Warcraft 3's new RPG campaign is 'the best storytelling medium Warcraft has had,' says Ion Hazzikostas

Warcraft 3's brand new campaign, The Forsaken Kingdom, launched without traditional base-building — and that was a deliberate call. At BlizzCon, senior manager Brad Chan and game director Ion Hazzikostas explained why the team went RPG-first, and what it means for the franchise going forward.

Chan said the RPG format was chosen specifically to serve a street-level, character-driven story. "You're a city guard, you're not a prince, you're not a king, you're not like a super power," he explained, adding that Warcraft 3 has always been a hybrid — "the only RPG RTS game that I think has had real success." He left the door open for base-building to return: if the community comes back asking for large-scale army battles, "we'll definitely lean into all that." Hazzikostas framed it as Blizzard re-entering the RTS space carefully, with future direction shaped by community feedback. Chan also pushed back on any idea that the RTS genre is fading, name-dropping Total War, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Age of Empires, and Tempest Rising as proof the genre is alive.

The Forsaken Kingdom isn't just a standalone story — it's woven into a much larger Blizzard narrative web. Hazzikostas confirmed it bridges the gap between Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft, and carries threads that connect to WoW: Forever. The timing is deliberate: The Last Titan, the next WoW expansion, heads to Northrend — once the seat of Arthas' power — while an upcoming limited-time remix mode will revisit Wrath of the Lich King, the climax of Arthas' arc. Undead paladins are also arriving in both WoW and WoW: Forever. Blizzard is clearly leaning hard into the Arthas legacy, which has historically been its most popular Warcraft content across every format it's appeared in.

For traditional RTS fans, The Forsaken Kingdom may feel like a detour rather than a homecoming — there's still nothing new in the base-building department since Reforged launched. But Hazzikostas' framing suggests Blizzard is listening, and the next campaign's shape will depend heavily on what players say they want most.