A few days ago Blizzard pleasantly confused a bunch of people by suddenly patching 2000's action RPG classic Diablo 2. Now they're at it again: Warcraft 3 is going to be updated to version 1.27 on March 15th.
Despite having come out in 2002 and being basically replaced by MMO giant World of Warcraft, it seems Blizzard isn't quite forgetting about their fondly remembered RTS. Announcing it through a video posted to Youtube account called Back2Warcraft, Blizzard Classic Game's lead Robert Bridenbecker had this to say:
Thank you very much for your support over the past decade, playing Warcraft III. Over the past few months, you may have noticed we have introduced a new battle platform. It's introduced features like matchmaking [and] the ability to communicate with your friends at a level that is unparalleled to anything we have done with Warcraft III in the market before. And on top of that, we're proud to announce that on March 15, the next patch for Warcraft III will be available in the market, simultaneously with the rest of the globe.
So what's in this patch? We're not quite sure yet. There were some hints that it would include balance tweaks, something that has always been important for RTS games, but it seems Blizzard is keeping its mouth shut on the exact changes for now. When Diablo 2 was patched to 1.14a a few days ago the updates were mostly to improve the anti-cheat software and ensure the game runs better on modern hardware, so we can probably expect similar for the Warcraft 3 patch.
The patches for Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 may not be so surprising to those who follow the company closely. Last year Blizzard opened up Blizzard Classic Games who had the job of specifically caring for and ensuring that those two games, along with Starcraft, can continue to run on modern hardware.