Warcraft III: Reforged lowest rated game on Metacritic, Blizzard offers refunds

Warcraft III: Reforged was supposed to be the rehauled and the better version of the legendary Warcraft III. The game was announced at the infamous Blizzcon 2018, where Blizzard had also announced Diablo for mobile. The announcement of Reforged was seen as one of the few good things at the event. 

But as things stand now, Blizzard made promises that weren’t kept and Reforged stands to be the biggest disaster for 2020, and it is only January. The game currently has a score of only 0.5 on Metacritic, which is currently the lowest user rated score. 

And it is with good reason. The game saw a buggy release. Players are complaining of connectivity issues, where they cannot connect to custom games. There is no support for competitive play as well. Moreover, Blizzard promised new cutscenes and voice lines spanning over 4 hours and a rehauled campaign. Well, there are no new cutscenes (even though the trailer showed the new feature) and the campaign is just the old campaign with new models. The thing that has made matters worse and has ticked players off is the fact that now they cannot go back to the old game. 

One of the more irking things about this new release is Blizzard’s new policy regarding custom maps. They want to avoid another Dota; Dota was initially a Warcraft III mod. But due to the old policies, the mod was owned by its creators, which were later hired by Valve and Riot and led to the development of the new giants in esports: Dota 2 and League of Legends. 

The new policy makes the custom maps Blizzard’s property. Blizzard will hold all the rights, including Moral Rights. Which means Blizzard has the power to not credit the maker of the mod as the creator and can delete it, modify it or take the map altogether from you. This also means that even though if you spend hours on a mod in Warcraft III: Reforged, Blizzard can legally claim the ownership and give you nothing. 

All of this led to the Metacritic score of 0.5 and a website dedicated to the disaster, called Warcraft III: Refunded. Initially, Blizzard was denying a large number of refund requests according to reports. But looks like they are finally giving in. Users on Reddit are informing that Blizzard has started to give out instant refunds, no questions asked.