Warcraft III: Reforged Release Date Announced

Yesterday, Blizzard proclaimed that the release of Warcraft III: Reforged, which serves as what the company calls a “recreation” of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, The Frozen Throne, has been delayed. According to the store page for the game within the Battle.net desktop app and on the website itself, Blizzard originally planned to release Warcraft III: Reforged on or before December 31st of this year; however, within today’s announcement, it was revealed that this will not be the case.

Within that same announcement, Blizzard revealed that the game is slated to actually release at precisely 3pm Pacific time on Tuesday, January 28th, 2020 in North America. It seems they’re going with their somewhat recently-developed “global release schedule” tactic in an attempt to ensure that everyone has access to the game worldwide at roughly the same time.

Blizzard has used this strategy in the past, such as in the case of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth’s release date back in August of 2018. In that case, at least in my personal experience, it seemed both that the expansion’s launch went relatively smoothly and that I was actually able to begin playing through its content a few minutes earlier than that exact 3pm mark.

In light of that, I think we have justification to suspect that the release of Warcraft III: Reforged will be just as smooth as Battle for Azeroth’s launch, if not even more so. Regardless, this proposed January 28th launch date is still a notable delay compared to Blizzard’s previous plan to have the game shipped before the end of this year.

Blizzard offered their rationale for the game’s delayed release within today’s announcement by stating, “we felt we’d need a little extra development time for finishing touches;” they went on to add that, “[a]s always, our goal is to honor the high standards you hold us to.” Of course, those statements don’t appear to have done much to placate those who have complained about the delay thus far, but I suppose that’s to be expected.

As you might be aware, Warcraft III: Reforged has been available for pre-order via Battle.net and its desktop app for quite some time now. Upon looking up the page which allows you to purchase the game, you’ll notice that there are two different versions of it, namely the standard edition and the so-called “Spoils of War” edition. These two editions are differentiated both by their price tags and by the content contained within them.

You can pick up the standard edition of the game for $29.99, and the “Spoils of War” edition for ten bucks more than that. The latter of these two contains several cosmetic goodies for the vast majority of Blizzard’s other titles, which I’ll cover in a bit more detail momentarily for those of you who might be curious. It should also be noted that according to today’s announcement, pre-ordering either version of the game will grant you access to its ongoing beta test.

The cosmetic goodies for Blizzard titles including, but not limited to Warcraft III: Reforged that are included with a pre-order of the “Spoils of War” edition unlock immediately after you purchase the game. The list of these cosmetics includes the following: several alternate hero skins for certain characters within Reforged, a “Meat Wagon” mount for World of Warcraft, a pet version of the demon Mal’Ganis for Diablo III, several console skins for StarCraft II and StarCraft Remastered, a handful of permanently-unlocked playable heroes within Heroes of the Storm, and several player icons and animated sprays which can be used within Overwatch.