REFORGED GRAPHICS... How are they in 2024? - Rank 1 Night Elf Quest - Episode 9 - WC3 

I would not touch that grass

Another thing to notice is the portrait animation In classic, it's very easy to tell when a character is speaking from their portrait, they also tend to be more animated. Granted, the animation sometimes make them look funky, but that's part of the charm. In reforged, it's so subtle that you barely tell if the character talks. the weirder part is the summoned treants and skeletons are how it should have be, they'll look around and generally be more animated. Of all the things, they choose to finish the insignificant summoned units instead of oh, you know... the Heroes that people generally look at?

A while ago, Grubby did a challenge, where he was playing extremely zoomed in. But he did it in classic graphics. I think it would've actually been better in reforged graphics. And would be nice to see him redo it this way :P

Druids of the Claw in Reforged run around like Scooby-Doo monsters: arms up and out like, "OoooOOooooo, I'm gonna getcha!"

They messed up on every level and that's that. Something I hate as well is that they force you to download 28Go of content even when you 100% know you only want the old graphics. Should have been a choice when you download, even if it's really hidden. I understand why they didnt do it tho, it would be admitting defeat I guess.

I remember they said something like "You don't want something that looks like Pixar" and it turns out, yes, we want the same models with way more polygons and maybe some tweaking. They didn't need to create anything from scratch they just had to polish the game more.

3D artist here. The models are very detailed, which isn't what you need for an RTS. Also Blizzard have always used handpainted (Reforged appears to be PBR) models for warcraft, i think if they did just that, with less additional artistic touches, everyone would've been happy.

Warcraft 3: Reforged is a good example that shows that the quality of graphics is not only determined by the amount of polygons and particles.

Crazy how the original Graphics back from the early 2000s legit look better than Reforged Graphics. It's not even Nostalgia, it's objectively better.

Wisps are extremely uncanny in this version.

Grass diff is insane

The reforged Gold Mine looks like an unfinished model. Something is just off with it's shading.

*wisp face* Hey, it's you, Grubby!

This looks like alpha concept footage

The haunted gold mine doesn't look hunted, it look like celebrated

Everytime i see reforged graphics im once again reminded of Bioshocks Dr. Steinman. " Its ugly. UGLY! *UUUGLYY!!* "

Bears walk like scooby-doo villains

grubby, you know it's coming. Perhaps after you get rank 1 with every single race, or after Bronze players collectively demand w3c for privacy, not to be spectated while they learn, but I can see the "rank 1 only reforged graphics, the ultimate challenge" series

Animation design for RTS is drastically important and something I think a lot of devs have completely forgotten. Age 4 had a lot of problems with unit recognition and the devs tried to make the weapons comically big to compensate which caused backlash. The real problem was that they didn't give each unit the unique and snappy animations that AoE 2 had. Spearmen thrust their spears back and forth, champions swung their swords up and down, unique units often had capes, funny hats or unique stances or walk cycles etc.

the neon green spray paint aka grass makes the terrain look so weird, i think its a huge factor

Reforged graphics are legit cursed. How did they came up with something so much worse than the original after SO many years is beyond me.

29:15 - Did anyone else notice that the Druid of the Claws human form was bigger than the Abominations? Admittedly a lot of undead units are uncharacteristically small as well.

I am so glad I got recommended your Arthas video. From some reason I did not even know you can still play with old graphics, kind of makes me want to play warcraft again. It used to be my favourite game ever.

Lmao at the bear walking. You're spot on

Honestly the reforged graphics made me appreciate WC3's choices through and through. Like the art style is cohesive while maintaining screen readability, every race has a distinctive flair (like undead being egyptian, or NE being a greek touch), and you can notice all the particle effects.

the whisp face already bothered me enough in classic. they should just have made the whisp a ball of light. like io in dota

when you fight the crypt fiend at the begining with your very epic corruped cenarius it looked like your hero was part of the enemy team

I dunno, when I play campaign the grass doesn't look this neon bright. Reforged is just... sad. What could've been if they handed it to Vicarious Visions, gave them budget and time it could've been another D2 Resurrected. Instead it got outsorced to some other studio and changed maps for WOW lore. I didn't even want the "new cutscenes" (not cinematics). I looked like it would make it impossible to switch between graphics settings then. 5:24 Same thing happaned with Archons in SC1 and SC2. In SC1 it was this being of energy, which resembled its HP being 90% shield and it barely had a physical shape still visible. In SC2 it's just a big buff dude in mega armor. It looks like some Digimon or some thing. This wisp could've been okay if the "magic energy" effect obscured the face much more, instead it's barely behind it. 8:27 Exactly. It's a fundemental misunderstanding of game design (I don't think even just RTS games). Everything needs to have one unique death sound so you quickly identify what died. Didn't the bears get increased in size cause it was talked they looked too small? Also, one thing Reforged will always have is that it gave Shadow Hunter the mask back. I saw it in a video game magazine back in the day or some early screenshots online and it looked cool, but then no mask in the game. Okay, don't have it in the campaign, but the default hero didn't have it either.

Honestly I just don't get what they did to the night elf buildings in reforged. It's like the building is the same size but the model is smaller or something. Whether you're looking at the ancients and finding their heads are now tiny or looking at the pool in the moon well or the statue on the altar, it always just looks like the key details of the building are weirdly small.

Trying to figure out how many fiends there were in that fight was like playing one of the mini-games in Uther party... so bad lmao

Immediately was like "OH GOD MY EYES" when it showed. Thanks for the update!

I warmed up to it because it’s mature looking and matches the movie cinematic art direction, but I grew up with the iconic WC3 cartoony look and it’s just toooo good, so it’s hard to compare.

DH's weapons don't look nice and round anymore, archers don't have those cute globes on the ends of their bows .... "Warcraft 3 Reduced"

when i started watching wc3 2 years ago, my eyes couldn't follow the micro of pros and i kept missing whats happening in fights, seeing this 12:43 fight reminded me of that, since i cant even see what units are there

This video convinced me as a new player to play on classic. I was running some texture mods to make the grass not look like 90s baseball stadium astroturf but didn't realize the clarity issues were that bad in reforged. Thanks for this! Great video love the content you made me want to try it!

It's also not very obvious how much juice is in the Moonwell. In Classic it gives you a pretty good indicator.

Thank you for posting this and taking the time to break it down. Yea the models look great zoomed in, but no one plays like that. They needed to make the graphics work at the zoomed out camera where everyone plays at. Why they thought changing spells and movement was a good idea is beyond me. Its like half the team was working on a graphic update while the other half was working on warcraft 4. Cause if this was just the next game, then spells and movement being different isn't a big deal.

The reforged grass looks like a pool table felt matt.

I always get so impressed with Grubby's english vocabulary. It's so much better than so many english mains

Bears in Classic walk with arms rocking back and forth like people normally walk. Bears in Reforged wear like zombies with arms out in front.

I've legit been watching Grubby playting a lot of WC3 on old graphics and I thought to myself "wow the graphics have aged really nicely" and then I see this, Reforged... what even.

There are some aspects of the graphics that look phenomenal. Like the archer death animation is so insanely awesome. But its all about playability, discerning units in real time in a competitive environment, being able to acknowledge what is happening with peripheral vision, etc. The units dont have good lighting and some also have poor movement animations. (dryads look like they are hovering above ground, bears.... yea)

just to mention, starcraft 2 has multiple deathsounds for units, specially bio units that has more than 2 sounds or quotes when die, marines has at least 5 death sounds, zealots like 4, etc.

OK, no, I got it, "what's a Lich's favorite cereal? CheeriOH-OOHHs"

That lag spike during the first 2 seconds you load in is so incredibly annoying, it's unbelievable how that still isn't fixed. Though, I always thought it was due to my older system. It's outrageous that it apparently even happens on high-end PCs.

In a totally different style game, Hunt Showdown, the death having one sound is really well demonstrated. Although technically there are multiple versions of it, every time someone dies there's a two part scream that they make which isn't replicated at all in any of the other sounds when a player is hit. The importance of the information s very consciously being taken into account and how easily recognizable it is makes a world of difference in the split second decision making that is vital to winning at that game. You hear that two part scream and you know it's time to revive your friend or start cooking a dynamite and pushing the survivors. Shouldn't be hard for people to understand why that's important for a RTS aswell.

I literally said „uugh“ right when the game started. Massacred my boy. Like what is that? :‘(

While reforged looks like total garbo, I think rejuv actually looks more clear lol. The light is a lot brighter than the classic version. I think it looks WORSE because the original swirly animation had style and was distinct, but clarity isn't the issue for me with that particular spell. The problem for me is that a lot of reforged effects come down to "generic glow." This is especially hard to read in clustered fights where these glows are overlapping, creating an unreadable mess. EDIT: Now that I think about it, I wonder if a lot of the issue comes from distinct borders and shapes looking "unnatural." It feels like they wanted to diffuse everything, like immolation, and blend the effects more naturally. This...did not work out, obviously.

Regarding death sounds. Starcraft 2 actually do have multiple death sounds. Difference being Starcraft is a faster paced game that you probably won't notice and all the units still sound very distinct. So multiple death sounds can work.

2:30 that's how i feel - there is just something EXTREMELY "off/wrong" about E V E R Y T H I N G bout the reforged graphics...

i think the fatal flaw here is that nothing is lit correctly. everything looks like its in shadow, including the buildings. the buildings that do look 'mildly lit' do not have the same lighting gradient as other buildings or units. your brain picks up on it being uncanny and mismatched

I said it before I'll say it again. I keep forgetting that your playing on legacy when I watch. It's timeless. Also do the bear walk more

The head/face of the wisp in reforged is scarily disturbing 😅

They redid demon hunter? The coolest design they ever had? What gave them the confidence to redo anti mage? Illidan himself. Thank god hes blind, not deaf

Still shocked that WC3 reforged doesn’t really match the art style of og WC3 or current WoW. It looks somewhere between sc2 and a mobile game.

In a vacuum, I like a lot of the models; I _really_ appreciate that they differentiated a lot of the creep units in particular, giving them different weapons/armour/postures/etc where before they were often just resized and tinted or reskinned, IIRC. That sort of thing is fantastic for custom maps, which are also often less "busy" (at least, with important info) than melee maps, so clarity often isn't as big of a concern. That said, I can certainly understand the clarity issue being a problem for normal maps, and it's really something that should have been considered early; things like the grass being weirdly featureless and some of the animations/effects I can forgive since the thing was obviously released way before it was ready, and probably would have been fine with some more dev time, but I'm not sure if they could really have done anything to the models themselves without remaking them entirely to improve clarity. I think the best would have been if they kept the creep differentiation, but the style was the way heroes of the storm did riflemen/raiders/etc in the alterac valley(?) map; less WoW-style and more the traditional somewhat-cartoonish aesthetic but with more polygons and details

Look at the Dryad reforged face --> It look like a blue Adi

I don't play either game but i can say with confidence, Great its just like WoW where it glows and shines so much that no1 watching can know whats going on.

It feels like whoever made Reforged tried to make each individual model and effect look good (though I'd say even then they missed the mark due to making it too 'un-WarCraftish'), but never placed any though on how they will all look together, from an isometric perspective, and during action, giving us the mess Reforged ended up being.

Grubby! If you have to try the Quenching mod, then it's worth playing with the reforged graphics

This guy facetanked your focusfire 100 to 0 with his Lich without healing him or moving a muscle, I guess he also must've done a viewer request

Noooooooooooooo! Grubby, what is this!? How can somebody not know Wisps are floating heads?!

Yess need more of this content ty

excited to watch dh on grubby talks

Imagine calling someone a hero clicker when you repeatedly tank with your lich.

28:35 wait, he had necros? Never saw them in the reforged graphics lol

The worst part about reforged was when it interfered with Logan's nap time.

Case and point, reforged wasnt completed. They released an unfurnished product.

the issue with reforged graphics is they were designed to look good up close, not from far away WC3 origional graphics uses something that warhammer calls "heroic scale" which is that hands, weapons, and details, are disproportionatly big for the model this results in the details and iconic parts of the model to stand out when viewed at an arms length, while if they were more proportionatly accurate they would blur with the overall silhouette and become harder to see this is what happens with reforged graphics, the models look great, but they arent "heroic" scale, and so when you zoom out their details, weapons, pockets etc, become blured into the silhouette of the model and it becomes hard to see this is true to life, if there is a person standing 100 meters away from you, your not really going to be able to tell what stuff they have on, but this isnt real life, its a game and your supposed to be able to very quickly parse what is what which is why WC3 and starcraft and warhammer and most other tabletop or top down rts games use heroic scale, because it makes it MUCH easier to see from 5 foot away exactly what this 1inch tall model is heroic scale doesnt look as good when held up to your eye, but it still looks good, and your not SUPPOSED to be seing the model up that close anyway, your supposed to be seeing it at arms length the terrain is an entirely different story i have NO idea why they went for such a rediculous oversaturated look

Hey grubs, amusingly, the fairy fire not visible, but not because its not strong enough to see. The problem was that the turtle was too big that it was literally inside the turtle. On a smaller unit you can clearly see it. Check 13:09 on the fiends. This would have been something that could have been found on testing... lol

The bears look like they just washed their hands and have run out of paper towels

meta looks 50/50, as you say, its TOO dark but the bright lime green (one of my top 3 fav colors) is awesome. the wings are good. and the projectile is nice.

“I’ll kill one of my archers so you can hear it again.” Wtf?????

In a sense I'm grateful to Reforged for highlighting just how good Warcraft 3 was when it came out over twenty years ago. Let that be a lesson to current game companies.

“Yo guys what’s up” “Yo guys what’s up” “Yo guys what’s up” Man . . . It really does look like an alpha . How sad .

they made the bears do an "anime" run where the static arms xD

did they also change DotC rejev skill sound? don’t hear that bell chime

If they made it customizable where you could mix and match graphics and audio as much as you want then I would still be happy with it. Like having classic wisp unit portrait with reforged wisp would be good. Talon was ok but faerie fire was too hard to read, could go for the classic spell debuff, etc

21:22 ish, THAT'S THE PERFECT WORD - it is ALL Too LOUD. finally i know how to perfectly describe reforged graphics. LOUD as hell, over-the-top, only look good when zoomed in... and every movement looks WEIIIIIIRD

I just realised that this is the first time I saw reforged graphics although I watch WC3 content pretty often, and it was painful.

I totally agree with you about transparency and movement. This graphics can only be favorable for those who haven't played it in a long time, or only very little. I've been following your video for a long time, because I'm an old player myself, and reforged is completely unacceptable for me. I wish Reforged was made by the same team that made Diablo Ressurected. An HD remaster of this game would have been perfect, higher resolution, better textures and that's about it. I would also like to bring back the old battlenet system, the old menu.

One definite distinction is how nothing seems rooted. The moonwells, all the trees and buildings just seem to float. But that's not how objects work. Whenever you build something or grow something, the area has shades and ares around it that becomes shaped as a result of an object. But in reforged they just appear without any shadow or impact on the land. Yeah sure there are some light shadows in some trees but the shadows have same transparency throughout and the shadows aren't darker/lighter and makes for a very artificial look. Warcraft reworsened.

The way DH says "quickly " in reforged...just rubs me wrong .....

Pretty when zoomed in, like they were made to sell a trailer, seriously! I went to rewatch the "Gameplay trailer" and sure enough most of the footage is very zoomed in. Considering how corporate game creation is nowadays I feel they had to make these models so colorfull and detailed to sell the idea of an upgrade to executives who never touched an rts.

Yeeey grubby

20 gifted subs AND a new video?! What a steal!

Imagine grub having children and sb having to be those children's teacher.

I don't hate the Reforged bear druid pose,.I think the objective was to make them look a bit cooler but it kinda misses the, I don't know, point of the unit? The joke about the druids of the claw is that they start out as sleepy grandpas, slowly lumbering around the map and providing support for the rest of the army but when you get their upgrades they transition to one of your deadliest units. The new model + animation looks *cooler* but the voice lines are the same so it leads to dissonance when you see this new muscular imposing model but still hear "I'm awake! I'm awake!".

The red team colors on the fiends in particular look very similar in shade to base wc3 animate dead. The corrupted cenarius has bright red on it's model, suitable for the enemy team. The points on the cenarius model for the blue team are very faint in comparison. Base team colors besides brown and dark green in WC3 are as bright as the nuclear radiation grass on screen.

i also changed my wc3 reforged dk/dh voices to female and i can NOT find the options to change it back and it bugs the hell out of me..

the worst part is that we are forced to download that, and use a lot of space

lol i don't mean to laugh but that was really sweet how you said "oh no! i woke up my dog and /drove/ over his leg" and then you check on him. that's a fantastic doggo owner right there. i've always really liked you out of all the other top tier wc3 players back in the day. you honestly haven't changed in terms of personality. and i appreciate that a lot. now , i apologize for commenting so much; but if you or someone else sees my posts soon, i'd REALLY appreciate a way to fix the voices of my heroes that should be male since they're in male model... and i honest to the big man, can NOT find the option... at all. the only other idea i can think of is reinstall which would take a while

I immediately hâte thé look of the wisps

That grass... What is this, Warcraft 2?

What about Age of Warcraft? They had a new demo? Release recently.

The weirdest thing that it doesn’t even look like wow either. It’s just not “Warcrafty”

i have a lot of trouble selecting units , alot of misclick issues , too much lag when there are big armies even with a good pc

21:25 They look like the corrupted moonwells from WoW 😂🤣😂 It would actually make sense lorewise to hire a Pitlord 😂🤣😂

I agree with your assessment of WarCraft Reforged vs Classic. The Reforged graphics often appear to have WORSE resolution than the Classic graphics. But one exception to what you said about StarCraft 2 death sounds: StarCraft 2 Ghost death, ~9 of 10 times: *AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!* StarCraft 2 Ghost death, ~1 of 10 times: "Never say 'Die'!"

Everything is glowing