Warcraft 3 Reforged betrays its legacy fans

Warcraft 3 Reforged seems to ultimately betray everything about its legacy playerbase by carving out some of the best parts of the classic RTS.

Classic Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne apparently doesn't exist any more. Anyone who fires up Warcraft 3 will be forced to upgrade to Warcraft 3 Reforged, the new remaster form of the beloved real-time strategy game. With this forced update comes the elimination of many core fan-favorite features including custom campaigns (yes, really, Blizzard killed this feature), which are user-created RPG campaigns shared across the community for over a decade, as well as a frustrating mess of bugs and aggravating UI changes.

Warcraft 3 Reforged also forces users to the Battle.net 2.0 framework, which eliminates features like profiles, so you can't check anyone's stats (including your own). The chat pane gets in the way of the game searching panes. For some reason clans have been nixed (a big, big mistake), and there's no way to play custom versus against players from other regions.

There's other small nit-picks like apparently downgraded visuals from originally advertised graphics, and the lack of shadows in specific maps. It's very distracting for returning players.

Fans are understandably pissed. No one wanted to have their favorite RTS completely overwritten and retired without any warning.

The game's EULA also states that Blizzard fully owns any custom creations you make in Warcraft 3 Reforged (it's clear Blizzard doesn't want another DOTA situation on their hands).

"Custom Games are and shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Blizzard. Without limiting the foregoing, you hereby assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games, including but not limited to any copyrights in the content of any Custom Games."

At this point I'm very glad Blizzard didn't remaster Diablo II. I couldn't imagine playing Diablo II: LoD without classic lobbies, private games, and the user-friendly Battle.net 1.0 UI system. It just wouldn't work; everything from trading, baal running, and overall progression in the game would be tremendously interrupted.