Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
Warcraft 3 had a lot riding on it for its community in 2020. Many had hoped that the game would be an incredible step forward for the franchise, giving a spotlight back to the real-time strategy that made the franchise a hotly competitive and creative scene in its early going, and the promise of a remaster that brought about everything everyone loved about the game with modernized graphics and tweaks had a lot of fans stoked. Unfortunately, Warcraft 3: Reforged is getting anything but the red carpet treatment after some questionable decisions by Blizzard garnered ire from its community. It's now the worst reviewed user-rated game on Metacritic.
Warcraft 3: Reforged had a release date of January 28, 2020, and users have been blasting it in record numbers on Metacritic since its launch, giving it an abysmal current user rating score of 0.5. Over 20,000 users chimed in to make the dreary score possible. Largely, the complaints with the game are over unsatisfying updates to the UI, cinematic graphics, and further technical features like frames-per-second. However, one of the more concerning elements is tied into Blizzard’s new license agreement for the game.
It was on launch day that players noticed a troubling addition to the end-user license agreement (EULA) for Reforged, stating that all custom content for Warcraft 3: Reforged would be legally owned by Blizzard, as reported by PC Gamer. Likely, this was with the intention of capitalizing on any sort of breakout mods which have been the beginnings of the likes of DOTA and Auto Chess, but it was an enormously upsetting fact to many that their unique efforts poured into the game would be the property of Blizzard. It was a fact made more bitter by the realization that the original client for Warcraft 3 is wiped and replaced by Reforged when the game is installed.
Review bombing is a definite thing in this day and age. Warcraft 3: Reforged technically isn’t probably a 0.5 game. It’s not sounding like what Blizzard promised at all, but it’s still Warcraft 3. Even so, the real-time strategy fans of Blizzard both competitive and non-competitive expected something great and Blizzard’s decisions regarding custom content and other facets of the game have definitely turned the loudest in its community against the remaster. It will remain to be seen if the game recovers, but for now, the users have spoken: Warcraft 3: Reforged is the worst user-rated game on Metacritic, ever.