Updated 2 years ago
July 2021 Update: Blizzard botched Warcraft III remake after internal fights, pressure over costs
TL;DR: Link at bottom.
The Decline
I have supported Blizzard Entertainment since back in 1994, when it was practically a startup. With Warcraft I and II, and in 2003 Warcraft III, Warcraft has always been my all-time favorite game franchise, and Warcraft III was MY GAME.
In January 2020 they killed a game I played almost daily since 2003. Yes, you read that right. The original game, made 17 years ago, is light years better than this abomination they fraudulently foisted on the commmunity.
Players like me, and the modders, the nerds, the basement dwellers, we put them were they are now, and we are now leaving in droves.
The first sign of trouble was in Late 2018, as Blizzard prepared the launch of Warcraft III Reforged, the mode I played, Reign of Chaos, was seemingly permanently disabled, so I quit altogether. Which was a great thing for my productivity, but I felt that it was a huge loss not to be able to go back to that world sometimes, even if single player. It felt like my home town got burned down.
I didn’t know this at the time, but this was an omen for things to come at Blizzard. Reign of Chaos players like me were the canaries in the coalmine. In the aftermath of Reign of Chaos disappearing, I remember still with much anger how many Frozen Throne players gleefully threw us under the bus.
2020: The Reckoning
So the shitshow ensued in the last week of January 2020. There’s even a parody site now. And a month after launch, at the Dreamhack Reforged held in Anaheim the game kept crashing, throwing the results in confusion and wasting everyone’s time. Incredibly, Blizzard is based near the conference, yet the TWO employees left early! What the hell! This was Blizzard’s big chance to show the world their new game, and they couldn’t even muster Heroes of the Storm viewership numbers. They fucked it all up right in front of their last devotees, many of whom gleefully paid $100 USD to compete in what ended as a big Fuck You.
This game went from one of the top all time games ever – to the lowest game ever on Metacritic. And their response? Spineless, passive-aggressive corporatespeak, probably written by some recent college grad who gets a pittance over minimum wage. They not-so-subtly blamed the players for “not having the experience they want” when THEY created the expectations in the first place at Blizzcon 2018. (Funnily, they used the exact same faux apology that Channel Awesome did when it belly-flopped) This tepid response makes it clear Blizzard has no idea what they are doing – in ANY of their games now – and is completely out of touch with what players want.
I just wanna play Reign of Chaos multiplayer again. Did they even play their own game? All two years of their tone-deaf and clueless efforts were completely 100% wasted on what appears to be a cheap Asian F2P game. Allow us to play the original game, and multiplayer. Blizzard, I don’t care what else you do, frankly just stop screwing things up.
And the Reforged version? Why did they put what appears to be the vast bulk of efforts in character models that no one will appreciate zoomed out?
Protip: RTS players, (the good, the bad, and the terrible) always play all the way zoomed out. Zooming in is an eye dandy thing that you may do once or twice. Period. Put more than a couple of units in one area and I dare you to pick out the individual units. So all that effort was wasted.
If you want to see an excellent “woulda coulda shoulda” checkout this Warcraft III theme in the Starcraft 2 engine, which incredibly is far superior to Reforged:
If you are a suit at Blizz, go out, right now, into your Orange County parking lot. See how many Uber stickers there are on your employees’ cars. Now realize you get what you pay for, and also realize you’ve milked out all your long gone prestige years ago, and can no longer rely on stiffing new hires. You are not hiring the creme de la creme anymore. Even EA pays far more then Activision/Blizzard, which has increasingly become a sweatshop.
And that’s not even all of it. The bigger, more obvious problem is way higher up the food chain. Apparently, deep down I believe you’re going to have to go bankrupt – so that Blizzard gets spun off/sold to someone who actually gives a fuck about gaming – before you change your priorities back to what made you great. In the meantime, the gaming community is going to find alternatives.
All in all, this was a monumental, corporation destroying screwup. The brand will take years to recover, if ever.
Do not ever trust Blizzard again.
After the recent fiasco of Blizzard’s tone-deaf release of Warcraft III: Reforged, and the subsequent disenfranchisement of thousands of players, the community has stepped up and filled the void left by a retreating publisher. Just like they did with WOW Classic.
Glad I still have my original disk. I was gonna toss it last year – everything is online now, right? But a deep inner part of my snake brain said HOLD ON TO THAT DISK! And Blizzard did not disappoint!
I found this post on the forums that basically fixes everything. Credit goes to GiantAxe for compiling this. I reposted here just in case it gets deleted from the game site. The link to all the pertinent files is in the pastebin link at the very bottom of this page.
But if you just have the disk somewhere, or, even easier, a pre-2016 .exe from the link at the bottom of this page (anything 1.27b or earlier), you should be fine. Just don’t connect the game to the Internet, like ever, or it will download 30 gigs of unwanted crap and overwrite all your old custom maps and campaigns.
Get the Right Build
“Due to some oversight on Blizzards part, it now falls upon the end user to fix their mistakes!
In this post I will explain how to download and setup the classic Warcraft 3 client so you can all revert and play with your friends again as well as some options for playing LAN over the internet.
(Note: this guide is not for playing on battlenet, only LAN.)
I tried using the PTR 1.30 build. While I could access single player and LAN, I could not get anyone on my VLAN to connect to my games. I don’t know if it was the particular build or if PTR doesn’t allow for LAN. If someone could figure it out, I’m sure it would be very useful as downloading the PTR build is much more convenient.
There seems to be a platform called Netease that supports 1.31; however, it is all in Chinese so it may not be an accessible solution.
Before I get into it, for those who do not understand the motivation for wanting to play on the old Wc3 Client, I will do my best to convey my arguments and feelings below. Many of us were playing Wc3 fine for decades without issue. Forcing the Reforged client on us (some of which are still having issues playing) even though we didn’t pay for it or don’t want it is tyrannical.
Sign in is now required to even get past the main menu.
Your CD-Key is now linked to your account, meaning it cannot be reused or shared. If your account is banned, you lose access to the keys.
World Editor and Custom games have been effectively gimped. No copyrighted material, custom models are allowed (anime games, basically any games with custom models) as well as maps deemed inappropriate by Blizzard.
IP of your maps belongs to Blizzard and there is now a report function, making me believe censorship will be rampant.
No LAN functionality? Correct me if I’m wrong, but there is no LAN menu in the Reforged Client. I believe you need to be “online” to play offline.
Some voice lines have been taken out of the game. (Dryad’s “I’m so wasted”) Not too sure what else has been taken out.
The main menu is a web app running on chrome which runs worse than the actual game.
Lazy animation work on Blizzard’s part results in missing animations for certain units. Animation Variety / Quality is Very Disappointing 102
If you refund the game, you lose access to the Warcraft you initially purchased as Reforged is the only client.
That’s basically the gist of it. If you want a comprehensive list of things removed in Reforged, take a look at this guy’s post. Reforged is a forced downgrade for classic users 413
Now on to how to setup the old client. Find a download of Warcraft 3. (pastebin below)
I won’t link any downloads, however its not hard to find (just google warcraft 3 download). There are a bunch of ways to get it, whether it be a direct download, torrenting, etc. You can install any of them, even cracked ones or legitimate CD copies you still own. You can also check out the Internet Archive for a download as well.
Install the game and make sure it works. Check the version.
The version I found started at 1.2. Take note of this, because it’s important.
Patch the game up to 1.27b. There is a link in the Pastebin below to the full 1.27n version. This for me is easiest.
Depending on which patch the initial install was, you will need to patch to 1.27b. Unfortunately, you cannot patch to anything above this, as I believe 1.28 was the patch Warcraft started using the newer launcher. If you try to patch past 1.27b, it will attempt to install the Reforged client on your PC.
If you download 1.27b from the pastebin below, after installation you might get an “outdated DirectX” message when launching the game. I tried the -opengl fix but it didn’t work.
This worked for me –
In regedit go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Blizzard Entertainment -> Warcraft III -> Video
Then click Adapter and set to 0
Note: YOU CANNOT SKIP PATCHES. You are required to install each patch in order. Here’s a good website for downloading the patches.
gaming-tools. com/warcraft-3/patches/
UPDATE: There are versions above 1.27b out there on the internet. You cannot patch past 1.27b; however, If you manage to find some of these builds you will be able to play at a higher patch. I recommend 1.29 and above, as they fixed the widescreen issue in that patch. I will update the pastebin to reflect this new information. Once you patch to 1.27b, you are done!
You can now play both single-player and over LAN. The Maps folder is located in the base directory. For those who don’t want to lug their PC’s everywhere to play, I will now discuss some options to play LAN over the internet.
For non-technical users, you can try out some third party software like Hamachi or GameRanger. WC3Connect is also a popular option (on entgaming). Google is your friend, I’m sure there are plenty of services out there that you can use with your friends.
For the technical users, you can install your own VPN using a Raspberry Pi, a server (local or not), or even a virtual machine on your own PC. I would highly recommend PiVpn as it is a relatively streamlined process that uses OPENVPN and can be used on most Linux distros. (pivpn .io) To save you a lot of trouble, make sure you are using TCP as well as have the VPN in “bridge” mode.
All the pertinent links are in this pastebin:
Here is How You Do It, Blizzard! Let EA show you the way:
