Blizzard releases Warcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 remasters — plus a glow up for Warcraft 3: Reforged

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise, which started with the first RTS game, we expected RTS news at this week’s Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct. But the scale of the announcement was a shock: we’re getting remasters for not just the rumored Warcraft 2, but all three original Warcraft real-time strategy games. That means Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, and major updates to Warcraft 3: Reforged to bring it up to par. On top of that, all three titles are now live and playable right now.

An updated version of Warcraft 2 wasn’t a huge shock, as datamining this week strongly hinted it would be announced soon. But enthusiasm levels weren’t that high, given the 2020 attempt to capture some of World of Warcraft Classic’s magic with Warcraft 3: Reforged. That remastered edition boasted revamped graphics and changes to multiplayer, but the devs overpromised and underdelivered, and the community’s reaction was overwhelmingly negative, to the point that Blizzard handed out refunds for Reforged to any player that asked.

But the remastered versions of Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness and Warcraft: Orcs and Humans already look great. It probably helps that Blizzard announced them and immediately released them, without hyping up features the finished game would never have, as happened with Reforged. You’ll have the option of playing with brand new hand-drawn graphics or switching back to the gloriously pixellated original 1990s assets, and you can even swap in real time. Both games have quality of life improvements and an updated user interface. As someone who downloaded both of these in the past decade in order to play them through a DOS emulator, I am interested to see how well Blizzard has fared with their second chance at remastering the RTS games that started it all.

But Blizzard hasn’t forgotten about Warcraft 3: Reforged. Brad Chan, Senior Manager of the Warcraft RTS team, acknowledged the feedback on Reforged, saying:

When something is broken, you fix it. When something is wrong, you make it right. And if things aren’t good enough, you make them better.

Reforged patch 2.0 will overhaul the environments and lighting, revamp the use interface, and add quality of life changes. So far the RTS community seems cautiously optimistic.

You can purchase each game separately, and there is (of course) a mega-bundle with all three games plus a cornucopia of digital goodies. You can pick up a bloody siege catapult to tool around Dornogal in, a Hearthstone card back, and skins, pets, and icons for for virtually ever game under the Blizzard umbrella. If you’ve already purchased WC3: Reforged, the price of the bundle is reduced. So will you jump back into WC3, or perhaps dip your toe into the RTS genre for the first time? I never quite got around to playing the third installment. Maybe I’ll finally check it out and see who this Arthas character is.