The developers from Blizzard continue working on the remastered RTS Warcraft III: Reforged. Following the initial update in April, the team details their roadmap for the game’s features, including revamping the matchmaking system.
- Ongoing Updates: Bug and Desync Fix Patches. The team will make a heavy emphasis on finding and resolving issues that cause desyncs as well as developing a tool that will help with the future desyncs.
- Balance Updates. The team’s goal is to preserve classic strategies where possible while promoting increased strategic variety. Balance patches will aim to ensure competitive integrity at the professional level while providing a variety of different strategies for new and returning players of all skill levels.
- Upcoming Features: the developers are working to deliver features to the game, including Improved Matchmaking, Ranked Ladders, Profiles, Custom Campaigns, and Clans.
Matchmaking Reforged
Blizzard shared the first details about the matchmaking revamp. Unlike its legendary predecessor, Warcraft III: Reforged will feature per-race MMR in all game modes except Arranged Teams which allows for more competitive matchmaking while freeing players to play their favorite races or learn new races without fear of impacting their overall MMR.
Also new, Reforged now features Global Matchmaking for all modes, which allows players to test their mettle against the best Warcraft III players around the world. While this addition is an exciting feature, we are aware of community concerns surrounding latency with Global Matchmaking. In reaction to this feedback, the team has begun rolling out a series of server updates which have reduced the number of high-latency games by over 60% since the week of May 4th. We will continue working to further reduce the occurrence of these high-latency games by implementing additional fixes in the coming weeks, so please continue to give us feedback on your experience.
- 1v1 will have the strictest matchmaking parameters as it is all about the individual performance.
- Team Games (2v2, 3v3, 4v4) will be slightly different to account for the fact that the outcome of a team game is not solely tied to the performance of an individual. The system takes longer to dial in on an individual player’s skill.
- Free-for-all (FFA) instead of having one winner and three losing players, Free-for-All games have shifted to a placements system of 1st through 4th places. At the conclusion of a game, multiple calculations are run to determine how each player’s MMR will change based on both placement and the MMR of the other players in the game. This results in a more nuanced change to each players’ Free-for-All MMR which should keep players of similar skill levels closer to one another in MMR. These updates help inform more accurate adjustments in MMRs and cut down on player queue times by keeping players grouped better with competitors of equal or similar skill.
We’re excited to continue rolling out these matchmaking improvements, and moving forward, players can expect ongoing communications from us at regular intervals as we release patches. As part of those communications, we’ll have a series of feature deep dives and development updates like this one, as well as lighter looks at other aspects of the game and community. Our next feature deep dive will be focused on our upcoming Ranked Ladder system, so keep an eye out for the details on our plans in the coming weeks. We plan to provide a roadmap for our future releases as our work progresses, but in the meantime please continue sharing your feedback and know that our team is working hard to deliver features, bug fixes, improvements, and balance updates as we strive to make Warcraft III: Reforged better with each release.
