Recently, Blizzard released their long-awaited remaster of Warcraft III, Warcraft III: Reforged. As we have previously covered, things did not go well. Fans were so upset by the litany of issues they had with the game that they review bombed it on Metacritic until it is now sitting at a record-breaking low for user reviews of 0.5 out of 10.
Some complaints were things that might be expected for the first day of a game that connects to the internet (connectivity issues) and some were things that were maybe a little disappointing (the lack of updates, visual or otherwise in the remaster). But then there was some truly gross stuff in the form of changes to the back end of the game. These changes made it so that even people still using their original copies of Warcraft III experienced the same issues that Reforged introduced into things. The controversy which almost overshadowed all the others though, was Blizzard seemingly adding language into their Terms of Service which appeared to state that anything fans worked on or created using Warcraft III or Warcraft III: Reforged instantly belonged to Blizzard. Last night Blizzard finally made a response. And they didn’t say a whole heck of a lot.
Posted on the official Warcraft III forums the response starts amiably enough:
“Hail War3 Players, We’ve been following the discussions the past couple days and want to thank you for your feedback as well as your support. 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.”
After that they state that they have mostly fixed the connectivity issues that plagued the launch and will soon have out a major patch with fixes to “the bug causing the colors and shading to look different from the original Warcraft III” when playing in classic mode as well as “fixing some portrait animations and audio bugs, (and) implementing some UI fixes”.
While it is good to see that they are working on fixes for the standard issues Warcraft III: Reforged is facing there is no mention in this statement of the thing which has become one of the main issues surrounding the game: the intense wording surrounding user-generated content in the ToS. As of right now, it still seems to many fans that any user-generated content will be completely owned by Blizzard, leading many to speculate that there will be no new fan-created content for Warcraft III or Warcraft III: Reforged from here on out. The whole situation is likely to remain up in the air until Blizzard directly addresses it. When, or if, they do we will be sure to keep you posted.
In the meantime, if you find yourself dissatisfied with the game, first check out the “fan” site Warcraft III: Refunded for a good laugh or perhaps sob of commiseration and then, head on over to Blizzard’s official website. According to many former players on the subreddit Blizzard has heavily streamlined the refund process and are now offering automated refunds on Warcraft III: Reforged regardless of how much time you’ve put into the game.
