Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom - What's Next Panel | BlizzCon 2026 transcript

See what's next for the legendary RTS with a look at Warcraft 3: Forsaken Kingdom. >> Hello again. Yeah, it is pretty surreal to be up here in the year 2026 talking not about World of Warcraft, but about Warcraft 3. [cheering and applause] >> Who would have thought? I not not on many bingo cards. Playing War II in my dorm room is where I personally fell in love with this world and and these characters, right? It's of course it goes all the way back to the 90s, but War II fleshed out this world and this franchise in a way that really set the stage for everything to follow.

The few dozen hours of gameplay in those campaigns laid the foundation for thousands and thousands of hours and decades of World of Warcraft. The world, the factions, and of course, epic characters like Arthus and Illan. But of course, there were some gaps in that narrative. World of Warcraft picked up around four inworld years after the Battle of Mount Hyel. And a lot happened in that time. If you were a Warcraft 3 player and then you logged into WoW, you'd seen Lorderon fall, of course, in that epic fashion.

But in WoW, suddenly it was the Unders City and the nearby lands were the plague lands occupied and ravaged by the scourge. Warcraft 3 Forsaken Kingdom is our chance to tell the story of how that transformation came to pass. As Holly mentioned earlier, we have a team that's been working hard on War 3 over the last few years to follow through on the commitment, on the promise we made with Reforged. Warcraft 3 has given World of Warcraft so much, and we are so excited to be in a position to give a little bit back.

Now, without further ado, let me get out of the way and let you hear all about the game. It's my pleasure to introduce the project lead on Warcraft 3 Forsaken Kingdom, Brad Chan. Hi everyone, my name is Brad and I'm a longtime viewer but a first time presenter. [applause] >> The year was 2004 and World of Warcraft had just came out. I was 15 years old at the time and I had to play this game. Why? Because I love the original Warcraft 3 campaign.

That's how I fell in love with the game. That's why I still play this game till this very day. So, I got the game and the first thing I did, the first thing, the only thing I could think about was this throne room. It was the only thing that was on my mind and I had to check it out. I had to see what happened to this place postcouraging. You know that iconic cinematic Arthus Returns, that iconic throwman. So, I immediately rolled a human character.

And I know, I know, just stay with me now. I rushed through all my early quests and then I finally got to the capital and I realized Wait a second. This doesn't look right. Was this Lorderon? No, it wasn't. It was Stormwind. Duh. Obviously. So, fast forward. I rerolled my character. I picked an undead this time. Spawn in Trisball Glaves. Okay, this looks familiar. I rush through the early quest, killed all the zombies, and then I finally see those texts, discovered ruins of Lorderon.

Cool. We made it. So, I immediately went to the throne room and I was standing in awe. My level five undead mage and I remembered, wow, Arthus was actually in this room. He actually killed his father right here. And I was like, "Wow, for the first time, I really am in the World of Warcraft." Nod. Nod. [clears throat] But after a while, I took a minute, that was done. Started wandering around and I started asking myself, "Hey, wait a second.

This this whole area looks kind of different. Like, how did this happen? Like there's a elevator here. There's an unders city. Was there a Warcraft 3 campaign that I missed? Some sort of bonus campaign? At the time, I didn't realize that there was a 4-year time skip between Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft. I think it was partially because I was 15 and my frontal lobe hadn't fully developed. I'm not sure if it still has, but that's neither here or there.

That's not the point. But the question has always stuck with me. How did the Unders City become what it is in WoW today? How did we go from ruined human kingdom to new capital of the Forsaken? Well, wait no more. Huzzah. [applause] So, the Warcraft 3 Reforged Forsaken Kingdom is a brand new campaign of a never told before story that consists of not only one but two campaigns. A prologue campaign called the Last Days of Lordon and our main campaign called the Forsaken Kingdom.

This campaign will take place between the four-year gap between Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft. This follows the infamous events of when Arthus returns to Lorderon and to when Sylvanas and her forsaken forces join the Horde. This campaign will have around 30 hours of gameplay and about 1 hour of in-game cinematics. So, it's uh it's a pretty chunky experience. But that's not the only thing we're doing. Alongside our new campaign, we are releasing patch 3.0, which adds a new definitive edition graphics for all existing Reforge users.

And did I mention that this is all available today? And also [applause and cheering] and also if you want to play it right here right now, we have a 100 PCs set up in the classic stage in Hall A. Uh so have at it. So before I get into this, I need to give a slight spoiler warning for the people who have not played Warcraft 3 uh before. I'll try to keep it as non-spoily as possible, but if you never checked out Warcraft 3 in the last 23 years, it might be a good time.

No, it might be a great time to pick it up now. So in order to really tell the story of how the unders city came to be, we really have to show what happened to the capital of Lorderon and what happened post Arthus return. In this four mission prologue, you will follow the events of the scourging of Lorderon, but from the point of view of the city guard. The prologue essentially picks up right when Arthus returns. You remember in those original cinematics, you see those city guards right there, right behind you in this little picture?

You get to play right them. You get to play as them. And does anyone remember that iconic cinematic where what are you doing my son? Succeeding you. You will literally be be right there. But you'll also revisit other locations like not only the capital but you will be the sewers pre-unders city anderhal and return to strath home post coloring. Something we found really interesting that we wanted to explore was this concept of perspective.

How did the citizens react to their prince betraying them? Look, we all know what happened from Arthus and the point of view of the scourge, but we never see it from the human's point of view. We know as a player Arthus descent to the dam, spoilers alert, um his interactions with Keltazad and him getting literally rage baited by Malganis which led to the infamous calling of Stratholm to forever sealing his fate when he picked up the rune blade Frostmore.

But to those people, they don't know. And we won't have to explore how those players react. For them, their prince is just returning. It's just another day. But we know it's not just another day. We know there's no tomorrow. We know that no human will ever inhabit this kingdom ever again. And it really is the absolute fall of a civilization. Now, can you imagine being a blacksmith on that day? He's like, "Oh, stub my finger.

Man, this day couldn't get any worse." Well, brother, it gets worse. So, after you completed this prologue, we pick up with our main campaign, the Forsaken Kingdom. Now, this isn't a linear campaign. It's more like a soft open world RPG. Does anyone remember our boy Rexar? >> Yeah. You remember? Yeah. Do you remember? You remember? You remember? >> I remember. Yeah. Let's give a shout out for for our boy Rexar here. Come on.

Let's make some noise. [applause] >> Yeah. So, this story isn't about Rexar. [laughter] the but it is based on the original Rexar campaign and what it was back when it released as a DLC in the throws and throne back in 2003 only this time instead of the founding of Duratar we're exploring the creation of the unders city what we did was double down on what make the Rexar campaign so great which was all the cool items and the leveling that you did on the way in this Forsaken Kingdom campaign we have added an improved inventory system and talent management system so you can progress the campaign, equip different items, spec out your hero with different talents, and progress however you want to play.

And for all the map makers back home, this is all done natively in our world editor. So, have at it. [applause] [cheering] [clears throat] Now, from a story perspective, there's a lot to unpack here, but you'll ultimately learn step by step how the Unders City came to be, its culture, why is the water green, and how come the scourge never retook Lorderon at the start of Classic WoW? Why were they relegated to the Plague Lands?

I mentioned earlier about the concept of losing your home forever in the prologue. Another interesting concept that we wanted to explore was what do you do when you realize that you have a second chance so to speak? What do you do with that second chance when you have the memories of your past life? And as the memories and you also have the memories being a mindless ghoul for the scourge bounded by the Lich King and you have to act against your own free will.

How do you come back from that? Can you come back from that? How do you move on? I know this is going to sound pretty cliche, but for some people, did they really have to die before they truly started living? Is it really only in death that they find life? So without getting into super spoily territory, this is in essence a story of what does one have to do when they have to start over? When they have literally lost everything and everyone?

How do they adapt to a new home? How do they adapt to a new family community? How does one rebuild? Can they? This is who the forsaken are and every forsaken has to go through this and they have to ask themselves that very question when they become awake so to speak. So in this story we really go deep in discovering what's the culture for the everyday forsaken citizen? How does the unders city run every day? How was Brill even built?

The more you play, the more you'll discover what this forsaken kingdom is all about. We have two brand new characters that we are introducing for the very first time. Garrick Bandarion, a newly risen forsaken warrior, and dark ranger Anya. We follow them closely as we see the transformation of the unders city as we know it today in Wild Classic. But we also have a few returning characters such as the banshee queen herself, Sylvanas, Putrus, Veramathus, who are primary quest givers and NPCs.

We also have the Scarlet Crusade at the height of their power with characters like Sally White Mane and Renault Moldin. >> [applause] >> And last but not least, we have appearances from the OG baddies, Death Knight, Arthus, Kelazad, Ras Frost, Whisper, Baron Ribbon there, and Oh, [applause] one more thing. You know that uh that new class in the in WoW, the Forsaken Paladin? Well, uh, you get to see his origins in this campaign and you get to see the events of the forsaken kingdom will actually carry over to WoW forever.

And so, for the first time in a long time, you can really see the connecting tissues between these two games. There was supposed to be a slide there, but we'll just keep going. And so definitive edition the big question I think most people watching are going to ask is what graphics were these made on let's just say reforge has a complicated history and early in development we asked ourselves what did we want to do in classic or in reforge and ultimately the answer was neither and So, in order to truly tell a brand new story in Warcraft 3, we really need to go beyond these two path.

So, we decided to make a completely brand new graphics mode called the definitive edition, which essentially captures the original Warcraft 3 spirit with a much higher fidelity. Not only is this campaign going to be in DE, but we've also remade over 600 units, and this will be free as a free addition to everyone who already owns Reforge. But yeah, [applause] but let me walk you through the high level of how DE was created for this campaign.

So on the screen here, this is one of the first levels we worked on, the throne room of Lordon. And yeah, I know I keep going back to that cuz it's so cool. And yeah, look at this. It's classic Warcraft 3 in all its glory, in its beloved and iconic art style. But we wanted to push the new visuals to experience this for a new era. So, long story short, we did some engine improvements, lighting, shadows, some magic, spirit fingers, and this is what it looks like.

Slide. I think I think it looks pretty pretty good. And for the multiplayer crowd, I think it's just better that I show you some comparison shots. So, this is going to be kind of like being at the optometrist for the second. I'm going to show you slide A, which is going to be classic, and slide B, which is going to be DE. So, let's start with human. So, slide A, human, classic. Slide B. Let's go. And yeah. Yeah, you can clap.

Yeah, you can clap about that. Yeah. Hell yeah. Let's go back. Let's just go back a second. Let's go back to slide A just to do a quick comparison shots. And now let's go back to B. Looks pretty good. Let's do orcs. Orcs. Classic orcs. Everyone loves orcs. And let's go bees. Pretty good. Let's go back to A and B. I guess I guess we're already halfway here, so we Let's just do the night els and undead then. Uh, so night els.

A, show me B. Show me A. Show me B. Just a little flippity floppity. And uh let's do the last but not least, Undead Lassico. And drum roll B. One more time. Let's go A and let's go B. Cool. Ultimately, it's up to you whatever you prefer. If you want to play, if you want to keep playing classic graphics, you can. If you want to keep, if you want to play this new DE mode, you can. We still support all cross functionality.

So, play whatever you want. Oh, yeah. I also mentioned, you know, how we are going to discover the origins of the Forsaken Paladin. Well, for you multiplayer folks, we are adding the Forsaken Paladin as a brand new tavern hero. This will be the first new tavern hero in over 20 years. Fun fact, the last hero that was released was the Fire Lord, Goblin Tinker, and the Alchemist back in September 20th in 2004, roughly right before when World of Warcraft came out.

It's all connected. But we also made a classic version of him. So players that want to play classic, Reforge, or Definitive Edition, you'll all be able to play him for free. Now, he might be OP. I can't confirm or deny, but if you want to see him in live action, you can check them out during the War II matches during the Classic Cup tournament that's happening today in Hall A. So you so you'll be able to see him in full force.

If you want to know more about the Forsaken Paladin, we'll be covering his kit doing a deep dive panel on the classic stage in Hall A. So before I wrap, I just want to close on a personal note. This is like I said, this is my first Blisscon. And to be completely blunt, I didn't think I was going to be here. I have worked on a lot of RTS games in my career, but to be able to work on a Blizzard RTS, she [cheering and applause] >> I um I thought that time had passed me by, but to the contrary, we just made a new campaign for Warcraft 3 in 2026.

[cheering] [applause] And when I say we, I don't mean just me and Blizzard. I mean all of you. You all did this. You all made this happen. Everyone standing sitting right here, you made this happen. Everyone in this convention, you made this happen. Everyone watching at home, you made this happen. Yes, you over there. Yes, you in the back. >> Did I make this happen? >> Not you. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

We're just telling jokes here. We're just telling jokes. We're having a good time. But just think about that for a second. Let that sentence sit in with you. How amazing, how ridiculous, how redonkulous is that 23 years later. And look, for some of you, this is this is just a game. All good. But for others like myself, it's not. It's more than that. We We all have different perspectives of what Warcraft means to us and how it's affected our lives up until this point.

But the point is it has meaning to all of us. So, I guess I guess what I'm trying to say is to be able to work on something like Warcraft 3 that means so much to so many people, it it truly is an honor and I want to acknowledge that we wouldn't be here. I would not be here standing right here in front of you without all of you. We wouldn't be doing any of this without you. So to the people still playing these games for all these years that don't want to play anything else, we got you.

Thank you so much for the support throughout the years and never giving up because we don't want to give up either. I don't want to give up either. So as long as you keep playing and keep showing up, we will too. Never surrender. Never give up. [applause and cheering] So, how about we make this memorable? How about a quick picture to celebrate the Forsaken Kingdom, the first new Warcraft 3 campaign in over 23 years, and not just to the future of Warcraft, but to this phenomenal community.

Let me get my phone out. It's down here. [laughter] >> Okay. So, when I say war, you say craft. War. >> War. >> Let's do one more. Okay. When I say war, >> you say craft. War. >> War. >> Craft. >> Hell yeah. [applause] >> Thank you everyone again. And remember, this is all available right now. If you want to know more, the Forsaken Kingdom deep dive panel will be at the classic stage later today. and be sure to see all the new graphics and the new hero during the Classic Cup.

Thank you so much. Peace.