Fan Does Blizzard’s Job, Releases Remastered WarCraft III Campaign Files

WarCraft III: Reforged hasn’t received a patch or official announcement since April 2021, and game managers at Blizzard have remained eerily silent on anything previously announced for this so-called “remaster” of an RTS classic. Official matchmaking ladders, leaderboards, and user profiles never materialized, prompting the game’s remaining community to cobble together their own solution, and that’s on top of the game’s complete lack of single-player updates. reissue. (To this day, the custom WC3 campaign files always are not officially supported.)

So, just as fans previously built their own online gameplay updates in the form of WC3Champions, as well as the game’s remaining community stepped up to make the single-player campaign more like Blizzard’s initial pitch for the project.

WarCraft III: Re-Reforged is a seemingly one-designer fan-made project that goes by the InsaneMonster handle. It received its second substantial update on Saturday, following its initial launch in January 2021 as a downloadable bundle of WC3R campaign records. The project now has up to 10 chapters in the game: the five chapters of WC3The Horde-specific prologue, which already launched last year, and the first five chapters of its human-centric first act. You can now access both parts of Re-Reforged as a free download from Hive Workshop (part one, second part).

Like the prologue portion, this week’s fan-made patch includes custom camera angles for in-game cinematic content, not only between missions, but also for important mid-campaign conversations. These snaps look much better than the originally teased version of WC3R, and they include breaks and careful camera framing to better showcase the original content of Blizzard’s campaign. Additionally, InsaneMonster has remixed the affected campaign maps without altering their main goals or flow. Some changes emphasize a cinematic moment, while others reflect lessons learned from Blizzard’s campaigns. Starcraft II and guide brand new players with more agility in the operation of the game.

The patches also add instructions and lore as new on-screen text in the foreground between objectives. These popups are handy, especially since WC3 laid the foundation for years of character-driven stories and plots in World of Warcraft. If you are a WC3 novice who wants to see how this game connects to the WarCraft universe as a whole, InsaneMonster’s patches go to great lengths to provide that information.

In a 2021 interview, InsaneMonster expressed surprise and dismay at finding out how much lip-syncing was applied to WC3RThe full cast of characters from – yet for some reason it was hidden from obvious player view. He didn’t have to rig any brand new animations with his patch; instead, he just coded custom camera angles and timings. InsaneMonster adds custom visuals to its patches, to be clear, though these revolve around colors and textures that better resemble the clearer paths and battlefields found in the original game than in the reworked one. WC3R versions.

The project may very well continue beyond these 10 campaign levels, although its creator claims that future progress is subject to Patreon support. You’ll need to heed InsaneMonster’s instructions for the patched campaign to load properly and make peace with the pre-rendered cutscenes not playing at the scheduled time, because Re-Reforged operates outside of the game’s intended mod ecosystem.

Today’s news follows an uproar on Twitter regarding Blizzard Classic’s other recent major release, Diablo II: Risen, as more and more users come up against one of its most curious restrictions. Console versions of the game require online registration with Activision’s Battle.net service every 30 days, even if you play the game exclusively offline.