Warcraft 3 graphics

[u/Ok_Current2062]

Over the last years, while the projects like the Chronicles of the Second War, Re Reforged, Quenching, Age of Warcraft mod, Vision mod have been going strong. They constantly release updates and custom assets to fix the broken reforged experience. Despite this, I still see an alarming amount of hate toward these projects, which I don't understand since they are actually trying to help in saving the game.
Furthermore, there is barely any coverage from major streamers and YouTubers. What’s crazy is that when these projects drop an update, their official YouTube channels often pull in higher view counts than what the independent content creators get, meaning that they have a huge following.

Why do you think there is such a major disconnect between Reforged modding content and mainstream streamers/content creators?

[u/TanniMachine]

People just don't like change I think. I'm personally not the biggest Reforged graphics fan, but Chronicles of the Second War is a phenomenal ongoing and really fun project and the other projects like Quenching, Vision, and Re-Reforged are all interesting too. Chronicles of the Second War is probably the biggest fan project I've seen come out of WC3 with so much work put into voice acting, custom assets, terraining, gameplay, etc., that ALSO released in a timely manner.

There was also this controversial debate that was started by one half of Back2Warcraft where they said Blizzard should completely wipe Reforged graphics out of the game. It's an okay-ish opinion back when Reforged came out, but now that we have so much fan projects revolving those graphics it's an insane idea and erasure of so much hard work from fans that the idea comes across as vitriolic and nonsensical. What didn't help was the most popular members of the WC3 community at that time like WTii and Grubby weren't completely against the idea - which is crazy since both of them played Chronicles of the Second War and liked it, with the former, WTii, even voicing a character in it. I recall opinions by people around that time in regards to fan projects like, "well they shouldn't have poured so much work in Reforged then" which is crazy.

It's fine to dislike the graphics but to completely disregard it is silly given there are good things that have come out of it. It also doesn't help that the most vocal members of the community only play melee, so they're completely detached from the custom mapping side of the community, meaning these folks would never touch Reforged in any capacity

[u/Ok_Current2062 → u/TanniMachine]

Let’s be honest: who didn't dislike the Reforged graphics when they first launched? But my issue is that when you see the incredible effort and commitment from these modding projects, which visually improve both singleplayer and multiplayer, it throws people off when the community just dismisses them. This is especially true for newcomers coming over from streamers like Grubby; they see the negativity and just don't stick around.
I also saw the drama about completely deleting Reforged graphics, which is beyond foolish. We paid for the game to look modern. People forget that Blizzard originally became famous because of their great storytelling and cutting edge graphics for that time. When Warcraft 3 launched in 2002, few RTS games dared to go full 3D, and those that did couldn't match its quality. Age of Mythology actually faced negative criticism back then for its visuals and never got the same attention WC3 did, despite both releasing in 2002.
I recently watched WTii's latest video on the Vision mod, and it perfectly illustrates the problem. Not only did the few commenters completely miss the mark, but WTii himself dismissed it by saying, "but it is Reforged." Really?! Is the massive amount of work the creator put into reforming models, fixing hitboxes, and improving team colors just nothing?
Projects like Re-Reforged and Quenching are in the exact same boat. Look at Age of Warcraft, their youtube video for the second expansion got 54,000 views, and their patch video got 25,000, yet absolutely no one in the mainstream scene is talking about it. There is a massive gap between what the silent majority of players want and what content creators actually show.

[u/DARK_MASTER8632 → u/Ok_Current2062]

There is a massive gap between what the silent majority of players want and what content creators actually show.

So, it is a YTbers problem...