Just an Idea: "War3EE"

Warcraft 3 Logo.

Two years ago, a day before Warcraft 3: Reforged released, I published a post on Reddit called "What about... Samwise Didier?" that talked about him not being involved with the project (as if it wasn't already obvious by looking at the art style), initial absence from "Special Thanks" section in credits and a couple of other things. It was received well, and then I went on writing two more posts of proper critical nature regarding the game's "remaster"/expansion. Ultimately, that led me to open up this Hall.

Even though I've covered pretty much everything I thought I could after "True Tragedy of Warcraft 3: Reforged", I knew there's something else that I needed to do in order to tie up loose ends. When it comes to people criticizing (in good, bad or "popular" ways), one of the most typical answers people come up with are something along the lines of "what's your solution then". Although I tried my best to acknowledge this situation with all the complexity surrounding it, I knew that this is an angle I pretty much missed out on.

And that's something I wanted to change for a long time, but struggled to come up with the right approach to it. Which resulted in me writing a few posts related to Warcraft 3 over the last 5 months as a "build up" of sorts. Now there's no better time to try my best and contribute to this fragmented community in its way to prospective in only way I really can: by throwing a bunch of ideas around I can't realize as if I know what I'm talking about. Many people seemed to enjoy it before, and I hope some will deem it worth their time now. 

The Right Focus.

Where do we start? From audience and the project itself. I'll talk more in-depth about both ways that Warcraft 3 can follow, but before that I would like to address who should be considered the target audience for such project in all of its forms as this is one of many questions that were answered wrong by the lead developers of Reforged, and not only them really. More on that later.

Those familiar with my previous texts related to the game or some other posts from this blog might quickly guess that my answer to this would be so-called "hardcore purists". You know, those who are "very passionate" about their favorite game to a point of mental breakdown because someone suggested fixing some obscure visual bug that was present in the game for many years. Jokes aside, you really should look up to players that treat the game you want to bring to a modern era as a pure form of art. The goal, as I've probably said too many times it regards to all re-releases and remasters, is to stay true to the original. Not attract new players from your other game or just in general, that happens naturally.

This time some will be quick to point out a certain degree of difficulties surrounding Warcraft 3 in its current state. Like, "vast majority of people don't like Reforged models, but there're still some that do" and "what about the feedback from the public in gaming industry". I would like to address points like that honestly and pretty straightforward: it shouldn't matter. When it comes to, let's say, "outsiders" that learned about Reforged's debacle from a few media article and video essays, you should keep in mind that most of them don't care about Warcraft 3 at all. It was just another weekly trend for social media everyone abandoned once new drama began.

The easiest way to understand that is to compare public's reaction to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition. Although majority of people got over this release as fast as over Reforged (and situation itself isn't the same as with Warcraft 3), I would say that overall flashback to it was louder for an obvious reason: current gaming community just prefers Grand Theft Auto, an action third person series, from "some old real-time strategy". They care so much about it that some of them would be more mindful to older versions of the games and modding, which are the topic your average modern gamer tends to ignore when it comes to classic titles.

What I'm trying to say is that if you would try to give Warcraft 3 the treatment it actually deserves while trying to please the crowd that uses current version of a game as a joke when Activision Blizzard pops up in the news again, you'll hit a dead end if not repeat the same mistakes again. The fact that some groups of media decided to highlight Chronicles of the Second War in particular (with Re-Reforged and Quenching being close) instead of older projects like Legends of Alkain really says it all. Reason they got some kind of spotlight is because they tied themselves to one of key missteps Reforged had made. Otherwise, nobody outside of game's community wouldn't have even heard about them as they're not a part of "hype material". 

If we want to bring Warcraft 3 to its former glory, fix all mistakes of recent years and just make it right this time around, the only way I see it somewhat achievable is starting a new...

Second Culling.

...and I mean that quite literally. Let's take on the first scenario: somehow Blizzard go back to Warcraft 3 and decides to "fix Reforged", even though the possibility of that happening are pretty much nonexistent. How should they do it? Start from scratch. Begin with a clean slate and version 1.28.5 as their starting point with taking the first steps in reimplementing the highlights of pre-Reforged era like 24 player support, increased map sizes, useful World Editor additions and others. In short, approach it similarly to Diablo 2: Resurrected. Damn, you might as well just abandon Reforged subtitle for more basic "Remastered" to distance it away from all the negative legacy gathered over all this time.

Starting point for that would be restoration of Battle.net 1.0 servers for both Reign of Chaos & The Frozen Throne with renewed destribution of older version of the game. Use any kind of backup data you have to restore all the accounts that were active on those servers if that's possible and just let people stay in that vintage bubble like original Diablo 2. Although I would've liked to keep crossplay between two versions of the game, I assume that at the end of a day that very well could be the lost cause. Would've been nice if Starcraft also got the same treatment, but currently I can't really talk for this game nor that's the topic of this post.

Battle.net's Shop "Classic Games" page from 2017. Available through Internet Archive.

Here's the part where I address those who doesn't think that Reforged's art style is that bad on itself. My radical approach to the remaster means basically frowing all of that away, which obviously would upset this minor group of people, but it doesn't have to go that way. In order to still make use of them, Blizzard can do something they've already done before: just add them to Starcraft 2. With all the changes made to its Galaxy Editor in one of the latest major updates to the game, that could provide more creators and players alike to smaller custom map scene of that game. In term, that would make the job easier for Warcraft 3 to heal all its wounds.

In an ideal world, public acknowledgment of such endeavor could've happened at the beginning of July 2022 since we're reaching 20th anniversary of Warcraft 3. Project shouldn't be rushed to meet any kind of symbolic date as it has lost such privilege back at Blizzcon 2018. As an official release by Blizzard, they should spend around the same time as for Diablo 2's remaster: actually, probably even more as Resurrected's development overall took two years. At least three years, if not more. Either way, I think it's time for me to focus on a few specific aspects of the game and how they could've been re-evaluated. While I wouldn't touch upon every single detail, I believe that these few examples would be enough to provide the general idea for Warcraft 3's "Enhanced Edition"/"better Reforged".

Main Menu.

One of the most apparent downgrades for the vast majority of Warcraft 3 players is its main menu. Whenever 3D backgrounds across the board were changed in favor of animated WEBM images for new Chromium based system, there's really no better way to put it. Not only that's one of (if not the) primary reasons why Reforged has no access to the likes of custom campaigns and clans, but visually it just looks more cheap. Not to mention my short-lived experience with it when every click on that background caused game to froze for a few seconds. It's probably not that bad nowadays, but I wouldn't hold my breath for that.

From the perspective of official revival, I think that main menu would still need a few changes here as a version of the game tied to Battle.net 2.0. My idea was to combine single player and multiplayer profiles in order to simplify the access to familiar Battle.net menu that in this case would be just a "Multiplayer Lobby" or something. You could name your War3 account whatever you want while your Battle.tag remains the same, similarly to (again) Diablo 2: Resurrected and how it allows for characters to have similar names. Not sure whenever or not you should be able to create multiple profiles though.

In theory, such approach should help bind your campaign progress to your account without the need to relay on backup files in order to play from the same moment on different device or reinstalled operating system. Not that there's any multiplayer benefit to it (I know what you're gonna say, just wait for the next segment; one thing at the time) But if someone would want to restart their campaign progress? Just add a reset button!

However, one addition it could bring to both single player and multiplayer enjoyers are ability to select various 3D background to use on the main menu. I've heard that's a thing in Starcaft 2 and likely would be one of a few things I would welcome into Warcraft 3 personally since it doesn't really hurt the overall experience and in fact adds a little thing for everyone to enjoy. Small things like that usually only add to the great experience.

Ladder & Rulesets.

Either way, let's shift over to second part of "new" profile system and major aspect of multiplayer side of Warcraft 3. Right now there's really only one ruleset on the game active, which is The Frozen Throne one. Some might say that its better to call it Reforged, but I don't believe that were as much changes made to in the same vein as between original game and its first expansion. That's one of the things I would've liked to change by providing three different rulesets for players to play in. Why do that when only TFT is really popular? While I do agree that in some cases less is more, removal of RoC's Battle.net with automated tournaments back in day was a direct downgrade of the Warcraft 3 in terms of available content. Easier access to it would ensure at least small increase of interest.

Profile's avatar was represented in-game via both icon illustrations and units portrait. In current Reforged many ex-Reign of Chaos icons were repurposed as Campaign rewards, which is term devalued already erased progression of veteran Warcraft 3 players. I would've just reverted this decision without offering any new profile icons for campaign progression as essentially that's a redundant feature. Vast majority of players that wants to play singleplayer come to Warcraft 3 just for that. While some of them might try and stick around for multiplayer matches, that's not going to be the case for most of them. Therefore including rewards like this is simply a waste of time.

Suggested Ladder & Clan Icons for revamped Reforged.

I think its pretty clear what my idea for three rulesets are: Reign of Chaos, The Frozen Throne and Reforged. While the first two are pretty selfexplanatory, I think its still worth noting what's the deal with them. They'll be based on... 1.19(?) and 1.25 versions of  the game specifically as that's the last patches were both iteration of the game received balance changes before pre-Reforged era. This would offer legacy experience with original ladder rewards, down to the differences in requirement number of victories. In terms of automated tournaments, it's probably best to just expand them to all three ruleset without providing unique icons for such of them: just leave it at demons. Perhaps increase requirement amount of wins for each of them to compensate for a decision that might, as I've mentioned before, decrease their value due to implied changes.

Balance is tricky topic to handle and I would like to point out that I'm not an expert here. If anything, I'm actually kind of bad at Warcraft 3 and my gameplay advices are really better to be ignored. Still, I'm going to share them anyway since... Here's the deal. In terms of specific changes, I would just point towards Grubby's wishlist as he's one of the few people who can actually offer some great ideas for this due to many years of experience. Combine  that with a general idea of Reforged ruleset: a middle ground between two other versions of the game, which is turn should help out new and returning players alike switch between all of them more easily. In order to reach such niche I would've looked into another revamp of all prizes across the board to get them somewhere in between. Bring in both new items (which is just Ritual Dagger, I believe) and old ones from Reign of Chaos days. Just let's go crazy and have fun, even though that suggestion alone will likely make me look like a troll in eyes of many. I'm blaming anyone for that though. That very well could be me going too far with "let's bring back old obscure stuff into the spotlight". Besides that, I don't really think there's any need for new units, heroes and such... We need to restore what we have.

Battle.net Callback.

While I'm at, let's recall one overshadowed feature of original Battle.net that doesn't seem to be recognized much nowadays likely due to the status of each game that was of its original iteration. Whenever you visit old school Warcraft 3's website, you can dig up a page that showcases all the game's chat icons. Among various competitive and technical ones, you'll see the ones that represent the player from different player that's connected to a specific chat channel in so-called Battle.net Classic.

Same principle implies to Starcraft, Diablo 2, Diablo and Warcraft 2. While the latter two self-contained within their own reopened servers thanks to re-releases on GOG, others have received "Remastered" treatment. As these three games that Blizzard chosen to "bring back" in such form considered by much people as the companies "golden trilogy", I think it would've nice to make a callback to it by imitating such game parity. This should be even more easy than it seems since there appears to be a different "Battle.net v1 Remastered Service" category... or not. Honestly, I have no idea what is up with that.

Visual Enhancements.

That might as well be the most discussed subject when it comes to Reforged, but I'll tackle it yet again simply because it's still an important one. We "got rid" of the misguided work of Lemon Sky Studios, so what's next? As was brought up by many people in various conversations around the Internet, we need to get on board both Samwise Didier and DragonFly Studio for proper creativity. This Russian art production company works with several large gaming companies. Their latest work can be seen in Ruined King: A League of Legends Story and Darksiders Genesis. Studio has long-lasting relationship with Blizzard Entertainment as they worked with them on multiple occasions for new models in Heroes of the Storm and other games of the company, but before that (we many of you likely know) they've created high definition version some Warcraft 3 models that later were added into Arcade for Starcraft 2.

Warcraft 3 & Arcade Paladin Comparison. Made by StormKnight.

These models are beloved by many fans of  the game across the globe, so DragonFly Studio seems like the most obvious choice for such project. Even though they followed a nice request of staying true to the original, there're a still some spots that generally could've been improved in this aspect. For the most part its more about the faces of various characters. Icons and other illustrations can either just receive a simple enhancement or be redrawn similarly to portrait icons discovered in Reforged game files and Heroes of the Storm. I believe that they do a fantastic job under the guidance of Warcraft 3's original art director: if there's anyone at Blizzard who can handle this right, that's Didier. He's one of the few "old guards" remaining at the project and his love & passion for his work is as strong as ever, despite recent controversies and other mistakes made by Blizzard.

Although we need to get rid of Reforged assets, there're still some maps that use its exclussive doodads like Terenas' status. To make sure that transition of these maps to healed Warcraft 3 is as smooth as it could be, I suggest do something that should've done before: their version for original game. Besides, I would say that it would've been to not only improve upon already existing female skins for Death Knight & Demon Knight, but add in a few more models for people to work with. On top of that, as a surprise and another token of graditute towards the community, various Alpha and Beta content should also be added (both Original and Enhanced variations). At least as a hidden material like Gargoyle Spire, "Advanced Structures" icon, "BridgeLog" doodad and others.

I also think that would be a good chance to potentially address existing recolors and reuse of original models for multiple units. Getting more recolors (similarly to neutral trolls) for units that for all these years had a certain color filter added on top of existing model in order to distinguish them from their smaller original relatives would be a great option in my opinion. Have more fitting variations would benefit custom map side of the community. Just a single setting for either player and/or map creator in case they wish to preserve older style for units in both graphical modes.

There's one elephant in the room... or that's actually a mammoth? Skins. Certain oblivious or desperate players suggested to go to the route of Starcaft 2 by including various skin packs as a microtransaction option in order to "extend the liablitiy of Warcraft 3". Even though there're multiple evidence that Reforged was meant to ultimately become a reskin of Starcraft 2 for the most part, initial cutting costs, lowered priority and community reaction thankfully didn't let that happen. Although such system is one of many great additions that can be nicely utilized by players, it doesn't bring much value to core competitive side of the game. Just cut out, again. As previously mentioned female variations of heroes do have "original version" (albeit totally far from perfect), maybe just fix them and leave as a bonus? What about Reforged only skins? Cut-cut-cut.

Campaigns, Cutscenes & Cinematics.

Similarly to Starcraft: Remastered, Warcraft 3 players should be able to experience the original campaign how they wanted: with original or updated graphics. Current Reforged version of the campaigns would be another "victum" of the cuts performed for game's restoration. Alterations made to fit into everchanging canon of World of Warcraft should be removed, including changed versions of chapters like Culling. An exception to the rule could be forest trolls in Chapters involving Blackrock Clan as that's better homage to Warcraft 2. Additional mission from demo version of the game must remain, however. These few new missions mentioned previously could be repurposed for a new bonus campaign that would serve as a compilation of those WoW-like missions, serving as time capsule of sorts and maybe even training missions for aforementioned Reforged ruleset.

Unit portrait position during cutscene should be reverted to its pre-Reforged version when it stayed within its original position even in widescreen mode. This includes leaving presented there HUD elements as it instead of their absense from current Reforged mode. Same goes to in-game HUD while I'm at it, as its "HD" version misses elements of interface on the sides that were added with proper widescreen support in patch 1.29.

Cinematics also should be addressed. While generally that's one of the highlights in Reforged as Blizzard just included higher resolution of original videos, they suffer from certain audio discrepancies that shall be fixed. Getting a 1080P version of original The Prophecy would be fantastic. While some people might prefer the recreated version made for Reforged's announcement, many will agree that overall it failed to nail the original atmosphere since new models for footman, grunt and infernal were based on their modern counterparts. Which results in unsatisfying results for many as I've seen personally how often fans of Warcraft 3 criticized orc and demons designs in particular. Again, "New Prophecy" could still remain in-game as a bonus material of some kind.

Deluxe Edition.

Spoils of War Edition should be disposed of as well. This digital "collector's edition" (which is lame) is... just kind of tight to current Reforged, so there's no real way to repurpose its rewards to new and improved remaster of Warcraft 3. Actually we just need to remove Reforged's hero skins, Diablo 3's pet, Overwatch sprays from the package. The rest can pass off as rewards for right remaster of Warcraft 3. Initially I thought that everything needs to be abandoned as I didn't really remember the contents of Spoils of War, but I guess we can end up with something larger than Prime Evil Collection.

Suggested digital goodies for new "Deluxe Edition". Made by StormKnight.

Although choosing World of Warcraft audience was one of many mistakes made by previous Classic Games Team, it is still a crowd that can be beneficial. Let's face it: from financial standpoint, the majority of the remaining royal fanbase of that game will give Blizzard money for everything. From pets and boots to transmogrification set... so why not use it? Just imagine if you add in three more mounts: steam tank, catapult and ballista? Yes, Reign of Chaos versions of siege units since that simply feels more appropriate. I didn't expect to look at that from this angle, but just imagine how much Blizzard could charge for that. It's not like it would have a negative effect for Warcraft 3 players as they have no reasons to purchase it... unless some of them happens to be "trapped" in current WoW. Oh.

I would've made something different with Heroes of the Storm though as just giving some Warcraft 3 heroes does feel a bit lame. Aside from the current low profile of the game, it's still a hidden jam saved from the negative influence of Activision Blizzard (even if that came at a prize). That makes a chance for dedicated event that would've coincides with unrealistic re-release of Reforged even less likely, but this idea is still curious nonetheless. Imagine receiving Paladin Arthas (tied to much desired character redesign), Farseer Thrall, Necromancer Kel'Thuzad and Awakened Malfurion: again, all directly related to Reign of Chaos. There're many other characters worth getting their own "War3's classic" skins like Mal'Ganis, Jaina and Uther, but tried to address each major niche of the game (tank, healer, mage and melee hero) within the template of recent content patches in order to get somewhat closer to reality.

Taking The Matters.

Now that we overall went through more fantastic turn of events, let's consider something much more realistic. Key element of all three "Just an Idea" posts about Warcraft's RTS games are the fact that each of them are already in good heads of respected communities, including this one. Various PvPGN servers and W3Champions represent the last bastions of Warcraft 3. While latest version of the game has centralized safe haven, older patches suffer from fragmented nature of this community. Despite existence of some prominent platforms, there's no concrete "the original Warcraft 3 platform" nowadays that would've stood toe-to-toe with W3Champions.

Why do I think there should be one? Because fragmentation is the clear problem that plagued Warcraft 3, and it needs to be dealt with for further improvements. I would agree that this position is better than monopoly. Although there's no clear signs of this, I don't think I need to really explain how community (or really any kind of) project would ultimately suffer from a lack of competition, even friendly one. Thankfully this illness doesn't seem to come close to W3Champions (which is wonderful), such signs shared by one of my friends suggest otherwise for Chronicles of the Second War and that's more concerning due to a long-term effect it could have on "custom aspect" of the game.

More projects in original art style should surface, which ultimately would lead to deserved resurgence of older creations. People need to be reminded that there's much more to World Editor's creations of Warcraft 3 than disastrous art style that doesn't fit the game. Just imagine how much faster you can make something with better visual results, especially when there're resources like Reforged UI Designer that simplify the process even further. Such activity can be encouraged by creation of new relevant guides for usage of current World Editor in SD mode and contests similarly to the ones on Hive Workshop. In case there're already solid and use-to-follow training articles or videos out there, they should be brought to light again in order to inspire more people. Even if it wouldn't "convince" some people to try their hand in World Editor, the word of mouth will do its thing.

But that's about the latest version of Warcraft 3. We still have the "older wildlands" to cover as it has kind of the opposite problem: a few platforms scattered around with reported lack of interest in some kind of unification. Solution to that? Obviously start another one and hope that this time everything works out just fine. Jokes aside, there's a bit more to it. Rather than to open just another PvPGN project, more inspirations should be taken from both NetEase and Warcraft 2 communities. I've already mentioned Combat Edition before, but don't know much about Chinese Battle Platform yet: only that they have focus on two major versions of the game (the latest one and 1.27, I believe) and there's a huge mess of custom maps with microtransactions all over them by creators themselves... I wonder if its within their wisdom to reimplement graphics toddle in Half-Life style, even if it would work just like in Reforged.

Exclude that and start from here. Problems with starting something like this comes from finding the right people that would be willing to pursue such goal. Although I've said it's much easier to achieve than wait for Blizzard to take proper action, it's more likely that people will be like "dude, there's W3Champions; no need for reinventing the wheel". Again, fair comment, but the community could've benefit greatly from coexisting project for previous Warcraft 3 patch.

Epilogue.

Well, it's been a while since I wrote more lengthy posts, and it's been fun. Again, all the suggestions thrown in here aren't my definitive answers to how things should be: I'm just a guy on Internet that uses this "series" in this dorky blog to share idea that I think are interesting and can work. Perhaps all of this is just garbage, and I'm a clueless moron that simply should move on... That should be easier to do now, at least. My hope is at least that my lack of skill or will to pursue some ideas here (not just some) would inspire someone more reliable to do what "needs to be done". That's why I started "Just an Idea" series here, those five Warcraft 3 "articles" and wrote this big wall of text like in good old days.

That's not really enough for a proper contribution to this game and its community, but I've tried, and it's up to you to judge how successful or not this silly idea was. Would've been nice if this post got followed up by some actual good news, but I don't think it's going to be the case (Note: I'm writing this way ahead of the time it gets published). I know first-hand that Reforged's anniversary doesn't really bring many reasons for celebration, but I would suggest putting aside all the negativity and sadness that comes to mind that day. As opposed to rightful speeches about Activision Blizzard's negligence, let's just use this opportunity to share a few good experience you managed to have recently or recall good old days of your favorite Battle.net matches, custom map parties or nice custom campaign.

It is done. Even though I wouldn't call it a definitive end for Warcraft 3 here specifically, I'm glad to get this post out there regardless of general reception. Even if nobody reads it, which is totally fine. Despite everything, I believe that at the end community will figure everything out in a way that would ensure that the true legacy of Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne would still live on in the same way it did for 18 years.