Blizzard may have a huge surprise coming to WarCraft fans soon.
As shared on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit by user Neggy5, datamining revealed a WarCraft 2 Remastered Internal Alpha. Let’s look more closely at this datamining.
BlizzTrack is a site that publicly tracks down updates and changes to the game clients for Blizzard’s games. As you can see from their home page, they track Battle.net, the WarCraft III Public Test Realm, Diablo Immortal, the Call of Duty hub, etc.
BlizzTrack has a new listing for a new title, which is the WarCraft 2 Remastered Internal Alpha. As of this writing, we can confirm that there were two updates today, 0.1.1 was published at 8:03 AM GMT+8, and 0.1.2 was published at 1:27 PM GMT+8. So even today this data has been receiving updates and changes.
Neggy5 also mentioned that WarCraft III: Reforged received an update. Since Blizzard published WarCraft III: Reforged in 2020, they dropped support for and delisted the original version of WarCraft III and its The Frozen Throne expansion. So, the only servers that are online are for the newer version.
BlizzTrack’s listing for the WarCraft III Public Test Realm does indicate that it was updated last October 4, and the last update before that dates all the way back to July of this year. This may be a minor update, with bugfixes and improvements, but Neggy5 says there’s a good reason to believe otherwise.
As we ourselves reported two weeks ago, Blizzard announced they would forego BlizzCon this year in favor of a WarCraft 30th Anniversary Direct. Blizzard hinted that they could have a surprise to reveal at the event, alongside the schedule that they are making public.
While we explained why Blizzard chose to pass on BlizzCon, there may be more to this even than just commemorating an anniversary. Chris Metzen, one of the founding members of Blizzard and a major creative mind in the WarCraft franchise since its inception, came out of retirement to rejoin the company, and is now the Executive Creative Director of the WarCraft universe.
We already know of Blizzard’s and Metzen’s ambitious new story arc in the WorldSoul Saga, to begin with World of WarCraft: The War Within. But it completely makes sense that Blizzard may already have other games and projects lined up alongside this big World of WarCraft update. They would have gotten this ready far in advance of the anniversary date, and if the game isn’t quite ready to launch, they could announce it now.
The WarCraft 30th Anniversary Direct is coming next week, on November 13, 2024. So we won’t have to wait that long to find out if WarCraft 2 Remastered is true. We could see Metzen getting the clearance to ride the wave of video game remasters and remakes, to reintroduce Blizzard’s big RTS franchise. And it is interesting timing, since Blizzard’s other RTS franchise, StarCraft, was just added to PC Game Pass. Blizzard is definitely busy right now, and they may be telling us what they’re up to very soon.
