A Tale of Warcraft Remasters that Almost Happened

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans Reimagened Cover Art from Blizzard.

It seems that I just can't stop talking about Warcraft. Sometimes you wonder about what could've been, especially in cases such as Warcraft 3: Reforged. At first, I wanted to talk about it in my previous post, but then quickly realized that this topic deserves its own spotlight. If I remember corrently, there were some "speculations" in the past that Blizzard Entertainment wanted to remaster all three RTS games before Starcraft and I want to talk about it.

Turn of Events.

I'll go in chronological order to have a full picture of what was going on. It all started from Blizzcon 2013, "World of Warcraft Q&A About Almost Everything" panel:

Girl-Cosplayer: "Hey. Um, I was wondering with Warlords of Draenor kind of bringing back the past again, would you ever, possibly consider the old Warcraft games being available to play on modern computers?" 

J. Allen Brack: "So, um, we actually have a guy on our team. Actually several guys on our team, um... who actually working on... a side project to, to do something like that in some, some form or fashion. Um-m-m... You know, we're, we're fans of Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 and we would love to replay those games for sure. Thanks."

That's why I put 'speculation' in quotes as it was basically confirmed that Blizzard was working on it, so "You think you do, but you don't" was said only in regards to World of Warcraft. Yes, it was that Q&A panel.

First signs of activity were seen almost a year later, in October 2 2014. That's when Battle.net Launcher received an update that added something extremely interesting: menu background and icons for Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. Nothing for Reign of Chaos (or older games, obviously), but that was a huge red flag. It seemed like war was coming...

Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne Background for Battle.net Launcher.

Almost 4 months later (January 31, 2015), Starcraft 2 PTR was blessed with all original assets from Warcraft 3, both main game and expansion. If that wasn't enough, several new models were added on top of that, providing an updated look to heroes, units and doodads. Strangely enough, I found this old Starcraft tweet from after Blizzcon 2013 that shows Orcish heroes in their HD glory. I suppose they were at least 2 years old at that point, which makes it even more interesting.

But things become confusing as nothing happens afterwards. A year goes by, until another Q&A session took place at the end of "Blizzard 25th Anniversary - A Look Back" panel in second day of Blizzcon 2016. They were asked about remasters of first two Warcraft games and we finally got an update on the side project from 2013:

Frank Pierce: "We, we're fortunate enough to have the, all of the original source code and assets. Um, but it's actually, it turns out, it's really hard to access that stuff, unlock it and figure out how it works. Because we're old, we've forgotten. Um, but..."

*some people laugh*

Frank Pierce: "...we had some, uh-h-h, dedicated folks that were passionate about the idea dig up the Warcraft 1, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans assets and code, and they got it working, and they got it running in a window. And I played it, and... Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was awesome... for its time and I promise you, in today's world, by today's standards, it's just not that funny anymore."

*He and a few people laugh*

Frank Pierce: "And so, like... We, we have limited resources with ev-, everything that we choose to do. Um... We would much rather work on amazing content for World of Warcraft, for you guys, or for Overwatch, or evaluating what a future project pipeline might be and, and devote our time to that, rather than going back and, and digging up those, uh... those fossils..."

Mike Morhaime: "At this time."

*Bob Fitch laughs.*

Sean "Day9" Plott: "At this time."

Mike Morhaime "At this time."

Frank Pierce: "At this time."

Sean "Day9" Plott: "At this time..."

Frank Pierce: "But, it's, um... Like, uh, totally appreciate your enthusiasm for those old games. We love them too. Thank you.

Mike Morhaime: "Thank you for question."

Although nothing specific was said about Warcraft 2, Frank's other explanation most likely played the main role here. Warcraft 3 wasn't brought up in question itself, which might be the case because, at the time, Blizzard started to observe them ahead of Q&A's. Jack (the guy who asked this question) was clearly a Blizzard nerd, very nervous and wore a blue shirt instead of a red one. They had nothing to worry about.

Another year, another Blizzcon. Brian Sousa was interviewed by Blizzplanet and one of the questions was Warcraft 2's remaster and here's what he had to say:

Brian Sousa: "Uh, we... Of course, we talked about, you know, what's next for the... the Classic Games Team. Um... Those kind of things that bringing, bringing back Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Diablo 1, Diablo 2... You know, everything that we have is technically, like... open to, to doing stuff.

What we're focusing on now is actually, um, you know, the games that we know that are still being played and loved by a lot of people: Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2. Getting those up onto the modern Battle.net platform, making sure that, you know, like, their experience with those games that are still being played, you know, work well with all of our other titles and, you know, still have the same amount of, uh... love that we get to all of our new titles."

It's not the first time when Brian shows that he doesn't know what he's talking about as Warcraft 2 still has an active community. Although you can argue that it's pretty small, compared to latter Blizzard titles.

Warcraft 3: Reforged was announced on Blizzcon 2018 and, during yet another interview, MMO-Champion asked Pete Stilwell and Brian Sousa about the reasons for choosing this game older ones... I guess that was the question. Sadly, this time I couldn't find an actual video and all we have from them is "Warcraft 3 was selected to be 'reforged' first over the other two because of the community demand."

Warcraft I & II Bundle. Taken from GOG.

This story finally ends in March 28, 2019 with a re-release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft 2: Battle.net Edition on GOG. In my personal opinion, it shows that Blizzard just has no interest in remastering these games (Diablo as well) and instead just decided to hand them over to GOG. That was the best way to do it, I think.

Looking for Answers.

We're not done yet. We saw this story from Warcraft perspective, but, in order to get a full picture, we need to look beyond and make guesses based on gathered information. Even though J. Allen Brack referred to them as "several guys from our guys", I'm not sure those people were coming from World of Warcraft specifically or if that was just some people within the company.

A few days before Blizzcon 2013, Blackthorne was re-released for free by Blizzard. The Lost Vikings and Rock n' Rock Racing followed half a year later. This coincidence makes me believe that the same group of people that worked on those games probably were the ones who got Warcraft: Orcs & Humans working for Frank Pierce to play. Then the game was put on shelf probably due to his feedback and attention was redirected to two other games.

There's no information in regards to Warcraft 2, so I really don't know what to say here. I doubt the gameplay was an issue here for Blizzard this time, not to mention making Battle.net Edition working for modern computers. One way or the other, I think they just decided that it's better to focus on just one game at the time.

Loading screen from "PC version" of Rock n' Roll Racing. Taken from MobyGames.

It's obvious that Warcraft 3 got the most attention in this side project. All signs point towards its remaster being really close to getting into full production. With The Frozen Throne stuff getting added into Launcher's files, I assume that full Battle.net 2.0 integration was on its way. Those HD models were created by Russian folks at DragonFly Studio and likely served as a prototype for the project. They probably would've worked on more models for remaster. Thanks to one of Kiraser's posts in his VK group, I've learned an interesting fact about development process: Blizzard asked them to be as close to the original as possible!

Despite how confident Blizzard seemed to be about remastering Warcraft 3, their plans have changed somewhere between October 2014 and January 2015. That led them to abandon the project all together and give all models they had from DragonFly to people via Starcraft 2 Arcade and port all original Warcraft 3 assets to play it save. Since these models seemengly existed as back as Blizzcon 2013, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a sneaky teaser of what's to come... soon. We know how Blizzard's "soon" works and that's a prime example of it: "shortly after Blizzcon" from 2013 turned into release in late January 2015. It was slow, but definetely most steady part of the project.

Revelation.

I think they had big plans for their 25th Anniversary: Blackthorne's appearance before Blizzcon 2013, then Blizzard "spilled the beans" about Warcraft games and after that The Lost Vikings and Rock n' Roll Racing arrived to the party. I guess that's the explanation for weird release of latter game: Blizzard's plans kept changing and they just rushed it.

You know, I don't think we need to look too deep into this. I'm pretty sure that Frank Pierce gave us an honest answer back in 2016. Just think about how many things we know of were worked on at the time: Project Titan that was cancelled and reborn as Overwatch, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls and Ultimate Evil Edition, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor and Legion, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm...

There was a lot of stuff going around. When I think about it, gameplay of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans might as well be more of a convenient excuse for them at the time and the real reason why that game and Warcraft 2 were put aside was just too many new games and expansions being worked on within the company. Warcraft 3 stayed for a bit longer probably due to raising popularity of game remasters and Blizzard's optimism, but even then they choose their priority.

Although they didn't fully abandoned the idea of updating old games, as Classic Games Team was created and looked for people a month after Starcraft 2 got Warcraft 3 assets. Next year was Diablo's 20th Anniversary: The Darkening of Tristam event and Rise of the Necromancer for Diablo 3 were revealed during Blizzcon 2016. And then comes March 26, 2017. In that day, I <3 Starcraft event took place in Seoul, where Mike Morhaime announced Starcraft: Remastered. Just a few days before its 19th Anniversary...

Damn, we came full circle. I didn't expected that. I thought it's gonna be just a relatevly short post that ends with no particular answer, but it escalated quicky.

Blizzcon 2013 was really iconic for old school Blizzard games... Huh.