Warcraft III: Reforged

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About

Warcraft III: Reforged is a 2020 real-time strategy video game which is a remake of the 2002 video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion The Frozen Throne.

History

On November 2nd, 2018, Blizzard Entertainment^[1] announced Warcraft III: Reforged, a remake of its 2002 real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its 2003 expansion Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, with the game planned to be released in 2019. On the same day, a trailer for the game was uploaded to YouTube, gaining over 1.9 million views in one year.

On December 17th, 2019, Blizzard Enterntainment^[2] announced that Warcraft III: Reforged will be released in January 28th, 2020, citing the need for more time to polish the game. On January 28th, the game was released globally, with the release trailer gaining over 61,000 views in one day (shown below).

Reception

Following the release, the game received mostly negative reviews from the audience. As of January 29th, 2020, the game maintained a 2.1 out of 10 user rating on Metacritic,^[3] with multiple users complaining about the lack of significant upgrades from the original version, as well as an abundance of bugs, with the rating dropping to 0.5 by February 2nd.^[4] A cinematic of Illidan's fight against Arthas from The Frozen Throne uploaded on the same day received over 3,600 dislikes compared to 1,800 likes with 154,300 views in one day (shown below).

On January 28th, on Blizzard forums,^[5] Reddit^[6] and 4chan's /v/^[7] a number of discussions about the lack of improvements in the game and its bugs were created. On the day of the release, the game peaked as the number six most-watched game on Twitch with over 71,000 simultaneous viewers.^[8]^[9] On Reddit, Twitter, VK and other online platforms posts and memes about the game and its initial reception were posted (examples shown below).

Metacritic Ranking Anti-Record and Automated Refunds

On February 2nd, Warcraft III: Reforged's Metacritic^[4]^[10] user rating dropped to 0.5 out of 10 with over 20,000 votes, with the game setting an anti-record for any game user-reviewed on the platform.

On February 2nd, multiple players reported that the game was being automatically refunded upon request.^[11] On February 3rd, Blizzard community manager Kaivax posted^[12] an apology on Blizzard's forums, promising that the game will be patched and addressing a number issues brought up by the players.

First off, we want to say we’re sorry to those of you who didn’t have the experience you wanted, and we’d like to share our plans for what’s coming next.

On February 3rd, 2020, PC Gamer^[13] published an article analyzing the outrage over the game.