Deforged Borecraft 3

Not my best puns, sue me .

It can be the easiest job of paint between the lines, the most inspiring job of rebuilding the wheel or the most self sabotaging job of belly flopping several times over a mine field; to revisit a game you've made before. (Or that the company you're representing has made, as least) On one hand you have the memento of the trust and love built for the original game to propel you forward, the clear-cut vision of what the final product should at least resemble baked into the heart, and if you're lucky, the expert guiding hand of those original developers giving you the insight behind decisions made. Although on the flip-side, all of that attention and boosters make it so that fans have very little patience when you still manage to screw up fantastically. Bonus badwill points go for when you somehow, idiots that you are, find a way to ruin the original as well. That take special levels of moronic incompetence. Yet that's the story when it comes to Warcraft 3 Reforged.

Now I've talked about this before in a blog and I've mostly left the thing alone since then for the dual reasons that there's wasn't a great deal going on with it and that I don't really play games like the Warcraft titles anyway. I was only ever invested in the story side of things, which is fortunate, because this past week has delivered us one heck of a story to tell regarding this maligned murder mystery. Don't you want to know who killed Warcraft 3? The answer might shock you! If you're sleeping, because only in your deepest wildest dreams does this blame fall down on any other shoes than Activision Blizzard's. (I originally thought there was some underpaid licensor sharing some of the blame, but apparently the buck did stop with the right's holders) Still, reading a full report detailing the specific ways in which Blizzard defecated the bedsheets makes for interesting, if a touch hackneyed, storytelling.

So aside from the developing and mounting stories of misconduct running rampant across the company of late, there's another key ingredient that combines together to make up the winning formula of modern day Blizzard, mismanaged teams that exist from riding the coattails of past glories. Whether we're talking about the World of Warcraft team, if they even have enough developers to constitute being called a 'team' anymore, who have lived for years being the top dog of MMO's by default, and only now are slipping beneath the waves and wondering if the nearly 10 years of lackluster updates has anything to do with that. Or the Diablo team who underperformed with three until a surprise saviour swooped in and rebalanced everything for them, only to then go on and try to repeat the same cycle again with their Diablo Immortal Mobile game. (Which still hasn't hit markets, what's up with that?) But with Warcraft 3 Reforged they went even further than that, by digging up one of their most beloved games of yore past and overpromising whilst undelivering, alongside a little bit of 'spit in the face of those who loved you' mixed in for good measure.

First of all, and not surprisingly at all, the report details that the project suffered from a lack of vision. "But how is that possible?" I hear you ask, "Warcraft 3 was already a game, the vision was right there!" Well the confusion came from people not knowing if this was going to be a remaster or a remake, which is... just wow. Pathetically poor management right there, if people don't even know the type of game they're making on so much as a fundamental level you really need to start re-evaluating your role as a game director. Of course, all that really needed to be made clear was how little Activision Blizzard gave a crap about this project (The Blizzard employees interviewed predictably shift the lionshare of blame onto Activision, but as I say: If you share in the successes you share in the failures too.) If anyone in the team had even the slightest inkling of how infinitesimal the amount of care the executives had for this project was, they would have known they'd be lucky to get enough money to put a low-effort remaster together.

But why didn't anyone in the suits care? Simple- potential. Blizzard has gorged itself and bloated like a stuck pig before softening into sludge on it's successes, and now those who hold her reigns simply refuse to settle with anything less than the eye-watering profits of Blizzard's best. "Overwatch 2? Yeah, that first game made gangbusters, make us a sequel!" "Diablo 4? That franchise could be a Billion dollar- make it happen!" "Warcraft 3? Err, isn't that a twenty year old game? Who's going to buy that again? The niche fans?! Never mention the word 'niche' in this office ever again! If there's no way it's getting to a Billion profit, it's already dead to me. Get out of my sight." A dramatization perhaps, but I'll bet not too far off from the dirty truth itself. Blizzard isn't seen as a art developer (as a game developer should be) but a money printing machine, and Warcraft just didn't have that mint potential, and so a project like this was dog-food in the eyes of those gourmet-addled executives.

And then came the mismarketing. What we would originally categorise as 'overpromising' (And that which would still easily fit inside of those margins today) actually better fits into mismarketing to me because it comes down to a team being asked to sell a game that they didn't know the scope of throughout development. So yes, they thought they'd have the funds to reshoot all the cutscenes, rework the UI, blanket improve the look of everything, and they instead got stiffed on the support from head offices. However, that still doesn't excuse their refusal to update and tell fans about the changes to the plan until after release, thus literally selling this game under false pretences to those who were excited for it. For every negative that can traced back to the parent company's there's an equally as dark shadow on the direct developers and their roles.

What I've yet to see a direct excuse for, however, is the butchering of Warcraft III classic. For the forgetful, the classic version of the game was wholesale replaced on the launcher by this rerelease and all old servers were expected to be depreciated to make way for the new netcode. The problem with this being that many didn't like the new game for one, and that the new version of the game had a clause in the online agreement specifically stating that anything created using the comprehensive creation tools in Warcraft III would automatically be Blizzard's property. A curious stipulation until you note that the creative community with Warcraft III original were so revolutionary and driven that they literally invented a new genre of game with the Warcraft custom game 'Defence of the Ancients' or DOTA. Blizzard were so scared of letting another group of fan developers make a game in their systems and go off to become successful developers, that they baked in a clause to sue. So was that a mandate from the higher-ups, despite the fact they could care less about this project? Maybe- but I suspect this comes from a lot closer to home and Blizzard doesn't want to say it. (Or else they'll obfuscate the lead by saying something like "Oh, everyone has those sort of clauses these days; therefore we aren't responsible for throwing it into our remaster")

There it is then, the reasons why the Warcraft III disaster happened, even though it's technically coming from the mouths of those who have a vested interest in shifting blame a little. One fellow waxed lyrical about plans they had which would have revolutionised the series and scored rave reviews with fans and newcomers alike, but paper airplane wishes don't fly far outside and given Blizzard's general state of late I see no evidence that they're capable of making any fans happy lately. (They even screwed with Overwatch team compositions for no reason whatsoever; they're in the business of solely pissing off fans) Of course, this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the apocalypse Blizzard is currently facing for it's other, much more serious, company failures, but perhaps this will serve as a material evidence that, should Blizzard be ground to dust by the coming storm, we won't have lost a lot for the Industry.