Nearly a year after its announcement at BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard is ready to host a beta for Warcraft III: Reforged. A remaster of its seminal 2002 RTS classic, Reforged is a complete visual overhaul and rebalancing of a game that many fans are still playing to this day. This upcoming beta will be the first time anyone not at BlizzCon has a chance to give it a go. In typical Blizzard fashion, invites are now being sent out for betas that will begin this week.
If you happened to have pre-purchased the "Spoils of War" edition for Reforged, you should be receiving an email within the next few days with instructions on how to participate in this weeks beta. Additional invites for friends will be handed out in waves before anyone that pre-purchased the standard edition of Reforged gets theirs. It's a long process, but Blizzard fans should be used to it.
The beta period will feature 1v1 and 2v2 matchmaking. Players will be limited to playing as Humans and Orcs during this first period. Night Elfs and Undead will come in updates as the beta progresses over the following month. It seems as if Blizzard will be holding this right until the game launches.
While Reforged may feel like an unnecessary update, the beauty of Blizzard's recent remaster efforts is how they play with past versions. StarCraft: Remastered released and provided fans a way of playing the game in HD, but it kept compatibility with the old PC version a primary feature. That, alone, is totally unheard of for most games, let alone Triple-A ones.
That Reforged isn't supplanting the original when it comes to playability is excellent. All of the balance changes will be coming to the old game and cross-version compatibility will be in place for multiplayer battles. While this beta is unlikely to feature any of that functionality, at least fans of the old version won't be left out in the cold.
There's still no firm release date for Warcraft III: Reforged, but Blizzard maintains that it is on track for 2019. With only a few short months left, we're likely weeks away from seeing it released.
Source: Blizzard