This is subjective, but I liked some of the old unit designs more than the new ones. For example Teutonic Knights and Cataphracts looked better in my opinion. The Teutonic Knight looked leaner and taller, while it now looks a bit like a walking barrel. OK, somewhere they need to carry all that armor ... but still I liked the old ones better.
Also I would have been completely fine with units having only 8 or whatever directions in which they can look. I don't need 360° all-around rendering of units. It even substracts a little from AoE2's abstract character.
What I do like is, that they added more civs.
But you don't have it anyway? I assumed the game is still actually isometric and not 3d but even if it is the camera is still fixed.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-gb/warcraft3/23896791/warcraft-...
I'll have to take another look now that this has been released.
But still, there was a 2 year stretch between 2020 and 2022 when the game was in a very crappy state and absolutely nothing was done to improve it or address the issues.
Besides, World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2, and Heroes of the Storm were all built using upgraded versions of the Warcraft 3 engine, so it’s proven to be quite capable. It’s logical to use an updated version of the engine for an updated version of the same game.
Trying who port the game to an entirely different engine would not only be much more effort, it would risk introducing subtle differences in gameplay and feel that could mean it doesn’t play quite the same any more.