After the launch of the game Warcraft 3 Reforged, it was met with an underwhelming comeback for the featured RTS title. Still, fans hoped against all the odds that it would not be the case in the competitive scene. They were wrong.
What is all the noise about
The first major tournament for the game Reforged post-launch is over, and disconnects plagued it on the regular that forced matches to be done once again. This issue only got worse as the tournament went on, a potential upset win during the quarter-finals against one of the world's best Warcraft 3 players was denied TWICE thanks to the desync bugs. Talk about a major let down.
Who was affected the most
Talking about the desync bugs, here are players that were affected the most. Swedish RTS gamer Marcus "ThorZain" Eklöf with his best-of-three against fan-favorite South Korean Jang "Moon" Jae-ho. Moon is well known in the community that he is one of the top Warcraft 3 players and, at some point, the most well-paid esports player in the world from signing a $500,000 contract way back in the early days of esports.
What happened
As the two players were tied in the quarter-finals 1-1, there was a potential win for ThorZain. The victory was nigh as ThorZain was clearly in the lead against Moon with an expansion ahead, launching an attack on Moon's left flank with 20 supply more. Along with a clear upgrade advantage, ThorZain was indeed crushing Moon's army slowly but surely. Alas, a desync bug happened.
The round wasn't ultimately going to end immediately; however, Moon did a great job of holding off ThorZains army, but he was bleeding much more profusely than ThorZain in terms of that fight.
Thus the restart happened, another round that ThorZain was in the clear lead with literally 1000+ gold in the bank, upgrades, and better army composition for the end game preparation. Surprise surprise! He dropped out again. If this isn't something that has to be one of the most frustrating things to happen as a player and as a viewer of esports, you tell us.
Tournament Rules
Tournament rules dictate that the match has to be restarted, rather than continued from a replay. Blizzard has done this with their Overwatch League before but not for this Reforged tournament, no.
The aftermath
To fix the desync issues, they reverted to the old graphics of Warcraft 3 to continue the tournament, and this pretty much settled the matter. Sadly, for ThorZain, the outcome was taking a giant L as Moon learned from the two previous games, and refusing to surrender wiped the floor clean. Moon went on to finish and take the prize of champion for the tournament. Still, many fans of Thorzain, as well as other esports teams, pledged money to commemorate ThorZain's insane performance of almost beating the now champion of the first Warcraft 3 Reforged Tournament.
If you feel that this is something that has to be addressed by the gaming giant, Blizzard, you are not alone. What you can do though, is to go to the GoFundMe page if you think ThorZain deserves more than what he got.
