Has Blizzard completely lost its mind?

Well, Activision-Blizzard has gone and done it again. You'd think they would, after all the trouble they had last year, try to stay calm and keep quiet...

Back in 2018, during the ill-received Blizzcon where they announced Diablo Immortal on mobile, which by the way still hasn't been released, Blizzard also announced a remaster of one of their all time best selling and beloved games: Warcraft III.

With all the scorn heaped upon them for their misguided way of announcing Diablo Immortal and their flippant comments of “don't you guys have phones”, this remaster announcement went a bit under the radar.

Until this last week when Warcraft III: Reforged released. The shock and outrage was immense as stunned players saw what they had received. The previews and teasers had been good, with new fully animated cut-scenes and updated graphics and UI, but what they ultimately got was not good.

Apparently, in several cases, the graphics look worse, and the beautifully rendered cut-scenes are now in game models just standing there with animated portraits talking in the corner of the screen. The UI is apparently just the old one.

Old and beloved custom maps and mods no longer function in Reforged, and the new EULA is rewritten to allow Blizzard to claim ownership of any and all mods and maps created for it. To make it even more ludicrous, a map maker tried to make a battle map based on the goblin run pirate town of Booty Bay only to be informed by Battlenet that the word booty is not allowed as it is considered dirty. Keep in mind that Blizzard themselves have created Booty Bay...

Angry gamers immediately tried to refund the game only to be met with considerable difficulties. Most have been denied refunds altogether, with Blizzard even lying to keep the money. One player reports that he hadn't even started the game when he heard how bad it was, only to be told by Blizzard Customer Service that he was ineligible for refund because he had played too long.

And all of this isn't even the worst part. The most ridiculous part is that Blizzard has nuked the old version of Warcraft III! So if you owned the old version, with no interest in Reforged , they have auto-updated it so that Reforged is the only one that works.

As if that wasn't enough, strong rumors are swirling around that players who are too vocal about refunds or helping others to get one, are being banned from the official forums. Yes, this is a rumor, but several news outlets have picked up the banning story so it may well be true.

As of writing this, Warcraft III: Reforged has a Metacritic score of 63 for official critics (incredibly bad for a Blizzard game) and 0.5 for Fans with 18353 players leaving feedback. This makes it the lowest rated game in Metacritic's history. It's no wonder the Internet has redubbed the game Warcraft III: Refunded.

That's that. Until next time, have a really good week!