Warcraft 2: Remastered appears to be coming

According to an update to Blizzard's content delivery network

Blizzard Entertainment / Microsoft

It looks like Blizzard is gearing up for an announcement of Warcraft 2: Remastered in the near future. According to BlizzTrack, which monitors updates to the Battle.net platform, the studio is preparing for an internal alpha test of the game. WoWHead reported that the backend update contained background images and logos for the product’s depiction on the platform.

Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness was originally published in 1995 and was acclaimed by critics and users alike as one of the best RTS games ever made at the time, becoming the basis for 1998’s StarCraft and greatly enhancing Blizzard’s reputation as masters of the genre.

Aside from a campaign and multiplayer, the game notably featured a map editor that allows users to create custom scenarios – a culture that later gave rise to flourishing custom game scenes in StarCraft and Warcraft 3, which ultimately spawned the MOBA genre.

Some fans aren’t enthusiastic about the potential announcement of Warcraft 2: Remastered, though, remembering the absolutely disastrous launch of Warcraft 3: Reforged in 2020. The modernized take on Warcraft 3 was fraught with technical issues, lacked features present in the original game, and made some changes that players heavily disagreed with. Worst of all, many of these issues persist to this day and have never been fixed.

On the brighter side stands the treatment StarCraft got with StarCraft: Remastered in 2017. It kept the original’s gameplay and features faithfully intact, while providing modernized graphics and quality-of-life improvements to make the title more accessible on today’s systems.

In case you’ve missed the latest official news around Blizzard’s RTS games, StarCraft and StarCraft 2 are now on Xbox Game Pass. 

We’ll keep you posted on that potential confirmation of Warcraft 2: Remastered.