Warcraft III Is Getting A New Update Over 15 Years After Launch

When you buy a Blizzard game, you know you can pretty much count on it being supported for a long time. A very long time. Like, kind of ridiculously long. Case in point, Blizzard is prepping a new patch for Warcraft III, which first came out in 2002.

Blizzard recently announced Warcraft III is getting its first-ever Public Test Realm, which will let hardcore players test out a variety of upcoming tweaks and balance changes. Here's the full list of changes coming to the PTR:

• Balanced creep camp difficulty progression from early to late game
• Balanced creep drop tables for better item progression from early game to late game
• Item diversity: Varied Level 1 through 6 charged items and Level 1 through 6 permanent items
• Balanced all start locations: total amount and starting distance from lumber, equal amount of spacing, equal size choke points, et cetera
• Balanced expansion distance from start locations
• Decluttered points of interest to reduce visual competition during gameplay
• Retextured map surfaces for better visual clarity - both on screen and mini-map
• Minimized the size of trees and doodads that obstructed player view of points of interest
• Added cliff lines or deep water to edges of the map - removing hard edges (aesthetic choice for immersion)
• Properly placed trees and doodads on the pathing grid: full-cell Medium Grid to half-cell Medium Grid alternate
• Removed the rolling shoreline waves from rolling hills to remove the noise the waves created

This isn't the end either. More updates, including improvements to matchmaking and tournaments, have also been promised. Of course, Blizzard suddenly paying so much attention to Warcraft III has got some folks wondering whether the game may be coming back in a bigger way. Blizzard recently released StarCraft: Remastered, so maybe they're tidying up Warcraft III in preparation for its own revamp?

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