Warcraft II patch information

For the Remastered patch information, see Warcraft II: Remastered patch information.

This article contains lore taken from Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, the manuals, and/or official bonus maps.

This page is about Warcraft II patch information for the original games: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, and Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition.

Battle.net release

This section covers the Battle.net platform release of Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition.

Patch	Release date	Highlights
2.02b	January 29, 2024	This version displays as "2.0.2" in the Battle.net desktop app while it shows as 2.02b on the game's executable file, which is the same version used for the GOG.com release. There are no official patch notes for this version.

GOG.com release

This section covers the GOG.com release of Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition.

Patch	Version	Release date	Highlights
Update 2.02 V5	78104	December 2, 2024	Updated GOG.COM DirectX wrapper
Update 2.02 V4	28733	November 13, 2024	Validated stability Verified compatibility with Windows 10 and 11 Verified Cloud Saves support
Internal Hotfix 2.02 V4		April 12, 2019	added German language support
Internal Hotfix 2.02 V3		April 3, 2019	added French language support; added a workaround for DEP issues on some machines; removed Administrator flags from Launcher;
Internal Hotfix 2.02 V2		April 1, 2019	added a potential fix for mouse issues; tweaked the video settings tool;

Battle.net Edition release

This section covers the only patch that was made after the original release of Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition in 1999. There is no known release date of this patch.

Patch	Release date	Highlights
2.02	Unknown	Improvements Eye of Kilrogg can now patrol. Fixed some Battle.net issues. Added support for Battle.net gateways. [PC Only]. The registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER is used rather than HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Battle.net Create Game Chatroom now lists resources and starting location along with map size and game speed. Major bug fixes Fixed a hack which would allow you to perform upgrades repeatedly, bringing your units to normally unattainable levels. Minor bug fixes Fixed a bug where sappers would sometimes walk up to the wall, but not detonate. Fixed a bug that caused the menu screens to become unresponsive to clicks if the computer had been left on for 24 days or more. If a player is #1 on both Ironman and Regular ladder, it now shows Ironman stats, not the Regular stats. Map-passing now sets the map's creator code to W2Be (a Map Editor file) instead of W2BN (a War2BNE file). Clicking on the portrait of an invisible unit not your own no longer centers the map on that unit. Previously, if somebody else had allied with you, you could not cast death coil on them even if you were not allied with them. [Mac only]. The application resource version no longer states beta, and copyright notices corrected.

Original releases

This section covers each patch that was released for Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and its expansion, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. There are no known release dates for most of the patches.

Patch	Release date	Highlights
1.5	Unknown	CHEATFIX for Warcraft 2 Expansion Set Macintosh only Bug fixes: CHEATFIX - In versions before v1.4 players can change unit types in memory (for example, changing a peasant to a wizard), and then cast spells using the changed unit. Network packets are now completely validated for invalid actions to prevent these occurrences. Map Descriptions are now displayed on the PUD selection screen. Fix to Movies when playing on a Mac’s second monitor.
1.4	Unknown	CHEATFIX for Warcraft 2
1.33	Unknown	Warcraft 2 Expansion Set Incompatibility problem with old saved games is fixed Expansion Heroes and the Draenor tileset are now available in the Map Editor, but are only usable in v1.33. Older versions of Warcraft II will use the "wasteland" tileset in place of the Draenor tileset, but cannot open PUDs that use the new Legendary Heroes.
1.3	Unknown	Warcraft 2 Expansion Set ("Beyond the Dark Portal")
1.23 (Mac only)	November 1, 1996	Warcraft II update (coincides with Expansion Pack release) (11/01/96) Bug Fixes Fix to "Sound cutting off" problem. Reworked CD-ROM code to be compatible with just about every single CD-ROM drive. Also works if you have more than 1 CD-ROM drive plugged in. Fixed LC 575 play-through problem. Fixed "bad char in vsprintf xx" error. Fixed zone choosing on networks with a large number of zones (more than 64 zones). Now Text-to-Speech works independantly of Speech Recognition being loaded. Now warns when you save a game on a full hard disk (would just silently fail to save in previous versions), and also warns on other disk-related errors. Fix to saved games that was causing loaded games to behave improperly Now imports scrap when application starts up (copy, start Warcraft, then paste into IP field works). New features Added Copy and Paste to all Text entry, to better enter TCP/IP addresses from IRC connections, and to give Mac Users the edge in "Cheat Code Wars" Auto-eject of the wrong CD if you forgot to put the Warcraft CD in. Puts up abort/retry file dialog if error reading from CD-ROM (the app would just quit in earlier versions). Switches faster between Warcraft and other apps. Can quit from more places in the game (in movies, from the mission objectives dialog, and from the victory/defeat screen). Allows FKEYs to work during the game (ie screen capture). Allows Custom PUDs to be stored in subfolders within the "Custom PUDs" folder.
1.22	Unknown	Fixed display of version information in chatroom.
1.21	Unknown	Fixed a memory overwrite problem related to sound effects.
1.2	Unknown	Fixed team color randomization Optimized IPX network code (improves performance over KALI) Fixed error when there are too many PUD files in a directory Added version information to chat-room.
1.1	Unknown	Exorcism spell fix Fixed system specific driver problems Included WAR2KALI and shareware KALI Attempt to randomize team colors Fixes EXORCISM SPELL - In the original version there were problems casting this spell near the top of the map. This has been fixed. COLOR RANDOMIZATION - In multi-player games, team colors are now randomized in addition to the starting locations. All players must be using v1.2 or higher for the randomization to be enabled. CHEATFIX - In versions before v1.4 players can change unit types in memory (for example changing a peasant to a wizard), and then cast spells using the changed unit. Network packets are now completely validated for invalid actions to prevent these occurrences.

Notes

• Warcraft II: The Dark Saga is not included as it did not receive additional patches due to the nature of console games for the classic consoles.