Blizzard Says Warcraft 3: Reforged 2.0 Is a Fresh Start, but Fans Remain Unconvinced After Rocky Launch

ign.com:

Warcraft III: Reforged 2.0 was a pleasant surprise when it released as part of Blizzard's celebration of Warcraft's 30th anniversary. But a week after the patch's launch, fan sentiment around the update continues to be mixed.

Touted as an ambitious patch that would fix many of the lingering issues from the original release, Reforged 2.0 endured a bug-ridden launch that required multiple hot fixes. Blizzard moved quickly to address problems with graphical glitches, game results failing to register, and the MacOS client breaking entirely, but the issues have tempered enthusiasm for the patch, which Blizzard promoted as a fresh start for one of the most troubled releases in its history.

Among the major complaints have been claims of discrepancies between the gameplay stills used in the marketing and the actual release. Grubby, a former pro player who remains active in Reforged, was among those who criticized the marketing stills, saying "none of this is real" in a video released earlier this week.

"I hope at best this was an oversight and an overreaching by the marketing department that was not signed off by the Warcraft III RTS team. That's the best case scenario," he said.

As of publication, the stills remain online on Blizzard's press site, and Blizzard has declined to comment on the discrepancies. In the meantime, Grubby says he's less likely to play with Classic HD settings due to what he perceives to be mouse lag impacting his performance, even as he praised its greater implementation of custom skins.

Apart from bugs and other issues, AI upscaling has been a hot topic among Warcraft fans. Following the surprise release of remastered versions of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness alongside the Reforged 2.0 updates, fans took to Reddit and other channels with claims that they were hastily upscaled. Blizzard, for its part, has said that the remasters feature "brand new hand-drawn graphics," though it did utilize machine learning to upscale