Warcraft 3 came in 2020 as a breath of fresh air. But soon, fans realized that the game did not really deliver all the promises made by the creators. Moreover, they might have taken even more. Now, some behind the scene secrets help us understand more about that and the decision of the creators.
At BlizzCon, back in 2018, we first heard of Reforged. Blizzard told us it was going to be a classic real-time strategy game. But the final product was full of bugs, the online play was not that great, and features were nowhere to be found. There were also improved cutscenes and re-recorded voice-overs. And what about the elements from the original Warcraft 3? Completely gone, no clans, no leaderboards.
Players were not happy, and the reviews were not great. And the team has understood that they were not pleased. Blizzard has then implemented a refund policy, but fans are still asking themselves why they have sold the product this way.
And the answer is quite simple: financial pressure and mismanagement. Activision has been pushing Blizzard to cut loose on the money, and make their priorities straight: bigger titles, then the others. This is due to cultural changes in the company.
The project started a few years ago, with changes made to the original script, and re-recording all dialogue – that took place between 2017 and 2018. But the team was clearly unorganized.
The internal post-mortem of Reforged says: “Leadership seemed totally out of touch with the velocity and scope of the project until extremely late in development. Senior voices in the department warned leadership about the impending disaster of Warcraft on several occasions over the last year or so but were ignored.”
So after cutting the money, the features were a no-go. We’re bound to find out more soon.