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Warcraft III: Reforged update fixes game-breaking bugs, but is it enough?

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Warcraft III Orc
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Player vitriol won this campaign. After it stumbled at launch, Blizzard has fixed game-breaking bugs and updated Warcraft III: Reforged. The game’s latest update addresses several issues that could stop players from progressing as Blizzard works toward rebuilding trust with its audience — provided they haven’t already received full refunds.

The latest Warcraft III: Reforged patch was released on February 6 and makes improvements across the entire game. It fixed a significant campaign bug that caused a failure screen to appear when players loaded into a mission. Digital Trends ran into this bug when playing the game for review, and had to reboot it.

Warcraft III: Reforged Cinematic Trailer

The patch tweaked animations, including those in cutscenes, and added the game’s “fog of war” system to armies in starting locations. The interface received criticism early on for not being up to par with Blizzard’s usual standards, and was improved to show senders’ names in “whisper” messages and better keep up with the latest chat messages. There is also no longer any crossover between menus in the “Classic” and “Reforged” graphic settings. Additional features including leaderboard support and clans will be added as part of a larger patch in the future.

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Progression-limiting issues in certain missions, dialogue audio level, and a problem that caused the save file folder to change after disconnecting were all resolved as well.

It’s a substantial first step toward improving Warcraft III: Reforged, but player reception remains mixed, with some fans disappointed that the remastered cutscenes were not as substantial as they were expecting. However, Blizzard explained in an apology post earlier this week that it wanted to preserve the “true spirit” of the original 2003 game.

Players don’t seem to buy this explanation, which is evidenced by the game’s dismal 0.5/10 user score on Metacritic. Reviewers aren’t particularly high on the game, either, with only a 60% average. The first Warcraft III is considered one of the best real-time strategy games ever, and Blizzard has a long road ahead of it in order for Reforged to live up to that standard. With the studio apparently taking players’ feedback into account while it provides updates, that is certainly still possible.

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Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
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