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

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.

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

I would not touch that grass

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.

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.

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.

Wisps are extremely uncanny in this version.

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?

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.

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

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

Grass diff is insane

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

This looks like alpha concept footage

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

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.

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.

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

It looks like WC3 from a bizarro universe. Worst remake ever. For those who don't know, search WC3 in UE5, that's how it should've looked.

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

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.

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

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"

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

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.

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

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

I can’t get over how bad the environment looks. The grass, the trees, buildings stick out like a sore thumb from where they’re built… it looks like a super cheap mobile game

Bears walk like scooby-doo villains

the grass is the most annoying thing, just fix the grass and it would be playable

What you see here are the ruins of what once was the best video game company of the world. This is what happens when you let people come into power that seek short term enrichment over development of a brand that stood for the best quality worldwide.

The Demon Hunter attack animation is NOT satisfying in reforged. In the original, it's so crisp and clean, the way his blade hacks.

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.

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

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.

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

I'm sorry Grubthas, I can't watch you play this.

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.

OG Wisp >>>>>>>> reforged wisp face by millions upon millions of miles.... that floating face makes ZERO canonical sense whatsoever...

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

My take is, it's probably look really good in single player campagin. And if we consider some statistics, the smaller percentage plays the multiplayer part of it.

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

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

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.

It boggles the mind that they managed to update a 20+ year old game and make it look _worse_ 😢

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

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!".

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

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

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

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.

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

The movements in classical are exaggerated for clarity. The treants are a good example with the way they wiggle. DotC rock their shoulders around. It's just obvious what they are doing. Hyperrealism isn't required, and is actually harmful.

Terrain is changed in a way some types seem not to have equivalents, but are replaced with something generic. Anyway, I like to play custom campaigns and those might have specific tiles on the ground important to solving puzzles, like symbols and such - Reforged just replaces it with dirt lol And yeah a bunch of indicators, like Curse debuff are barely visible, or in many cases, like we see here with Farie Fire, just don't exist lol

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)

Yeah all of reforged is missing like 2 solid quality passes. Sure, some individual things are nice, but it doesn’t come together at all.

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

The reforged grass looks like a pool table felt matt.

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

It's even sadder because the modelling and texturing is very competent from Lemon Sky, very nice, they just lacked intention and direction FROM Blizz themselves like a overall note of "hey. these look awesome but they need some adjustment to be little more distinct, here and here and a bit chunkier there, etc. to match the original silhouette that worked from top down perspective, because we're not making WoW the MMO, we're making Warcraft 3 the RTS." Everything that was the right size in classic, is just smaller in Reforged, the Mountain king is somehow smaller, the Rifleman's guns, the Demon Hunter's weapon, the Warden's cloak etc. They screwed up how they "fixed" the scaling and proportions of everything. There could have been a nice middleground, where they corrected the proportions of the Sorceress for example, but without compromising the unit silhouettes. It's so obvious how they lost the team that understood RTS as a genre and how important readability and silhouettes are.

“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 .

The moonwells look so bad on the grass.

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

Terrain in Reforged doesn't blend well at all. Also it looks like a background and doesn't fit with buildings.

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

I respect your opinion Grubby, but I do fully think you are wrong and do not respect us HD fans

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

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

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

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

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

If you want tons of views you could try to get samwise Didier to talk about reforged graphics on stream

The summary would be "good art, bad design"

Reforged graphics and animation tierlist 🧐🧐

They couldn’t be bothered to rip WoW graphics or use Warcraft 3 art as the base.

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.

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

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.

Thank you for the comparisons! It really feels like the original was made by the A team, and Reforged made by a gutted, rushed, underpaid, and inexperienced C team (for obvious reasons)

I don't like reforged graphics. They made it look a lot more cartoony.

I would love 3D artists to keep what's working and change what is not. Sound artists and VFX artists to fix spells and sound clarity and Blizzard, just admit what is best and take what the community is doing to make it the default.

Samwise Didier, the art director for WC3, is an artistical genius, he still makes drawing videos on youtube even after leaving blizzard

Really weird how you still hear the DH glaive sounds when in Meta (in reforged)

Mountain Dew™ grass, anime wisps.

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

I always thought that druid of the claw is a humanoid lion that can transform into a bear lol

I liked this, even not all aspects of new graphic look worse. You pointed out that green tatoos on DH metaform is cool, but did not put attention on this comparing it with classic, also a lot of whining on a new graphic is making regular opinion only worse. There ARE problems, but in 1v1 mode in most situations is ok to play, unless it turns out to be 100 pop of dragowhawks

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

The loss of clarity with the "improved" graphics is a serious fundamental problem with these remakes and modern sequels. D2 Resurrected is the same, generally the graphics look nice but the loss of clarity isn't worth it. It legitimately feels like these companies have no quality control any more, and none of the devs who actually play the games are given enough agency to influence what other devs are working on, leading to this disjointed mess of terrible and unnecessary design decisions. I think it all really comes down to people being put in leadership positions that they're totally unqualified to be in. The right person for the job of remaking WC3 should've been someone who played a lot of WC3 and who actually has respect for the original, not someone who wants to insert unnecessary changes at the expense of clarity or coherence.

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.

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