The widespread opinion on Warcraft 3: Reforged is that it failed to upgrade the overall presentation of Blizzard’s RTS classic without breaking much of what made the original so special in the process. Even after a few patches, longtime WC3 players preferred to downgrade to the latest pre-reforged build of the game, but could a new major update make up for past mistakes?
User hobblygobbly at ResetEra may have struck gold while looking at Warcraft 3’s internal PTR on BlizzTrack. He pointed out on October 15 that a rather suspicious 2.0.0 update had popped up and explained that Blizzard is usually specific with how game versions are numbered, which is totally true. Anyone who’s been paying attention to Blizzard’s games – and more specifically Warcraft 3 – over the years knows that a 2.0.0 release could mean that something big is happening.
More than four years after Warcraft 3: Reforged’s ill-fated launch, however, what could Blizzard possibly be doing with it? We have some ideas, and the timing may be perfect for something major to be coming our way.
Could Microsoft be planning something special for the Warcraft community?
The first possibility that comes to mind is that Blizzard hasn’t given up on Reforged yet and, maybe due to Microsoft and Xbox now calling the shots, is returning to its eternal Azeroth-set RTS to properly fix it and add back the features that were missing. It feels odd that StarCraft: Remastered turned out perfectly fine while the company struggled to make something really good out of its high fantasy crown jewel.
Another option, which could happen in conjunction with the first one, is that Warcraft 3: Reforged is coming to Game Pass soon, thus a new major patch is needed to improve integration with the Xbox ecosystem. This is likely to happen at some point regardless, as the full StarCraft games were recently announced to be coming on November 5 to the subscription service.
Another positive announcement would be Warcraft 3 surprise-dropping on Steam, which would be quite a historical moment. We never thought we’d see a Diablo game on Valve’s platform, yet Diablo 4 arrived shortly after Overwatch 2 last year and found tons of success there. With almost every major publisher with a platform and launcher of its own slowly crawling back to Steam, we wouldn’t be surprised if Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 1 & 2 soon joined the party.
Back at ResetEra, the user who made the aforementioned discovery also pointed out that Warcraft’s 30th anniversary, as well as World of Warcraft’s 20th birthday, is just around the corner, meaning that it’s the perfect time to do something big with the property. For all we know, maybe several new announcements could be headed our way. We can’t see a full-blown rework of WC3: Reforged happening though, so lower your expectations a little bit.
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