Blizzard appears to have let the orc out of the bag a week early: ahead of its planned Warcraft Direct celebrating 30 years of its most famous series, a logo for Warcraft 2: Remastered has appeared on its internal servers.
As spotted by WoWhead, there’s a new entry on Blizztracker for the game, specifically titled “Warcraft II: Remastered Internal Alpha.” Blizzard’s server update included the logo as well as a piece of key art for the game. If you remember the naval-heavy theming for Warcraft 2 (“land, sea, and air” was the big pitch for what the sequel offered over the original real-time strategy game), this art looks right on point.
Longtime WoW leaker Stiven spotted the files around the same time as WoWhead, posting them to Twitter to considerable excitement.
Well—excitement and hesitation. A lot of players seem hesitant to trust a Blizzard remaster after Warcraft 3 Reforged, which infamously came out in rough shape, with features missing from the original game. Reforged also made it impossible to play that original game online, which is what really got folks upset—much in the same way Overwatch 2 erased Overwatch 1 from existence. While the Warcraft 3 remaster was improved a bit after release, Blizzard never fully addressed player criticisms, leaving modders to come to the rescue.
Though movement on Blizztracker suggests Reforged may not quite be dead yet. Maybe Blizzard has another surprise in store for next week’s Warcraft Direct—a proper overhaul to Reforged sure would go a long way towards making people believe Warcraft 2 Remastered is being handled with the care it deserves.