Warcraft 3: Reforged Anew; Mod Delivers on Blizzard's Promises
Blizzard still doesn't seem to have recalled the existence of Warcraft III: Reforged, but fans still remember the unfulfilled promises. For example, InsaneMonster, who added the missing new features to the story campaign in the Re-Reforged mod.
- InsaneMonster is working on a mod to refresh the story campaign of Warcraft III: Reforged in the way that Blizzard Entertainment originally promised to;
- Warcraft III: Re-Reforged adds cinematic custscenes, rebalances missions and makes numerous improvements;
- For now, you can check out the prologue and the first act of the campaign.
The recent turmoil surrounding Blizzard and the acquisition of the studio along with Activision by Microsoft has made it easy to forget about the studio's other "problem". Especially since it seems to have slipped the minds of even the developers - but thankfully not the fans. I'm talking about Warcraft III: Reforged, which finally received the first chapter of a refreshed story campaign. But not thanks to an official update, but a mod.
Internet user by the handle InsaneMonster published his work on The Hive Workshop. The project is called Warcraft 3 Re-Reforged and - as you can easily guess - is supposed to be such a refresh of the third Warcraft's story campaign that the fans were hoping for after the remaster was announced. This includes revamped cutscenes on the game engine, in a style reminiscent of the presentation from BlizzCon 2018, and upgraded gameplay, including modified quests and more "meaningful" in-game events.
The modder also took on the story background of Warcraft - after all, after years of WoW's development, the lore is much more extensive than it was two decades ago. That's why InsaneMonster adds details and character interactions absent in the original, and based on information about Azeroth acquired from World of Warcraft.
Such cutscenes were promised by Blizzard years ago. Source: ArsTechnica.
In addition, the creator balances the difficulty level and AI and adds a handful of secrets, beautifies the maps, etc. What's also interesting, InsaneMonster added support for multiple languages, including not only text translations of the new dialogues, but also voice recordings. The whole thing will also be compatible with all visual mods for Warcraft 3: Reforged. However, for now the modder warns that this may result in broken animations and other visual glitches.
So far, the modder has only released the prologue and the aforementioned first chapter of the human story campaign: Plague of Lordaeron. The creator also stated that although he dreams of revamping the entire campaign, it's a huge undertaking and he can only promise that he won't abandon work on the chapters he's already started.. He also encouraged to support the initiative on Patreon and join the work on the mod via Discord.
Fans have appreciated the mod's achievements so far, but Re-Reforged also reminded them of Blizzard's unfulfilled promises. As of April 2021 Warcraft III: Reforged has received no new updates, and the last post dedicated to the game on the company's official website was published in... August 2020. Meanwhile, the "refreshed" version of W3 is still missing many features, including support for custom campaigns.
Some gamers are hoping, however faintly, that this will change with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Not only has Phil Spencer promised the return of many of the publisher's old brands, but Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra has also assured that the studio wants to bring more content and innovation to "existing" games. Hopefully, this includes Warcraft III: Reforged. For now, all we're left with are fan creations.
As formally Warcraft III: Reforged still does not enable us to play our own campaigns, the Re-Reforged mod must be installed in one of two ways. The first is to unzip the mod files in the game's maps folder in the Documents (Documents\Warcraft III\Maps\download folder), which will enable you to run each mission separately from the custom game menu (in the single player section). The second method boils down to using the world editor: open the file with the selected campaign map in it and select the option to test the map.
