It’s been a long, strange trip.
Warcraft III: Reforged has had one of the worst launches in Blizzard’s history. In fact, it has undoubtedly had the worst launch of a Blizzard title. As of writing this, it sits on an abysmally low 0.5/10. The game has 407 positive reviews, compared to 12,338 negative reviews.
There’s plenty of reasons for this. Visually, the game is decent enough but doesn’t show much improvement over the original launch almost eighteen years ago. This is assuming you can get it to start without it crashing consistently to drastically high numbers of issues with the game itself. You can try to improve performance by turning the graphics back to the original 2002 appearance, but then certain units just won’t load into the game, so you aren’t really in a much better spot playability-wise.
This, reasonably, made thousands of fans want a refund. Many players felt cheated and borderline abused after having a beloved title that they’ve waited for for years end up being something barely even resembling a cash grab. It became a quick topic to talk about on social media – frankly, we at Happy Gamer have had plenty to say about it as well – and very rarely was the topic at hand a positive one.
Blizzard were hesitant to acknowledge this, especially when it came to acknowledging fault. At one point, they even were bold enough to suggest a customer purchase a better computer in order to play the game properly (which, obviously, wouldn’t have solved the majority of issues anyway). But thankfully, it seems enough Blizzard heads have come to their senses as they’ve finally decided to reconsider their approach and offer refunds to those that are seeking them.
“Blizzard stands by the quality of our products and our services. Normally we set limits for refund availability on a game, based on time since purchase and whether it has been used,” Blizzard states, still adamantly defending the broken release. “However, we want to give players the option of a refund if they feel that Warcraft III: Reforged does not provide the experience they wanted. So, we’ve decided to allow refunds upon request for the time being.”
If you wish to claim a refund, you’ll need to go to their support site to fulfill the request.
Frankly, it’s only partially something we should be applauding Blizzard for. On one hand, it’s great that they finally offered refunds, and it shows that they’re finally accepting that their release isn’t good. On the other, they still released a game that they knew was absolutely riddled with issues, as well as making a myriad of questionable choices policy-wise.
Either way, it’s a good time to get your money back if you’d like to.