Warcraft 3: Reforged review – a horde of problemsīack in 2002, Warcraft wasn’t known as anything but a real-time strategy series a trilogy of games that were heavily influenced by Command & Conquer but which never went any further after the whole genre fell out of favour with mainstream gamers. 3D landscapes with physically correct hand grenades rolling downhill? Explosions reflected in the water? Missile swaths, headlights, muzzle flashes? None of it! But even on the packaging, the sham pictures are still shown.
When Tiberian Sun finally came out in August 1999, it didn’t look nearly as good as the official screenshots, and many of the features that had been announced were missing. It’s just funny that every single picture has to be approved by Boss Brett Sperry beforehand. Because the year is 1999, and the cult studio Westwood keeps publishing impressive screenshots for its new Command & Conquer, paired with big announcements. Perhaps the most egregious is the absence of essential and expected multiplayer elements that, of course, helped to propel Warcraft III to the status of competitive classic. Instead, Reforged is very much the original game plus the Frozen Throne expansion, inconsistently lacquered over with new textures and beset by news species of bugs.
Perhaps in part from Blizzard’s marketing and pre-release promotion, players expected Reforged to be something akin to a revolutionary - or at least, significantly - new version of a classic.
Warcraft III’s story went on to form the core of World of Warcraft and the hero unit concept nearly singlehandedly gave rise to an entirely new genre, MOBAs. In addition to heroes, Warcraft III redefined the RTS genre by focusing on smaller squads instead of massive swarms of units and finally, its colorful and - for its time - detailed graphics were a real evolution for the franchise. It had an engaging high fantasy story filled with larger than life, epic and memorable characters. It’s hard to overstate (speaking of hyperbole) how influential and important Warcraft III was when it was first released nearly twenty years ago.
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