Revised Issues & Suggestions for War1R

Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest Trailer Screenshot. Taken from YouTube.

It's been over a month since Blizzard Entertainment has shadowdropped Warcraft 1: Remastered, Warcraft 2: Remastered and Patch 2.0 for Warcraft 3 during Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct. Since then, I tried my best to dedicate some of my free time to observe and take note of the general state of the first two releases, their updates and unaddressed issues. This approach mostly comes to the fact that more eyes are likely to be centered on Warcraft 3 with its fragmented community, but even then there're some things that I feel like have been missed out on by players and developers alike. It would have to wait for a good while though.

Nevertheless, right now I would like to talk about remaster of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and not just because it's the first game in Warcraft franchise. But because it's likely to be the most neglected one, which you can argue may be evident by all the recent updates both titles were getting: War2R managed to catch Patch 1.01 alongside multiple hotfixes, but War1R is yet to receive a proper patch of its own (only hotfixes). Warcraft RTS Team and developers from Blackbird Interactive (assuming they're still attached to the projects; hopefully, they are) are making some admirable small steps after the initial rushed release, but more needs to be done. Because these games deserve much more.

The purpose of this "article" is to revisit my list of issues & suggestions for War1R I posted on r/Warcraft3 & Blizzard's forum in more depth to the best of my abilities and even add something new to all that. Not only just to "do this myself" (video would be ideal, but that's not something I can do anytime soon; post's timing isn't good already with too many delays) and get it out of my system, but to publish a "comprehensive" feedback based on my outside observations for the developers in hopes that they're keeping track of all that people have to say outside of forum discussions, Reddit posts, YouTube videos and such.

Prelude.

First of all, I would like to establish the foundation of this post in order to make it clearer why I'm talking about everything in a way I do. As I've mentioned before, it's very easy to get an impression that both remasters were pushed into the wild earlier than they should've been if you're familiar with original versions of War1 & War2. While what Blackbird Interactive and Warcraft RTS Team have managed to accomplish (in likely a rather short development time) is admirable, it came at a cost of each game's uniqueness. One of my key hopes and desires are to see the restoration of said uniqueness. Staying true to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and making sure that you can have the original experience in Remastered. Because that's how it's supposed to be, obviously.

I fully acknowledge that certain decisions I may deem necessary or simply neat for War1R could be out of developers' capabilities either due to short team size or lack of budget limitation. That's not my problem. Not the problem of War1R players. Neither it is a problem of Warcraft RTS Team & Blackbird Interactive. This is a baffling case of greed coming from Warcraft Team or Blizzard Entertainment's leadership at large, if anything. Blizzard is already a big company on its own, not to mention it being owned by Microsoft nowadays. My hopeless optimism tells me to put the blame on them until proven otherwise, so that's my approach here. Although some of the issues could've been avoided by developers paying a closer attention or being more dedicated to the source material.

What I'm saying is that players and developers alike shouldn't settle for compromises simply because the people at the top couldn't be bothered to spare additional resources, but I'll kind of address that closer to the end of this nonsense. Now, I'll try to address each aspect of the game as you first come to experience it. Start off with the similar muttering and then summarize all the points before moving on to different fragment of War1R.

Introduction & Main Menu.

When you open War1R for the first time, you're greeted by the intro cinematic and its upscale stands out negatively. Abundance of visual artifacts and unnatural smoothing doesn't allow for players to immerse themselves into the world of Warcraft. And once you take a note of things like the game using Blizzard's old school logo from the early 90s and Remastered visuals themselves still sticking to pixel art, the idea of giving this cinematic the treatment it got seems very strange.

What was even stranger for me is to stumble into this video by Scrotus Maximum where he used upscaled in his recap of game's narrative. And guess what? His version of the cinematic is nearly identical to the one in War1R. You can often see fan's work cited as superior to developers (no offense to video's author), but this case being more equal adds more to the odd nature of this situation. In order to reinforce the product's consistency, I think it would be best to replace the current version of introduction with the original one. Keep the pixels, but increase the resolution. It's also worth noting that an archived promo material for War1 that you can view on MobyGames includes two screenshots from intro cinematic that look much nicer in comparison to the upscaled version from Remastered. Maybe Blizzard still has the original files for it lying around somewhere.

It's once worth mentioning that there're actually two versions of intro cinematic, depending on the hardware you used at the time. At least I believe that's what was the determining factor. Rather than your typical cinematic, this low-end version was more like a slideshow that immediately switched from one shot to another while also retaining the animated elements of specific scenes: the flag at the top of Castle Stormwind & torches at Blackrock Pass (or an entrance to Blackrock Spire) and inside a hall in Blackrock Spire. You can take a look at it in this longplay by Old Nerd Playing Old PC Games, it starts with said version of introduction. Having this version of the cinematic alongside the "proper" one would be a nice touch for the most dedicated fans.

Main Menu itself seems fine at first glance, but then you notice a few differences. Starting with a missing highlight of the first letter for each option across all available options that indicated the shortcut function. For example, pressing "R" would activate "Replay Introduction" button... that's missing from War1R. So the UI fails to either signal that players have this option to navigate through menu or remaster failed to carry it over from the original. Both options are bad. And yes, bring back "Replay Introduction".

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (CD Demo/Shareware by Creative Labs) Screenshot.

It also appears that main menu in War1R is lacking the autoplay function if you remain idle for about ~13-17 seconds and, if so, should be reimplemented. Original game randomly picks one of the four demos (you can view them all here) where armies of Stormwind and the Horde fight one another and playing introduction cinematics, switching between the two options. Players can't control any units and the press of any key or mouse click brings them back to the main menu. This feature should be present in War1R and allow players to switch between Classic & Remastered modes when demos are played.

The only way to see credits in War1R is to finish one of the campaigns, which isn't quite ideal. Both Warcraft 2 & 3 (all versions) allows players to look at them from the main menu. It's only fair that the remaster of War1 learns from its sequels and does the same. As of this writing, a full recording of credits from War1R haven't been uploaded to YouTube (or I failed to find them). Because of that, I can't verify whenever or not they include the credits from the original War1. All I could see is every (most of them, at least) person involved with the development of a remaster one way or another. After that, credits go on to recite every member of Blizzard Entertainment at the time of War1R's release. If original developers are mentioned some time later, I think it would be best to move that section much higher to make sure players aren't missing out on them.

While we're at the topic of credits, current version of War1R's credits could use a change of scenery throughout it. So far it only scrolls with remaster's key art as a background, but you could make it switch the visuals to both briefings and all ending screen (including the ones that are still missing from the game; more on that later). Time it in a way where each screen doesn't change too regularly while also not overstaying its welcome. Just make it dynamic enough without distracting players from the list of names.

Fun fact about the mission titles on campaign menus is that those were seemingly taken directly from Warcraft Wiki (it's outdated and abandoned Wowpedia version, to be specific): missions weren't named in Orcs & Humans and sourcing the origin of wiki's titles seems rather futile. They are all named after a significant quote from mission's briefing to stick true to the original game and make dedicated pages more narrative friendly than just sticking to a race and mission's number. The only adjustment made to wiki's approach was change the title of Human's first mission from Regent to Westfall, but I think that more could've done and offer a few suggestions. Many of them will relate more to specific places introduced in World of Warcraft, which is something I don't personally have an issue with since a few titles were already edited to fit how they're written in WoW:

• Remove "The" from all titles because they're, in my opinion, seem just out of place.

• Rename "The Forest of Elwynn" to "Elwynn Forest" to match its more commonly known written name from WoW alongside some other titles in remaster.

• Rename "Medivh" to "Karazhan" (Medivh's Tower) to match all the other titles as they're named after places and not people.

• Rename "Northern Elwynn Forest" to "Elwynn Lake" based on location known as Stone Cairn Lake. Warcraft Wiki states that Lake was named after a memorial dedicated to Stormwind's losses during the First War, but without any reference... If that's true, naming it "Stone Cairn Lake" would be a narrative error. Its placement in the northern part of the Forest also makes it a good candidate for a better sounding title.

• Rename "The Center of the Human Lands" to "Westbrook Garrison". Technically, it stands in the center of Stormwind's lands due to being relatively close to the City itself. Its destruction would surely deal serious damage to Stormwind's defenses.

Another thing that could be changed on Campaign menus is the display of player's high score. It's present in all Warcraft games, but they're not documented anywhere besides victory/defeat screen. Remaster could lean more into this arcade-like side of War1 and brag more about these score. You can set a default value of sorts for each mission alongside players' results to intensives some replayability alongside another feature that's mentioned much later in this "article". 

If you look closely at Campaign menus, you can notice that there's a bit of space left out for at least one additional mission for selection. This feels like an oversight, but it can be reused in a good way. Warcraft 3 was the only game in the trilogy that offered an ability to select (in its case) chapters from the menu straight away. Not just chapters themselves, but intermissions, cinematics and endings. The latter can be done in War1R as well. Use that remaining space for ending, you even have dedicated titles for them already.

Summary of "Introduction & Main Menu" points:

1. Introduction cinematic should be replaced by its original version with increased resolution in order to offer more faithful player experience.
2. "Low-end" version of introduction should be added into War1R with an ability to choose between the two in Options.
3. Main Menu should highlight shortcuts for its every selection. If the functionality is missing, it should be brought back from the original.
4. Bring back "Replay Introduction" button from War1 that allows players to watch game's cinematic at any point.
5. Ensure the presence of the autoplay function that replays the cinematic and four demos from the original game when players are idle on the main menu for ~15 second. With an ability to toggle it on/off in Options. Also let them switch between two graphic modes when demo is played.
6. Add "Credits" button in order to allow players to view War1R's in-game credits at any point, similarly to Warcraft 3 and all versions of Warcraft 2.
7. Ensure that in-game credits don't leave out the developers of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and, if they're present, place them right after War1R team and people involved with this project.
8. Make in-game credits more dynamic by including all briefings and endings visuals as part of the background that would be switched alongside War1R's key art after a certain amount of time.
9. Remove all "The" from mission titles and rename a few of them after the existing places from World of Warcraft, pivoting away from current names given by fan wikis.
10. Add default and player's high scores for each mission in Campaign menus.
11. Add "Victory for the Horde" & "Victory for Azeroth" (Orc & Human Campaign Endings) to mission selection screen in Campaign menus.

Options.

When it comes to Options, War1R did substantially expand on what they have to offer in comparison to the original release. Yet there are a few things that I think are sorely missed from its current form. Settings here shouldn't be as advanced as Warcraft 3 and many latter releases. In fact, it's not that weird to see many indie titles to have very compact settings offered to their players. That being said, I don't think it exactly excuses what War1R missing out on.

Most notably, there's current no way to change hotkeys manually nor select Grid input option. Latter was added to the War2R in Patch 1.0.1, but it not being brought to War1R as well is quite shocking. It would be a good idea to take inspiration for setting's implementation in Warcraft 3 that was improved with the Patch 2.0.1. There's also no option to select game's display mode, which comes off as a weird oversight. It appears that War1R currently support only Windowed and native Fullscreen modes, not Borderless. There's also no setting for selecting a specific resolution for the game.

It's also very noticeable how messy Options actually are. Every setting is all over the place, forcing players to scroll up and down to select what they need each time. I strongly recommend bringing it up in line with War2R's Options with its categories (Sound, Speeds, Preferences, Gameplay) and setting options included in each of them. The reason this part of "article" is particularly chaotic is to further highlight this issue alone and not me being too lazy to rewrite to make things more organized.

Since War1R gives players access to Options through the main menu, the next few points will be mentioned here instead of "Gameplay, Visuals & Audio" segment. Having modernized mouse control is a nice option, but it shouldn't be the only one. Not having an ability to switch back to the original mouse controls is very weird, especially when you count in the fact that this option has been present in all versions of Warcraft 2. And yes, this includes War2R too. You can use old War1 controls there, but not here.

Warcraft 2: Battle.net Edition Manual Screenshot. Taken from Blizzard.

Another setting that I think should be present alongside original mouse control is return to the original four unit selection with the HUD adjusting to that. Old mouse controls are only a minor inconvenience that's solved by getting used to them, but War1R's increased twelve unit selection makes an already simple game (for the most part) too easy. Being able to return to lower unit selection limit of original War1 not just helps with its preservation, but gives players more choices for "challenging" themselves and leaves some room for additional replay value.

Lazy Widescreen with Classic UI Sketch for Warcraft: Remastered.

In its current form, Classic visuals in War1R stuck with the Remastered's font for UI elements. There's no way to replace it with the pixelated font from the original version, so you end up to just deal with out-of-place font while everything else is made of pixels. Some remasters like Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster (all six games) have an option to switch between pixel and modern fonts thanks to players' demand for it. Would've been great to see War1R follow suit for a more seamless classic experience for those who go for it.

Not much to say about the soundtrack. Having Sound Blaster 16 option as the Classic soundtrack is great. I still have no idea about where Remastered came from because it didn't seem to totally match the bonus CD version from (I think) some later physical releases of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. One thing that's common between the two is that I'm not really sold on either of them. However, now that I've mentioned other remasters as an example for tweaks and additions, I would like to point out Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition and its inclusion of more than two soundtracks in-game. Recently I was listening to the General MIDI version of War1 soundtrack and I think it's totally not bad. Sound Blaster 16 version is still the go-to, but General MIDI has its own charm.

War1R supports ten languages in total for its interfaces. This is a nice new addition, but the problem is that there's no way to switch the game to another language besides using "Game Settings" option in Battle.net Launcher or editing config file. All Blizzard games account for this, even though in many cases it'll request to relaunch the game to download chosen language. It's just a basic setting that pretty much any game with multiple languages has, there's no reason to not have that option.

Summary of "Options" points:

1. Implement hotkey customization option similar to Warcraft 3 to let players play the game the way they want to.
2. Add Grid input option that's currently present in War3 and was added into War2R with a post-release patch, fixing an oversight of not implementing them earlier for War1R.
3. Add an option for manual selection of game's resolution regardless of its Display Mode.
4. Bring in "Borderless Windowed" Display Mode option or a proper "Fullscreen", depending on which one is actually missing from the game.
5. Rework War1R's Options by making them more organized & similar to how they're in War2R. This includes separate all settings into different categories, as well as bringing over addition options that are currently exclusive to sequel's remaster.
6. Reintroduce the original mouse controls as a toggle for players to switch over from the updated ones. All versions of Warcraft 2 have it, even Remastered. Come on.
7. Reintroduce the original unit selection limit with Classic HUD as a toggle for players who want to stay closer to the original War1 gameplay experience while keeping other additions from remaster.
8. Add General MIDI soundtrack as an additional option for "Music Version" setting.
9. Add a setting to easily select preferred language in-game.

Briefings, Victory/Defeat Screen & Endings.

As of right now, War1R has only the Remastered versions of its briefings, victory/defeat screens and endings. No way to switch them up to the original versions. Just because not every remaster goes that far, I don't think it's enough of an excuse to not adjust the old classic material to the widescreen (and ultrawide) while keeping all of its elements intact similarly to what was done for DOOM & DOOM 2's re-releases by Nerve Software from 2019. This includes the style of scrolling, the pixelated font, no mission title and buttons present throughout. Last two aren't that big of a deal, but they weren't a thing in the original War1. Ensuring that people can get as close to the original experience as possible with War1R is a huge plus as many people (myself included) would love to have this option.

There're some nice accessibility things present across the board in those part of the game. I'm not totally against that, but I think it would be best to allow people disabling them. Already talked about the mission titles in briefings (+ titles in endings) and "Continue" button everywhere: nice option to hide them out, but that not crucial. What I think would be favorable is the ability to hide this "fancy rectangle" (don't know its proper name) that serve as kind of overlay for the text. I get that the idea is to make said text more readable, but it does slightly obfuscate the art itself. Also yeah, wasn't a thing there originally.

Text's placement, size and scrolling speed also doesn't quite fit the original. It's both faster and slower. Every line of text is more spaced out and it scrolls out a bit faster. This feels very organic and narration mostly keeps up very close to it. But because the text itself is smaller and more condensed in War1R, you can see it all quicker than usual. This can prompt players to read it on their own instead of letting the narrator finish it. Not to mention that it simply just looks odd.

I've noticed an anomaly of sorts in a certain briefing in a form of needless change, which forced me to take another look at all of them. It's weird how some words were corrected to match how they were spelled in WoW, but some other cases were overlooked. Naturally, I got to list them all. Starting with Orc Campaign:

• "You are wakened from your nights sleep" in The Deadmines wasn't corrected to "nights'".

• "We may study how their magiks are created" in Sunnygrade was changed to "magic". This doesn't match the narration.

• In The Black Morass, "hordes" isn't written with capital letter. Although the Horde is never mentioned in Orcs & Humans, this correction would match other spelling changes that were made to tie it to World of Warcraft within reason.

• Despite the aforementioned change in Sunnyglade, Northshire Abbey's text still says "magiks".

• "Magiks" in Northern Elwynn Forest were changed to "magic".

• The "Hordes" in "The Orcish hordes" from Stormwind Keep's briefing isn't written with capital letter.

And now to Human Campaign with a couple of its bizarre alterations:

• During the briefing to The Temple of the Damned, it's said that player character "should assume the mantle of War Leader". Despite this, the text was changed to "Grand Marshall".

• In Rockard and Stonard, narrator says "After conferring with your warchiefs". Text changed "warchiefs" to "Field Marshals".

This isn't nearly as weird as "Grommash" thing in Warcraft 3 that happened with Reforged. Still, altering the text in briefings in spite of original narration like that is incredibly strange. Good way to approach this would've been to get Bill Roper on board to revoice every bit of dialog and then make small adjustments, but even then having original voice as an option would've been required. In this case, it would be easier to change back the weird corrections in briefings' texts. 

One of the hotfixes for War1R brought with them the return of animation for game's briefings, but that was just the first step of getting things right. Starting with the looping nature of these Remastered briefings, something I've noticed by watching MickCraft's video about the thing. How is that a problem? Well, as you might've guessed it... That's not how it actually works in War1. If you compare with briefings from the original (in this video by Game Quotations, for example; finding a compilation in HD is quite tricky), you can see that each character in them perform their animation a different amount of time instead of the set cycle you can currently observe in remaster:

• Orc: Grunt (Blondy) turns his head 3 times, moves his jaw and then blinks twice. Spearman (Stabby) cleans his dagger 4 times, squint and blinks once. 

• Human: Knight chews 3 times, blinks twice. Conjurer blinks once and immediately inhales through nose one time.

While originally, each character is supposed to do each of their action 1-4 time for each cycle with delays for each action also having a varying duration. Blinking is also apparently should be its own thing for at least the Spearman that he does whenever he pleases. I'm assuming that at this time War1R uses WEBM video to display current version of briefings, similarly to current campaign backgrounds in Warcraft 3 with its Chromium-based menus that are present there since Patch 1.32. It's not a problem there not only because that implementation lacks original version of those backgrounds (different issue altogether), but even then the original versions were created to be looped if you look close enough. This principle can't imply to the original Warcraft and how its briefings work.

Another unique aspect of War1 that was adjusted in one of remaster's hotfixes are tall pixels. In-game visuals were made based on original's base 320x200 (16:10 aspect ratio) resolution while Blizzard had evidently counted on monitors at the time to stretch the image to more common 320x240 (4:3 aspect ratio) because War1 was more demanding than their prior DOS releases. And this principle implied to the game across the board, naturally... including briefings, victory/defeat screens and endings. As far as I'm aware, this isn't currently the case for War1R. There's another slight problem with remaster's implementation of this option, but I'll comment on that later.

The Land of Stormwind. Taken from Warcraft Wiki.

Either way, a few things are still missing from these parts of War1R. I'll start with the 3D rendered "map table" of Kingdom of Stormwind that highlighted in which region player's armies were heading to. It's always pre-loaded in each briefing, and you can bring it out earlier by pressing any key (and maybe a mouse click too, can't remember). Afterwards you have to repeat that step if you want to force camera to zoom into the specific region just as it gets uncovered. This behavior is also present in some Demo/Shareware versions of War1, at least the ones that were distributed by Creative Labs and FormGen, which I played while writing this "article".

Victory/defeat screen still misses a window in the upper right corner that displays an animated scene, depending on player's results. After achieving victory, you could a door open into the treasure room inside Blackrock Spire. If player fails, the window will demonstrate grim ruins with fire and skeletons scattered around it. It's not just that those scenes aren't animated, they're just completely absent for no apparent reason. And that's not the only part of War1 that faced such fate. I think it would be best to simply remove the current Remastered design of victory/defeat screens and bring back the original ones, but overhaul them to match the Remastered's aesthetic if that's the chosen mode by the player. High score also doesn't "load in" like in original War1 and all versions of War2 with its take on victory/defeat screen, it's just there right away like how it was initially in War2R.

All Variations of Victory/Defeat Screens from Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (CD Demo/Shareware by Creative Labs).

Not something that I can verify on my own, but there's another aspect of victory/defeat screen that I hope is retained in War1R. Once you get to said screen, the adjacent music stays on a constant loop until you leave the screen with a catch. All tracks are on the traditional loop except for Orc's Victory music. This one starts looping only after it reaches its "second part" (that starts at around 00:36) where said loop is the smoothest of them all. I'm just hoping that it works as intended in remaster.

To be honest, both endings are most likely the most butchered parts of War1R. They suffered the most from apparent push for remaster to reach the deadline regardless of the actual state and progress it was making during its development. Starting with a missing scene from the first half of the endings. They start off with a celebration scene from the perspective of your faction. It's either an orcish crowd cheering on around fire or a view of Stormwind Keep with fireworks fired into the fire. Each scene is accompanied by corresponding sound effect (burning fire & fireworks' explosion). Much like with victory/defeat screen, it's terrible that these things are missing even in non-animated form. War1R is totally capable of switching scenes because it does so already: around ~75 seconds after ending's narration ends (thanks to AsApp_ for not skipping straight to the credits), the game immediately jumps over to the credits. The game could and should've had endings in their full form even without proper animation.

However, that shows another problem with ending. There's no 5 second pause between both parts of endings. After the first part of ending's narration is finished, the game waits around 3 seconds before it smoothly fates to black for a moment and then reveals the throne room with Warchief/Defender sitting there. This pause gives player a room to process the first part of the ending, letting it properly register in their head. Giving a moment where they can tell themselves: "I've done it! I am Warchief of the Orcish Clans/Defender of the Crowd! This is so epic!" Current version of Remastered endings immediately goes from the first part of narration to the second. This feels choppy and robs players of this window to let their triumph truly settle in. As I said, War1R can pull it off properly with the tools it already has. The only part that's missing is a smooth fate to dark, which surely shouldn't be too hard to add in.

A noticeable oversight from the developers bringing back animated elements of briefings can be seen in the current Remastered Orc ending. While there was no animation in the throne room of Castle Stormwind in War1, Blackrock Spire's throne has two burning torches at its top and flame is still not animated.

While I don't know if the original credits from Warcraft: Orcs & Humans are present in Remastered credits, they were definitely removed from their original placement. They were originally part of the ending sequence. After ending's narration stops and the last of its text goes up, you have to wait around 10 seconds before credits come in. Having original credits in their intended place not only helps with retaining the original experience of War1, but also further ensure that original developers won't be left out of the remaster.

Summary of "Briefings, Victory/Defeat Screen & Endings" points:

1. There's no original version of briefings, victory/defeat screen and endings. They should not only retain the same font, text spacing and scrolling speed, but also have its visual assets extended to widescreen similarly to recent DOOM & DOOM 2 re-releases.
2. Add an option to hide the darkened window ("fancy rectangle") where the text is displayed in briefings and endings for an original-like experience.
3. Text's size, spacing and scroll speed in briefings and endings should be brought in line with original War1 to make it feel less weird and better looking.
4. Bring back the consistent usage of word "Magiks" (Sunnyglade and Northern Elwynn Forest) , write "Hordes" with capital letter (Black Morass and Stormwind Keep) and fix the typo in "nights" (The Deadmines) in texts of Orc Campaign briefings.
5. Revert the changes made to briefings text in The Temple of the Damned & Rockard and Stonard in Human Campaign briefings. Change "Grand Marshall" and "Field Marshalls" back to "War Leader" and "warchiefs" respectively.
6. Restore the apparent randomization of animations for characters present in Remastered briefings where each character present can preform their animation 1-4 times instead of set amount of times like they currently are in remaster.
7. Extend the effect of "Render using non-square pixels" option to briefings, victory/defeat screen (after their rework) and endings.
8. Bring back the 3D render of classic Kingdom of Stormwind map and a zoom-in to its specific region for every briefing.
9. Bring back the original layout of victory/defeat screen from War1, including an animated scene that depicts a treasure room of Blackrock Spire and devastating ruins on battlefield respectively for both Classic and Remastered modes. Also ensure that the high score loads in similarly to how it does in original War1.
10. Ensure that the music is properly looped on victory/defeat screens, including the unique way it works for the Orc Victory where it loops only a fragment of the track.
11. Restore the celebration scenes for each ending with animations and accompanying sound effects in their first half: burning fire for Orc and firework explosions for Human.
12. Reimplement a five-second pause between two parts of each ending with a quick and smooth  fading effect for changing the background.
13. Bring back the animated torch flames on the throne for Remastered Orc ending.
14. Ensure the presence of original credits at the end of endings as they were in War1 for both Classic & Remastered versions.

Gameplay, Visuals & Audio.

Above all else, one of the priorities should be addressing every reported case of performance issues and crashes players face while playing War1R. I've seen many complaints about various glitches here and there, but opting for not be too detailed with them because this point seems pretty obvious on itself and it would be hard to collect a comprehensive list. This is a tricky subject where the reason why these technical difficulties might occur can be incredible random and/or one-of-a-kind, so there's probably no way I would be able to cover this to the fullest extent with my limited perspective. Some of these issues include getting a fatal error that doesn't let users launch the game or War1R just refusing to launch without any explanation.

It's weird how portraits are still aren't clickable in War1R like in War2. In all versions of the sequel, you can click unit's portrait to either select that unit specifically (when in group) or center the map on selected unit as if the player pressed C in original War1. Apparently this addition wasn't backported to remaster, which just adds to many of the weird decisions surrounding it that were likely a result of rushed development cycle. Regardless, including it would improve and simplify (in a good way) the gameplay of War1R.

One of the new things I've learned about War1R thanks to my initial compilation of its issues with my suggestion for it was a peculiar side effect of healthbars. In a comment to my initial "report" of remaster's problems on r/Warcraft3 subreddit, user GrimGrimbler pointed out how these healthbars reveal the location of human units hidden by Cleric's Invisibility spell. Looking at some of the latest video playthrough of latter Orc Campaign missions (starting with Northern Elwynn Forest, the 9th one) uploaded to YouTube shows that oversight is still there. And you actually get target them, which is even worse. While it can be definitely be annoying to end up having your Horde base ambushed by Stormwind forces, this is how things should play out in War1. Healthbars should be adjusted in a way where they're not giving away the location and movement of units with Invisibility effect regardless of their health and chosen setting.

Besides that, you can also get to see when enemy building is training someone or updating something if you simply select it. Initially I noticed it by watching AsApp_ clearing out Stormwind City. His playthrough is a couple of months old by now, but this bug is present in current version as well... Unfortunately, I forgot to save a link to a more recent gameplay video where I spotted it being shown. Even though War1R doesn't show what exactly enemy trains/upgrades due to another oversight, you shouldn't be able to see "% Complete" bar of enemy buildings at all.

Now I'm going to complain about the usage of "fancy rectangle" again. To be specific, it's also used for a tooltip window and that feels kind of wasteful. Both War3 & WoW using a rounded square for their tooltip windows, which feels more simple and elegant. Having this "fancy rectangle" used for it (at least, to me) feels quite wasteful in terms of visual space it takes. I understand that you need these tooltips to be seen easily, but it could've still used more tweaking to get them just right. Choosing to copy the approach of the third game in the franchise would be more organic and consistent with the franchise at large.

Another oversight can be observed with the usage of "Render using non-square pixels" option. Rather than just adjusting the in-game visual look to the intended aspect ratio, it also affects the current font used for both text and numbers. In other words, players choosing so-called tall pixels have to trade proper text and numbers for it as they end up look unnaturally stretched because, well, they are. There's got to be a way to exclude the font from the setting's effect with some adjustments to the placement of text and number on the HUD.

Switch between Classic & Remastered visuals is signified not just by the change of graphics, but also by the removal of HUD borders from the upper, right and lower parts of the screen. While some players will definitely prefer to have this option, it would not be up to everyone's taste. Aside from subjective preferences, I would argue that having no background for player's resources may make it less visible for some of them in a moment where a quick decision making is required. It will also make the transition between two visual modes more seamless. Patch 2.0 for Warcraft 3 with its emphasis of providing freedom of choice through settings allows players to toggle HUD's sidepanels on and off. Giving more options in this case won't hurt.

Ability to adjust the position of resource bar is fantastic, but it is weird that mission objective display didn't receive the same treatment. It's a welcomed addition, even though you could always remind yourself about the mission objective by replacing minimap with "Score/Objective" screen in original War1. That being said, I'm sure many people wouldn't mind having a chance to move it from upper left corner of command map to one of the three logical alternatives.

...and that's when I realized I forgot something. When I booted up the Demo/Shareware versions of War1 to get some screenshots for this post, I rediscovered the Hot Keys screen that you can bring up by pressing F1. I remember either hearing or reading somewhere that "map position" functionality is present in War1R, which then brings up the question of "did any other Hot Key functions remained"? Considering that remaster relies on F5 for switching graphical modes, it's safe to assume that you can't bring back the minimap using it like in the original. What about all the remaining keys and even the Hot Key screen itself? Remaster's Objective HUD Display may imply that all three additional screens (Unit, Economy & Score/Objective) were cut. Centering on a unit and showing the buildings' grid is likely still a thing. Hot Key screen was probably cut as all of its other segments (Commands, Group Select and "To send messages") became outdated. If so, it should be reimplemented with updated information and even account for Classic and Remastered mouse controls if/when they'll be properly reintroduced.

"Hot Keys" Screen in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (CD Demo/Shareware by Creative Labs).

In my search for a documented defeat in War1R, I stumbled into this clickbait "Defeated at level 1? Original Warcraft Remaster" video by nxrtech. While I obviously didn't get what I was looking for, this footage helped highlight a missing detail from the original game. When damaged building is selected, War1 will display a message (which is also where the text appears when you try to type something after pressing Enter) "Full Repairs Will Cost ? Gold & Lumber" with ? being replaced for required amount of resources. There're a few moments in the video where damaged Town Hall is selected and this message is missing. It should be brought up not only for the sake "it was there originally", but because that's actually a very helped feature. There're also "Training a ???" (??? is for specific Unit) and "Researching Weaponry/Armor/New Spell" that are seemingly also missing (you can see the Training message missing in this part of Grubby's video; older patch of War1R though), so their return is also in order.

Building Status Messages on Info Bar in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (CD Demo/Shareware by Creative Labs).

This reminds me about the lack of detailed parameters of Health Points (HP) and Magic in War1. Reason for that was fairly simple: there wasn't enough space for numbers in that segment of original HUD. This isn't the case for Remastered since its HUD was extended in order to accommodate for increased unit selection screen. Therefore, how it should be possible to add such details there as an optional setting. You already made changed summoned units' Magic bar into "Summon" to properly highlight its role as a timer for how long it'll stick around, which is another nice touch that also indicates that you probably could've done a bit more.

One of the things that stood out for me in War1R's version of "You Are Victorious!" prompt is the lack of "Save" button as an option alongside "Continue". I understand that the likely reasoning for its removal was the implementation of mission selection in game's main menu. That's not a thing in original War1, therefore the ability to make a save right at the end of specific campaign mission is very important to keep your progress (aside from using cheat codes). I've already talked a lot about how letting players have more options isn't bad, so I don't think I should really say more here. Aside from how some players (especially those who played original War1 before) may simply prefer to continue their playthrough via their save files instead of mission selection.

Both Versions of "You are victorious!" Prompt in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (CD Demo/Shareware by Creative Labs).

Visuals in Classic mode are currently only limited to the core gameplay part. Should you achieve all objectives in a mission with original visuals, you'll be greeted with Remastered version of "You Are Victorious!" and not the original one. It would be weird to let it be this way when War3 in its Reforged era doesn't have the same nitpick: if you complete or fail the mission in Classic mode, the game uses proper prompts. And while I couldn't find a footage with a player losing in War1R, I feel like it would be safe to assume that "You failed to achieve victory..." prompt behaves the same way in remaster.

Same implies to the pause bar in War1R: if you're playing in Classic mode, the menu itself stick with Remastered design. If we go back to War3, its menu bar mostly retains the Classic look in corresponding mode aside from Options. This section is replaced by current wider window that was implemented with Reforged and then reworked in Patch 2.0, but everything else remains the same. War1R's pause bar appears to be overall more proportionally consistent the original game, so creating two visually different versions of all its menus should be an achievable task. I would assume that the only limitation required for it to function properly would be restricting players from changing graphics mode while the pause menu is opened.

Now I would like to talk about the resolution in Classic mode. Based on my observation, it seems that both graphics do actually support widescreen resolution when players choose to change their UI Scale by selecting "Fixed" or "Automatic" setting. If they stick with "Classic", however, War1R scales back to 4:3/16:10 that's more typical for the original War1. It's not clear if "Use Window Aspect Ratio" can affect that as I couldn't find the video footage that would verify it being selected alongside "Classic" UI Scale. Some videos seemingly demonstrate that War1R output widescreen with default sized UI, but without solid confirmation I can't state anything for certain. Either way, I think that War1R should just default to whatever screen resolution is currently used by the game regardless of graphics mode. Current versions of StarCraft & Warcraft 3 don't have this issue. Diablo 2 Resurrected does with its Legacy mode though, which isn't great either. Maybe add a new option for whenever or not the remaster should default to the original aspect ratios in Classic mode.

Water Elemental in
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans Manual.
Taken from Warcraft Wiki.

A lot of people were quick to point out how weird Remastered Water Elemental looks and how it doesn't match the original version at all. I don't think I can call this an oversight due to the fact that Catapults for each race were given distinct details from manual's artwork (which wasn't even necessary since colors already distinguish them well enough, but that was a nice touch anyway; an option for original detail-less Catapults would've been nice though), which shows that artists have paid attention to it. And you can see that War1's Water Elemental supposed to have feminine figure instead of being an odd blob that stands out like a sore thump even in comparison to Water Elementals from War3 & WoW. This sprite and icon should be redrawn to properly match the original version.

Thanks to "Warcraft I Icons" page on Warcraft Wiki, I'm able to properly compare Remastered versions of unit portraits with the originals and a number of differences have stood out. Those are the following, excluding Water Elemental since I talked about it in more detail earlier:

• Base Axe is made of stone, but it looks more metallic.

• Necrolyte misses saliva and bloody mouth.

• Raise Dead misses what appears to be a bone coming out of skeleton's mouth.

• Orc's face depicted on Unholy Armor misses a bloody spot at the edge of his mouth.

• Cleric's eyes are too dark in both Cleric & Invisibility icons.

• Flame Elemental's face is too smooth, misses nose and its angry enough.

Listed Icons Comparison from Orcs & Humans (243x171; OG size x9) and Remastered (245x173).
Original War1 Icons taken from Sprites Resource.
Remastered Icons taken from Warcraft Wiki.

Part of me feels like there might be more things to point out if you compare both versions of icons really closely to one, but I think that's at least the most obvious ones. My general criticism of Remastered icons would be that a lot of them appear to be darker in comparison to their original versions. Not just a darker shade of metal like you can notice on Spearman & Footman, but shadows themselves seem too prevalent here and there. It would've been great to have a more throughout look at all icons alongside sprites themselves, including the ones for buildings. Unfortunately, they weren't ripped out of War1R at this time. To be fair, I'm pretty sure that not all of original War1 were uploaded onto Internet either.

At this point, I've also noticed a strange thing about Classic icons in War1R. If you search around for War1 icons or just start ripping them from the screenshots in the raw resolution (320x200), you'll find out that they have 27x19 resolution. But if you look at those same icons in War1R, all of them have 29x21 resolution and I'm wondering why. Was it the original resolution from back in a day and Blizzard just cut off a line of pixels from each side to make tidy up UI? Did someone from Blizzard/Blackbird/Contractor added those lines to make icons fit better in Classic mode?

Regardless of how weird spotting this detail may seem, it was actually pretty useful in reminding me about yet another thing. In The Deadmines (Human Campaign), you meet two unique units: Lothar and Wounded. The latter is interesting not only because they're the only unit in the game who can instantly transform into another one (Archer), but also because their icons remained unused. If you select them before getting close and triggering their transformation into Archers, you'll see them using Archer icon instead of a Wounded one. This was never fixed in original War1. And it was never addressed in War1R either, even though it also has both the original and Remastered versions of Wounded icon. So why the hell it remains unused?

Original and Edited Versions of Wounded Unit Description.
Original taken from Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (CD Demo/Shareware by FormGen).
Edited was made by me using Wounded Icon from Sprites Resource.

If you look at War1's Road page on Warcraft Wiki, you can learn from its Trivia section that Swamp 1 map (reused from Kyross mission) in Custom Games/Multiplayer has been bugged since Patch 1.12 in original War1. When starting a match, there're no roads around player's starting point at the top of a map: "The road is nearly a full screen to the left". Considering the number of oversights in the remaster listed so far, it's save to assume that this issue wasn't fixed as well. I would really like to be wrong this time though.

While looking at publicly available pre-release War1 material from Interactive Entertainment's preview, I stumbled into a screenshot where Ogre seemingly had a proper corpse. One of the screenshot demonstrate a sprite for Ogre's corpse that didn't make it to release. Similarly to both Daemon and (both Water & Fire) Elementals, they just explode and don't leave much of a trace on the ground. Perhaps it was done to save up a bit of space and memory, I don't know... Either way, it reminded me of how some re-releases would go as far as to bring in some of the cut content into the game. Could be a nice little addition.

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans Preview for Interactive Entertainment 1994.
Taken from MobyGames.

In the past I talked about how funny it would be to have Macintosh version of War1's graphics as a silly hidden bonus in remaster. But the thing is, that's essentially the same as increasing the original DOS version resolution to 640x480 and applying filtering to it (not to the briefings, it seems). Animated (if it's animated) scenes in victory/defeat screens are also in higher quality. Human HUD is a bit different, there's also no pixelated font... Besides that, it seems to be about the same. Macintosh port of War1 isn't documented particularly well sadly, so there's that. I thought this port was done by Blizzard, but it was at least co-developed by Future Tense. Couldn't find any details about it. Still, considering that both DOS and Macintosh versions were distributed in one package (on the same disk), I'll assume that Blizzard holds full rights to the port. As for the way to make this work, I would suggest binding it to a cheat code affecting Classic mode as opposed to a proper setting. Because Macintosh version of War1 is pretty much a secret to many. For example, you could use a phrase "Information Purification" taken from Apple's 1984 commercial. "Think Different" is a bit too soon for War1 as it debuted after the port of Orcs & Humans was released.

Note: There was supposed to be a screenshot that compares DOS version of War1 to Macintosh since I figured that I should make as many screenshots as possible. While initial setup of Basilisk II for emulating Macintosh wasn't too complicated (just mildly annoying), at the end I got too frustrated with things like game's resolution and performance to commit to achieve my goal. I apologize for this inconvenience caused by my laziness and desire to finally publish this "article".
Instead, you can look at some screenshots of Macintosh port on MobyGames and these Orc and Human gameplay videos on YouTube.

As I was going through various videos of War1R, I've noticed that in sometimes narration can be quieter than the music. That's particularly noticeable in the Remastered version of endings. It's not quite as bad in the original War1, but I believe there's a universal fix to it would be easier. All in-game voices should be separated from the rest of sound effects, allowing players to better setup their in-game sound settings. This should also include bringing in "Unit Speech", "Unit Acknowledgements" and "Building Sound" settings from War2 for more options.

Summary of "Gameplay, Visuals & Audio" points:

1. Keep addressing all performance issues and game crashes that are reported on forums and elsewhere. Specifically, deal with issues that result in War1R having fatal errors on specific campaign mission or not being able to launch in the first place.
2. Make unit portraits clickable like in all versions of War2 with similar behavior to center the screen on lone unit or target the specific one from the selected group.
3. Using "Show Healthbars" setting reveals the location and movement of enemy Human units hidden by Cleric's Invisibility spell, allowing players to target them and changing it from "an annoying surprise" to completely useless.
4. If you select enemy building while it trains a new unit or researches an update, you can its "% Complete" bar. 
5. Rework the tooltip window from "fancy rectangle" to rounded square like in War3.
6. Modernized font gets stretched when "Render using non-square pixels" setting is active, making it look weird. This is clearly an oversight from its implementation.
7. There's a lack of HUD frames on top, right and bottom parts of the screen for Remastered visuals with no option to enable or hide them. Only way to have them is to play in Classic mode.
8. No setting to change the alignment of mission objectives from upper left corner of command map to the other three available corners when "Hide Objective HUD Display" is inactive.
9. Ensure that "Hot Keys" screen is present for both Classic & Remastered modes and every function it lists are properly supported in War1R. Those functions are "Unit", "Economy" and "Score Objective" that displayed revealed information in place of minimap.
10. Bring back "Full Repairs Will Cost ? Gold & Lumber" message that appears in game's info text when a damaged building is selected. Same implies to "Training a ???" and "Researching Weaponry/Armor/New Spell" messages for selected buildings displayed during stated action.
11. Add detailed health points, magic and summon parameters (numbers) as a toggle. 
12. When playing in Classic mode, War1R displays Remastered version of "You Are Victorious!" (and "You failed to achieve victory...", most likely) prompt instead of the one from original War1.
13. When playing in Classic mode, War1R's pause bar (unlike the current version of War3) doesn't change its visual appearance to match the menus from original War1.
14. Ensure that War1R can support widescreen view for Classic mode with "Classic" UI Scale. "Use Window Aspect Ratio" may overwrite game switching to 4:3/16:10 aspect ratios. Add a more obvious setting in Options for how the game should treat aforementioned combination.
15. Remastered version of Water Elemental's sprite and icon should be redrawn to match its original feminine form.
16. Remastered versions of Necrolyte, Raise Dead, Unholy Armor, Cleric, Invisibility and Flame Elemental's icons don't exactly match their original versions.
17. Clarify the source of difference in resolution between original icons in War1 (27x19) and Classic icons in War1R (29x21).
18. Fix an issue from the original War1 where Wounded unit in The Deadmines of Human Campaign doesn't use its own icon, displaying the Archer one instead.
19. Ensure that a road placement for player on Swamp 1 map is fixed.
20. Reimplement Ogre's death animation and sprite from Beta version of War1.
21. Add a new "Information Purification" cheat code (reference of Apple's 1984 commercial) that toggles filtering for Classic mode, mimicking visuals of Macintosh version of War1.
22. Separate all in-game's voices from the rest of Sound Effect with a dedicated setting in Options to regulate its volume independently and backport additional sound settings from War2.

Multiplayer.

What multiplayer, you may ask? That's the point: it's not there! Warcraft: Orcs & Humans allows two players to fight each other across many existing maps. Similarly to Custom Game, they can choose their Race, Army and Map with a twist: only one player has control on a specific screen at the time. On "Set Army" screen, player can see parameters for both players with an ability to hide them... Unfortunately, I can't describe or show how its done since I don't have access to the full version of War1's Multiplayer and all the video dedicated to it that I could find don't demonstrate it. Either way, this feature can help with coming to consensus because you won't be able to start a match before both sides don't agree with chosen race, army and map.

We don't know for sure why multiplayer is missing from War1R, but running theory is developers not having enough time and resources to bring over War1's multiplayer away from ancient ways of modems and IPX to modern online and local area network (LAN). Still, it's a mistake on Blizzard's part to not ensuring that this part of War1 is present in its remaster. A lot of work for that was already done with War2R, so the goal here would be to make sure that War1R's implementation stays true to the original implementation I mentioned before.

It's fair to assume that there's no way that, whenever War1R gets its multiplayer restored, it won't require an authorization into Battle.net for playing online. But rather than demand this for gaining access to the game period, I think it would be best to follow in the footstep of all recent re-releases of id Software's classic games like Quake. You can still play it without logging into Bethesda.net, but without online multiplayer. This will open new opportunities for War1R that I'll talk about in due time.

While I'm at it, let's talk about online DRM protection. If you look at War1R's Product Config on BlizzTrack, it indicates that remaster is supposed to support offline play. Yet I've seen a few reports in this forum thread where players had authentication issues with Battle.net servers. War1R should have its multiplayer restored, but even then I think that having such "always online" DRM is pointless. Comparing to this thread dedicated to War2R, you can assume that the only way to launch the game without Battle.net connection is by using some "Additional command line arguments". It appears that this Battle.net check is the only form of DRM present there. Which means that otherwise War1R would be DRM-free like Quake & Quake 2 re-releases, so it might as well join that club.

I think it would be best to keep original War1's system of selecting everything as it was, but with an additional in-game chat in those menus for proper communication. So players would have an easier time to discuss the terms of upcoming match. This would also require the addition of profanity filter and an option to mute opponent player in case of spam and other nonsense.

Besides the private match system for playing with friends, I guess a simple matchmaking system similar to the ones from Quake's re-release would work the best because it's only a duel (1v1), but even then you would have to account for potential trolls. War1's system might not be a good fit for certain cases, so maybe matchmaking should settle for preselection of race (Orc, Human, Random), set amount of units (for example, 3 peons/peasants for Forest/Swamp maps) and map randomizer after selecting its type (Forest, Swamp, Dungeon)... Dungeon would need more notes for players since no building is allowed there and it's basically a deathmatch of sorts. This feels like a simple approach that would guarantee fast start for playing against complete strangers that won't devolve into a constant struggle before the game even starts.

There's one great addition for War1's original multiplayer setup that can make it better: minimap in "Set Map" menu. Most people will likely prefer a visual representation of a map instead of blindly selecting "Forest 1" or "Swamp 2" or opening up a dedicated Warcraft Wiki page to take a good look at them.

Backporting additional six team colors from War2 could be another nice little addition for War1R multiplayer. There's only red & blue in original War1 because, again, there're only two players. More team colors may seem completely unnecessary (and, in a way, I do feel like that), but this could help bring some visual variety exclusively to multiplayer that can be selected alongside player's race.

Having observer mode for 1-4 people to watch two players fight against each other would be a nice addition for small friendly gathering or niche tournament. War1 is unlikely to warrant a somewhat consistent competitive scene, but it doesn't mean there can't be planted some humble seeds to let it grow in that direction to the best of its abilities.

Summary of "Multiplayer" points:

1. Despite being present in original War1, multiplayer was cut in War1R. This is bad.
2. Bring back War1's multiplayer intact with the support for local area network and internet connection as options. Ensure that its foundation remains true to the original game.
3. Remove the requirement of being logged into Battle.net account for launching the game, instead tying it to gaining access to playing multiplayer online as a lesser evil.
4. Ensure that War1R can be played offline and make it DRM-free properly.
5. Implement an in-game chat for multiplayer lobby across all menus with settings for enabling profanity filter and muting opponent. Just in case.
6. Add a simple matchmaking system and private matches for online multiplayer. With matchmaking working a bit differently from original War1's setup, opting for a determined number of units for Forest/Swamp and Dungeon maps, map randomization, but leaving the selection of race with an inclusion of "Random" option.
7. Add a minimap preview for "Set Map" menu, giving players a better idea of what selected map is like.
8. Bring over additional six team colors from War2 as multiplayer-only option for selection.
9. Add an observer for 1-4 people to watch two players duel each other.

Bonus Suggestions.

Now that I think I went over almost everything I could properly, it's time to finish things with making an extra by mentioning some issues present outside War1R itself and all new suggestions for remaster. Stuff that doesn't quite fit any present categories directly for one reason or another. In fact, a couple of them will get a dedicated category of their own. This way, they won't bloat currently present issues and good suggestions that I think are more important to implement into War1R before anything mentioned from this point on... With a few exceptions, but I'll get to that.

Nowadays, more and more re-releases & remasters include development insights into game's development history. From developer commentary and concept art to unreleased content. Great examples of that would be Blizzard Arcade Collection by Digital Eclipse and Quake 2's re-release. Having the same kind of "Museum" with the collection of known and unknown parts of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans would be fantastic! Not just previously unseen material, but also the final levels from Demo/Shareware versions with its own briefings and endings of War1 for players to check out. Not only that would be a elevate War1R to the same level as aforementioned re-releases and be a huge step towards preserving game's history, but will help addressing the next big mistake done on Blizzard's part.

Somehow, War1R's page on Battle.net Shop contains a part with false advertisement in "A Preservation Of History" part of Product/Game Features segment. It alludes to Campaign menus displaying an "original concept art" that "includes a plethora of never-before-seen pieces"... and that's a complete lie. Mission selection screens demonstrate original map of Azeroth that was just a name for Kingdom of Stormwind at the time. A map that was included in the manual for Orcs & Humans. Most publicly available archives missed out on the map, but you can see it on this video that proves the existence of War1's manual with a map. Alternately, I believe a version of manual with map is a part of extras for currently delisted GOG version. Don't know if there's a manual in Battle.net's War1 package.

2/3 Product/Game Features of Warcraft: Remastered on Battle.net Shop.

I would also like to mentioned that images used for "Classic Gameplay, Modern Controls" & "A Preservation Of History" were made incorrectly. You can see some artifacts in upper and left sides: while line and something else. Most of them are very noticeable by looking at these images from the store page, but opening them in a new tab makes this even clearer.

Interesting thing about Warcraft manuals are that most of them can be publicly viewed directly from Blizzard's servers. There're old hosts of Battle.net Edition and Reign of Chaos manuals that remained accessible to this very day alongside the more recent upload for World of Warcraft's original manual that Blizzard put out as additional material for WoW Classic. It would be natural to finish up the collection by publishing Orcs & Humans manual in similar manner, letting people easily access manuals for all Warcraft games directly from Blizzard's servers and go through them at any point.

Looking further below War1R's store page, I've noticed that there's no mention of Blackbird Interactive as a co-developer of this remaster (and War2R too). They deserve to be properly credited for their role not just in project's credits and their own resources like Twitter & LinkedIn accounts. You can currently learn about Blackbird's involvement only by actively looking for it, so many people just assume that remasters were developed solely by a small Warcraft RTS Team. If players end up enjoying War1R in its current state, their appreciation will go only towards Blizzard unless they pay any attention to credits. And, let's be real, that's not a guarantee: having proper Credits in-game is good, but not everyone reads them. Blackbird Interactive should be listed on Battle.net as War1R's co-developer.

During my observations of these remasters, I couldn't help myself with making comparisons to Blizzard Arcade Collection when trying to guess how their long-term support will turn out. For reference, BAC received just one major patch a couple of mouths after its initial shadowdrop and there were no updates to this day. I suspected that the same will happen to War1R & War2R, but that remains to be seen. My point is that Blizzard could've very likely decided that any work that was done in 2024 was more than enough investment required for them, opting to not finance and prolong it any further.

In this scenario, it's likely that Blizzard would need to see financial worth to greenlight even just minor patches for War1R. Like I said before, this shouldn't be anyone's issue but theirs. Still, I'll play along for a bit. To see how a project like this can put out substantial returns with the lowest effort possible... What can be done here? Naturally, the most obvious option would be to lean into the largest gold mine: WoW audience. That crowd loves their mounts and pets, so they can be offered that alongside both original War1 & War1R to make this deal feel more worth for the buck.

My proposal for the contents of such First War Pack/Edition are as follows:

• Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

• Warcraft: Remastered.

• Mounts based on War1's Raider & Knight steeds.

• Small versions of Daemon and Water Elemental from original War1 as pets.

• Orc/Human Catapult mounts inspired by manual art & Remastered look for "Ultimate" bundle.

This bundle will likely cost somewhere around ~$/€25-35, which would put it somewhere around standalone purchase of War3 and Remastered Battle Chest. Both are more than twice as costly as War1R on its own. For the reskins of existing models of pets and mounts in WoW for collectors and impulsive buyers alike... This is a greedy move, yeah, but you got to admit that this will work with getting more money out of War1R. Some people buying this imaginary bundle could even try out the game someday!

Anyway, how about another way to easily increase War1R's revenue? Publish it on different storefronts, all main ones: Steam, GOG and Microsoft Store. It's just a matter of time before War1R gets to PC Game Pass like StarCraft and original Diablo. Having it join Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 on Steam and more won't take much, but will introduce remaster to large groups of people in return. Not only people completely new to Warcraft series, but those who just stay away from Battle.net for whatever reason.

Seeing the delisting of War1 & War2 from GOG was rather annoying. Cutting off the proven passive source of income in hopes that people will opt for buying Remastered Battle Chest is the apparent motive here, which is quite frustrating. Both games consistently stayed in Top 3-5 of GOG's Top Wishlisted tab alongside original Diablo and Baldur's Gate 3, indicating the clear desire for seeing older Blizzard catalog on other platforms. It would benefit the company both financially and reputationally to revert this decision, similarly to what Electronic Arts did after asking GOG to delist first two Ultima Underworld games and Syndicate, to listen to the audience and bring these titles back. And then follow Bethesda's approach by bringing the original version of War1 to Steam & Microsoft Store as well. Doing that will be even easier than War1R.

The greatest gesture of good faith, however, would be to dig out the source code of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and release it into the wild as open source. Let community tinker with it and open the floodgates for more amazing community projects like very impressive WinWar, the reverse engineered port of original War1. Any projects like that will still require the purchase of the game like with original DOOM games and Quake, so there won't be any harm in this. Many people will still prefer War1R to dealing with manual installations and having to move around some files. But for people willing to spare some dedication to this thing, it's going to be a godsend.

Short list of Bonus Suggestions:

1. Add new "Museum" accessed from Main Menu that would serve as a dedicated collection of development material, insights and details for original Warcraft. From concept arts and unreleased content to playable fragments like last missions with unique briefings and ending from Demo/Shareware versions.
2. Rewrite the "A Preservation Of Gaming History" segment in Product/Game Features of War1R's store page that misleads people into believing that game shows original "never-before-seen" that in fact is a map from War1's manual.
3. Fix noticeable artifacts on images used for "Classic Gameplay, Modern Controls" and "A Preservation of History" segments in Product/Game Features.
4. Make Warcraft: Orcs & Humans' manual publicly available in browsers for viewing from your servers similarly to manuals for War2 (Battle.net Edition), War3 (Reign of Chaos) & WoW (Original).
5. Add Blackbird Interactive to "Developed By" section of War1R's store page alongside Blizzard Entertainment in order to give them proper credit.
6. Create special "First War Bundle" that puts together original War1, War1R with thematic pets and mounts based on units from Orcs & Humans in order to boost sales.
7. Put War1R for sale on Steam, GOG & Microsoft Store alongside eventual PC Game Pass offer.
8. Bring back War1 onto GOG and release it on Steam and Microsoft Store for PC Game Pass as either standalone purchase or as a bonus for buying War1R.
9. Make original War1's source code public as open source.

Leaderboards.

Let's look back at the topic of high scores. I've already talked about showing them on Campaign menus when you select specific mission, but there's another good way to utilize them to incite some replayability for the players. When seeing high scores, many people will immediately recall how other games used to have a special leaderboard with list of records from other players or written in by developers themselves. A new "Leaderboards" option on the Main Menu can be added that could contain ranking for each mission in both Campaigns. Not sure if Custom Games should get the same treatment too: not just because most of its maps are the ones War1 reuses from Campaigns.

Used ranking can be offline for simplicity's sake, using the names of, let's say, ten characters from original game and notable individuals from the times of First War that were introduced to Warcraft franchise afterwards. And not just stick to the same names across all missions when it comes to newer ones. Do your homework and mention those who had or would've likely been present there at the time, even for the missions that haven't taken place in current rendition of Warcraft's narrative. This could also be used to enrich modern canon even further by alluding to. At this point, I should probably provide a few examples:

• Teron'gor could've been a leader of Necrolytes as part of Doomhammer's group that attacked Grand Hamlet.

• Assuming that Lothar was still taken captive in The Deadmines, Gavinrad could've either accompanied Defender of the Crown or be in the command of that rescue operation.

• Making Cho'gall and Twilight's Hammer Clan be involved with hunting down Griselda and Turok's Ogres would be an interesting choice. Pale Orcs have lived underground and their connections to the Old Gods would've helped them navigate in The Deadmines. With Cho'gall, it would be rather ironic of Blackhand to send an ogre to fight against his own kind.

• Khadgar played a central role in taking down Medivh.

• Rend and Maim, sons of Blackhand, could've led the assault into The Center of Human Lands.

• Bravo Company under the command of John J. Keeshan could've been responsible for the attack on The Temple of the Damned.

• "The Black Morass" of Orc Campaign could've still taken place in modern canon, just after the First War. Some members of the Blackrock Clan might've stayed loyal to the Shadow Council, guarding Gul'dan and others near Blackrock Spire. While Orgrim Doomhammer charged forth into the mountain itself, Varok Saurfang could've stayed behind to deal with the rest.

• This could be used as an opportunity by Blizzard to finally give a name to Defender of the Crown (something Chronicles missed out on) or hint at his deeds being spread out to different existing characters in modern canon besides Anduin Lothar.

Those are just a few examples because going through all lore details about the First War would be just too much for me at this point. So yeah, the idea is to both give some lore fans of Warcraft something to chew on while also encouraging War1R players to replay Campaign missions to improve their high scores. This would lead aforementioned groups mostly satisfied with what they were provided.

Leaderboards should also track player's Rank they get alongside the score in the game period, be it Campaigns, Custom Games, Multiplayer. So that they can easily see what ranks they did manage to get in case they want to get every possible rank without having to keep notes and screenshots. It would also be incredibly a useful detail for the next suggestion.

Summary of "Leaderboards" suggestion:

1. Utilize in-game scores by creating "Leaderboards" system with dedicated menu for every mission in Campaigns and, potentially, every map in Custom Games with the goal of encouraging the replayability.
2. Use the names of known characters from original War1 and additional narrative material for the First War for default version of "Leaderboards" for each Campaign missions. Select characters based on how likely they would've played a role in a specific event, implying or confirming their involvement in current continuity of Warcraft franchise.
3. Include a section that would track all available Ranks in War1R and whenever or not the player earned them. It should be tracked across all game modes (Campaigns, Custom Games, Multiplayer), not be separated in three different lists.

Achievements.

I'm used to collecting achievements in games nowadays. Every time I start playing a new title from my Steam library, I end up with a new addition to my Perfect Games. There're also a few rare occasions where achievements are present in the game itself. Good example of that from me would be original Portal, Crystal Caves HD (yet another remaster) and WRATH: Aeon of Ruin. They have in-game notifications, dedicated menu for viewing achievement or the combination of both. This way, you can properly collect those offline if that's how you choose to play the game. It should also come with additional settings, such as disabling said in-game notifications, resetting all achievements and even deactivating this feature altogether. 

As for the approach to achievements themselves, I don't think any of them should be overly demanding or crazy. Provide some challenge and excuse for a bit of grinding, sure, but without going overboard with all that. A mix of achievements that will practically complete themselves, serve as a mild challenges and require a bit dedication to get. Luckily for me, there's enough to fit the number I was roughly aiming for.

Now I'm going to provide all 23 achievement examples for War1R. Why 23? Well, that's the number you get after combining all digits that form 1994 — the year when original War1 was released. Silly excuse for hiding meaning, I know. I'll also make it potentially confusing by sticking to all my suggestions when it comes to descriptions and such. Considering how "far" I went here, I think I might as well go for it:

1. Rebellious Pigs — Kill Griselda and Turok's band of Ogres in Deadmines.
2. Great Knight — Rescue Lothar and Wounded survivors from Deadmines.
3. Fat and Lazy — Capture the Tower of Sunnyglade after destroying the village.
4. Treacherous Curs — Save Northshire Abbey from traitors to Stormwind.
5. Seize Control — Challenge Blackhand's rule in Black Morass.
6. Utmost Importance — Rescue Peasants of Sunnyglade, rebuild the village and ensure its safety.
7. Vital Mission — Rescue Garona from Northshire Alley and purge it.
8. New Crisis — Kill Medivh and his dark minions in Karazhan.
9. Decisive Blow — Raid Westbrook Garrison.
10. Strike Boldly — Raid Temple of the Damned.
11. Warchief of the Orcish Clans — End the First War by taking Stormwind Keep.
12. Defender of the Crown — End the First War by destroying Blackrock Spire.
13. Orcs & Humans — Finish Orc & Human Campaigns.
14. Warcraft — Finish Orc & Human Campaigns with original mouse controls and unit selection limit.
15. Sythegore's Pillage — Destroy Stormwind Keep itself with only an army of Raiders.
16. Brotherhood's Gambit — Destroy Blackrock Spire itself with only an army of Knights.
17. First War — Achieve victory on all maps.
18. Cunning, Intellect and Brute Strength — Achieve victory without any casualties.
19. Counterattack — Achieve victory after rebuilding the Town Hall.
20. Scorched Earth — Achieve victory after destroying a Gold Mine.
21. Overworking — Earn the highest rank.
22. This... Thing — Earn dishonorable rank.
23. Career Path — Earn all available ranks.

First thirteen achievements are self-explanatory. These are the achievements you'll get by simply playing Orc & Human Campaigns in War1R. I highlighted the equal amount of missions with unique objectives over the standard "destroy base(s)" ones. Unfortunately, there's an issue with Orc's (The) Redridge Mountains because this is their "extra" mission with different goal in a form of "start with enemy attacking your base": Human mixes this one and mirror match in Northshire Abbey, but for Orc those were spread out. Considering that this premise is the least unique difference used in War1's Campaigns, I decided to overlook it to keep an unique amount of achievements for each race.

There're a few small Campaign-only challenges. "Warcraft" was in part inspired by Grim Fandango Remastered's "The Right Way" achievement where you have to beat the game with original controls. It's funny and not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. Make the game be strict about it though: don't let players bypass it by switching these settings at any point in the mission or reloading saves. Each mission must be complete with original mouse controls and unit selection limits from start to finish. As for "Sythegore's Pillage" and "Brotherhood's Gambit", that's just something I remember doing myself while playing Orcs & Humans many years ago. Names come from the old bits of lore from War1 & War2 manuals. Initially I wanted to name these achievements after Orgrim Doomhammer and Anduin Lothar as a reference to canonical end of War1 and future interpretations of War2.

After that, it's some silly win conditions and grind. "First War" achievement is with a catch and not just because it would require you to dive into Custom Games or Multiplayer. In those modes, players have access to 21 maps with only a third of them being unique: the rest are reused from Campaign missions. I remember enemy AI being quite ruthless in Custom Games from my brief attempts in the past and attack you as soon as it can. Since currently I'm unable to see if there're ways to avoid it (ability to preselect up to 6 units kind of suggests that there's a chance though), I think the "safest" variation of this achievement would be for it to imply to the entire game period. So that if you completed both Campaigns, you would have to worry only about achieving victory on 7 maps.

Getting a win without losses includes both units and buildings. It takes some planning and patience, but it was actually very easy to get deathless run in Orc's Deadmines. Dungeon maps will likely be a cheesy way to get them, even easier than the first Campaign missions. "Cunning, Intellect and Brute Strength" is a reference of War1's introduction. "Counterattack" and "Scorched Earth" are kind of joke achievements. You can do both quite easily by just waiting before the moment when you're about to win. Gold Mine just takes a while to break, I checked. At one point, I thought about "Scorched Earth" being a "rebuild a Town Hall destroyed by an enemy", but this one could be too tedious for singleplayer. And I want all the achievements be solo-friendly because multiplayer-only ones are very annoying. Going for "choose your own adventure" approach sounds better here. You can really torture yourself with these challenges if you really want to (and good job if you do!), but there're potential shortcuts for "cheating the system". That's also why the "as Orc and Human" part is missing. It would be too monotone and repetitive.

Naturally, some achievements had to be related to War1's Ranks and it's all pretty straight forward there. Get all the ranks, including the special ones. I couldn't think of anything better relating to Blizzard and Designer rank than "Overworking"... I acknowledge that not everyone would be on board with that kind of irony and getting "they're out of touch" reporting over an achievement would be too annoying, but it's just a stupid title suggestion. For the other two achievements, it went much smoother. What's the deal with "This... Thing"? Mandatory Warcraft film reference: specifically, it's part of Orgrim's quote from when he talks about Gul'dan right after Durotan dies. Playing along with the "Gul'dan cheats" meme by having an achievement for using a cheat code. And this one should be also required for "Career Path" (title is self-explanatory), of course. Note about "available" is because of supposed "Slave" rank that War1 has for 0-200 Score, but dedicated Warcraft Wiki page says it's impossible to get and I can't really check... So yeah. And yes, all ranks for each race should be treated interchangeably regardless of whenever they're called similarly or not in order to avoid excessive grind. 

Just to clarify, cheat codes shouldn't disable any of these achievements. If that's how some players decide to get them all, that's on them. All proposed achievements are meant to be not too bothersome to earn anyhow. Some players go in blind and end up bumping into any obstacle possible. Some have a guide opened close by to be prepared and stick to cheesy strategies when they think it's optimal. In other words, people make their own journey.

Summary of "Achievements" suggestion:

1. Create an in-game "Achievements" system with dedicated menu and notifications with options to hide notifications, resetting achievements and turning this feature off entirely.
2. Make sure that achievements offer a mild amount of challenge and silly grind, serving as an additional fun things to do while playing the game.
3. Create an equal amount of achievements for Orc and Human Campaigns for stand-out missions, including the final one. Exclude the Orc's (The) Redridge Mountains for the sake of fairness.
4. Create an achievement for both Campaigns using original mouse controls and unit selection limit as a silly-but-serious challenge players won't be able to easily bypass. Other Campaign-specific achievements could include destroying Stormwind Keep/Blackrock Spire with Raiders/Knights only.
5. Create achievements for achieving victory in all maps across all game modes or in Custom Games/Multiplayer as 2/3 of the maps are reused from Campaigns.
6. Create a series of special conditions that must be achieved alongside victory that can be completed in all game modes. These challenge can include not losing any units and buildings, rebuilding Town Hall after it was demolished and destroying a Gold Mine.
7. Create achievements for earning the highest rank, cheating rank and every possible rank period.
8. Allow players to use cheat codes for every single achievements if they choose to do so.

Conclusion.

This "article" took me too much time. For context, I planned to publish it on December 15th at the latest. As you might've noticed, I made a slow miscalculation, and it was partially for a good reason. Each time I got close to the end, I suddenly stumbled into new issue and/or thought of another suggestion. Considering that there're some parts of original War1 & War1R that are currently out of reach for me, it was nice to list as many points as I could. Although I still could've finished this post earlier if I was much more organized.

Back when Patch 2.0 for Warcraft 3 was just an unreasonable interpretation of Blizzard's survey, I suspected that they'll settle for the bare minimum for public's positive perception. You know, greenlight a couple of patches or so and let it be like Blizzard Arcade Collection. My original publishing date goal was made in hopes to throw all this feedback at Blackbird Interactive & Warcraft RTS Team just in time for their return from holidays to continue iterating on remaster of War1. So far, the last sight of activity could be seen at Warcraft 2: Remastered Internal Alpha with an update that brought it to Patch 1.0.1.2343 on February 4, 2025. This bring a bit of hope that my silly efforts to bring light on War1R's issues weren't a total waste of time, but only time will tell.

The idea of re-releases or remasters of the first two Warcraft games were just a distant thoughts that would've been nice to see materialize, but very unlikely. And when (probably intentionally) Warcraft 2: Remastered was leaked to the public prior to Warcraft Direct, I was curious about the prospects of it to be on par with StarCraft Remastered. That's not what we ended up with. Just a trio of rushed releases created to sugar-coat all the other announcements made during Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, no matter what. While a lot of people gathered around War3 criticized terrible upscaling done for Classic HD visuals with plethora of technical issues plaguing the game, both them and Blizzard audience at large saw War1R & War2R as a solid remasters in comparison.

Sadly, that's simply not the case and I think I've provided more enough arguments as to why with this "article". It's totally far from perfect as I can't gain access to both War1 & War1R and there's simple not enough publicly available content out there for full examination. We can't look at each individual sprites to compare their Classic and Remastered versions. I wasn't able to find screenshot or video footage of "Hide" function being used for "Set Army" screen in Multiplayer. And so much more. Some of the things listed here are both hypothetical and speculative already, so there's also that. However, this is as best as I could've done it. You know, if you want something done... Hopefully, that would be somewhat enough to get the attention of not just some random strangers from around the Internet, but people that might still be working on Warcraft: Remastered today.

Am I going to write something similar for War2R? It would've been great, but totally not anytime soon as I need a break from writing big posts like this. I'll state that there're no guarantees that I'll make a follow up for the sequel. Although I think the end result might actually be substantially smaller for War2's remaster. Considering that Blizzard currently distributes only Battle.net Edition, you may argue that original releases of Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal currently remain in ambiguity of abandonware. This grey area can make things much easier for the future. Not great for multiplayer, but could suffice for the singleplayer issues that have been mostly overlooked so far.