With the original Diablo getting the necromancy treatment (not to be confused with the Necromancer treatment) in Diablo III, fans of other Blizzard series are wondering when they’re gonna get theirs. The answer for Warcraft? Not any time soon, unfortunately.
During a Q&A at BlizzCon (via Eurogamer), Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce fielded a question about remasters of Warcraft 1 and 2. He explained that Blizzard does have all the original source code and assets for those games (developers are not always so fortunate), but it can be hard to access it and figure out how it all works again. A lot of time has passed. People forget.
But it is possible. For Pearce, the bigger issue is, right now it’s just not worth the effort.
“We had some dedicated folks that were passionate about the idea dig up the Warcraft 1 assets and code,” he explained. “They got it working and they got it running in a window. And I played it. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was awesome for its time. I promise you, in today’s world, by today’s standards, it’s just not that fun any more.”
“We have limited resources with everything that we choose to do,” he added. “We would much rather work on amazing content for World of Warcraft for you guys, or for Overwatch, or evaluating what a future project pipeline might be and devote our time to that, rather than going back and digging up those fossils.”
However, he added that Blizzard still loves those older games, and Blizzard president Mike Morhaime chimed in with an, “At this time,” implying that things could change.
I get where Pearce is coming from. Shit, I played Warcraft 2 first, then tried Warcraft 1 and thought it was kinda dull. That happened back in… 1996? But those games were still foundational for people like me, and it’d be cool to have the option of reliving the good old days. Oh well. Maybe one day we’ll get full remakes with reimagined mechanics? I can dream.
Comments
23 responses to “Blizzard Won’t Remaster Old Warcraft Games Because They’re ‘Just Not That Fun Any More’”
I played the shit out of WC1 and 2, and they will always hold a special place in my heart… but I think Blizzard are right. From a mechanics perspective, everything in the games is outdated, and really the value they hold now is in nostalgia.
That isn’t to say that old games can’t be great. I still think Master of Orion 2 is the best space 4x of all time, and still play it regularly (in addition to the reboot, apparently I am the only person on the planet who really enjoys it). Sure, the 2D graphics are being put to shame by indie games today, but the gameplay mechanics haven’t been topped in any game before or since. Just like WC2 superseded the original WC in basically every dimension, WC3 did the same to WC2.
about 5 years ago I played warcraft 2 again. It was defiantly dated but I had fun.
Unpopular opinion: the first two weren’t that great anyway. WC1 is a very polished Dune II clone, and WC2 was pretty much an iteration on that. Starcraft was their real high water mark for that genre, and it actually holds up today.
But…but… the unit responses!
I never liked Starcraft, thought WC1 & II were much better games, Starcraft lacked the fun and soul of Warcraft. I played a lot of Dune2, but enjoyed Warcraft way more.
I really didn’t like Warcraft3, I wish they would make a proper Warcraft RTS instead of more crap for WoW.
I’d mostly agree with this. I think they were great for their time and the story of Warcraft 2 (the first barely had a story) can still hold up but gameplay-wise I agree, they aren’t timeless or at a ‘Greatest game ever made’ kind of quality.
I would argue that Warcraft 3 holds up a lot better than Starcraft 1 does with it’s AI/pathing issues but then Warcraft 3 is several years more recent so it’s not exactly a fair comparison.
Surely it wouldn’t take them much to get them running in DosBox & put them on GOG or the Blizzard store.
Not sure if there’s a workaround nowadays, but tried this sort of thing after uncovering my WC2 disks. Apparently the map/window scroll function was directly resulting from the processor speed of computers at that era, so while the game was playable, it was essentially unplayable because I couldn’t move around, I could only rocket from edge to edge of the map.
I’m not sure about dosbox but some of the dos emulators let you limit cpu speed.
I think it should be updated, mostly from a game preservation perspective.
Doesn’t need anything fancy; just enable it to work natively in Win 10 x64, add options for screen filtering and resolution scaling, maybe even ensure multiplayer can still work, then ship it out.
Your sound card works perfectly!
It doesn’t get any better than this….
age of empires remaster says hello
Don’t know why this should be considered unfortunate. It’s about damn time people stopped pumping out shitty remakes of games. The game industry is fast turning in to Hollywood in the past years. Give us new games that are fun instead of remakes that will bore us after playing for an hour as we realize why we stopped playing it in the first place.
It’s one thing to remake something if it no longer has a platform to work on, but even that should be a free or cheap update if you own it. Paying full retail for something you’ve already payed for and finished is just stoopid. (ie Skyrim.)
At least they had the decency to offer it as a freebie for a time, but kinda shit that if you didn’t own all the dlc, or make that deadline, you need to pay full retail for something that’s essentially a patch to make it prettier. If you’re gonna do that, at least have the decency to add something significan and new that you can’t get with the original.
I agree with not re-making the game, but i don’t believe that blizzard as a company would want to see their old games disappear from the minds and hearts of old players.
Lost vikings, 1 and 2
Rock n Roll Racing
Warcraft 1and 2
these are all games that despite possibly not holding up to today’s low attention span populace (me included), it is still comforting to know that the games are around, haven’t been forgotten about and are still playable to an extent on modern equipment.
I ask that they don’t let them die out, they definitely don’t have to be remade, in fact nostalgia is based off the original, not the remake.
They don’t even have to do the work, it could be outsourced to a company that can make sure the games work on modern equipment and sold on GOG just to allow the preservation of them. the workload for this, would be minimal and the potential profits would at least help break even.
Can we get a remaster of Warlords! which they ripped off shamelessly to make the first Warcraft?
“You think you do, but you don’t.”
Never Played warcraft 1, But i considered Warcraft 2 and it expansions to be fun games, Starcraft i could never play more than 1/2 hour of it don’t know why i would start playing it and never go back to it.
i liked Warcraft 3 for it’s story, i always felt that it was a pity that all the story went to WoW because i would like to have played through that as an RTS
No need for remakes.
Just give us Warcraft 4
Warcraft 1 is a fundamental building block of everything I am. A lot of my interests and hobbies can be attributed to Warcraft.
I can understand the mechanics wouldn’t be that fun now (I mean jesus, the inability to drag and group command would be hell) but a remaster in say the SC2 engine? Wouldn’t mind that one bit and very willing to pay. Hell, redo the story if you need to for the Warcraft movie retcons.
Wait wait wait, Blizzard one the one hand say “I promise you, in today’s world, by today’s standards, it’s just not that fun any more.” and “rather than going back and digging up those fossils.” but ALSO say “Blizzard still loves those older games”…. what? Sounds like they’re contradicting themselves to me. I’d love to play Warcraft 1 and 2 with updating graphics and game interface. Warcraft 3 is a very different style of game to them and even that’s ancient now. And since Blizzard just doesn’t seem to want to make warcraft 4… Well looks like a Warcraft RTS is dead for the foreseeable future.
Amazing content for World of Warcraft? Isn’t that a game in massive decline?
“He did it!”
“NO! He did it!”
———-
“Stop touching me”
so on and so forth until you’ve created and molested every unit of every faction with the mouse pointer.
I played WC2 again last year sometime, I still love the simplicity and the humour.
10/10 would play again in 2017.