Blizzard announces Warcraft 3: Reforged remaster will release January 2020

Blizzard has announced a new Warcraft 3: Reforged release date, which is now on January 29, 2020. Initially set to release in 2019, Blizzard said in a blog post that while it had hoped to deliver the game this year, it needed a little extra development time to "honor the high standards you hold us to." The post also revealed the global release times of Reforged in all of the different regions.

First announced at Blizzcon 2018, Reforged is a full-scale remaster of the classic RTS Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and the Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne expansion. Featuring seven single-player campaigns to work your way through over 60 missions, the remaster also includes updated matchmaking features using Battle.net's online service.

Warcraft 3 follows in the footsteps of other Blizzard titles such as Starcraft that have also gotten a modernizing remaster. As a recreation of the original 2002 strategy game, "Reforged takes you back to a tumultuous time in Azeroth's history, when a dark shadow eclipsed a peaceful land, the world trembled before the coming Burning Legion, and heroes risked it all to prevent the death of their world."

To take Warcraft 3 "into the modern era," Reforged has had a graphical overhaul, with modern graphical updates on the game's characters, animations, structures, and effects. The audio has also been given some improvements, but will still feature the original voice-over recordings in order to keep the Warcraft 3 experience as authentic as possible. One neat feature also allows players to battle against each other across the original release and the Reforged re-release.

Blizzard also detailed the new rebuilt World Editor that will be coming to Warcraft 3: Reforged, complete with new triggers, LUA scripting support, and new model importing tools for the creator community to play around with. Blizzard said it also plans to add more enhancements to the World Editor in the future.

Currently, you can already pre-order Warcraft 3: Reforged from Blizzard's store, where you can also pick up the rather packed Spoils of War Edition that will give you a variety of goodies for other Blizzard games, such as a Meat Wagon mount for World of Warcraft, a Mal'ganis pet for Diablo 3, the Third War cardback for Hearthstone, and animated sprays and player icons for Overwatch.

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Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.