January 2020 saw the arrival of Blizzard's highly anticipated Warcraft 3 remake, Reforged, but the celebratory mood quickly soured once fans realised the game failed to deliver much of what was initially promised and took away even more. Now, a report from Bloomberg has shed new light on the behind-the-scenes decision-making that lead to such a disastrous outing for one of Blizzard's most beloved games.
When Reforged was originally announced at BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard sold it as a significant overhaul of its classic real-time strategy game. However, the final version was plagued by bugs, brought broken online play, and was absent of expected features promised in its initial reveal, including improved cutscenes and re-recorded voice overs. It even stripped out elements from the original Warcraft 3, such as leaderboards and clans.
So significant was the negative response to Reforged, Blizzard eventually implemented an on-request refund policy, but the question remained why the company thought it was even remotely acceptable to ship a product in such an shoddy state to begin with.
