[...] How is it anything but trolling not to get him to use either 1.26 or 1.32? [...]
His question is a bit complicated, because he says he just wants a great campaign experience without random bugs, nor crazy map editing tools. The problem is, I can not guarantee that my suggestions are bug-free. Plus, he will have to do a bit of handiwork himself. But imho it is worth the (small) effort and "risks".
To answer the base question: use v1.26a.
To update the video rendering:
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crosire/d3d8to9 (mandatory for reshade - minor framerate drop)
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crosire/reshade
To update the audio rendering (note: useless for WC3 as of this writing)
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IndirectSound - 3D Audio in Older Games
To play updated Blizzard campaigns:
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Warcraft III: All In One
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The Scourge of Lordaeron (loktar's edit) (untested with 1.26a)
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Path of the Damned (loktar's edit) (untested with 1.26a)
To play an updated version of the demo version of the game:
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Exodus of the Horde (Original Voice Over)
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Exodus of the Horde (loktar's edit) (untested with 1.26a)
For Widescreen and *lots* more:
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WFE - Warcraft Feature Extender
(makes RenderEdge Widescreen Patch obsolete, as well as ManaBars.mixtape, Camera Hack.mixtape, and GameDll_fix_mapsize_limit.mix (v6))
After a FMV has been played the screen will go black. Exit and restart the game to McGyver this.
Use v2.19 if you want to remove (parts of) the interface. And believe me, you want to try this out despite it being experimental and making the portraits of the cinematics glitchy, because it is imho a major new way to play the game.
With WC3 versions <=1.28.5, widescreen is stretched. But fortunately, tweaking some mdx files alone can already fix (or significantly improve) the cursors, the logos, the loading screens, the endscreen, the loadbar, the multiplayer screens, the scorescreens. Extra fixes / improvements can very certainly be achieved by editing the fdf files, but in that case one must run the game with an executable that allows to load more modified files than allowlocalfiles does. This is (for example) how the subtitles of the FMVs can be fixed.
The FMV can be made to be true widescreen by editing the registry, and imho can be greatly improved on modern OSes by bypassing blizzard.ax entirely, thanks to the K-Lite codec Pack Mega (by using the LAV splitter along with FFDShow for the video rendering)
I still recommend using the animated trees from this thread:
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Warcraft 3 HQ
(do not forget to allow local files)
There exist several HD mods on ModDB, but I am not using any of them.
The best thing would imho be to tear apart all of them, and then cherrypick what you like best, to create your own version of the game. Likewise, I would suggest tearing apart more recent versions of WC3, and see if some assets are worth including in your own private modded version of the game.