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

[Lyric Suite]

Didn't widescreen just stretch things out in WC3? Or was there an update that changes it so it uses a different viewport?

There was. And now it's gone forever.

[EDIT] Ayy links to teh patches. Thanks.

 

[Norfleet]

there is no rock bottom

There is always more, and it is always worse.

 

[Wilian]

Anybody uploaded the patch that adds widescreen out there yet?

Theoretically I could share the client with it patched in. If I knew how. And it was legal.

 

[Olinser]

Oh look, they released a patch that fixed some of the big bugs.

See, its crap like this that pisses people off and has led to the level of backlash.

Fans can deal with some stuff slipping through or niche bugs not being discovered for a while.

But stupid shit like the basic audio callout for a completed unit not playing if your camera is off screen? Chat not scrolling properly with posts? People's names not being attached to freaking messages? Starting locations not being obscured?

That tells you that you didn't test the released version AT ALL. And when they were discovered and they actually decided to fix them, they got fixed.

Pure lazy greed to have fans test it so they could fix it later.

It's just pathetic.

 

[Olinser]

So just finished the original campaign on Hard. I had actually played through the game last year so its pretty fresh in mind.

God DAMN they nerfed Twilight of the Gods into the ground. I don't know if it was intentional or bugged, but it was ludicrously easy. Beat it this time without even losing the Human base.

Air waves were nonexistent, there was only 1 the entire mission. Heroes were nonexistent - Dread Lords and Pit Lords were removed completely, only 2 liches showed up the entire time. Even at max size waves seem to be smaller than they used to get, no more than a handful of aboms/doomguards with some support and 6-8 meat wagons. They used to get a LOT bigger.

Coupled with Ancient Protectors doing piercing instead of siege damage and the increased threshold for High upkeep and the mission was just EASY. I was never under real threat at any point and didn't lose a hero the whole mission. No variety necessary, just archer spam with 4-6 bears as frontline with heroes backed by line of APs and you're honestly never even threatened.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can't not lose the human base if you are playing normally (i.e. no pot of invul + goblin mine + treant spam) because Archimonde comes with the army at one point. So, yeah, something's definitely borked.

 

[Olinser]

You can't not lose the human base if you are playing normally (i.e. no pot of invul + goblin mine + treant spam) because Archimonde comes with the army at one point. So, yeah, something's definitely borked.

He spawned at 45 sec left with the end of mission trigger. And no, I didn't exploit it. Just built ancient protectors inside the walls and bear frontline with archer spam.

 

[Grimlorn]

Uh. Lots of people in this thread seem to be talking about this game in the context of some Great Cultural And Moral Decline Of Gaming, but this isn't some misguided creative effort by radicals. It's just a failed cashgrab, the likes of which have existed since the beginning of video games.

It seems obvious that they hired incompetent radicals that couldn't design a game to save their life and put them in charge of the cash grab remaster. Sure you could look at it as a failed cash grab, but why did it fail, especially compared to Starcraft? Seems obvious to every one because it's been happening over and over for years now. Incompetent people either get hired due to nepotism or identity politics, and they're more obsessed with politics than game design and we've been getting shit game after shit game. It appears to happen to every bloated corporation in general, they get huge and then take on a bunch of incompetent people that begin screwing everything up at the company.

 

[Lacrymas]

We haven't gotten a good AAA game in like 15 years, so there are other factors to take into consideration. As for why this is shit, like I said they either underestimated the time required (which I'm willing to believe and am 99% sure that's what happened) or overestimated the Asian studio (I'm less willing to blame them because they are the only ones who did their job). It's not about diversity hires, they've been out of touch for a decade, and I suspect their only truly profitable game is Hearthstone because it's impossible to screw that up.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

We haven't gotten a good AAA game in like 15 years

...Wut? I’ll give you that they’ve certainly decreased in frequency, but that’s a silly thing to say. Unless you mean AAA RTS?

Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

 

[Olinser]

We haven't gotten a good AAA game in like 15 years

...Wut? I’ll give you that they’ve certainly decreased in frequency, but that’s a silly thing to say. Unless you mean AAA RTS?

Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

Even within RTS it isn't true. Starcraft 2 may have had flaws in glaring places like story, but it was definitely a AAA game.

 

[luj1]

Small studios were able to produce better games on average than large AAA studios, though.

 

[Lacrymas]

Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

None of these are ...great, though. At least uncompromisingly good. I haven't played Prey, but Dishonored 1 and 2 suffer from story issues and badly balanced playstyles (I applaud their level design though, truly great), Alien Isolation also doesn't have a compelling narrative and I found it rather boring tbh, the Arkham games are severely overrated, the X-Coms are but a pale imitation of the originals and they introduced the silly cover mechanics that plague us still. Dishonored 1 and 2 are the best of these.

Starcraft 2's only upside is the gameplay (some would even say it's a downgrade from SC:BW), everything else from story, to aesthetics, to expansions is ...not stimulating. The campaign-wide upgrades were a nice touch and it gives a sense of progression to an RTS campaign which have only ever relied on unlocking units and buildings as you go further into it.

I honestly can't think of an AAA game in the past 15 years that is genuinely, uncompromisingly worth it. EDIT: Guild Wars, it came out in 2005.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Otherwise just off the top of my head we’ve had Dishonored 1/2, Prey, Alien Isolation, Arkham games, XCom1/2 -all of which are, even on the Codex, largely considered to be pretty good to great, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

None of these are ...great, though. At least uncompromisingly good. I haven't played Prey, but Dishonored 1 and 2 suffer from story issues and badly balanced playstyles (I applaud their level design though, truly great), Alien Isolation also doesn't have a compelling narrative and I found it rather boring tbh, the Arkham games are severely overrated, the X-Coms are but a pale imitation of the originals and they introduced the silly cover mechanics that plague us still. Dishonored 1 and 2 are the best of these.

You should play Prey, which is easily the best of the games I listed imo, especially if your favorites of the ones you've played were the Dishonoreds. Prey does pretty much everything the Dishonored games did better, with the notable exception of level design, which as you noted is pretty sublime at parts in Dishonored 1/2. That's not to say it's bad in Prey, but it's not up to the standard set by Dishonored. If you do play Prey, I would recommend using RoSoDude's mod, which significantly increases the challenges of resource management and the tradeoffs of character development (and, incidentally, I believe brings it much closer in line with Raph Colantonio's original vision for the game before the Zenimax suits got their hands on it).

As for the rest of your post... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ de gustibus I guess. I like the Arkham games well enough and think they're popamole done right, but I have always been surprised how well-liked they are on the Codex. I also agree that XCOM is inferior to X-Com as a series, but I find the implication that X-Com qualifies as AAA dubious; it was certainly fairly high-profile for the time, but the team-sizes, budgets, and the market in general was a lot smaller back then. There's no way X-Com would have been profitable if it had been given the budget of XCOM, even accounting for inflation. I would argue the idea of AAA games didn't really exist until the late 90s; 3d tech was becoming more commonplace and bigger companies like Microsoft, Sony,and Warner Brothers were starting to take note of the success of franchises from Blizzard, Valve, and EA Sports, and those new players pumped a huge amount of cash into the industry and ballooned budgets up to what we know think of as AAA.

Hmm, sort of lost my train of thought there. Oh well. I guess what I'm getting at is that when you say "none of those games are great" (which, ah, *pedant alert* I do feel compelled to point out that your initial claim was that there have been no "good" AAA games) my response is sort of just... Well... yeah? They're AAA games. They've always been "good" at best. They're designed to appeal to the broadest possible base, and are always going to compromise on vision and design in some way. Prey's difficulty and balance got completely gutted. Dishonored 1 and 2 have, as evidenced by the world-building and lorebooks, pretty competent writers forced to write the most banal boring plots ever. This is nothing new though. Call of Duty single-handedly dumbed down the FPS genre, and before that Half-Life single-handedly erased the run'n'gun shooter for the next decade and a half. None of that isn't to say that there aren't occasional "good" AAA games put out.

 

[Preben]

So my friend just got this add

Spoiler

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I never heard of this happening before. Talk about sinking lower and lower into desperation to fleece your customers if this is some new shit they are pulling off.

Imagine that there are people sheepish enough to buy tickets for an event which serves as a platform for corporate rats to tell you how much they despise you.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I honestly can't think of an AAA game in the past 15 years that is genuinely, uncompromisingly worth it.

Metal gear v

 

[Ninjerk]

Metal Gear?!

 

[Harthwain]

the Arkham games are severely overrated [...] Dishonored 1 and 2 are the best of these.

I found Dishonored to be overrated. Arkham games were good in my opinion. They had decent, cohesive storyline - for a superhero game - and the action/stealth elements were well done. They really made you feel like you're playing Batman. But they should've stopped on Batman: Arkham City.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well:

 

[madbringer]

Can we just agree that Blizzard is a steaming pile of shit at this point? I'm getting tired of arguing with nostalgiafags still clinging to decade old memories of a company long gone.

 

[catfood]

Talking about the human campaign... I need to try and replay the campaign on hard again. Now I want to download the classic game from alternative means. Did that two years ago. Every time I try to replay the campaign on hard, I get rekt in March of the Scourge. Do I suck or is that mission just super-hard?

It's the second toughest mission after the last NE one. The only way I could beat it on hard was to set the game speed to slow so I could micro my units better.

 

[Olinser]

Talking about the human campaign... I need to try and replay the campaign on hard again. Now I want to download the classic game from alternative means. Did that two years ago. Every time I try to replay the campaign on hard, I get rekt in March of the Scourge. Do I suck or is that mission just super-hard?

Beat it this time without even losing the Human base

What in the fuck, that's broken. You can't NOT lose the human base, its pretty much scripted because Archimonde shows up, and he is basically invincible and even if you somehow managed to beat his ridiculously broken Divine Armor ass, he has a ankh of ressurection so he is going to re-spawn in like five seconds flat and stomp you good.

I mean... its decently tough on Hard but not honestly that hard. Arthas is quite strong at this point and as long as you've got Devotion Aura and Holy Light leveled up its not particularly tough. Just set up a cluster of guard towers and keep your whole force on standby behind them. Use holy light for healing not damage. Not really sure what I can say there's honestly not that much strategy variety you can use because you only have a handful of units at that point. A handful of footmen with riflemen backing them up and about 4 priests for healing shouldn't have a lot of trouble holding. I can't remember if they have them but in campaign sorceresses suck ass, don't use them. Simply too many enemies for Slow to be useful (they're awesome in MP though).

 

[Olinser]

Talking about the human campaign... I need to try and replay the campaign on hard again. Now I want to download the classic game from alternative means. Did that two years ago. Every time I try to replay the campaign on hard, I get rekt in March of the Scourge. Do I suck or is that mission just super-hard?

It's the second toughest mission after the last NE one. The only way I could beat it on hard was to set the game speed to slow so I could micro my units better.

Negative. The 2nd toughest on Hard (hardest now that last NE one got nerfed/broken) is the one before you get Malfurion where the undead are chopping the trees. The timer is fucking FAST on Hard.

 

[Lacrymas]

I have never managed to destroy the orc base in the mission where you have to get Malfurion's horn on hard, I always killed as many of the orcs in there as possible and ran through the base. As for March of the Scourge, the problem is really only the meat wagons and the 6th level liches. The trick is to stay outside of the base with a decently sized force and ambush them from behind. Sorceresses and priests are invaluable too, you micro slow on the abominations and dispel skeletons.

While havin devo aura is ...nice, Holy Light and Divine Shield are much more useful, especially when going for optional quests (Arthas can solo the orange meat wagons in the March of the Scourge).

 

[cocorulverde]

At least now they can release Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures (with triple A price) and several other alphas they cancelled because they were not "up to standards".