Blizzard Leaks Reveal ‘Warcraft II: Remastered’ Ahead Of ‘Warcraft’ 30th Anniversary Stream
It seems as if players will soon have the chance to once again raise their swords in the battlefields of the Second War, as it appears a remaster of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness is on the way.
The supposed existence of this remaster was first brought to light courtesy of user Anshlun on the World of Warcraft centric WowHead forums.
Sharing a number of high resolution logos and graphics related to the project, Anshlun explained that he discovered these assets thanks to Blizzard having recently “pushed an update to their CDNs [Content Delivery Networks] that includes a new title, Warcraft II: Remastered Internal Alpha.“
“The info can be seen publicly on BlizzTracker,” he elaborated. “You can also see the full configuration file there as well.” Anshlun elaborated.
Further, per the aforementioned Blizzard API tracker BlizzTrack, the Warcraft II: Remastered Internal Alpha is currently receiving regular updates, with the most recent coming roughly eight hours prior to this article’s publication.
While Blizzard has yet to officially confirm the game’s existence, given that the developer is set to hold a Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct on November 13th, it seems all but certain that the Warcraft II remaster was intended to be a crown jewel in the day’s events.
The original Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness launched in 1995, in doing so notably adding naval combat to the RTS series’ strategic offerings, and received the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion a year later.
And though the original has received very positive reviews, due to Blizzard’s prior remastering efforts, there’s no guarantee that the remaster will fare as well with players and critics.
For example, 2020’s Warcraft III: Reforged is widely considered to be inferior to the 2002 original by nearly every metric, with its numerous problems including missing features, a restrictive map editor meant to ensure Blizzard could dictate and own what was created, and the final release boasting far worse graphics than what was promised in the game’s announcement trailers.
Worse still, when Reforged launched, it did so as an update to Warcraft III, thus removing players’ ability to access the game’s original form.
Though Blizzard was quick to roll out refunds, offer apologies, and fix what issues they could on launch week, their efforts did little to quell players’ rage and soured many on the whole experience.
According to “people familiar with the plans” speaking to Bloomberg, Warcraft III: Reforged was so poorly received by players and considered such a disaster by Blizzard higher-ups that the development team who worked on it was pulled from working on 2021’s Diablo II: Resurrected.
And this ultimately turned out to be the right decision for the developer, as censorship aside, Resurrected was well received by critics, and not nearly as reviled as Reforged (though some plays did feel criticize its graphics, which they felt altered the original’s art style for the worse, as well as its infestation by bots).
Ultimately, whether or not Warcraft II: Remastered is in players’ future will be revealed with Blizzard hosts their aforementioned Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct on November 13th.
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