The most disappointing games of 2020, led by WarCraft III: Reforged from Blizzard

WarCraft III: Reinforced Can you get another makeover this year? “/>

You may have heard that 2020 was not the best year – an issue that we try not to insist on covering the fun and escapism of video games at Ars Technica. But “disappointing” games are different from bad ones, especially at Ars, where we do our best to err on the side of caution and skepticism before finishing a game. In our case, when a game lets us down, especially during a year like the previous one, the results hurt much more.

When the dust settled in 2020, a game –WarCraft III: Reinforced– stood out as the most surprising and disconcerting disappointment of the year. Unlike other obvious candidates for the disgusting 2020 designation, he did so with a full 12 months of opportunity to repair his own ship. So, I’m going to focus on that game to start, then I’ll go back to other annoyances until the end of the article.

WarCraft III: Reinforced: Customs violation

One of the gems of the early 2000s real-time strategy era for PC, WarCraft III entered 2020 still driven by a devoted modding community and a battling fan base. It wasn’t burning the charts at all, but WC3 continued to enjoy a vigorous online population, largely fueled by the goodwill of the community.

Three weeks in 2020, the game handlers at Blizzard burned most of that goodwill … then spent the rest of this ridiculous year looking at the wreckage and occasionally poking the ashes with a stick.

WarCraft III: Reinforced not only was it released as an entirely new version of the game; it also overwrote the existing licensed copies of the game and forced all players to download a bloated 26 GB version of the game instead of the original 1.3 GB package. Once installed, players found that a ton of original game content was missing, including stair-based matchmaking, custom campaigns and LAN support. The recently remodeled 3D features proved to be uneven and unimpressive, and fell with a thud because they lost the forge of the trees: the combination of characters, terrain, shadows and color treatments, seen from the perspective of the eye of god inherent in RTS games, has became more difficult to analyze Blizzard’s questionable changes.

Fans who didn’t pay for the update had to wait for Blizzard to return the game to a tolerable state, as the 26GB version spoiled some of the game’s “original” graphics. The good news is that these graphics were eventually corrected, as well as some flaws in the “reinforced” visual side. Blizzard also reinstated the game on LAN and made custom games work again – although a new and overwhelming EULA killed that scene to some extent.

“Personalized games”, for the uninitiated, are essentially WC3is the playground for modders to create new types of RTS games and rule sets, and this has become a particularly mature factory for fun and experiments, thanks to WC3The mix of standard RTS elements and ultra-powerful “hero” leaders. (In other words, you could do a lot with a system that combines resource management, deployment of troops and central, Diablo-like butt kickers.) This is where the original and mega-popular mod Defense of the ancients was born before evolving into totally new games, like Dota 2 and League of Legends. (History lesson: Blizzard had six years to recognize and reward the popularity of this mod before Valve rushed in and did it.) Blizzard’s lawyers thought of cracking down on IP a good 17 years later Dotathe company’s original launch was a wise decision, and it apparently hit WC3 creation of the community mod has been halted.

As much as usual campaigns go, they still don’t work. WC3: R broke those with no sign of them coming back. And if you’re playing a smaller custom game and want to pause it for whatever reason, tough cookies: WC3: R players still it cannot save your progress.

Jobs still unrealized

The fans were waiting for any sign that the game may return to the nonRetired feature level of the version, not to mention hoping that game graphics can be smoothed to the level that Blizzard promised at BlizzCon 2018. Regarding features, in July and August, Blizzard described how their team would re-establish matchmaking based ladder and player profiles, respectively. Neither happened, and in December, Blizzard released a terribly brief update: “We would like to acknowledge that a new build of the current version of Warcraft III: Reforged has just been made available. This update addresses a server issue and does not contain changes for the player. “Reddit’s responses to this official newsletter – which acknowledged nothing about the team’s months-long promises – were less than polite.

Fed up, the WC3 community built its own system to manage seasons of online matchmaking and player profiles within the Retired client. This requires the installation of an additional EXE and registration at W3Champions.com. The community seems quite happy with this system, as it allows them to return to the original set of rules and base code of the game and just play satisfactorily WC3 matches. (Which means community members have found their happiness in rejecting every drop of updated content.) But there is no way to say whether or when Blizzard might break the community’s indirect solution.

At this point, WC3: R seems to exist solely and entirely due to someoneBlizzard’s arrogance. Remastered graphics are, at best, tolerable in a pinch – although they are famous for being disabled in almost any WC3 streamer’s Twitch or YouTube feeds. And Blizzard’s reasoning to break the game’s client and eradicate beloved features continues to elude anyone with a personal interest in the game. Why did they bother? Was it worth throwing almost 20 years of fans into the trash to sell special items and add-ons for other connected Blizzard games? (WC3: Rthe $ 40 version gave World of WarCraft players a mount and Diablo III players a pet.)

A better company would have canceled everything and refunded players, or any less left the original customer in untouched condition. Blizzard is clearly not the “best company” in 2021.

Best choice: Command & Conquer: remastered collection (Windows PC). This’ 90s explosion costs $ 10 less, includes every campaign mission imaginable, and has robust online support and developer transparency. (These updates, among other things, meant that developers added potentially controversial QOL updates because the community begged for them.) The result was easily EA’s best product in 2020.