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Games Entertainment

First Warcraft 3 Reviews Trickle In 363

Posted by michael from the i'd-rather-be-sailing dept.
Mortin writes "Several reviews of Warcraft 3, set to be released on July 3, are up at Icrontic, Tweakers.com.au, and of course IGN. Looks like Blizzard has yet another killer game on their hands."
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First Warcraft 3 Reviews Trickle In More

First Warcraft 3 Reviews Trickle In

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  • July 3? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:22PM (#3796873) Homepage Journal
    Are you sure it's supposed to be released on July 3? I mean everyone I know has it already.

    • Re: July 3? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Andorion ( 526481 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:25PM (#3796882)
      Even so - people will buy it so they can play on the official battle.net network.

      -Berj
      • I have a copy, but I also have had a copy reserved for me. The copy was useful for seeing if my old hardware (which was really good 3 years ago!) could handle it... it can... at the low settings. :-) IN any case, you're right, I like blizzard's games. I loved warcraft 2, starcraft, and now wc3. They have fun with their games, which I like. So I want to see them get compensated for their good work. :-)

  • Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:28PM (#3796890)
    The RTS genre is one of those that i found interesting at first, but after playing six to eight quite similar games, i've kind of lost interest in the genre. I had quite a lot of fun with Starcraft and Myth 2 for a short while, but mostly only when i could find someone i knew to play with, like at a LAN party or something. Eventually, i got kind of tired of these. I don't really play these games anymore.

    Give me one reason why i should care about WarCraft 3, given that? Is there any reason that this is different or would catch my attention? I'm reading the reviews. Nothing is particularly catching my eye.

    If no one can come up with a good answer to this question, i think i'm just going to go back to bed, pretend i'm boycotting Blizzard because of their unethical attempts to use barratry to crush people legally reverse-engineering their games' communication protocols, and eagerly await this fall, when the mac release of Neverwinter Nights is out, and i will also be able to play Star Wars Galaxies on my girlfriend's PC :)

    -- super ugly ultraman

    • Re:Yawn (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jack9 ( 11421 )
      The one reason you should care about Warcraft3 is that it's a long-awaited cultural event. Everyone who's anyone on the internet knows about it and for some time people will have an opinion about it. That's not saying YOU should or that it's even a GOOD THING (tm) but it's something you should know. It's coming out July 3rd, a lot of internet savvy people care. Sleeping through this 'event' will be easy and probably wise. Oh yeah, Blizzard is a game company who has an unblemished track record in game varied popular game titles (debateable...Blackthorne?).
      There is no similar company. This is yet another opportunity to prove themselves or fail.

  • My review. (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Shadows ( 255371 ) <thelureofshadows ... minus physicist> on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:30PM (#3796900) Homepage
    I've been playing the Beta since Spring. It's wonderful. I've got the Special Edition on order from EB. I've got it ordered for one day delivery. I've got.... I've got no life do I?

  • Warcraft 3 Owns! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Grieveq ( 589084 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:33PM (#3796909)
    Having played for a couple weeks now I must say I am pretty damned impressed with what Blizzard has done with the game. It's not revolutionary or anything like that, but the single player campaign is just pure fun. The storyline is great, the battles are great (Though mostly easy up until the last one), and the cinematics are beautiful. The new hero systems is pretty neat as well, it adds a completely new dimension to the genre. I wasn't impressed with the beta multiplayer on battle.net so I'm looking forward to getting a real copy and seeing how it performs. Now the wait begins for Worlds of Warcraft...
    • Ah, the World of Warcraft... I saw that at E3 this year, seems to me like Diablo in 3D with Warcraft characters.
      • the single player campaign [..] is just pure fun [and the] battles are great (Though mostly easy up until the last one)

      They're not just easy, they're insultingly so. I lost one scenario in the entire four race single player campaign, and that's because I got bored and peon rushed an enemy base in sheer frustration at how trivial it was to defeat the laughably incomptent and predictable computer opponents. Warcraft III single player is fun in the same way that flicking snot at the back of a crippled kid's head is fun.

      As for the heroes adding a whole new dimension to the genre, that's true enough, but it's a sucky dimension. Now instead of peon or grunt rushing, you have to (and I mean have to) Hero Rush around the map. Whoever scoops the most levels has pretty much got the game won. Sorry, but I prefer actual strategy in my RTS.

  • some (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zdzichu ( 100333 )
    "The cut scenes are movie quality"

    well, right. Blizzard always made best cutscenes. Those in W3 are compressed with DivX, to be more like real movies ;).

    Warcraft is really good game. And the additional scenes after credits - simply rocks. Just to say - there are many short scences, one of them is Warcraft2 intro redone in War3 engine.

    The game was cool, alhrough my mouse wheel didn't worked. Running under wine and winex was unsuccesfull - big minus.

  • Didn't care for the Beta (Score:4, Informative)

    by Deltan ( 217782 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:38PM (#3796931)
    I was so not impressed with the Beta. Warcraft 2 came out in 1995. So basically they've had 7 years to come up with a third installment worthy of its predecessor. Instead they squander those 7 years, and at the last minute spit out what is basically Warcraft 2 with some new graphics and a couple new races. Most disappointing, there was huge potential for something so much more. GG Blizzard.

    The all time best Real Time Strategy game is and continues to be Total Annihilation. Better luck next time Blizzard.

    I also assume that this week we like Blizzard and next week we're back to hating them for wheeling the DMCA on Bnetd?

    • Re:Didn't care for the Beta (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Instead they squander those 7 years, and at the last minute spit out what is basically Warcraft 2 with some new graphics and a couple new races.

      Umm, except they spent a great deal of that time working on Starcraft, a complicated game that is by some considerations the best RTS ever in terms of both depth of gameplay and complexity&game integration of plot and story...

      Also, they during that seven years managed to completely develop, design, and release both Diablo and Diablo 2, two incredibly innovative networkable games that blended and elevated the RPG and Adventure genres.. and while not quite to the almost unheard-of levels of starcraft, these games both had very well-developed game universes & storylines.. and Diablo 2 was being worked on for some of its development concurrently with WC3, wasn't it?

      Yeah, gee, that's just nothing. They just plain wasted 7 years, didn't they?? What were they doing for all that time?? Just sitting on their asses and getting drunk??
      Umm, no. Blizzard could maybe have done more to rework the basic ideas and assumptions of the RTS with WC3, but it is definitely a significant step forward even if it is not revolutionary. They can experiment some later, for now they just seem to be focusing on making a new, exciting, different, interesting, fun game. I mean, come on. How many game companies can you think of that FOUR TIMES since 1995 have created games with as much stature and popularity as starcraft, broodwars, and diablo 1&2?
    • No the all time best Real Time Strategy game continues to be starcraft.
    • I was a big fan of Total Annihilation, but I finally tried out Empire Earth and was pretty impressed. The first couple games against the computer can last a LONG LONG time. Once you learn some strategy it's not so bad.

      The very first time we played it, it was two of us vs. one computer and it was a 13 hour game. We sucked!

  • Fun? Yes. Blizzard's best? Far from it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by c-town ( 571657 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:55PM (#3796987)
    The evidence is in the players. All the rts hardcore players have played in the beta and have quit. Why? Cause the game lacks a lot of depth due to a lot of built in "features". Like for instance, creeps. The idea of AI controlled units around the map for you to attack and guard things such as mines and shops might sound good. However, creeps has an adverse side affect. It gives experience to your heros and gives you gold (Heros are another new concept, which is a big buff unit that can gain experience, level and have very powerful abilities and spells) . How is that an adverse side affect you ask? Well, it turns out, early on in the game, you *HAVE* to go creep hunting to give your hero that experience edge. Heros have the ability to turn the tides of the battle and a level 1 hero is much weaker than a level 3 hero. Right now, I rarely engage combat with the opponent until my hero is at least level 3. After creep hunting for a couple hundred games, it gets mundane and boring. Some people brush this off as "another resource" to get. However, this resource takes the first 10 min of the game. Before in previous RTS games, the focus of resource gathering was maybe the first 1-2 min of the game. Another big flaw many players see is upkeep. Upkeep is another new concept by Blizzard which cuts down the amount of gold a peon will bring out of the mine. At 30 units, you enter low upkeep which reduces gold to 7 and at 70 units, you enter high upkeep which reduces gold to 4. Blizzard implemented this because they didnt want 200 zerglings running around on the map. However, many players despise this limit saying low upkeep is annoying and they never really enter into high upkeep, which defeats the purpose. This also affects expanding because the extra peons cuts into your upkeep. Oh, that reminds me, 5 peons *MAX* per mine. These are two of the most controversial ideas that Blizzard has brought in. There are others as well. Many players complain that these limitations limits the depth of the game. IMHO, the game is fun and interesting. The 3D is done pretty well. However, it's not a Starcraft. Starcraft has depth and it's a very strategic game. It captivates players even today (I think it's been out for 4 years?). Will I buy War3? Yes. Will I be playing it after 6-12 months? Prolly not.
    • If you want to play Starcraft, Blizzard has announced no plans to discontinue support for it on Battle.net. You should be able to continue playing it indefinitely.

      Tim
    • The reason I like the 5 peon per mine limit is that it forces everyone to expand early so they can get in more cash flow. War3 isn't the first with this. Empire Earth did the same thing and to me it just seems natural now. You have to explore in a RTS anyway... Why not do it with your hero and a few troops and open the way for a 2nd and 3rd base at the same time?

      I don't know... Maybe my brain has been warped by the hundreds and hundreds of hours I've played War2, C&C, AOE, EE and other games. I just think they are getting better.
      • But the game penzlizes you for expanding through upkeep. Everytime you expand, it's another 5 towards your upkeep.
        • Okay, sure. But that just makes it a tradeoff between how much cash flow you want and how much of an army you want. What I tried a couple times against a buddy was to explode at the start and make 8 bases as soon as I can. Well, not bases just gold collection points. I kept my a small army at my main base and used town recall scrolls to jump to any base that was in trouble. After a little while it became a bit too much trouble to defend all of them but by that time I'd sucked most of the gold away anyway. So that when I had to build a larger army to offset my opponent I had more cash to do it with.

          Plus, warping in with an elite army is pretty fun. :)

          I think 'low upkeep' ends at 70 food? That's still a pretty good force. 25 on gold at 5 bases. 5 more on wood maybe? That leaves an army of 40. That's not 40 units because the better units use more than one food, but it's still a sizable force.

  • Can We Get Another Game Please? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HomerJ ( 11142 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @05:56PM (#3796991)
    I'm going to put this game in the same catagory as Doom 3, and say that this is what's wrong with the American game industry.

    There is too much convergant thinking in PC games anymore. War Craft 3, and Doom 3 being prime examples. Neither game sets off to be a good game in their own right. They want to be the perfect example of what a game in their genre would be. Neither Id nor Blizzard look at a game anymore and go "what would be good for this game?" they go "what would be good for a RTS or FPS?" Instead of trying to give the player a totally new experience, and make it something worth my time to play, I just get new polish on the same games that have been released for years. Most of the "improvements" in WC3 weren't because it would make it a better experience in the world of Warcraft, it's what would make it a more "perfect" RTS. The same can be said for Doom 3, which is going toward what a "perfect" FPS should be. It seems like the companies just seem to say "let's make a RTS, do what would be a perfect RTS, then just theme it with whatever franchise we should have a sequel to. Id being the same way, just so happens the Doom was the next franchise to get an update to approach that "perfect" FPS.

    Is it really that hard anymore to actually try to create a game, and then design an interface to the game that would be best fitted to the experience you wanted to gamer to have? Show me something new before I put down $60 for a game. Or has the US gaming market have become so braindead that if a game doesn't fit perfectly into a given genre, it's "too hard and confusing". Excuse me if I don't want the same game 50 times, and have to have my hand held though a game. Give me something new, and I'll go put $60 to get a copy.

    • Actually... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Balinares ( 316703 )
      Actually, some companies did try originality. Let's take, say, Looking Glass [ttlg.com]. Those guys made *EXCELLENT* games. Thief [thief-thecircle.com] revolutionized the FPS concept. Thief 2 is one of my fav games ever, and one of the very few remotely recent games that I consider worth my time.

      Next thing you know, Looking Glass bites the dust.

      Why?

      My idea is that if you're reaching for the masses (and if you want to make money with a $50 game, you'd better reach for the masses), you'll have to aim for the masses' Lowest Common Denominator. Kind of like McD, if you want: they sell cheap crap that is successful worldwide because it's the lowest common denominator of food. Maybe it goes the same for games, and the suits, whose priority is to make the most money out of the game, will only approve games with the most basic gameplay...

      Sad, indeed. Good thing there are mods [ttlg.com]...
    • There is too much convergant thinking in PC games anymore.

      The "clone and sequel" industry is another term for it. Same thing that is happening in Hollywood. Coincidence? :)

      Or has the US gaming

      industry

      become so braindead that if a game doesn't fit perfectly into a given genre, it's "too hard and confusing".

      Bingo. Tell him what he's won, Bob.

      The game "industry," in their money-soaked, stumbling mad rush to become an interactive Hollywood has no tolerance for risk, and no tolerance for moderate success. Creativity is discouraged. Talent is fired. Only the "proven" get funded. It's a numbers industry, not a creative industry, and that is why it fails.

      The game media is the other half of the problem, as they have no tolerance for a moderate budget. Warcraft 3 was every game journalists favorite as soon as the first concept sketches were released (I know this because I read the fawning, fanboy-esque 18-page "previews" in PCGamer, complete with cover feature), because they knew Blizzard would throw umpty million dollars at it.

      Meanwhile, Warcraft 3 will lose to the Sims by a minimum of four million units, and they still don't get it. There are people making $70,000 a year at these companies that cannot explain why the Sims succeeded, but they can ALWAYS explain why THIS new idea WON'T sell.

      Sigh. Another $10 million yawn.
    • Here it is, I was waiting for the obligatory "Why aren't games these days more original?" post.

      As another poster mentioned, Looking Glass Studios made some incredibly original games (he forgot my personal favorite that even beats out Thief, System Shock 2) and they went out of business.

      Then how about Ion Storm? Daikatana was meant to be original, and it bombed, which just shows how hard it really is to be original and still make a good game. On the other hand, Deus Ex (the same team that's now in charge of the Looking Glass Thief franchise) was very original and clever and did extremely well.

      Neverwinter Nights is redefining what an RPG on the computer can be.

      And then there's Black and White.

      And the Sims.

      And Grand Theft Auto 3.

      And probably a whole host of others that I've forgotten. Your choice of Doom 3 is a poor one, because that game is more of a proof of concept for the engine, which will then be used to make the real games by others. This was done with the Q3 engine and the UT engine and will be done once again.

      There is plenty of innovation happening in the gaming industry. You are just choosing to ignore it.
  • Beat single player in 2 days >:) It plays like a movie... If you had a good movie that lasted 48 hours, it'd be praised :)

    Thing is it lasts multiplayer too, bad ass game... Nothing new, just more of the same, refined better :)

    I write occasional articles in warcraftstrategy.com under the nick crazy jim.

    One of the best parts of battlenet games is that you meet alot of friends on it. I have a clan, so people chill in our channel, and talk about shit and hang. Its a whole lot of fun and even more so if you get involved with the communities.

    The game plays like a new game of chess, there is no way of knowing what will win 100%, and if you know what wins 100%, then we evolve the game by letting Blizzard know about it.

    Blizzard is a great company that respects its players highly. I submitted a ton of bug reports in the beta, and got a free copy of the game because I finished in the top 16 :) Blizzard listens to player suggestions, and changes based on them. I know like several dozen changes in the beta happened on stuff I was suggesting. Might not have been direct, but I felt like I was getting some respect in it.

    I don't know about Vivendi, but I do know all Blizzard's titles have quality behind them. If you don't know what to buy in the store, a Blizzard title isn't gonna suck.

  • This Game Has Been Avail For Three Weeks (Score:5, Informative)

    by puppetman ( 131489 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:02PM (#3797013) Homepage
    if you know where to look. I've uninstalled it, and tossed the disk. Reasons are,

    1) It won't play smoothly on a P3 500 laptop (with 384 meg of RAM and an ATI Rage Mobility). Blizzard usually tries to get the low-end of the market. Not any longer

    2) In the past, Blizzards games were evolutionary (but not revolutionary). This one is not even that. It's just another Real Time Strategy game, but with heros. Warlords Battlecry 2 [warlordsbattlecry2.com] did the same thing, and I bet there are others.

    3) This thing is selling for $90 Canadian (about $60 US) even in the "no one beats our prices" electonics stores.

    Screw it. If this game had come out 5 years ago, maybe. But Starcraft is better, and so is Age of Empires 2.

    • Self-contradictory. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @09:23PM (#3797939) Homepage
      "1) It won't play smoothly on a P3 500 laptop (with 384 meg of RAM and an ATI Rage Mobility). Blizzard usually tries to get the low-end of the market. Not any longer"

      On my A750s with TNT1s, which are "super-duper" for 3 years ago, the play is acceptable like Starcraft on a P120. It's slower than top-of-the-line, but very playable. If you want to play a game released in 2002, don't have a machine from pre-1999. Is that hard to accept? If so, try console gaming. They can have much larger windows of games (release + n years) than an arbitrary computer configuration.

      Also, a Rage mobility isn't exactly a great 3D card to be using in a 3D game.

      "Screw it. If this game had come out 5 years ago, maybe. But Starcraft is better, and so is Age of Empires 2."

      If it had come out 5 years ago, it wouldn't be Warcraft 3. The Voodoo2s of the time (very high-end for 1997) can't do it acceptably. Starcraft and AOE2 are better for you because you have an old 2D-capable system. Essentially what you're saying (in your own words) is that you wanted something that worked on your old computer, and you're disapointed when it doesn't work like a game released 4 years ago (Starcraft). Again, I have to say, if you want to play games for computers released this year, own a computer with hardware from a maximum of 3 years ago. Try a desktop P3 with a GeForce 2 MX 400, I'm sure it'll do it more than acceptably.

      Or move to console gaming. You sound like you'd enjoy that a lot more.
      • The laptop is only 2 years old. That was the best graphics card you could get at the time. It's only been the last six months or so that the decent cards for laptops have come out. But my point was that Blizzard always made sure the game ran on the lower-end computers. Games for the unwashed masses, so to spead. Warcraft to ran on my 486. Starcraft on a P2 300. They sold alot more games that way (and they had that cool spawn-an-install feature).

        It plays fine on my Athalon 1.2 gig desktop, but I wanted something to play in the office, against the people I work with. We all have laptops, all Dell Inspiron 7500's.

        But my biggest complaint is that the game just isn't that great. I loved Warcraft 2, and Starcraft, and Diablo (never played Diablo 2). Adding a small RPG element doesn't make it a must-have game. A friend in the gaming industry who attends E3 every year said that aside from the cut-scenes, Warcraft 3 excited no one.

        And I hate console gaming. Haven't owned one since the Intellivision, and I doubt I ever will.
        • A P2 300 was not low-end when Starcraft came out :p It plays nicely on 166 Mhz P1s (although non-MMX ones aren't really up to it).

          If you want to play games at the office, why not just have people bring in computers? I mean, you can't sit down and have a big network game on a short 30 minute lunch break. Not the ones I play, anyways.

          I like the story element and RPG-ishness introduced in War3. It's great for the single player game. I'm less likely to create thousands of units and rushrushrust, as I am to create a small fighting force which I train and nurture to the highest level. It's not quite Myth2 in terms of battle tactics and the like, but it's a nice change from the usual "build everything, throw them at each other" Blizzard RTS :)
    • If this game had come out 5 years ago, it probably would have been starcraft with orcs (assuming they had been working on it for the same amount of time). Is that really what you want?
    • 3) This thing is selling for $90 Canadian (about $60 US) even in the "no one beats our prices" electonics stores.

      Agreed! 90$ canadian for a computer video game is outrageous! Thats even more expensive than many console games.

      Unfortunately, since I am such blizzard fan, I will undoubtably fork over the 100$ it will cost me (including 15% quebec tax) to buy the game. However I must say that raising the price of a game 20-30$ higher than normal is in no way going to PREVENT piracy.
      • I used to be a huge blizzard fan, but the game market is so much bigger now, and there are more great games.

        I plunked $90 for Neverwinter Nights, no questions asked. NWN for RPG, Tribes 2 for FPS, and Starcraft/AoE 2 for RTS.

        I'm all out of three-letter acronyms.
    • 1) It won't play smoothly on a P3 500 laptop (with 384 meg of RAM and an ATI Rage Mobility). Blizzard usually tries to get the low-end of the market. Not any longer
      If anyone else besides me is wondering if Warcraft III will work with their video card, Blizzard has provided a video card tester [blizzard.com].

  • Have Your Cake and Eat it too. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fapestniegd ( 34586 ) <james AT jameswhite DOT org> on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:02PM (#3797015) Homepage
    These posts (posts involving lawsuits against hackers) are always riddled with persons who want you to boycott these products, be they games, CDs or Movies. Personally I like games, CDs and Movies. However I don't like the tactics being employed by The RIAA, MPAA, or Vivendi any more than the next slashdotter. What I propose is not a boycott, but to give an equal or greater amount to the EFF Whenever you purchase one of these items. That way Every dollar you contribute to Evil is equally matched by one for Good. So At least your not contributing to the net evil.

    Just my $.02

  • War III is not a strategy, it's a clickfest (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EvilBastard ( 77954 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:05PM (#3797033) Homepage
    All they did (showing some of that wonderful Blizzard Creativity) was take the main character from Diablo, and put it in the middle of Warcraft. The trouble is, the heros are so essential to the game, and so hideously overpowered the rest of the characters are reduced to sideshows.

    Warcraft III is designed to be a quick and dirty game where the fights are over in 30 minutes or less. Gone is any hope of a epic back-and-forth fight, it's a lets get the game finished as quick as possible.

    The first person to lose their hero has lost the game in 90% of the cases, because their hero is out of the game for 2 minutes, while the other hero is running around levelling up and getting more items.

    In order to get the game over as quick as possible, the game is exaggerated - if you lose, you come into the next fight at a disadvantage. If you win, you are more likely to win the next time, because the game is adjusting the hero's strengths. Add to that the Upkeep rules and the game is saying "You will play me this way or not at all - I will not let you deviate from the designers vision"

    Strategy games should not do this - It's like playing a game of chess where when you capture the oponents pieces you get to put them on your side. Fun ? Maybe once or twice for the low-attention span crowd, but it's not strategy.

    Personally, I'd look to a company that doesn't have a history of screwing over the open source community, or trying to steal your personal details from your system registry - say Creative Assembly, who will be releasing the latest Total War game in the near future - Medieval Total War [totalwar.com] which is more a computerised table top wargame then anything else.
    • Not to flame, but what you say is only true when you're a newbie. As you're skills progress you'll discover that the game has quite a bit more depth than you seem to think it does. And, while heroes are important (one might go as far as to say essential since no good strategy will function without one), they are definately not so dominating as your skills progress.

      Strategy games should not do this - It's like playing a game of chess where when you capture the oponents pieces you get to put them on your side. Fun ? Maybe once or twice for the low-attention span crowd, but it's not strategy.

      If that doesn't involve strategy, then I know a bunch of dissapointed shougi players.

      As for upkeep, I'd argue that it promotes strategy. Conisder Starcraft, because there was a high unit cap and no upkeep, there was really no question about what you would do. You would keep building units constantly until you either won the game or hit the unit cap. There wasn't any "strategy" that involved building fewer units.

      The addition of upkeep rectifies this. It gives players a choice. They can choose to go into high upkeep and use more units, or they can choose to stay in lower upkeep and use fewer units. By creating a choice where there was none, upkeep adds a level of strategy depth that Starcraft did not have.
    • Mind you, I am still very new to WC3. I have barely played the thing as much as some players. (300 hours, cripes!?)

      However, I have played at least 20 games of melee combat (just me versus a computer) on a variety of different maps. I lose every single time. Why? Because no matter what I do, the computer is always there first with more units and a souped up hero that trounces anything I can build. The comp. players are don't have this nuisance of having to click around to build things like we do. But given WC3's interface, it's hard to click around different structures like a hyper 10 year old.

      The end result is that their army is always at least twice the size of my army. And when they attack, and I fight back, they retreat with half their units intact and none of mine. Then they come back in with double the size and I am still trying to build 5 units.

      I have not played against human opponents yet, and from what I read here, I already don't want to. It seems some people have already learned how to trash you in 5 minutes just like SC with zergling rushes. Stupid.

      WarCraft III is a clickfest. It is not a strategy game.
      • I lose every single time. Why? Because no matter what I do, the computer is always there first with more units and a souped up hero that trounces anything I can build. The comp. players are don't have this nuisance of having to click around to build things like we do.

        I agree; this is a major flaw in the game. IMHO the skirmish AI is way too powerful. The only way to beat the computer in a skirmish match is to cut off its resources and starve it to death. I can beat the AI about half the time on maps that give you a good, defensible starting position. On the other hand, on open maps you're toast. The AI can manage resources and buildings much more efficiently than a human who has to click everywhere, and the AI can micromanage combat with ease. Take the "sleep" spell, for instance. Puts an enemy unit to sleep until it's attacked. For a human player, hit the hotkey then try to target an enemy unit. Just try to pick him out of the middle of a melee bunch with a slightly sluggish mouse. Oh, and even if you do get him, try to convince your army to stop attacking him and move on to someone else! Ha! They just continue to beat on him, waking him up right away. Gobs o' mana, wasted. The AI, on the other hand, has precision targetting and can simultaneously command the rest of the army to break off and attack something else.

        On maps that actually have you physically separated (by rivers, trees, etc.) the AI is utterly incompetent. It has a hard time establishing a secondary base, and effectively starves itself with another goldmine sitting there just beyond a line of trees.

        In general, I really like some of the changes they've made to the game. I like the concept of heroes, and I really like the "upkeep" penalty for keeping a huge standing army. The variation in races is good (although a bit too reminiscent of Starcraft). I really look forward to playing against other people. But it's not a great single-player game.

        I ought to add some gripes about the game engine as long as I'm here. First, it's dark! I have to crank the gamma way up, to the point where everything looks washed out. This could be a flaw in my video drivers, since the 2D controls look okay. It's just the 3D that's dark. (And, oddly, the 3D seems much better after a cinematic is run. Maybe they're forgetting to set or clear a value for the regular game?) Second, the 3D is not put to good use. You can tilt and rotate the camera, but there's no reason to. Tilting it just makes it hard to play, and the rotation snaps back to normal when you release the button. And there's no zoom! I really want to zoom out to see more on the screen, but I can't. Zoom would have been way more useful than camera tilt. The 3D terrain isn't put to good use, either. I haven't really seen any change in behavior for being on high ground or being down in a valley. It seems to be just eye-candy layered on top of a Starcraft-like elevation system. I think this game would have done better as a traditional 2D RTS.

        CAMPAIGN SPOILER WARNING

        The campaign scenarios are much more fun and well-balanced. Unfortunately, there are no sympathetic characters! In the human campaign you play Prince Arthas. He starts out okay, but then he turns to the dark side, disregards his advisors and friends, slaughters a human town, turns on his mercenaries, and pretty much condemns his own army to death. In the final cinematic he murders his father the king in cold blood. I had absolutely no sympathy for this guy. None. I felt no reason to want him to win. I even to run tried the slaughter-the-town scenario without killing the villagers; just going after the bad guy. Nope, no can do. You have to kill 100 villagers or no cookie.

        Okay, the villagers were infected and were going to turn into undead. Maybe he did have to kill them. But jeez! Make him seem heroic about it! He's a Paladin, for cryin' out loud! He shouldn't be going into this berzerker rage. He should show some compassion even if there's no other way. (I know, that wouldn't mesh with the later storyline, but it would have been a lot more satisfying to play.)

        By the end of the human campaign I was so disgusted with this guy I was really hoping he'd get his ass kicked by the undead in the second campaign. But no, you end up playing him there, too. At least I can revel in treachery and vile deeds when I'm playing an undead. Slaughtering towns of innocents is good, unclean fun! I still want to off Arthas, though.

        The game has its high points, but it has a number of flaws as well. It's a good successor to Warcraft II and Starcraft, but nothing revolutionary.

  • And we care because... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gravaton ( 413066 ) <gravaton@optonlin e . net> on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:19PM (#3797086)
    LOL seeing as it still completely, applies, I'm simply going to repost (with some edits and additions) an earlier post of mine concerning WarCraft 3.

    It seems to me that spending $65 on the "WarCraft 2 Graphics Upgrade Pack" would be like buying an expensive gift for a way-too-spolied child. Let's think about this for a minute. A company offers a product, gives us a date for it, lists a ton of features. Sounds like a good deal. Until they start pushing the date back. Still, no big deal. Then they start cutting features...like mad. Now if this was any other company, we'd all be panning their product and despising him, but for some reason everyone LOVES Blizzard for it

    Countless people have called games like WC3 and SC some of the "greatest games ever". I am standing up right here and preparing to argue it soundly. This is not a troll, it's a statement of belief. Warcraft 2 was a great game; it was innovative for its time and introduced a brand new game setting. Since that point, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them. Why would I want to play StarCraft or WarCraft 3 when I could play larger, richer games with far more depth (ohh...say...Total Annihilation comes to mind).

    Now, to be fair, these comments relate to WarCraft 3 only through my experiance with the beta version. I honestly do not know if the game has changed since then, and if it has my opinions might change as well. But here is what I saw. The game was very pretty, it looks quite nice. However, the game mechanic hasn't changed or evolved at all since WC2. Same extremely limited unit selection, same "rock-paper-scissors" unit balance that makes "strategy" equal to "Just build some of each and run at each other". The "Hero" units were unimpressive and seemed to only be more powerful normal units that could somehow use Town Portal. The "Unaligned NPCs" were just weak units you killed to get at some resources. Games were fast and pointless, the races were unbalanced at that point, there was no strategy at all as you could never have enough units to enact a given strategy.

    Maybe TA has spoiled me. I'm used to massive 2000-unit battles where you actually USE all 9 unit hotkeys, feint and probe, battle across a massive map. Strategy and production were vital tools as you pushed forward to conquer territory. Admittedly, maybe such things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I don't understand how the RTS genre has remained the exact same game since the original C+C (which, I do know, wasn't even the first RTS). Many people have tried to innovate somewhat, but where's the evolution? Shouldn't we demand MORE instead of eating up what's only vaguely satisfactory?? To put it very plainly, Blizzard's RTS games are no more interesting or complex then playing War or Spit. Sure, those games can be fun sometimes too, but a deck of cards is a lot less then $65, and so is the number of broken promises and lowered expectations.
    • Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them.

      How can you say StarCraft is unbalanced? StarCraft is nearly perfectly balanced. If you believe StarCraft to be unbalanced, then you don't know the units well enough. Here's an example I've seen: the siege tanks are far too powerful and the range is too long. Counter: take three zealots up against a siege tank and see how long it lasts...siege tanks are unable to effectively defend against melee attacks. Many people, unfortunately, fall into the trap of believing they need something big to take out something else big. Also, only being able to select a certain number of units isn't a problem in starcraft. i.e. selecting a large number of zealots and making them attack one thing is counterproductive, stupid, and a really good way to waste resources. Starcraft emphasizes micromanagement of units. In the case of the zerg (a race who can only effectively be used in masses) the limit of simultaneous selection is set high enough to allow the player to select enough zerg to do damage, and low enough to force the player to manage several smaller groupings of zerg (which is what you'd want even if there were no selection limit, otherwise you'd be wasting resources on units that weren't even getting an attack in before getting killed).

      You should play more StarCraft :-).

  • My impressions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bonch ( 38532 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:21PM (#3797091)
    Keep in mind, this is all just opinion. :)

    As a huge fan of the first two games (especially the first one), I'm somewhat disappointed with this one. It actually kind of bores me. At its core, WarCraft 3 seems like just a mixture of StarCraft and Diablo, like they just decided, "Hey, we'll mix our two biggest money-makers to make a mutant third one." StarCraft kept my interest for a while, but Diablo absolutely bores me. And now I'm running around in War3 doing little pointless sidequests and investigating towns and building experience levels and gaining inventory items...whatever happened to the big, massive battles? The game is party-based now!

    Maybe it'll grow on me, who knows. I never really liked the storyline to begin with once I heard it, but playing the single-player campaigns, I'm even more turned off. A large amount of characters just talking, not very many cinematics (as in, stuff not done in the engine itself), and some downright cheesy stuff (for instance, the meeting with Jaina made me roll my eyes...and peasants running up to me, "My lord, legend tells of a *whatever pointless thing you should get that your character will say "Hmm, that could prove useful" about*). I feel like I'm just running around exploring more often than I'm planning attacks or doing any other war strategy. As in WARcraft.

    Worst of all, the graphics retained their cartoonish look of War2. I loved War2 and tolerated the comic book look as just the theme of that particular installment, but the goofy humor and looks still exist in War3, and I'm kind of tired of it. Especially with the Orcs, who used to seem so badass and evil in the first game.

    I miss the building tension of seeing the first few troops of a huge army slowly marching toward your base. Where's Bill Roper's "Yes, my lord" gone to? What about a recognizable war theme instead of the more ambient soundtrack of this game? Stuff like that. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but it seems like Blizzard was concentrating so much on changing the gameplay and throwing so much stuff into it to make it different (heroes, hiring troops from the huts, running little sidequests, and more) that I miss the old classic simplicity of just two sides building bases and sending troops after each other to win instead of following some story about how the Orcs just happened to have revived themselves as a culture and, oh, by the way, some firey things are suddenly coming down from the sky to kill everyone and the dead are rising and the Night Elves are coming out of the trees. I guess I was hoping for just one last, huge, epic battle of Orcs and Humans, with all the neat little gameplay enhancements but without all the pointless features and unnecessary races to bog it all down. Though I'm sure a bunch of you disagree with me already. :)

    At least there's Red Alert 2. :) And I'll definitely want to see how they do StarCraft 2; I'm hearing rumors of another race that is a mix of Protoss and Zerg...

    I'll go ahead and give War3 another try, promise!
    • that I miss the old classic simplicity of just two sides building bases and sending troops after each other to win instead of following some story about how the Orcs just happened to have revived themselves as a culture and,



      So, can't you play a skirmish game? :)

      At least there's Red Alert 2. :)


      Bad bad westwood

      And I'll definitely want to see how they do StarCraft 2; I'm hearing rumors of another race that is a mix of Protoss and Zerg...



      The Xel'Naga - yeah, here's hoping they'll come back :)

  • Too bad Blizzard can't come up with a killer Battle.Net =(

    Still can't connect half the time, and when I am connected, all the servers seemed to be desynced and I can't ever see my friends. We can't get a game going. When bnetd was around at least we could play on our private server. And LAN games don't seem to work well when you're 1500 miles apart.
    • You could setup a virtual VPN [com.com]. That'd allow you to play a LAN game with friends anywhere. The program I've linked you to is a 30 day trial, $80 to reg, but I'm sure you could *cough*crack it*cough*. There might also be similar software for free / cheaper, do a google search.

  • Penny Arcade (Score:5, Funny)

    by silhouette ( 160305 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:29PM (#3797116)
    I think Penny Arcade said it best - back in 1999! [penny-arcade.com]

  • Fry's has it. Play it for free today! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by neurojab ( 15737 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:38PM (#3797134)
    I played warcraft 3 at Fry's a bit today in Sunnyvale. They had 4 really nice warcraft 3 setups available for anyone to sit and give a try.

    My impressions: Graphically, it's amazing. The sound completely rocks. The unit AI is the best I've seen in an RTS yet. For instance, when your peasants are done building, they will go and do something useful like chop lumber or mine gold. This eliminates a great deal of micro management.
    I can't say more than that because I only completed a couple of battles, but it filled my soul with the urge to upgrade my hardware.

    FYI.. Fry's is also selling it an hour before the rest of the west coast... 11PM on the 2nd.
    • For instance, when your peasants are done building, they will go and do something useful like chop lumber or mine gold.
      Aww, I always won games because I could micro-manage better than everyone else. Strategy was sorta important, tactics nonexistent (select guys, tell them to patrol to a specific area of the map, forget about them), but games were won by micro-management. I still remember about ten different War2 opening build orders to about thirty steps--all based on different levels and situations. This'll make it easy for everyone to easily do what I could do so well.

  • critics critics everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Metaldsa ( 162825 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @06:57PM (#3797203)
    People here act like this game was supposed to change the world or something.

    Only Warcraft1 was evolutionary. Warcraft2, Starcraft, and Warcraft3 are nothing new. Orcs and humans, grunts and knights vs. orgres and orcs. Its been the same since those old pixalated days. So why when Warcraft3 comes out with the same exact thing does everyone throw their nose in the air condemning it?

    ID software just kept remaking doom. First it was quake1, then quake2, then quake3. Now doom3. No changes there either. Another example of a solid company just doing what they do best.

    Warcraft2 and starcraft proved pure quality even though they didn't evolutionize anything. So why can't warcraft3? Quake1/2/3 showed quality (to a lot of ppl, not everyone) and Doom3 will almost certainly show quality with its engine.

    Just like in the movie industry, its extremely hard to find something new that create a large new base of fans. Ska and techno slightly did it in music recently but its extremely tough.

    I know all the critics will disappear six months from now when its recognized for being a solid game to play over and over. And the single player plays like a good movie offering 2+ days of gaming.

    In conclusion, if you call yourself a gamer and don't hate the rts genre then this is a good buy.
  • Blizzard had said that they wished to create an RTS where mass producing legions of units and rushing them against the enemy wasn't the primary (and only effective) strategy available. Well, I think, in that regard, that Blizzard has failed to make the combatting armies smaller and tactical decision making more important.

    I say this from playing the WCIII beta for two months. Compared to Starcraft and WCII tactics, WCIII has similarly large armies and tactics, whereby you pump out, as fast as possible, as many units as you can and send them all in one clump towards the enemy. Of course, one produces a diverse type of army to counter any of the enemy's forces, but the resultant tactic still says the same. Push your army into the enemy's base and keep the guys coming.

    With the large amount of hitpoints of most units, it is very hard to employ any effective defensive strategies. No longer can 12 archers (or any long rangers) all target one incoming melee and kill him before he reaches your defensive wall. No longer can cannon towers or other defensive structures play a significant role in actually defending your base. Employing a defensive position and constructing defensive structures along with an appropriate mix of units no longer even remotely effectively defends one's base.

    My experiences come from playing against both skilled and newer players in the WCIII beta. I found that the skilled players employed the all crushing, mass producing rush of 80 guys as soon as possible. Unlike in SC or WCII, attempts to form concentrated defensive kill zones where the enemy would attack completely failed to even remotely repel an attack. Against the newer players, armies meeting midway in the field would often just hack at each other with little strategic input into their actions. It was hard both to control which units attacked another and what spells to fire off in the ensuing melee.

    I look forward to the single player campaign, however, because, without the unescapable lag and the mad rushing, WCIII could be a great game.

    I just wasn't all that impressed with the multiplayer, though. Sigh.

  • Graphics and the move to 3D (Score:3, Informative)

    by Captain_Frisk ( 248297 ) <captain_friskNO@SPAMbootless.org> on Sunday June 30, 2002 @08:24PM (#3797627) Homepage
    Everyone has been going on about how great the graphics are.

    I disagree. I think they suck.

    Due to the number of units on the screen at one time, each unit has to have a relatively low polygon count. This results in having units which don't look very impressive at all.

    I like the lighting. Spell effects are pretty good. Environment looks cool. Units look like ass.

    Here is one case where the move to 3D has really hurt the game. When you went from 2.5D in Doom / Duke Nukem to full 3D for Quake + clones, you incorporated the Z-axis, levels started to take it into account etc. In general, this was a good thing.

    In WC3, its still essentially a 2D game. There are 3 levels of play, just like Starcraft, but the ramps are so large, that for the most part have no strategic value.

    Next, you need a brutal system to play this well, and you have to turn down the details. It may be nice and smooth and pretty when you're starting out, but as soon as you have a battle (and remember that these battles are much smaller now... > 50 enemies is rare) your FPS drops like mad. Wouldn't be a problem, if you didn't need to click on your troops to tell them what to do. End result? Whoever's got the better system wins.

    I love Blizzard. I own WC, WC2, WC2X, SC, Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II:Lod, and I'm not going to buy WC3 (I played the beta, and it doesn't seem like its changed significantly since I have)

    I could rant about this game for a while, but bottom line... multi play kindof sucks. It won't hold your attention.

    If you are into the whole SP thing, then maybe it will be ok, but don't buy into the hype. Blizzard's games are critic proof, and for good reason... up till now they have made games that were either amazing (Starcraft) or seriously addictive (Diablo).

    I'm waiting for their next personally.

    Captain Frisk out... all this ranting makes me sleepy
    • Blizzard games is they seem quite long-lived. I still know lots of people who play Starcraft and Diablo, years after they were released. Is it possible that they're planning for the game to come into its own performance-wise 6 months or a year from now?
    • I saw the beta and pretty much dismissed the game based on that.

      There's no use of terrain in the way that Total Annihilation did back in 98 or so. The game still seems balanced towards rushes, and the units are pretty dumb.

      I liked how in TA you could tell your repair units to patrol an area and repair anything that needed it. Anything else makes unit repair/medics a micro-management nightmare.

      Age of Empires 2 is a much more in-depth game, and TA is much more strategically advanced. W3 brings nothing to the table except funny unit sayings and exploding sheep. Star Craft at least pioneered the not-identical races concept.

      Bleh. Blizzard has always been heavy-handed about trying to prevent certain tactics instead of actually trying to balance the game against them. For example, to try to limit rushes they put a limit on the number of units you can control at once. Boring. Part of the fun in TA was bringing a huge army towards your enemy and watching the 100+ unit dust-up. And the SC unit-limit didn't stop rushes, it just made them a bit more annoying to launch and defend against if your enemy did launch them.

      The big thing that made rushes so effective in WC & SC was that there were no useful defenses as in AoE. That's a game where attacking a base is painful if they defend it well. It's also an example of how to encourage diverse armies because ideally you bring infantry for attack power, cavalry to destroy enemy catapults and trebuchets, plus your own trebuchets to destroy walls and towers, etc, etc. The lack of walls (supply depots in a row don't count) in SC meant that you could pretty well ignore everything except melee troops.

  • My review (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DeathPenguin ( 449875 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @08:55PM (#3797789)
    As a beta tester, I've been playing the game for months. The final version was released to the beta testers. So here's my review:

    Great game! Only three things wrong with it:

    1. The human archmage casts blizzard way too fast. It should require more mana to cast, or should take longer to cool down.

    2. Starfall is way too powerful against buildings. It's fine against humans since it's stopped reasonably easily, but it's pretty lame how you can sneak a priestess into an enemy base while they're distracted and completely level it with a single starfall. It would be great if starfall only did half damage to buildings. It would still take out towers, but wouldn't destroy barracks and town halls.

    3. Offensive towers are LAME! In Starcraft, it was a lot more difficult to OT, even with Protoss. At least then you either had to:
    a) build on creep with zerg
    b) fill a bunker with marines
    c) build a pylon first to make canons
    And in Starcraft, 'towers' were much easier to defeat. In Warcraft, however, towers are not only inexpensive, but are extremely difficult to take down without siege units (Which all require upgrading the town center first). They should make it much easier to take down towers without siegecraft. This won't hurt using them for defense since you can place them behind other structures to prevent non-siege units from reaching them early in the game.

    The unit cap in the game should be changable. I suspect they only allow 90 control points because the game is graphically intense and they didn't want to alienate those without extremely fast hardware. However, for those of us fortunate enough to own GHz+ machines with GeForce 2 or better graphics hardware, it would be nice to be able to be able to use more units.

    Other than those four things, it's a very fun game. I highly recommend that everyone interested in the RTS genre try it. As for bnetd, well, we all know that was just their (failed) attempt to curb piracy during the beta test. I'm confident that the suit will be dropped.
  • Yes, the zerg are in Warcraft III if you know where to look.

    And if anyone's in the mood for strategy with great storytelling, may I humbly suggest Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis for Game Boy Advance?

  • Yawn (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Monday July 01, 2002 @08:03AM (#3799889) Homepage

    Finished the single player last night, although I'm not entirely sure why.

    The maps are effectively all very simple mazes. There's so much blocking terrain that the amount of actual usable space is small, even on the big maps. Defensive towers are so cheap and effective that your "strategy" on most maps is just to build 8-12 towers on each of the two or three very obvious approach routes (that might as well be signposted "Very Obvious Approach Route") and massacre the desultory trickle of understrength AI attacks. A small flying squad of infantry (or flyers) to deal with the token seige engine in some attacking groups, plus a patrolling group of repairing peons, and you're impregnable for all practical purposes.

    And this works on every map. Every single map. The "game" is just wandering your hero around, hoovering up goodies and picking fights until he stops levelling. Then you can pretty much take the enemy down any way you like. Grunt rushes, creeping artillery barrages, suicidal hero charges, it's all good, and it all works, as long as you concentrate on taking out buildings instead of wasting time engaging the enemy.

    The AI is as pathetic as always. It's actually sad watching the small groups of mixed troops going down in the meat grinder of your tower fire, and the sallies are even worse. If you want to know one of the actual "tactics" for a base assault, it involves sending in a couple of units to snipe the enemy base. The enemy sallies everything out to engage them, then you just rush your actual attacking force right past the melee into the heart of their base and smack their town centre. Works. Every. Time.

    On the special quest maps with no construction, it's (if anything) worse. Because your hero regenerates faster than any enemy, and because their AI's are crippled so that they only pursue you for a short distance and then return to their home, you can defeat all opposition with hit and runs. There's no skill involved, only patience. The only troops that are actually beneficial are artillery; the infantry you get gifted (generously) on these maps are largely irrelevant, as your hero can solo them. The plethora of healing wells scattered around just imbalance it further. How come the enemy never uses them?

    Multiplayer isn't a bundle of laughs either. There's none of the StarCraft distinctiveness among the races. They're all fairly generic, and the Night Elves are pretty obviously an "oh yeah" addition that serve no purpose. The single player Night Elf campaign really does seem tacked on and anti-climactic.

    Because of the unit limit, you have to choose between trick supporting units or combat units. Guess what? 10 powered up combat units will beat any combination of combat and support units, because the support units are feeble, and their effects are either underpowered or require too much micromanagement, and they go down before they can make a difference. Sure, that sorceress might polymorph one of your grunts into a sheep, but then your other nine grunts will smack her, both sides have lost a unit, your grunt will recover, and you still have more total hit points. In fact, most battles are just meat grinders where the winner is the side with the most total hit points. "Tactics" means using "attack" rather than "move" to get in some first strikes, and then the old saw of concentrating on one enemy at a time. Forget flanking, forget advantage of terrain, forget posture, it's just grind, grind, grind. Take out the peons and the town centre, and you've won, as always. Heck, if you're human and you're getting bored, ring the alarm bell, turn your peons into pathetic militia, and just make it easier for your opponent to snuff them as they charge mindlessly into combat.

    In other words, we've seen it all before, and better. The graphics aren't even anything to write home about. You'll only ever view the game from one angle anyway, with the units on mostly level ground, and so they might as well be pre-rendered. You'd lose the lighting effects, and that's about it.

    Sorry, I am sadly disappointed in Warcraft III. The engine and gameplay have evolved not one bit from StarCraft, unless you count the multiplayer Hero Rush (either to attack, or to loot and level). All the work has gone into the graphics and the token humorous unit poke-poke responses. To give you an idea of how derivative this is, they even lift sounds straight from Diablo.

    This is a sequel by the numbers. Stick to the same old formula, give people what they know they like, sell to the same market, don't introduce anything that would require actual strategy or tactics like unit posture, significant terrain advantages or bonus damage on enemy that are in "move" rather than "attack" mode. Oh no, just keep on churning out the same old same old, and keep counting the profits. Bah.

  • My review of WarCraft 3 (Score:3, Informative)

    by WndrBr3d ( 219963 ) on Monday July 01, 2002 @06:14PM (#3803636) Homepage Journal
    Warcraft 3 Review - By WndrBr3d (wndrATirev.net)

    Overview:

    Out of all the games released so far in 2002, I must say that the biggest overrated hype and most disappointing delivery has to be Warcraft 3. What it boils down to is this game is a successor to Starcraft and NOT it's predecessor Warcraft 2. Unfortunately I feel that Blizzard was banking this game on the success of Starcraft in today's market. This game was rushed to the market and many vital items that would GREATLY enhance game play are missing.

    Races:

    Orcs - Hard to go wrong with this race. It's basically humans painted green sans technology and intelligence. Actually, think of them as an inbred Swiss family Robinson.

    Humans - Some things never change. Footmen, Knights, Healers, blah, blah blah.

    The Undead - Remember the Zerg ? Change their colors to Green/Black.

    Night Elfs - Warcraft 3 equivalency of the French. You could kill off an entire Night Elf base with one-foot solder and then proceed to rape and pillage their trees.

    Graphics:

    Decent. I'm impressed with their graphics for an RTS game. But in all honesty, HOW many RTS games have been released with >WarCraf2 Graphics. Besides, this graphics engine couldn't hold a candle to other graphics engines today *cough*Quake3*cough*. The texture quality is very high though and there didn't seem to be any low frame rate issues.

    Sound:

    This is where I don't care. Seriously, I have something I like to call, A LIFE. And in this life (for some of you, I'm referring to IRL) I honestly don't give a crap if my computer can play a RTS in 5.1-surround sound. But for some reason, this seems to be a MUST for Uber-dorks out there. Stereo is fine for me. But I will say that the Music/Sound is very nice. Pleasing even.

    Campaign Game Play:

    I feel that Blizzard again took the high road on this one. Maps are of course wonderful and crafted well, but the flow of the story leaves LITTLE to be desired. In StarCraft all cut scenes were done with MASTERFUL 3D Video Scenes, which were just AMAZING. Proof that Blizzard did take their time with Starcraft to make it rich and feature full for all users.

    WarCraft3 on the other hand took the high road. You will only get one cinematic clip in the Beginning and End of your Campaign. Instead of the key placed clips, they've decided to just place animated scenes using the game engine before/after/during your missions. To me, this is Blizzard basically saying FOAD.

    My reasons for saying this product was an attempt to follow StarCraft and not be an ACTUAL sequel to WarCraft 2 is basically these two reasons. Sea Units? Gone. HOW THE CRAP CAN YOU NOT HAVE SEA UNITS IN WARCRAFT 3 ?! They were in One and Two! That's like not having the humans in the third! WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING ?! I WANNA HAVE A BATTLE OF MIDWAY GOD DAMN IT!

    In one mission you actually go around destroying BOATS.. meaning the Models and Objects are actually IN the game, but they decided it would be best not to implement them. So this would be an example of Blizzard being lazy and just pushing their product to market without actually implementing ALL features/units.

    Second reason, Resources. Oil? Gone. Reason: NO SEA UNITS. Yes, again in Warcraft 3, as in Starcraft, there are only TWO resources. Gold/Wood. Because apparently my mechanical units burn liquid gold (or you would assume so by their cost). This to me, doesn't make any freaking sense what so ever.

    Custom Game Play:

    This section should just be titled, 'Game Play'. There is seriously next to NO customization options. You can select your map, fog of war options, and that about sums it up. You cannot even modify the skill level (Bunny Hunts are sometimes FUN!). Modify Game Speed/Starting Units/Starting Resources? Nope.

    Summary:

    I feel that WarCraft3 is basically Blizzard shitting on all our chests. And with a $60 price tag, it wants us to swallow said shit and call it candy. I'm severely disappointed in this release and am honestly considering visiting Blizzards offices and peeing on their doorstep.

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