All this does is give advantages to certain players (much like editing hotkeys)
Lol, it's not giving advantages to certain players
It's just updating the game. Without it you won't have these players, cause they will prefer to play some more advanced games like... well... Age of Empires 1 DE?!
In my opinion Warcraft 2 desperately needs any improvements and these should be already implemented 10 years ago if you wanted to have new players here.
Something perfect would be a Remastered version same way Starcraft 1 was remastered (with HD sprites, zoom, custom hotkeys etc.) or even new engine created from scratch, but I know all of that are just a dreams of a fool. Nowadays Blizzard cares about $$ only so there will never be official remaster for War2 or War1. Also they failed with remastering War3 so maybe that's better this way
Danny already mentioned Wargus and that project was an attempt in rewriting Warcraft 2 to make it a more modern game. I was modding Wargus years ago and unfortunately this engine is clunky, bugged and it feels like there is something wrong with this engine itself.
Also there is "Chronicles of the Second War" project but this one is a huge disappointment for me, because it's more Warcraft 3 than 2 but their audience loves it.
Anyway it's awesome that there are still people here who want to work on 26 years old War2 source code to make any improvements. You are amazing guys