Well, here’s news I never expected to write: Warcraft 3 is getting a new patch. That’s right, in 2016, a gasp-inducing 14 years after the game launched in 2002. As reported by Gamespot, the update—patch 1.27—is coming out on March 15, so we really don’t have long to wait. But for now we have no real idea of what’s coming in the patch to the rather old game. The news follows hot on the heels of the first Diablo II patch in five years. Blizzard, keep it up!
New Warcraft 3 Update: What It’s Probably About
As Gamespot noted, the trailer (above) announcing the new patch is targeted toward the game’s still-large Chinese audience, but the patch is debuting worldwide on March 15. Beyond that, we don’t have any firm details on the content of the patch, but it’s pretty safe to say the recent Diablo II patch can give us a good sense of what to expect. That patch is one of the first releases from Blizzard’s relatively new Classic Games division, which is focused on improving and updating the company’s legacy games (does that mean we can expect a StarCraft patch soon too? Wouldn’t surprise me). The Diablo II patch focused entirely on making the game playable on modern computers—after all, the original game came out in 2000, technically a different millennium—and included a new launcher for OS X. Now Diablo II will hopefully work out of the box on modern computers.
It’s reasonable to suspect the Warcraft 3 1.27 patch will have the same effect—make the game run more smoothly and install more easily on modern computers. But the brief Diablo II patch notes explain that this is just the beginning: “There is still a large Diablo II community around the world, and we thank you for continuing to play and slay with us. This journey starts by making Diablo II run on modern platforms, but it does not end there.” The same may well be true for Warcraft 3, especially since Warcraft 4 is years away at best.
What do you think? Are you going to dust off your old copy of Frozen Throne and check out the new patch—and if it’ll run on your super shiny computer?
