Blizzard is now offering Warcraft 3 Reforged refunds

Blizzard released Warcraft 3: Reforged last week after nearly two years of waiting. And by all accounts, the release has been a disaster on levels that even EA's botched 2013 SimCity game would struggle to match. Forums are alight with active threads and the MetaCritic score for Warcraft 3: Reforged is the lowest for any game on the service ever. Now, Blizzard is offering owners of Warcraft 3: Reforged full refunds for their game.

Initial word came via a Reddit post, but has since been confirmed in the thread by dozens of users. The user reported their trouble with the game as a "tech issue" and says that may have hastened the refund, which was fast enough that they called it an instant refund.

If you picked up the troubled game, you can find the refund request page on Blizzard's support site. The user in question pre-ordered the game over a year before release and had put 5 hours into the final game, so this isn't just for new buyers or those who have just played a couple of hours.

Warcraft 3: Reforged is a huge mess

Warcraft 3: Reforged is rife with issues at almost every level. The trouble started with unkept promises. Blizzard had promised improved cutscenes and even new plot content to bring the game in line with World of Warcraft, and neither has materialized. The game, which is still a reskin of an 18-year-old game, is also riddled with bugs and crashes, as well as connectivity issues. This release also moved the original Warcraft 3 to the same network infrastructure, so the problems with connectivity are affecting players of the original game as well.

So we have a game with broken promises and broken tech, but it gets even worse. Features built into the original game are missing, such as automated tournaments, clans, and profiles.

The new license agreement also features language that gives Blizzard control over any games created inside Warcraft 3. This is likely to prevent another situation like the Defense of the Ancients mod. What started as a Warcraft 3 mod grew beyond even the wildest expectations. One of the creators of the mod, Steve Feak, would go on to create League of Legends. His protege would eventually head to Valve to make Dota 2. There's definitely some lightning-in-a-bottle there, but it's likely that Activision wants to be able to profit should something like that happen again.

This, of course, follows a rough few years for the once-celebrated developer. Last year, the company announced Diablo Immortal. A hotly-awaited Diablo sequel was instead revealed to be a phone game aimed primarily at markets like China and South Korea. Then came the protests following the company's response to a political statement from a Hearthstone player. Founders and long-time executives like Mike Morhaime have been filtering out for years, too.

Hope for a second chance

Many games, like Rainbow 6: Siege, No Man's Sky and even Blizzard's own Diablo 3 have seen very rough launches turn into successful games in the long term thanks to continued support and careful messaging from their developers and publishers. It's possible-even likely-that Warcraft 3: Reforged could look like a very different game a year from now. Right now, though, it seems like the wave of refunds is justified.

The post Blizzard is now offering Warcraft 3 Reforged refunds appeared first on The Tech Report.