What just happened? Blizzard’s zeal for remastering its classic games seems to have led to an early orc attack. Ahead of next week’s 30th anniversary Warcraft Direct event, some leaked files point to a remastered version of the 1995 RTS Warcraft II being in the works.

The leak was the first mottled by the folks at WoWhead who spotted a new entry “Warcraft II: Remastered Internal Alpha” pop up on Blizzard servers. Along with the name came a fresh logo and a piece of key art showing the naval warfare that was a big focus of the sequel’s gameplay.

Steven, a frequent leaker of Blizzard-related information, also managed to get hold of the files and shared them on X, setting off a flurry of hype. The leaked footage shows Anduin Lothar commanding ships against a force of orcs, their armor straight out of the classic Warcraft 2 look – spikes, fangs and all. It also shared several logos with that unmistakable modern Blizzard flair.

Warcraft II Remastered!!! 😀 pic.twitter.com/txO5VyL3nS

– Steven (@Steven_SRB) November 5, 2024

However, along with all this hype are concerns. After the mishandling of Warcraft 3: Reforged in 2020, many are understandably wary of trusting Blizzard with another remaster.

Reforged infamously released missing features from the original game and made the older version unplayable online, angering a large portion of the fanbase. While some post-release updates helped, the remaster never fully addressed all the negative feedback. Many players on Reddit are calling for Blizzard to fix those bugs before releasing new remasters.

However, there are glimmers of hope that Blizzard could have learned from Reforged’s failures. The developers could have a real redemption arc planned to revisit Reforged in the remaster it deserved to be.

If that’s the case, perhaps revealing a cleaned-up Warcraft 3 along with a respectful Warcraft 2 remaster would go a long way toward regaining trust.

Of course, this is all just speculation at this point, and Blizzard has yet to confirm anything. But the leak has been backed up by another credible Warcraft source, Marlamin.

I think Blizzard forgot they have the ability to encrypt catalog entries for unannounced games, whoopsies.

– Marlamin (@Marlamin) November 5, 2024

Whatever the case, RTS fans will be keeping a close eye on next week’s anniversary event.