Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft III: Reforged user review score on Metacritic is so low, it end up becoming the lowest user-rated game of all time on the review aggregate website .
For those unfamiliar with our prior coverage, Warcraft III: Reforged‘s launch was nothing short of a disaster, with complaints arising within 24 hours of the game’s launch.
Those problems included (but are not limited to), poor graphics, the promise of cinematic cut-scenes being broken (despite being shown in earlier gameplay footage), and an update to the original Warcraft 3 stripping away many online elements.
In addition, a new EULA (also applying to the original game) effectively banned many custom maps and game modes- along with making said game modes property of Blizzard. For those unfamiliar, Defense of the Ancients was a custom game mode of Warcraft 3. It eventually lead to its sequel, better known as DOTA 2 and currently owned by Valve.
At the time of writing that article (January 29th) the user score for Warcraft III: Reforged on Metacritic was 2.1 out of 563 ratings. We compared this to Fallout 76, which suffered devastating bugs and other issues during its November 2018 launch and to this day [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. At the time it had a user score of 2.7 out of 6094 ratings.
Now, two days later (January 31st), the user score for Warcraft III: Reforged on Metacritic is 0.7 out of 7818 ratings. Even in the process of writing this article, an additional 373 ratings were submitted when the above screenshot was taken. Fallout 76 remains at 2.7, with 6131 ratings.
Fallout 76 is far from the worst user rated game on Metacritic. Looking at the website as of this time of writing, the lowest user rating is of 0.8- out of all games with at least seven or more reviews. Warcraft III: Reforged currently has six.
The “honor” of the lowest score of 0.8 currently goes to NBA 2K20, criticized for missing features, poor graphics, and excessive micro-transactions. WWE 2K20 is also extremely low (0.9), due to being plagued with bugs.
FIFA 20 and especially Star Wars: Battlefront II were also criticized for their excessive micro-transactions (0.8, and 1.2 respectively), with the latter arguably starting the push back by governments around the world against lootboxes [1, 2, 3, 4].
Other notably low-rated games include Ride to Hell: Retribution (1.2, heavily bugged and unfinished), and Metal Gear: Survive (1.2), which was mediocre overall thanks to a mishmash of gameplay styles, driven further down by micro-transactions (such as paying for an extra character slot), and after Hideo Kojima was fired by Konami [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] and even banned from attending The Game Awards 2015.
One major caveat to consider is that Metacritic has no means of testing or proving whether a user has truly played or watched the medium they are reviewing or rating on their website. This may explain one reason why the website removed over 6,000 negative user reviews of Death Stranding when the game launched.
“Review bombing” has been debated in recent years, over discussions of where a legitimate user review ends and someone who has never played the game dog-pilling begins. Both Steam and the Epic Games Store have begun taking measures to prevent it at the publisher’s or developer’s request.
We have seen review bombing occur in cases such as when Metro Exodus announced they would be exclusive to the latter and would no longer be coming to Steam, and when Taiwanese horror game Devotion was accused of hiding hidden messages in the game mocking Chinese President Xi Jinping.
With so many poor user reviews in such a short time, will Blizzard Entertainment claim the review bombing was unjust? Will Metacritic remove any of the reviews?
What do you think? Sound off in the comments below!
Blizzard were probably hoping for a better 2020 after how 2019 went for them. Blizzard Entertainment had been denounced by many gamers over their suspension of pro-Hearthstone player Blitzchung for his support of the Hong Kong protests, firing the casters, and their overall handing of the entire debacle [1, 2, 3]. Even US Senators wrote to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, condemning the decision.
Image: Metacritic, Warcraft 3 (via WoWHead)
