Blizzard on Warcraft 3: Reforged's cutscenes: "We did not want [them] to steer too far from the original"
Blizzard has issued a statement on the Warcraft 3: Reforged debacle that addresses some grievances, and ignores most.
The launch of Warcraft 3: Reforged has been met with legitimate complaints from longtime fans, new players, and even those who did not buy the game.
With a long list of issues to sort through, Blizzard has began by offering refunds to players who request them, and has now released a statement on the different issues causing the controversy.
The hottest ticket item is of course the dramatically lower scope for remastered cutscenes, compared to what was originally shown at Blizzcon 2018. Although Blizzard did announce last year that the remaster's scope has changed, the developer continues to use those upgraded cinematics to advertise the game, at the time of writing.
In today's statement, Blizzard seems to conflate players' concerns over retconning the game's original story with their desire for the higher quality cutscenes.
"As we talked about last year at Blizzcon, we did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game," the developer wrote on the official forums.
"We went a little deeper into the thought process behind that at the show, but the main takeaway is that the campaigns tell one of the classic stories in Warcraft history, and we want to preserve the true spirit of Warcraft 3 and allow players to relive these unforgettable moments as they were (albeit rebuilt with new animations and the higher fidelity art)."
Blizzard also confirmed in the same statement that it's not planing to bring back tournaments, or the Reign of Chaos ruleset. "Eliminating the maintenance for underused elements has helped us streamline our overall support of the game and focus on areas impacting the most players," the developer explained.
"That said, we do anticipate that players who prefer Reign of Chaos will find custom games with similar rulesets, which we hope will help satisfy that concern."
As for clan support and leaderboards, which were also removed from the original Warcraft 3 client, Blizzard said those features will arrive in a future patch as the developer works to "stand up the back-end to ensure a smooth transition to this new MMR system."
You can read Blizzard's full statement at the link.