Warcraft 3: Reforged devs blame company for lack of support - Report

Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft 3: Reforged launched last year to a poor reception from critics and players alike, and a report from Bloomberg yesterday shed new light on the circumstances that led to that.

The publication spoke with 11 people with knowledge of the game's development, who said that a reduced project budget, mismanagement, and a small development team contributed to the game's troubles.

Serving as the remake of 2002's RTS game Warcraft 3, Warcraft 3: Reforged was announced in 2018 and Blizzard said that it would also be providing new content.

This didn't happen as sources told Bloomberg "the project was never a priority for the company," which was attributed to the fact that it wasn't likely that the title would sell to Activision's standards.

With Activision Blizzard focusing on its largest franchises, the title wasn't able to receive the budget that project leaders wanted. Documents provided post-launch revealed that the remake was changed due to budgets cuts and disagreements over direction.

The remastering of Warcraft 3 with a small team and mismanaged production was difficult, as the work needed was more than they initially thought the report said. People had multiple roles as they worked nights and weekends to finish development.

Along with the mass layoff of 2019 and the additional loss of support, "the team structure didn't set up the project for success," sources told Bloomberg.

Weeks after the title's launch promises were made to fix its bugs and add missing content; however 18 months later that hasn't happened yet.

Responding to Bloomberg, an Activision Blizzard spokesman said that the company offered "no question-asked refunds" to Warcraft 3: Reforged owners.

In addition the spokesman commented on the problems of the remake, "The central issue with Warcraft 3: Reforged was an early, unclear vision and misalignment about whether the game was a remaster or a remake.

"This led to other challenges with the scope and features of the game, and communication on the team, with leadership and beyond, which all snowballed closer to launch. Developers across Blizzard pitched in to help, but ultimately bug fixing and other tasks related to the end of development couldn't correct the more fundamental issues."