The release of Warcraft 3: Reforged hasn’t been the best in 2020, by a long shot. The remastered RTS has been beset with problems from day one. Players felt cheated in many areas, not getting the polished and improved RTS experience that the hype promised. The backlash has been pretty intense and has been harsh enough for Blizzard to offer automatic Warcraft 3: Reforged refunds.
According to Blizzard’s support site, the company will approve refunds based upon each request. Normally, Blizzard limits refunds on any game “based on time since purchase and whether it has been used.” This is the pretty standard offer for the PC game industry. Keep in mind that automatic refunds are available “for the time being.” Blizzard will likely retract the offer at some point, so get in on the offer while you can if you want your money back. No one knows when the option for open Warcraft 3: Reforged refunds will disappear.
PC gaming refunds have not been the easiest part of the hobby. Steam and other online sales platforms had completely lacking refund policies for the longest time. It took years for Steam to even offer a refund within the first two hours of playtime. Seeing Blizzard offering full refunds in this manner suggests that they know how bad they’ve messed up. Blizzard has tried to alleviate some problems with new patches, but there is a lot of ground to cover.
This may help reduce some of the backlash, but the complaints seem pretty grounded. The major complaints about unrefined gameplay and graphics not matching up with the promotion ahead of the launch are only one problem. The major complaint among many hardcore fans was that Blizzard had effectively killed any kind of creativity within the modding scene for Warcraft 3: Reforged, where the company also claimed total ownership over any mods or prototypes created using the engine.
There are some nice things about the remaster, like being able to switch between the two graphical modes. but it’s clearly not enough.
