Bit of a long post, I'm sorry.

TL - DR: Looks like shit, plays like shit, I would almost have preferred for it to not even bear the warcraft name. However, it's better than it was a month ago, when I preordered to get into the beta. I feel very strongly about what blizz did because this game helped shape who I am and the lore and characters are very dear to me.

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1. Who am I and my background in War3: I was born in an old, third world country around the time when the communism fell. We didn't have computers almost at all with me growing up but sometime in the late 90s and early 2000s Computer Cafes and clubs blew up. Now, we had no supervision or laws concerning video game piracy back then so every club had every game. Including Warcraft (in fact we still fucking don't almost 30 years later) and no one had taught us about piracy and how bad it is and how if we continue we can't have good things in the future. We solved the multiplayer problem with Garena and Headoff. Let me just list some of the custom games which I grew up on just to further my nostalgia agenda: X Hero, Enfo, Anime Fight, DOTA (with big, golden letters), That 3-way-tower wars map called Tower Wars, Warlock, Wintermaul, Footman Wars, DBZ Tribute (and the one before that, DBZ Fight I think it was).
2. Preordering and heartbreak: I saw somewhere that I'd get access to the beta if I preorder. I also somehow got confused because I assumed I'd get access to classic as well. So I did. Immediately I realized that I only get the beta. I started up custom games and HOLY JESUS ON A POGO STICKSADJNFAJSDNFDSAOISIDNFINFOAISDJ. Pimp my peon (I think I first played that in Dota2), Enfo, Footy, Warlock, DBZ Tribute (or some such) and some new ones, like Pyro and WoW Arena and Survival Chaos. I think I was so pussy whipped that I didn't even notice the crashes the first couple of days. Let's say - a week later:

- I open Bnet and launch the game

- It locks up on the login screen so I kill it after a few min. (Also Login Screen? WTF?)

- I relaunch the game for the second time, go into custom game. I choose/start a game
and after a few people get in you need to refresh the slots because if you don't for some
reason people can't join.

- We get a full group and launch. I never connect :/

- Reopen for a third time. See previous step. Someone else doesn't connect. We rmk.

- 30 min later (maybe more) i get to play a custom game.

-After the initial turbulence it's surprisingly ok. Downtime between games is 4-5 min,
enough for a cigarette.

Now at this point there must have been 3 weeks until launch and I already kind of knew that unless they have 2000 people working on it they can't finish it in 3 week.

So I'm a bit daft. I wasn't displeased with the 'new' graphics. I liked the shiny armors and new models and I even occasionally offered praise (mixed in with various profanities directed at the crashes that I experienced) down the random Discord Voice chat I was in at the time. The peon animation where he tries to juggle his axe, but is so unfathomably stupid that he wacks himself in his head made me chuckle.

But somewhere in the back of my head I knew that this wasn't the "Blizzard polish" I was used to. it sorta kinda wasn't Star Craft 2 or Overwatch. I didn't really see it all until you reddit people told me.

So what happened? I seem to remember Blizzard being able to polish a turd if they wanted to. I remember Overwatch when it first came out, how responsive and generally fun it was. I remember Star Craft 2, where I licked the blizzard maps because they all have these really interesting details. I remember the Star Craft 2 story, which you almost play in a single breath (until you get to the protoss, sorta). This isnt it. Why is this not it?

1. The rant: BECAUSE they fucking outsoursed the anims and graphics to another studio. Why? Because greed. They use bureaucracy to steal your creativity from you. Why? Because greed. This dominion over custom games is nothing more than someone at blizzard trying to literally steal talent from this one poor soul who walks alongside millions of others, who has a GOOD idea and publishes it not because of money but because it is a good idea. And they want to steal that, put a price on it and sell it back to the massless, formless wave of fucking WHALES that buy their game. Eat Shit. Eat all the Shit Blizz. :/

I see it all so clearly now. The static ground images - almost no change. Sure, it's richer, more vibrant in color and might have a few more pixels lit but is it different? Fuck no it's not different. It is the same. I won't say 0 effort, but perhaps 0.1 effort :/ The fake marketing? GREED. Someone in the subreddit pointed out that the Culling cinematic was, in fact, in the game files, and it was the ONLY ONE. HOW fucking greedy can you get?

The new models. Those are ok, I guess. Most of them anyway.

1. The end: I usually eventually begin to feel bad for the company eventually when I see a PR disaster and a community exploding like this. But not fucking this time. I hope you guys bring that fucking metacritic page to the negatives. Like world record bad. And fuck Bobby Kotic and that other mouthpiece "sorry not sorry' piece of crap asshole with the long hair. Fuck Shadowlands and Diablo 4 as well. Burn it fucking all and put a bullet in blizz because even with this much outrage it's not gonna get any better. Sure, they'll make the game playable, they'll address the crashes eventually, because ofc they will with all this outrage. But this insult that they've given their community and their paying customers and the fact that they've dared to fuck with such a darling like war3 cannot be ever forgiven.