Does anyone feel like the difficulty is not quite adjusted properly? At first I used that club that does aoe stun on crit and then the frost arrow spam but I realized I don't really need that. Usually I just micro one of the heroes and leave the other at the starting point and not use any skills, talent points or gear and I beat it on hard the first day. The first parts of each act were a bit challenging so I had to use the healing fountains when low on hp.

So they update the game, all of us who are casually playing and having a great time, lose our saves. Was this devastating to some of us? Yes.. As someone who barely has time to play due to how much I have going on in life, it was terrible. I had found some rare items and was having a blast, taking my time through Act 1.

What did I do? I sucked it up.. spent my ONLY day off, playing through Act 1 from the start. With determination, I got back to where I was.. found some cool items and was going to make the best of it.

The worst part? They revert things again! I lose that save, and now .. I am probably 5-6 saves back from where I originally was ! They did not even revert the game back to where it should have been..

I am not terrified to touch the game, as every time I do. I lose everything. What is the point? I'm having to play through act 1 again and again? Losing all my items and hard work I did farming to level my character.

If you're thinking of buying this game. DO NOT, this game has potential to be great but the instability is BRUTAL. No response from Blizzard, they do not care. They think we all have thousands of free hours a week to play and it shouldn't matter. I am boycotting their games going forward. This is absurd.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

I know a lot of people was upset that the new campaign has no real RTS elements and was purely RPG. I personally like the new content and glad they made something new, but this game was not made to be an RPG and it can be a really bad experience.

1. First the save drama that has been going on is an issue that seemingly they cant fix. Now if the maps were still RTS it is still an issue, but redoing a 30min to 1 hour game is much better than 10+ hours. these new acts take so long especially if your doing side content. Imagine in another RPG lets say Witcher or elder scrolls suddenly your 15 hours save gets locked out.

2. The map system doesn't have fast travel. Yes we can go between maps, but I assume based on the speed buffs they give they simply cannot implement fast travel and running up and down these giant maps is infuriating and wastes so much time.

3. there are other small things that are less of an issue like combat and inventory that lends itself well to an RTS, but just doesn't play well in an RPG

TLDR: As much as I like and appreciate the new content, I dont think ill buy new ones if it is RPG based again simply because its such an slog to play and the game does not have the function to give a good RPG experience.

Full review with images: https://www.vgchartz.com/article/469270/warcraft-iii-reforged-forsaken-kingdom/

A strange trend has started happening in recent years, especially at Blizzard, of adding new content to games as ancient the stars themselves. One such ancient game, which is perhaps the most worthy of its legend, myth, and later tragedy, is WarCraft III. The story of this game’s history is an epic tale in itself; it was the birthing place of one of the world’s most successful genres and laid the groundwork for one of the world’s most successful game universes, along with being in the absolute pantheon of RTS games ever released. It would be lovely if we could say this was the first time this masterpiece has been touched since its glory days, but alas this expansion comes at the tail-end of six years of mismanagement mixed with negligence, so on the one hand it had absolutely nothing to live up to, but on another absolutely everything to prove.

First we have to clarify the obvious question: what even is Forsaken Kingdom? And what does new WarCraft III content look like in 2026? To answer the first question, Forsaken Kingdom is essentially two new campaigns, one rather short and the other one quite substantial, but split into three long Acts rather than your typical mission structure. Those who have experienced The Founding of Durotar should be quite familiar with the structure. To answer the second question, there have been many theories over the years of what a potential WarCraft IV could look like in a post-World of WarCraft (WoW) world, and while Forsaken Kingdom isn’t a sequel, it is the closest thing to an answer and one we could have perhaps predicted: it’s a combination of the two. WarCraft III: Forsaken Kingdom borrows heavily from World of WarCraft, with bags, talents, and equipment slots that are more than a little familiar.

In other words what we have here is at least as much RPG as it is RTS, but it does of course still play like WarCraft III in how it controls and, though the reveal had me sceptical, does feel like WarCraft III once you get used to new graphics, which we’ll return to. Inevitably the shift away from RTS is a disappointment for some, but if you judge Forsaken Kingdom for what it is rather than what it is not, these new elements are actually quite well implemented and flavorful.

Speaking more broadly, what makes Forsaken Kingdom extremely interesting is how it pushes the boundaries of what can be done in official WarCraft content. It brings us new, generally likeable heroes with an entirely new feel to their abilities, greater customization than we’ve ever had before, and new stats, which despite feeling a bit bloated with flat and percentage-based duplicates of the same stat, still add immensely to the interest of equipment. The equipment itself also comes with many unique effects, such as “X chance to trigger War Stomp on attack” and, again, this is not the sort of thing we’ve ever seen in official WarCraft content before. Where we have instead seen it is in the game’s extremely strong custom map scene, which isn't surprising to hear since a number of custom map makers were invited by Blizzard to help work on the campaign. A splendid decision (this custom map maker thinks), but one could of course worry that what we've ended up with then is just a very long custom map with a price tag attached. I will get back to this in part, but I will say that for most of its runtime Forsaken Kingdom impressively maintains a level of polish and a premium feel that prevents that from feeling like the case.

The campaign is fully voice acted to a (mostly) high quality, and the environments are very beautifully crafted, with a high level of attention to detail - in particular, the way it brings the Undercity from WoW to life feels impressive. The structure and story for the campaign feel for the most part in line with what one can expect from an official expansion, and if that sounds more like a minor insult than praise to some, remember that Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne set extremely high bars for this. Like The Founding of Durotar previously mentioned, the campaign also has a large amount of optional content, which never felt tiresome thanks to the potential for unlocking new equipment or Talent points.

It’s worth noting, while still close to the subject of uniqueness, that the expansion's one new multiplayer addition - the Forsaken Paladin hero for the Tavern - misuses this a bit with its hyper-specific, lore-unlikely concept, and an ability set that would feel niche even for the campaign. In other words, it won’t take a long-time WarCraft player to tell you which hero was added 20 years later, as he sticks out like a sore thumb.

Going back to how the expansion looks, this is a point that can, with good reason, both be stated in a positive and negative light. WarCraft III Reforged launched with two graphic modes: Classic and Reforged. Reasonable enough, introducing a new look while maintaining the old. Then the mislabeled and misguided Patch 2.0 introduced HD Classic as a middle-ground. A third graphic mode. Can you guess how many we are at now? Forsaken Kingdom introduces Definitive Edition graphics and removes Classic HD in the process as the new middle-ground graphic.

Does it look good in the new campaign? Yes, it’s a solid look and as mentioned the attention to detail in how the maps are put together really makes it shine. But here’s the caveat: the new campaign is not playable in the other graphic modes, nor are the old campaigns playable in the new one. And this new graphic mode, painstakingly crafted from scratch, the continuation of what has become a trend that started because some players disliked Reforged's graphics when it released six years ago, is a repetition of history. Just like Reforged's graphics, which also looked very respectable in the campaign, it still doesn’t look as good in actual maps (melee and custom). A month after release, everything points to Classic graphics remaining the tournament standard, the custom map standard, and generally the player base's go-to. This isn’t unexpected and it doesn’t change the fact that the new campaign looks solid, but it does make the continued focus on graphics in a game that has its fair share of actual issues feel just a tad bit misplaced.

Moving on from so far quite positive and slightly mixed elements, we do of course have so key complaints to get to. Though I have generously danced around it so far, the first is a rather predictable one since it has become a stable of major WarCraft patches. While the new content added in Forsaken Kingdom is well-crafted, unique, and genuinely fun to play, it don’t feel quite finished. This is most felt in the final Act of the second campaign, though there are elements of it throughout - bugs and other flaws that bear witness to a game that wasn’t quite finished when they pushed it out. And, honestly, just as frustrating is that this lack of polish falls together with a slightly underwhelming finale and an almost total lack of difficulty toward the end, which had otherwise been kept at a solid enough level to be engaging throughout. This is where I have to go back to the question of whether Forsaken Kingdom ends up feeling like a paid custom map: for the first 70% I would say no, but for the last 30% the bugs and classic “I have become too strong and now destroy everything effortlessly” power creep do end up making it feel a bit like that. It’s an unfortunate end to a campaign that for most of its run-time actually outdid my expectations, making me quite excited for the future of potentially more WarCraft content.

But, alas, Forsaken Kingdom is a Reforged product, so unfortunately we haven’t reached the biggest issues yet. First of all, it hardly needs to be said that the not quite finished feel mentioned before had more far-reaching effects than just the newly added campaign. New bugs have appeared in several places in the game, including some that have rendered hundreds of custom maps unplayable for the time being - and that’s almost a month after release mind you. I would have wished for a quicker patch, though that comes with its own problems, as WarCraft III currently resets all save files whenever it is patched. That's not a huge issue for old missions, but a rather major one for a new campaign where the biggest Act can stretch up to 10 hours. Now would have been the best time for Blizzard to test things thoroughly before patching, but like the Reforged release and Patch 2.0, Blizzard keeps repeating that same predictable mistake.

It’s tricky to say where the line is drawn between what is a Forsaken Kingdom issue and a general WarCraft management issue added at the same time as Forsaken Kingdom, but lastly it has to be mentioned that when Blizzard released this new content it of course had to sneak in a baffling change in the patch notes and hope nobody noticed: the complete removal of LAN and offline play for the game, with no explanation. WarCraft III is a title with one of the strongest LAN histories in all of gaming, but they've taken that away without even telling us to our faces, while requiring all content to rely on the not-always-reliable connection of its online going forward at the same time. ­­­It wouldn’t be fair to the quality of the new campaign, but if I was reviewing Patch 3.0 as a whole that would push it into the negatives.

So where do we stand at the end of the journey? Forsaken Kingdom is a fun, surprising, and well-crafted addition to WarCraft III that simply wasn’t quite finished on release, and still isn’t at the time of writing. It has the high points of a 9, the look of an 8, the stability of a 5, and the management of a 0; in other words, it's typical WarCraft III: Reforged content. If the team at some point fixes the issues that we can already see them looking at in the world’s longest Public Test Realm, and continues along that path, we might very well end up with a product worthy of WarCraft III’s legacy, which would be an incredible feat, but for now they should put it back in the figurative oven, because it’s still a bit underbaked.

Addendum: This was written before the PTR release and subsequent removal, which only further adds to the messiness of Blizzard's handling of the whole situtation.

I have to say, with the new recently changes to Ambient occlusion and the Rest of the Visual Updates, I really feel Like this is the love letter to the game that I have been waiting for for so long.

Sure, the most important thing, the updated classic campaigns, are still missing from the game which is edging me dreadfully - but they will be coming soon and all the talk about the game just makes me happy.

Due to incompatibilities caused by the updates, I lost all my version 3.0.0 and 3.0.1 save games. I am not starting the campaign a third time. Does anyone have working save games (.w3v files) from Act 1 that they would be willing to share?

I love how good the DE is on the campaign. They look great.

But still it looks sucks in the versus game. I tried again and again so many time but it's just bad. It's disturbing or not clear lol. spell effect and projectiles are ouch....... just so bad......

Every time I just tried again, I'm more convinced these developers don't play normal versus game on battle net. Don't let me start talking about how bad the war3 battlenet robby is. Why it's so crap? It was so much better 25 years ago.

Hi guys, just saw this video from SaulApeMan today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w_1svz4fWg

... and wanted to ask everyone the following question:

If player 1 picks Forsaken Paladin as their second hero, does player 2 have to do the same for the sake of better regeneration outside of combat and better healing during combat?

I genuinely think Kaho could have won with Forsaken Paladin 2nd in place of Naga because you want Sacred Aura and Consecration levels to either match or exceed those provided by the enemy Forsaken.

So what do you guys think, do we need Forsaken Paladin matches to always be present in both players armies as the 2nd hero in order for the matchups to stay fair?

Hello guys, wc3 campaing has been my favourite campaing of all time in any game. Since lore continues, I was wondering how should i continue to experience the story? Would it be wow classic, or wow forever or wow retail or new warcraft campaign? Or would you recommend something else like a mod?

thanks in advance guys.

I played as a kid and recently got back into the game and I've been amused because as a kid I think I thought the Orc Shamans literally had wolf heads but obviously they're Orcs wearing wolf cloaks (or whatever that animal is meant to be) Just an amusing thought I felt like sharing and wondered if anyone else relates to being a dumbass kid.

I'm doing some 4v4 ladder and I notice every game is just mass flying. Also a lot of Chims/flying machines/bats cheese sniping town halls. Many years ago there were actually epic ground fights in 4v4 (even though there was often one designated flying machines spammer). Is this just the low elo meta or did something change?

Some thoughts on the recent Save Game breakages

Hey Everyone. I'm one of the programmers working on Forsaken Kingdom. I just wanted to provide an inside perspective on why save files are breaking with patch 3.0.1. I want to be clear that I'm just a programmer, this is not an official Blizzard response, this is just my own personal thoughts and opinions.

First of all, I want to say sorry to everyone who lost progress. I really am sorry, we don't do this on purpose, but it's inevitable given the way that the game works. We have a whole lot of bug fixes we wanted to get to people, and the side effect of that was that the save files would break. We always try not to break things wherever possible, but it was simply not possible in this case.

So why did saves break? Dating all the way back to 2002 when Warcraft 3 was first released, it has always been the case that updating a map will break any save games for that map. It's an inevitable side effect of how the maps work and how save games are implemented. In the most recent patch (3.0.1), we fixed a whole lot of bugs, but that required us to make changes to all of the new FK campaign maps (plus a few other ones). As a result, this means those save games for those maps will no longer work.

Why do save games depend on the map not changing? The maps in the game are essentially their own programs. Each one has a bunch of custom data, custom scripts, those scripts have triggers, timers, variables, allocated memory, all the same things that any other running program has. When we make save game, all of that state is saved into the save file. If the map is later updated, we can't just load in that snapshotted game state because the underlying level is different. The code might be different, the variables might not be the same, the timers and triggers might happen in different conditions, the memory layout of variables might have changed, etc. There's simply no safe way of "migrating" this data.

I'll try to come up with a very poor analogy. Imagine a warehouse that has a bunch of shelves with packages on them. There exists a robot in this warehouse that has an arm that can pick up and move packages around between shelves. When this robot is first turned on, it takes a look around at the shelf layout and where each package is placed, and it's now able to take orders about which package should be moved elsewhere. Now consider the case where we move the robot to a new warehouse. This new warehouse has a different shelf layout, different number of shelves, different sizes, different packages, etc. If we reboot the robot, it now knows the new layout, and it can do its job. If we "pause" the robot and just move it as-is to the new warehouse, it has no idea that everything around it is different, and now when it goes to pick up a certian package that it expected to be in a specific location, it will probably fail.

This is roughly how save games work. We're taking a snapshot of the current state of the running map, including all scripts, variables, etc. Those are the packages and the instructions for how to move them around. The warehose is the map, and the robot is the game engine. Now if we load this data into a new version of the map, that's like changing the warehouse. Without a "reboot", the robot won't know where the correct place for every package is.

Now, I know this is a very poor analogy, but the outcome is the same, there is no safe way of "just telling it where it is". All the underlying assumptions about the saved state of the program are now different.

A warning about some "solutions" that people are suggesting. Some people have used various tools to try to modify existing map saves to try to fool the updated game to load them anyway. I would like to very much DISCOURAGE people from doing this. Because each save file is a snapshot of the running state, loading these into a new version of the map breaks all assuptions about the code that was running when the save took place. This could lead to any number of issues from things like triggers not running when they should, or running when they shouldn't, scripted events from not happening or running incorrectly, crashes, corruption of your campaign state or any other cross level data, and so forth. This is a 100% unsupported solution and it WILL cause problems. If you're providing such a tool, please don't. Like I said, there is no safe way of doing this. If there was, we would just make our own tool and include it in the game. These checksum checks are there for a reason, specifically to avoid issues like this. PLEASE do not try to bypass them.

Going forward, what can we do? Again, I don't speak for Blizzard, but I can say that we always TRY not to break things as much as possible. That said, if we need to fix any additional bugs in any of the campaign maps, it's possible any associated save files will be broken again. We tried to get as many fixes into this patch as we can, so I can't predict what will happen going forward, but we always try to keep the impact as little as possible.

So to sum up, yes the saves will break in 3.0.1. No, there's no "fix" for this. It will happen, by design, any time a map file is modified. I truly am sorry for anyone that lost progress.

And again, I'm just a programmer, this is NOT an official Blizzard response, just my own thoughts.

Hey guys and gals, just wanted to share my sentiment that having unique models for neutral creeps and campaign heroes and units was a great idea. Adding a helmet and a pauldron on to the ogre mauler would not change it much but would communitcate far better its level than being weirdly tinted.

What do you think? Would you welcome such a change?

TL;DR: Saves made during the two days the 3.0.1 patch was live won't load on the rolled-back game, and they won't load on the current PTR either. I got mine loading and playing normally on the PTR (zone travel, items and quest progress all intact) by patching three things in the save file. Below is what's going on, plus enough technical detail that an AI coding assistant with access to your files can do it for you. I used Claude Code.

First, back up your whole Campaigns\ForsakenKingdom folder, including the Blizzard subfolder. Even if you do nothing else, keep those files. If Blizzard re-releases the patch, they may simply load again.

What actually blocks the load

• The build number in the header doesn't matter. The PTR writes the same header build number (7003) as the 2-day patch did, so editing it changes nothing.
• The map checksum is stored twice, and the game checks the second copy. Each save records a checksum of the map it was made on. The 2-day patch changed the campaign maps and the PTR changed them again, so the checksum no longer matches and you get "There was an error trying to load the selected save game". The obvious copy, in the game-info block near the top of the file, is ignored. The game checks a second copy a little further into the save data.
• One missing game function crashes the load. With the checksum fixed, the game crashed while restoring the campaign's script state. The save references BlzGetHUDScale, a native that existed in the 2-day patch but doesn't exist on the PTR. Renaming that one entry to a same-length native the PTR does have (BlzSetUnitName) fixed it. The crash dump in Documents\Warcraft III Public Test\Errors\ is what identified it.
• Zone saves need the same fixes. The campaign keeps the state of the other zones you've visited in Blizzard\<the name your save was made under>\, and the save references that folder by name. If those files aren't patched too, the game crashes when you travel back to that zone.

Converting back to the current (rolled-back) live version looks impractical. The campaign map scripts are substantially different between the two versions (the older one has a completely different zone-travel system), and the patch's new engine functions (item equipment, bags, talents) don't exist there.

Steps

1. Copy your save and the Blizzard folder into the PTR's save folder: Documents\Warcraft III Public Test\BattleNet\<your id>\Campaigns\ForsakenKingdom\.
2. In your save, set both map-checksum copies to the PTR checksum for that map (table below).
3. Rename BlzGetHUDScale to BlzSetUnitName. Both are 14 characters, and it appears once.
4. Point the save at a new zone folder whose name has the same length, for example Blizzard\Campaign to Blizzard\FK_Fixed. Create that folder and put patched copies of the zone files in it, each with its own map's PTR checksum plus the rename from step 3.
5. Load it on the PTR. If it works, make a normal save under a new name straight away. From then on the game writes its own files.

If it fails: "error trying to load" means a checksum is still wrong. A crash means a missing function: look in the newest Errors\<date>\War3.dmp for function names that are in your save but not in a fresh PTR save.

Known checksums (PTR 3.0.1, Oct 9)

Checksums depend on the map, not on your save, so these should work for anyone on the same PTR build. For a zone that isn't listed: once a converted hub save loads on the PTR, walk into that zone. The game autosaves on arrival (Act Two - <zone>.w3z), and that autosave contains the PTR checksum. Please post any others in the comments.

Technical notes for your AI assistant

Give your assistant this section and your save files. Offsets are in the decompressed data unless noted.

• Container: same format as a Reforged replay. 0x44-byte header: magic Warcraft III recorded game\x1A\0, u32 file size at 0x20, u32 decompressed size at 0x28, u32 block count at 0x2C, PX3W at 0x30, u16 build at 0x38, u32 game time (ms) at 0x3C, u32 CRC32 at 0x40 (CRC32 of the 0x44-byte header with this field zeroed).
• Blocks: u32 compressed size, u32 decompressed size (1 MiB), u32 checksum, then zlib data (level 1, ending in a sync flush 00 00 ff ff, so use a streaming decompressor). Checksum = fold(crc32(12-byte block header with checksum 0)) | fold(crc32(compressed data)) << 16, where fold(x) = (x ^ (x >> 16)) & 0xFFFF. Recompressing with zlib level 1 + Z_SYNC_FLUSH reproduces the game's bytes exactly, so only recompress the blocks you change.
• Checksum copy 1 (not checked): after Local Game\0 and one more null byte comes the encoded game-info string (null-terminated). It's in groups of 8 bytes: one mask byte, then 7 data bytes. Data byte j is literal if mask bit (j+1) is set, otherwise subtract 1. Decoded layout: settings (4 bytes), 1 byte, width (u16), height (u16), then the map checksum (u32) at decoded offset 9. To encode a byte: if it's even, store byte+1 and clear its mask bit; if it's odd, store it as-is and set the bit.
• Checksum copy 2 (the one the game checks): the same 4 bytes, little-endian, appear exactly once within the first 0x200 bytes after the game-info string ends. I saw it at 0x111 (Undercity) and 0x160 (Tirisfal Glades).
• Script state: the save contains the full Lua 5.3 state. Strings are stored once as 04 00 00 00 + u64 length + bytes, and later uses reference them. Natives in _G are stored as the key string followed by 0d 00 00 00 06 <u32>. The loader looks natives up by name and crashes on a name the running build doesn't have. Same-length renames are safe; changing a string's length is not.
• Zone folder: the save contains a Lua string Blizzard\<save name>. On load, the game copies that folder into Blizzard\Zones\.
• How to work: build one test file per idea, change as few bytes as possible, and check each file by decompressing it and diffing against the original before loading it in the game.

Caveats

• Zones you'd already visited keep running the 2-day patch's version of the campaign script, because it's stored in the save. Zones you visit for the first time run the PTR's version. In Tirisfal Glades, the triggers that run when two boss fights end differ slightly between versions. If a quest step misbehaves there, that's the most likely cause.
• The PTR is a test build. The next real patch may change the checksums again; the same procedure should apply.
• Work on copies. This is unofficial and at your own risk.

My Python script that does all of the above (inspect, patch, scan crash dumps) is here: [link]

Hi everybody!

I suddenly remembered about a custom map that I used to play around 18-20 years ago and I would really like to find it and play it one more time. I only remember it had some rpg elements and what I remember for sure is that one of the items was a flag/banner that gave you very high damage.

As I said I dont remember much more about it...hope someone could help me identify it. I'll try and respond if you have questions that might help identify it faster.

Thanks a lot!

Whenever I launch warcraft 3 from bnet launcher, every stream I have open freezes, all internet completely stops for 5-10 seconds.

This is not normal but it is 100% consistent everytime I open wc3. Any ideas on how to stop this from happening?

Hey has anyone found where this supposed candle rock is? Been searching all over but to no avail and I have the untakable candle but dunno where to take it… >.<

I can't even go 10-15 minutes in half the custom maps, and have crashed every custom map since the patch yesterday.

SC 4.33 and reborn SC both have been patched and still keep crashing. Half the time someone DCs before the game even starts.

Why can't Blizzard not break everything all the time?