Some video game remakes have been highly celebrated (Halo 2 Anniversary comes to mind), while others received harsh criticism. Blizzard's games tend to end up in the second category, and every time the company decides to "update" its content, fans tremble. But that's not all: besides the possibility of receiving a terrible job, you also have to tolerate the disappearance of the original versions. Recently, Warcraft 1 and 2 were remastered and put on sale in the Battle.net store. What did Blizzard do? It asked GOG to remove the classic builds after December 13.
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans dates back to November 1994. Largely inspired by Dune II (the "father" of modern RTS), this game laid the foundations of a complex and fabulous universe, with alliances, betrayals, life and death as common currency. Warcraft II took the market by storm a year later, and was so good that it managed to break the curse of second installments in an spectacular way. The wait extended to six and a half years with Warcraft III, but success manifested once more. "Warcraft" was synonymous with quality.
Fast forward to January 2020. Blizzard released Warcraft III: Reforged, an updated version of Warcraft III with new graphics and additional functions for Battle.net. The fans' response was devastating (justified by a large number of bugs and technical issues), and the specialized press didn't have a generous opinion either. As if that weren't enough, Reforged eliminated the availability of the classic versions, but instead of analyzing its mistakes and learning from them... Blizzard did it again.
Blizzard removes Warcraft 1 and 2 from GOG
Through a brief announcement, GOG confirmed to its community that Blizzard requested the removal of Warcraft 1 and 2, to take effect on December 13. That removal is linked to the recent release of Warcraft 1 & 2 Remastered (November 13, to be more precise), which celebrates the franchise's thirtieth anniversary. The new versions allow players to easily switch between graphic styles and aspect ratios (just press F5), but for some reason we can't understand, Blizzard doesn't want the classic builds to "compete" with the remastered versions.
This also puts pressure on GOG, since both games are part of its Preservation Program. However, the platform confirmed that it will continue to guarantee the compatibility of Warcraft 1 and 2 even after they leave its catalog. Obviously, GOG doesn't have authorization to modify files, but it can work around it, with network tweaks in Warcraft 1 and patches for the DirectX wrapper in Warcraft 2.
Needless to say, those who decide to buy the classic Warcraft 1 and 2 on GOG before December 13 will be able to keep their copies without problems. In fact, GOG enabled the discount code "MakeWarcraftLiveForever", which reduces the price of the bundle to €12.99.
Sources: GOG, Ars Technica
