New Reports Reveal Warcraft 3: Reforged Failed Because Of Budget Cuts And Mismanagement
When Blizzard President J. Allen Breck first announced Warcraft 3: Reforged back in 2018, he described the original game as “monumentally important” for the studio and the franchise. Now, if something was that important you’d expect the studio to give the remake the attention it deserves, especially since the original title paved the way for World of Warcraft, one of the studio’s biggest revenue generators.
Unfortunately, the remake didn’t do the original game justice and was not only riddled with bugs but was also missing features that Blizzard promised fans, including but not limited to updated cutscenes, re-recorded voiceovers, competitive ladder matches, and custom campaigns. The team promised that they would introduce a few of the missing features post-launch but it’s now been 18 months and the updates are nowhere to be seen.
Blizzard would later retract their promise of updating the game’s cinematic cutscenes because, in their own words, “We did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game.” Post-launch documentation, however, along with statements from Bloomberg’s sources, indicated that the game was rescoped because of budget cuts and disagreements over the game’s direction.
So what exactly went wrong and what happened to what was supposed to be a promising Warcraft 3 remake? According to Bloomberg, newly-revealed documents and anonymous sources point to mismanagement and lack of funding as the reason for the game’s failed launch. The project apparently took a backseat in favor of Blizzard’s bigger and more popular titles as part of parent company Activision Blizzard’s efforts to cut costs.
“Warcraft 3: Reforged not only felt like a disappointing remaster, but it actually made the online experience of the original game worse for fans who have been playing it continuously for almost 20 years,” said PCGamer Editor Wes Fenlon. “Five years ago, I think Blizzard was one of the few big game companies that could still cast itself as being your friend, but I think that innocent trust is gone.”
Blizzard also reportedly decided to release Warcraft 3: Reforged even when it was missing key features because players had already pre-ordered the game and they couldn’t risk giving out refunds should they decide to push back the game’s launch.
Warcraft 3: Reforged’s disastrous launch is only a blemish on the face of a company that’s been facing backlash from the gaming community over the past few years for low wages, overpaid executives, mass layoffs, censorship during the Hong Kong protest, and more recently, a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing for alleged sexual harassment, discrimination, sexism, and the company’s “frat boy” culture.
