember specifics though.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

Timmy turned into a ghoul in a later mission, and eventually into a robot iirc.

 

[Deitti]

What a shitshow, holy hell. So glad i still have my original discs so i don't have to get involved with this shit ever. I had so many good memories from the original battle.net times too, such a shame.

 

[The_Mask]

They looked at it and said, "Yeah we can milk the Blizzard fanbois for some cash with this. Don't spend any more money just toss it out and grab some quick cash."

I realize that this is the thing most people go for the most, but I think the more pervasive initiative they had was to make the custom maps a property of AC-Blizz.

Problem: "How can we get all the internet's creativity when it comes to our game(s) to work for us?"

Answer: "Release a half-baked product with some (glaring) issues people will cling to. Tech issues. Image/perspective issues. Narrative changes/rolling back narrative changes. BUT ---- what is more important: We will change it - make the EULA so that no more IceFrogs/Guinsoos/Euls ever exist ever again."

Step 3 is to make this an industry standard, where you make the user-base work for you.




And yes, as an AC/Blizz shareholder, I do love that move.

 

[Lyric Suite]

He was a ghoul in WoW.

 

[Zer0wing]

...as an AC/Blizz shareholder...

Ok boomer

 

[The_Mask]

What a shitshow, holy hell. So glad i still have my original discs so i don't have to get involved with this shit ever. I had so many good memories from the original battle.net times too, such a shame.

This is the problem, isn't it?

In order to play WarCraft 3 as it was intended back in 2002, you, now in our Lords year 2020, must NOT connect to the internet while you do.

That usually does not go well. When a company tries to interfere with the way the world works, in this case "I like to play my videogames, while connected to the Internet", things don't end up so well.

I have a feeling that the corporate heads at the top measured the active community, and decided that WC3 is worth tanking just to see if this EULA change will stick with people.



Time will tell if they were right or not.



Personally, I haven't played anything from AC/Blizz for close to 10 years now, and I don't see that changing. Sadly, there are other people out there that don't think like me.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It's amazing how much of a perfect storm this fuck up is.

 

[ChaDargo]

What a shitshow, holy hell. So glad i still have my original discs so i don't have to get involved with this shit ever. I had so many good memories from the original battle.net times too, such a shame.

This is the problem, isn't it?

In order to play WarCraft 3 as it was intended back in 2002, you, now in our Lords year 2020, must NOT connect to the internet while you do.

That usually does not go well. When a company tries to interfere with the way the world works, in this case "I like to play my videogames, while connected to the Internet", things don't end up so well.

I have a feeling that the corporate heads at the top measured the active community, and decided that WC3 is worth tanking just to see if this EULA change will stick with people.



Time will tell if they were right or not.



Personally, I haven't played anything from AC/Blizz for close to 10 years now, and I don't see that changing. Sadly, there are other people out there that don't think like me.

Well, they weren't making money off of the property anyways. I'd say that assuming a ton of fans pre-ordered the mess, or will order it not knowing/caring it sucks or hoping Blizz will fix it (lol), they more than paid for the salaries of the interns who did the conversion. I imagine they're getting to run their little experiment at a small profit at least.

 

[shihonage]

Upscaling 2D art (Starcraft) is tremendously easier than upscaling 3D art, because in the latter you deal with not just texturing, but modeling, improving animation quality, and harsh rendering performance costs.

Blizzard got cocky after successfully updating SC1, and stumbled on a much more difficult job of updating WC3.

Hopefully they are working on upscaled Diablo2, because the graphics on what will blow Diablo3 out of the water, and again - it's just sprites.

 

[Hobo Elf]

It's amazing how much of a perfect storm this fuck up is.

But is it really? Ever since 2018 with Diablo Immortal Blizzard has been slipping from one media blunder to another. No, really, I can't recall a single bit of news that was positive for Blizzard in 2019; everything was extremely bad and negative. Even their streamer and youtube bootlickers are turning against them at an increasing rate. They've managed to burn bridges with all their fans and even the most delusionals are slowly going to wake up to this. 2020 opening up with a giant Blizzard fuck up just seems like a natural amalgamation of where the company has been heading for a while now.