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Games Entertainment

Warcraft III Expansion 272

Posted by michael from the good-blizzard-bad-blizzard dept.
Ultra Magnus writes "Looks like Blizzard is releasing an expansion pack to WC3. I've always been pleased with their expansions before, so I hope this lives up to expectations."
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Warcraft III Expansion More

Warcraft III Expansion

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  • But, we're boycotting WC3 this week, right? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:29PM (#5163562)
    Or am I off on the weekly schedule? Because I could swear this was the week we're upset over the DMCA server stuff.

    • Re:But, we're boycotting WC3 this week, right? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:47PM (#5163647)
      "Or am I off on the weekly schedule? Because I could swear this was the week we're upset over the DMCA server stuff."

      I know you're being funny, but the truth is that the market needs AAA games. Boycotting Blizzard would do more harm than good. (Besides, it's Vivendi you're after..)

      • Re:But, we're boycotting WC3 this week, right? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by sstamps ( 39313 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @01:15AM (#5165393) Homepage
        >(Besides, it's Vivendi you're after..)

        EXACTLY, and who gets the lion's share of the money from my purchase if I buy a Blizzard game? Why, Vivendi, of course!

        No, I don't hold Blizzard blameless in the bnetd fiasco. If they really wanted Vivendi to 'let it be', they could, because they have absolutely no financial reason to attack bnetd. It's purely a control issue; one which they never had to begin with, and the bnetd folks pointed out so ardently.

        Please, don't bother reciting about the piracy issue; it isn't one and never was.
  • Instead of wasting time with Warcraft, where's Starcraft 2!?! And not some stupid console version please

    • Re:Starcraft (Score:2, Interesting)

      by XplosiveX ( 644740 )
      Yessir I want Starcraft 2! Just think aboout it! 3D all terrain and characters, gonna rock ass but I think Vivaldi or whatever will stop production of Starcraft 2 because of it's non expectant sales that will probably plumet with Blizzard's stock market and their 1st quarter earnings.

      • Re:Starcraft (Score:2, Insightful)

        by numark ( 577503 )
        That's Vivendi :) And Blizzard doesn't trade on the stock market, being a subsidiary of Vivendi. However, I do agree with what you say, that Starcraft 2 will probably never be, just because of the horrendous finances at Vivendi and the fact that they're focusing on Warcraft more now. Add to that the fact that they may be bought by Microsoft, and Starcraft 2 is very unlikely.

        • Re:Starcraft (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Osty ( 16825 )

          Add to that the fact that they may be bought by Microsoft, and Starcraft 2 is very unlikely.

          I'm not following here. Why would being acquired by Microsoft keep Blizzard from making Starcraft 2? In fact, I would think that would guarantee that Startcraft 2 would be made. Say what you will about Microsoft, but they're not stupid.

        • "However, I do agree with what you say, that Starcraft 2 will probably never be, just because of the horrendous finances at Vivendi and the fact that they're focusing on Warcraft more now."

          I was kind of under the impression that Blizzard goes back and forth between Warcraft and StarCraft. I think they have SC2 in the works right now, but you know Blizzard, they take their bloody time with stuff. They don't just poop out games regularly like some places do *cough EA*. Lots of design work goes on there.
    • I tried Starcraft on SNES for the first time a few weeks ago.. suprisingly close to the PC game. Ran kinda slow once you got lots of units on the screen, but I have no idea what kinda CPU is in those things

      I had major problems with the controls.. Gimme a mouse and keyboard, dammit.

      • I would imagine Starcraft would run VERY slowly on an SNES.

        That's N64, you insensitive clod!

        Oh, right. Those guys actually have CPUs comparable to my ancient Macintosh Performa 6220CD which acted as my Starcraft box for ages. That's 75 mhz of crippled (the Performa line was aimed at consumers) processing power. Its certianly a testament to the black magics Blizzard writes their software in, as it runs on anything.

  • First News! (Score:4, Informative)

    by DarkVein ( 5418 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:32PM (#5163583) Journal

    Well, if this isn't late [bluesnews.com] breaking news [shacknews.com], I don't know what is!

    Isn't online news supposed to be really fresh? This is a week old.

    • ... than a dupe! :)
    • This is in full accordance with slashdot's "only post stuff that was originally submitted more thn a week ago" policy. I can't tell you how many times I've submitted stuff only to see it rejected and then later posted (often MUCH later). It makes you wonder what kind of catchy title you have to have to get your submissions read. :)
  • Should have been from the "days-old-news-bin."

    Seriously, this was announced days ago. Seems that if the Slashdot community really cared about this, it would have already been posted. But I guess today must have been an extremely slow news day for this "everyone knew it was going to come out sooner or later" to make the front page.

  • WC3 Extension functions (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kragg ( 300602 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:33PM (#5163588) Journal
    Blizzard promise that this extension to WC3 will allow the standards body to resolutely approve new web standards well within a year of their being suggested.

    Oh, hang on...
  • Ending like WC3 has,... how do you create anything more in that line ? It was all a bad joke ? It was actually someone's bad dream ?
    • "Ending like WC3 has,... how do you create anything more in that line ? It was all a bad joke ? It was actually someone's bad dream ?"

      What the hell is Medivh doing alive again?

      Is Sargeras dead or not? Was he or wasn't he supposed to be in his tomb in WCII? And if he really is dead, how come the Burning Legion is still so well-organized?

      How has the Lich King been keeping himself busy? What's left of Lordaeron?

      How is Azeroth (the kingdom) fairing in all this?

      Where did Illidan wander off to?

      What about Telly Savalas? What's he been doing lately?*

      *(Is obscure movie reference.)

    • Re:With a Story (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Squideye ( 37826 )
      Didn't Starcraft look like an "ending" ending? *Spoilers* Tassadar crashed the Gantrithor, blew up the Overmind? Sounds comparatively final to me, but you know, I could be insane.

      No, I think that there's always room for stories to continue. Firstly, "World of Warcraft" the MMORPG is continuing after WC3 anyway. Secondly, just because the Burning Legion is all hosed, that doesn't mean that a) The Undead (Arthas!), b) The Orcs (Thrall!) c) The Humans (Jaina!) or d) The Night Elves (Furion! Illidan!) are completely gone. There's lots of potential for each of these stories to continue.

      Remember that sometimes the best stories are made not from world-beating threats, but from character interactions.

  • Bahhh! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by motorsabbath ( 243336 )
    Bah! Brood War was (is) one of the greatest games I've ever played. Diablo II pretty much sucked and was a lousy follow-up to a great game (chop-chop-chop). Warcraft III is even worse. Bad graphics, boring gameplay, no sense of humor. Which is too bad because Warcraft II *is* the greatest game I've ever played.

    Neverwinter Nights kicks the s**t out of War3, by a light year. I know, they're not the same game type, but War III sucks. Sorry.

    Hope Blizz get's it right next time. This is 2 strikes in a row. Not that I'll be playing the next Blizz game on my Mac if M$ buys them anyways...

    Can;t wait for the penguin client for NWN!

    • Re:Bahhh! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by daoine_sidhe ( 619572 )
      How is it two strikes in a row? They are a company with a business model designed to generate revenue; their games do so very successfully. So, we have: 1.) Create game. 2.) People love/buy game. 3.) Profit. Because you (personally) don't like the game, does not mean (for them, or anyone else) that the game is a failure, as is proven conclusively through sales. Obviously, since they've sold many, many copies.
    • I agree about Warcraft II & III--Warcraft II is still my favorite computer game, but there are few others I know that agree.
    • Single player WCIII is a little boring, but multi-player is fantastic. Warcraft II's multi-player was nothing more than who could perform a grunt rush first.

      This expansion will introduce a slew of new units, which will only make multi-player better. If you go about judging Blizzard simply on their single player efforts, then you're not looking at the whole picture.

  • By GW? (Score:4, Funny)

    by duckpoopy ( 585203 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:34PM (#5163592) Journal
    Warcraft3: The Iraqi invasion

    • Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @07:19PM (#5164032) Journal
      Somebody has made a custom map called "Bomb bin laden", so there might :)

      After all the most played WC3 games on BattleNet seems to be custom games (ie, people make maps which not like regular games, different rules, units etc)

      I just checked BattleNet:

      Number of Starcraft games being played: 10967

      Number of Warcraft III games being played: 4925

      Perhaps that should tell them something ;)

  • Old. (Score:1)

    by BartG ( 559876 )
    Old news, The information was announced last week and all the new info has already been leaked.

  • Viva la Bnetd! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BlackGriffen ( 521856 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:36PM (#5163610)
    http://www.bnetd.org/

    BG

  • Inter-Game warfare? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:40PM (#5163625) Homepage

    Wanna know what I'm looking for?

    A patch that allows a WarCraft III player go up against an Age Of Mythology player. Better yet, make some sort of a patchwork quilt where you've got Sims Online to the north, Command & Conquer to the south, EverQuest to the east, and WarCraft to the west.

    THAT would be fun. :)

    • A patch that allows a WarCraft III player go up against an Age Of Mythology player. Better yet, make some sort of a patchwork quilt where you've got Sims Online to the north, Command & Conquer to the south, EverQuest to the east, and WarCraft to the west.

      THAT would be fun. :)

      No it wouldn't. It's hard enough to correctly balance the units in a single RTS game let alone trying to make multiple such games work together in a fair and consistent manner. The technical hurdles could be overcome using some open protocols (assuming all the developers coded to the protocols), but the game design issues would be immense.

      • I think the complexity of online game protocols is all that keeps us from seriously cheating. You could easily write a simple client for SC that has a single unit kicking everything else's ass until resources are gone and you win.

        The only way to circumvent this would be to do all the "work" on the server defeating the purpose of sharing.
        • I think the complexity of online game protocols is all that keeps us from seriously cheating. You could easily write a simple client for SC that has a single unit kicking everything else's ass until resources are gone and you win.

          Really? Wouldn't such a thing make the whole game state go out of sync? One client is claiming that unit is immortal, but the other client is going 'That unit should have died TWICE now! Something's smelling funny..'

    • Re:Inter-Game warfare? (Score:5, Funny)

      by silvaran ( 214334 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @06:28PM (#5163831)
      It wouldn't be fun... you'd have to break out of battle every five minutes to let your sims go to the bathroom and grab something to eat.

    • Yay! Now we can finally find out which game IS better!

    • To hell with those warring factions though. Although Sims vs Everquest would be entertaining and realistic, with the Sims respawning like mad and the EQ players camping them as usual. We should mix games with equal mentalities. Everquest vs Counterstrike; spawncamping, (p|t)killing and wallhacks, all in ONE game. Woo!

      Now, if there will ever be a true RTS/FPS (one builds, others drive around and blow stuff up with built units) or Space Strategy/Space RTS (Homeworld 2 + MOO3) crossover, I'd be happy.

      • Now, if there will ever be a true RTS/FPS (one builds, others drive around and blow stuff up with built units)...

        I point you in the direction of Natural Selection [natural-selection.org] - a quite good Half-Life mod that does exactly that (As long as you play the marines)

    • Re:Inter-Game warfare? (Score:4, Informative)

      by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @07:46PM (#5164110)
      I'm currently working on a tie of freecraft (warcraft 2 clone), freeciv, and the starcraft clone.

      It's comming along quite well, with the underlying connection code just about done. I'm just doing it for a laugh, so I have no idea how well it will work.
      I won't put up any screenshots, cause last time I did I got lots of posts saying it looked crap :)
      Give it 2 months tho and it should be mostly done by then, with some good screenshots to show.

  • If Blizzard is thinking SC ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by webdevcoder ( 626832 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @05:44PM (#5163641)
    If Blizzard is trying to do to Warcraft III, what BroodWar did yo Starcraft ... Good Luck. They are missing their time as Warcraft III did little to innovate unlike SC. For that reason, it may just be better to tap into the SC users and release something good, like a well designed SC2 :)
  • I found it interesting that some outfit called 'Swords and Sorcery Studios' has partnered with Blizzard to put out the Dungeons & Dragons WarCraft RPG too. I'm sure there's a couple of geeks who still get off on spinning 20 sided dice for kicks.

    Story is here [swordsorcery.com]. NOTE: This is NOT a computer game, its the same D&D we all had a crack at/obsessed over in our teens. Although a video game version would be pretty cool to see in the future.
    • I found it interesting that some outfit called 'Swords and Sorcery Studios' has partnered with Blizzard to put out the Dungeons & Dragons WarCraft RPG too. I'm sure there's a couple of geeks who still get off on spinning 20 sided dice for kicks.

      SSS is a great company. They're a subsidiary of another company you may have heard of: White Wolf, makers of the Vampire/Werewolf/Mage/Hunter storyteller games.

      SSS also did the pen & Paper Everquest game.

  • Disappointed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shamashmuddamiq ( 588220 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @06:07PM (#5163739)
    I bought WC3 on the first day of its release. A huge starcraft fan, I couldn't imagine it could have been bad. I played WC3 nonstop for weeks in a row, and I didn't like it nearly as much as StarCraft. "That's OK," I thought, "it's just because I haven't played it as much as StarCraft."

    Well, I slowly came to the realization that I didn't like the game very much. It was just boring. I got the feeling that part of the reason that StarCraft was so fun was because you could be creative and play strategies that the developers hadn't intended. Unfortunately, they must have thought that was a bad thing, because in WC3, they capped the unit limit much lower and added the annoying concept of "upkeep". Now, every game is the same (you have like two or three strategy options), and if one of your team's partners is a bad player or just uncooperative, you're screwed.

    I'll buy the expansion. I hope it turns my opinion of the game around. I really *want* to like WC3. If it's even half as good as SC, it should give me limitless hours of entertainment.

    • Re:Disappointed (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Bisifiniti ( 635115 )
      Uh, if you don't like getting screwed over in Random Team, play Solo. See, the idea of upkeep is to keep the Starcraft mentality of "max out my base with photon cannons and get carriers". Now, you can't just sit there with a bigass army behind 17 rows of cannons and pump carriers from 18 stargates. You have to think. Less units = more management. You don't just pump units and hope you win, you have to target units. It's a lot more thinking. And, I think, a lot more fun. Anyway, if you play solo up to about level 13, then play Random Team and you'll be playing with other higher-level guys.
    • It seemed to me that the game designers seemed to think that because a strategy was prevalent, it was bad and needed to be stopped.

      The idea was without certain commonly-used SC tactics, that you'd be forced to be smarter and more creative in your strategies. The end result was that you simply had fewer strategies available to you.

    • I bought WC3 on the first day of its release. A huge starcraft fan, I couldn't imagine it could have been bad.

      Yeah, same here. I even shelled out for the Collector's Edition. I really wish I'd held off - the bonus material in the box was really cool, but I didn't enjoy the game much at all.

      I think the reason is that StarCraft has (IMO) a much more unique storyline than WarCraft. WC (again, IMO) seems to be mostly some *serious* borrowing from Tolkien, and not much original content. WC3 in particular also seemed to be mostly cannibalized from previous Blizzard games. I had way too much deja vu seeing the discovery of the infested grain towers, one of the main good characters turning to evil, and especially the ending cinematic.

      I've also hadmore thanenough of makingnames ofthings bycombining twowords intoone. It'sbeen donetoo manytimes already,especially inthe warcraftseries.

      Blizzard obviously has some kind of special place in its heart for the WC series, but I think they should pay more attention when their fans ask for them to expand the other franchises instead.

    • Re:Disappointed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dghcasp ( 459766 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @12:56AM (#5165303)
      I got the feeling that part of the reason that StarCraft was so fun was because you could be creative and play strategies that the developers hadn't intended. [...] in WC3, they capped the unit limit much lower and added the annoying concept of "upkeep".

      Strategies that the designers hadn't intended? You mean "Zerg Rush from the left instead of Zerg Rush from the right?" Or BattleShip Rush with 24 battleships instead of 8? Or (insert whatever here) rush?

      Almost every RTS degernates into "he[1] who gathers resources best wins, regarless of everything else." I remember reading an interview when they said that they were trying to change that model for WC3, hence the upkeep and small caps.

      [1] I almost said "he or she;" what was I thinking?

      • Re:Disappointed (Score:2, Interesting)

        by nrjyzerbuny ( 141033 )
        Or a lurker/reaver drop on their gathering units, or a psystorm on their rally points, or mind controlling half their battleships for fratricide, or more than half to simply turn them around back into the enemy's teeth, defilers in the front lines so their attacking units can't target anything, defensive nuking, or the ultimate in interspecies cooperation with valkyries, carriers, and a d-matrixed arbitor assigned to a group of guardians for damn near unstoppable death from above.

        There are tons of strange, weird, and interesting things you can do in SC, alot of teams just aren't balanced enough to get that far, or play on maps that are far too small for the number of people playing.
        • Thank you. Mod parent up. *Bad* SC games were simple. Good ones involved some insanely good tactics and strategy.

          On the low level, it's about streamlining everything for maximum resource usage. On the high level, your resources are used. The focus is on microcontrol and efficient force combinations, because no monolithic force will win.

  • Hrmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smasherbob ( 634806 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @06:11PM (#5163759)
    Let's take a look here:

    One new Hero per race, each possessing powerful spells and magical abilities specifically designed to enhance each race

    A host of new units, each equipped with new abilities and spells, giving players the opportunity to create diverse strategic and tactical forms of combat

    3 new tilesets featuring extraordinary new lands to explore, complete with numerous creeps and critters to wage war upon

    Player-built shops, unique for each race, equipped with items carefully designed to improve and aid the units of every race

    Neutral buildings, which will provide players with numerous new upgrades, items and abilities

    Neutral Heroes, available for recruitment by all players, that can supplement and strengthen a player's army with all new spells and abilities

    An advanced world editor that allows players to create their own custom campaigns, complete with cut-scenes and voiceovers

    Many new multiplayer maps

    Expanded multiplayer options over Battle.net® including multiple new game types, clan and tournament support.

    Well, I'm dissapointed that the Burning Legion didn't somehow worm their way into the expansion as a playable race, buuuut... it's nice that there will be new clan features. That's something I've always wondered about - in all the FPS and RTS and RPGs and yada yada, why the heck are clans always an out-of-game feature? You'd think by now that game developers would have gotten wind of the fact that gamers like to group together. Why not give them options to solidify that in-game?

  • the story is amazing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stormrage ( 626983 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @06:18PM (#5163786)
    Cant belive that they could create another expansion to War3. The story was terrific. Many months have passed since Archimonde and the Burning Legion were defeated at the Battle of Mount Hyjal... The stalwart night elves, led by the Arch Druid, Furion Stormrage and the Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind, have vanished back into the shadows of Ashenvale Forest - intent to heal the ancient lands that were scarred by the Legion's vile corruption. The battle-weary orcish Horde, led by the idealistic Warchief, Thrall, has settled in the harsh, eastern hills of the Kalimdor Barrens. Finally able to claim a homeland of their own, the orcs work tirelessly to found and protect their new nation of Durotar. The human survivors of Lordaeron, under the command of the Sorceress, Jaina Proudmoore, have also settled along the eastern coast of the Barrens. The island citadel of Theramore was erected to safeguard the last, rag-tag remnants of the failing human Alliance. ...And Arthas, the newly crowned King of Lordaeron, has driven the undead Scourge to eradicate the last vestiges of resistance to his iron rule. His kingdom - the once proud bastion of human might and nobility - has become a plagued realm of death and sorrow. Now, driven by haunting visions of the Frozen Throne of Icecrown, Arthas plans to tighten his grip over the rest of the world. * * * ...Still, one dark soul still remains at large... For in some shadowed corner of the world, the wayward creature known as Illidan Stormrage plots... and awaits... and the art was absolutely amazing . cant wait to play this new game . Blizzard says it comes out in summer 2003 . but i seriously hope that Microsoft doesnt buy Vivendi games .If this happens , i wouldnt buy any game from blizzard
    • Yeah, I thought the story was amazing too. Then I re-read the Lord of the Rings, and read for the first time The Silmarillion and realized that pretty much the whole story was a rip off of Tolkien. But then again, so is pretty much the whole genre...
      • I remember loving WarCraft II so much when it first came out, but in retrospect, I miss the simple storyline of the original WarCraft. It was just Orcs trying to take over the kingdom of Azeroth. Not all this weird mythology, Tolkien rip-offs (Treants??), reformed Orcs, and quest-based gameplay. Oh, well.

  • Anyone else find it humorous that the Blizzard link in the article links to bnetd.org ? Thought this might just be more PR for Blizzard till I noticed the link :P
  • I wonder if they have decided to add CD keys to their expansion packs now. My guess is no, there isn't any good reason to. But then again, why have CD keys on any of their titles? From what I have read, publishers make them add that sort of "copy protection" to their products.

    • Re:Activation Keys? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by smasherbob ( 634806 )
      If the trend continues, there will be keys attached to the expansion. Brood War didn't have a key, and I imagine a lot of people didn't legally purchase theirs =P Heck, the game came out before my birthday, so my cousin burnt me a copy as a present. No CD Key, no hassle.

      The Diablo II expansion had a key, and this probably kept people honest. Not many people would enjoy not being able to play with their RL friends, so people that knew eachother had to buy their own copies.

      I personally don't mind the keys at all... if it makes Blizzard happy, good for them. They put out great games, and it's not like their collecting our personal information without our consent... anymore [cdmag.com].
  • This is the first Blizzard game I have boycotted because of the bnetd issue, so so I thought I'd let my opinion be known that I could care less about the expansion. I do, however, still play DiabloII because of my bnetd server with my friends.

    That is all. Thank you.

  • Great Now they can start on Starcraft 2 ! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @06:45PM (#5163905) Journal
    About time too! [starcraft2.com]
  • Maybe they'll put in some units to counter those fsck'ing mass dryads and witch doctors!

  • I'm not too excited (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sevensharpnine ( 231974 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @07:08PM (#5163996)
    Some of the dedicated b.net players are dissapointed by this. The usual Blizzard fanboys are, as expected, frothing at their mouths. But this "expansion" is both ill-timed and a slap in the face to those of us that have been patiently waiting for Blizzard to fix Warcraft III multiplayer. Some of the new multiplayer features (like clan support) were hoped to be in the game originally. Many of the things they're adding are features that have been asked for since the public beta, and Bliz kept giving generic responses -- "We value the fans opinions..." -- leading us to believe they were planning on implementing them. They kept telling us they were working hard to improve b.net and planned many changes, but now we find out the changes are exclusively for the expansion!

    And furthermore, the imbalances in Warcraft III are so blatantly obvious that it's sickening. The only redeeming factor is that each race has so many different imbalances it's usually possible to compete between races. But come tournament time, one or two main strategies (sometimes bordering on being bug exploits) appear.

    What I'm getting at here is that I'm not excited; I'm dissapointed. Warcraft III to many still isn't finished. Map hackers (and other cheaters) run rampant on b.net, the ladder and scoring systems are in serious need of an overhaul, there has been no mention of Warcraft seasons or Blizzard-sanctioned tournament, and their attempt at "balancing" the game have become so bad that Warcraft III is nothing like what it was originally supposed to be, at least judging from the beta. (Need to kill high-ranking undead abominations? Mass frail spellcasters and rush them in headlong! No melee support needed!)

    Blizzard led us all to believe that they were intent on fixing the broken multiplayer system. Now I find out that for $30 I can have the game I was originally promised. Way to go Blizzard.

    --

    • Re:I'm not too excited (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Manes ( 17325 )
      >Blizzard led us all to believe that they were >intent on fixing the broken multiplayer system. Now >I find out that for $30 I can have the game I was >originally promised. Way to go Blizzard.

      Except, and you know this as well as i do, that it still won't be the game we where promised.

      There will be massive maphacking, just like today, they'll prolly ban a few thousand for a week then let them back in (banning people = less customers = less money), and there will be tons of imbalances, lack of features etc. Then after a couple of patches they realize that the MONEY isn't there anymore and move on to the next game, rinse, repeat.

      Gotta love blizzard.

    • Re:I'm not too excited (Score:5, Informative)

      by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @02:05AM (#5165636)
      Need to kill high-ranking undead abominations? Mass frail spellcasters and rush them in headlong! No melee support needed!

      What's your beef with this? I've never quite gotten the hang of playing undead, too much micro management of the hero's, and too weak in the early game. Magic as a general rule does whoop melee people, depending on what type of spell caster you are discussing, especially if they are ones that cast slow, this seams reasonable, Abominations are slow, they can't close. How many Abominations did you have, how many spell casters? Did you bring the hero that casts sleep on them all? Did you crack out the little wood gathers to make a zillion little targets? Did you bring a good mix of guys, or did you just bring Abominations? Did you bring something to resurrect them? Did you bring meat wagon's to have range on them?

      If you hold StarCraft out as some great well balanced game, I've seen the 4-5 little lighting guys (Templar I think is the official name) take 120 Terran Unit points in under 10-15 seconds. Doesn't make any difference what they are. Battle cruisers, tanks, transports, marines and medics. I've seen them do it to a ton of Zerg units, generally Ultralisks are the only thing that hold up to a good batch of well played lighting guys. They've done it to Carriers. Best way to beat them, bring in zergling's or speedy units, possibly cloaked units.

      I've been pissed when the Taurean Chieftan at the 7th level took 65 unit points and my 8th level Priestess of the Moon doing Star fall, pretty much single handly. I believe he had 4-5 grunts with him. It took about 120 unit points worth of Night elves to take him and his 40 unit points of grunts and spear throwers. Oh, did I mention, that it was the third time we'd taken over 100 unit points at him, and took getting him trapped between two different armies to finally kill him?

      The game has met most of it's design goals. It's not a build a massive army and send'em. You need to go pickup items, you need to get your hero to level up. A high level hero can generally make up for a lack of a massive number of units. You have some incentive to go out early and actively fight creep while doing the upgrades. My biggest beef with it, is that losing the first big battle can be absolutely fatal. It means that more then likely you have given opposing heroes too much experience, and will spend a fortune rebuilding that you should be spending on upgrades.

      The undead don't have a lot of game early, or really late. In the middle they are pretty good, especially if you can counter attack after whooping people with your superiour base defenses. They can expand and get a ton of money, and if they can get a good group of necromancer's with meat wagons they can be pretty impressive for fodder with the micromanage hero's well played, they can be devastating in the mid-game.

      The Orc are great pretty much start to finish, but lack massive group killing spells or anything worth putting in the air. In term's of straight up melee battles nobody can stand with upgraded Tauran. Once an Orc takes an expansion, or a part of town, if they have pillage, they generally will roll units at you until you just can't keep up, it's a huge financial boon, especially if resources are tight on the map.

      Night Elves, if you can get a big group of anything together, and get a level 6 priestess of the moon, you are hard to just crush if you can keep starfall running. They have good late game units, but don't have anything that can stand toe to toe with high-end melee units. Especially because they don't have a mass heal (non-hero based), or an auto-casting heal.

      Humans seem to have good everything. Very well balanced, and can hurt you in a lot of different ways. Mortar men at with knights up front. The flying bird guys. The water elementals. The mass teleport, and auto healing w/ brillance to juice the healers, and a palaiden make them hard to beat. In general they can be pretty bad ass if they can level up the heros. Good magic, good range, good flying, good melee. Probably the race I consider too powerful. However, I play mostly night elf, and it might just be I haven't figured out the proper strategy yet.

      I don't do much on Battle.net, a buddy of mine played it for StarCraft and said nobody online was worth playing because all the high ranking players ducked anybody who was good, so you could whoop on crappy players for weeks to try and get a game with a good player. However, we might try it on WC3, because what he's heard is at least the 2v2 and 3v3 ladder matches are really stiff competition, so that'd be fun to play. We gave up playing StarCraft against the computer after we took every defensible ground map 2v6, and every air and ground 7 player map 2v5. It just wasn't any fun any more.

      Kirby

      • Re:I'm not too excited (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Meepr ( 518987 )
        ComputerSlicer23 said a lot of good things, I pretty much completely agree with him. I played warcraft 1,2 and 3, and I played starcraft and broodwar. I don't see what people are talking about in terms of unit balancing. I remember in brood war, it was extremely easy to win by simply going mass zerglings. Or mass hydralisks. it pretty much didn't matter. The whole point of war3 is that massing doesn't help a whole lot. I have personally beat armies that are 2-3x my size in warcraft, simply because I adapted to the gameplay. Warcraft 3 != Starcraft. Warcraft 3 gameplay is not starcraft gameplay. I don't see why so many people are complaining about it. When I started playing warcraft, I thought night elves were completely favored, and humans were the weakest and all this. However now that I have played the game through several patches, I see a bunch of balance issues I would not notice if I just looked at the game once in a while.
        I also don't see how people can complain about warcraft yet. Starcraft was extremely unbalanced until about a year after broodwar, yes, a YEAR. After the expansion. I remember when the expo came out, and protoss had a major advantage because of Corsairs, because they could stop any air attack easily, and they could disable mass ranged units on the ground and mass amounts of base defences. Nothing could match that.
        Anyway I will end with what I said earlier, Warcraft is not Starcraft. Warcraft has a more tactical feel to it I guess. Anyway, I love both Starcraft and Warcraft. I thank Blizzard for making them.
      • actually, since the Undead are the hardest race to play (their "cheese" tactics are pretty easy to counter), playing well with the Undead means that you generally play well with all the other races. I personally go for 3 heroes early in the game, all of them with direct-damage spells (Carrion Swarm, Death Coil, and Frost Nova). sure, i may be at a disadvantage with regards to units, but that's nothing a few well-placed spells and clever micromanaging can't solve. enemy heroes go down pretty quickly after they've been hit by three offensive spells.

        the lynchpin of the whole operation is a high-level dread lord - carrion swarm and vampiric aura mean he can deal out damage to whole groups of enemies, and heal his own army without any mana cost. cool, eh? the death knight just sits back and keeps on casting death coil at any units that are damaged. i've taken out 3 armies at once with my "puny" army of 12 ghouls and 3 heroes. which just goes to show how deep Warcraft III's gameplay is - with enough practice, and dedication, even seemingly overwhelming odds can be surmounted.

  • Warcraft 3 Expansion Overview (Score:5, Funny)

    by Herkum01 ( 592704 ) on Sunday January 26, 2003 @07:53PM (#5164128)

    Building: Game Expansion
    Requirements: Must be part of the Blizzard faction
    Resources: 2000gp

    The WC3 Expansion is upgrade from WC3. When it is completed, it brings about an increase in gold production, fan loyalty(like "Blizzard rocks"), and opposing commentary(ex: "This is unoriginial"). It also extends the life of WC3 for 4 to 6 months.

  • Sorry, I meant "added appeal to sheep".

    If Starcraft is the RTS equivelant of Olympic fencing, then Warcraft III is a bunch of grade schoolers playing at WWF.

  • Here's an idea... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by brucmack ( 572780 )
    Why doesn't Blizzard stop releasing "expansion packs" a short time after a game's release and start actually making with the goods initially. Consider this scenario:

    Blizzard releases a great game in the initial release. Maybe a couple of patches to deal with unit balances and stuff, but there shouldn't be any major flaws that need fixing. Then (and here's the tricky part), they actually get to work on the sequel right away! Who ever thought they could improve on all aspects of the game instead of just adding to the original? :)

    Seriously, why would I want to pay basically the price of the original game over again for an expansion pack that generally adds little to things like graphics and the game's core functionality? Especially in games like Warcraft, where you're guaranteed a wealth of custom scenarios created by other players, great to keep interest in a game. If the company put the manpower into getting the next chapter in the game underway, they could avoid making us wait years and years for the next game in the series.

    But of course this means they can't bank on everyone paying twice for the game + expansion pack. Since everybody buys them off the shelves the instant they get put there, nothing's gonna change.

    On a note related specifically to War3, I was surprised at how little had really changed from War2 except for the graphics. Sure, they integrated the neat control features from Starcraft like easier unit grouping and such, and added heroes, but I don't think it justifies the amount of time the game's been in development. Blizzard is in the great position of being able to release any garbage they want and have it break sales records.

    • The same with SimCity 4 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bonch ( 38532 ) on Monday January 27, 2003 @01:19AM (#5165412)
      Did you know they had 4-lane roads originally in SimCity 4 before release (there were screenshots)? Also, notice you can't edit region sizes in-game? And so on and so on...obviously, EA is holding out for an expansion pack, like they overdid with The Sims. I am so sick of expansion packs, to be honest. They were neat and exciting in the 90s; for instance, the one put out for WarCraft II where you went to the Orc homeworld. But it's become too much of a routine now to use expansion packs as a way to IMPROVE the game as it should have been instead of simply adding on to it.
    • Seriously, why would I want to pay basically the price of the original game over again for an expansion pack that generally adds little to things like graphics and the game's core functionality?

      Basically the same price? The MSRP of the original game was $60. The MSRP of this game is $35, which means that you could probably find it for $25-$30 (if not less) at many online retailers. So "basically the same price" is actually "a little over half of the price".
  • When I was skimming the front page a few minutes ago I saw the "WC3" there and thought "Wing Commander III? What's that doing getting mentioned on Slashdot, it's 9 years old!.... well, I guess it could be a re-post!" :)

    Seriously though... am I crazy, or are there other people who still associate "WC3" with that space-combat sim that, at its release, needed just about all the computing power a then-new 486 could muster?
  • I've always been pleased with their expansions before

    As was I, until the day the Diablo II xpack was released... While it was fun for a while, and really enhanced the gameplay, it also made the ladder system totally pointless. It was so easy to get experience that people could reach level 99 in a day. I liked the D2 xpack a lot, but it also ruined D2 for me...

    However, as far as the RTS genre goes, Blizzard knows what they are doing. Blizzard is one of the ONLY companies that actually can create RTS missions which don't bore me to death. I trust this xpack will be excellent.

    • As was I, until the day the Diablo II xpack was released... While it was fun for a while, and really enhanced the gameplay, it also made the ladder system totally pointless. It was so easy to get experience that people could reach level 99 in a day. I liked the D2 xpack a lot, but it also ruined D2 for me...

      I hated the xpack for Diablo II. I have yet to buy a Blizzard game after that horrible expension pack. I hated because it completly changed the characters. Having three characters I had worked on for a year become completly useless kinda sucked! The worst thing was that if you wanted to play on battle.net, you had to get parts of the xpack. This pissed me off more than anything else, as I think it should be a choice wether or not you want to apply an expansion (which is why it's differentiated from a patch). Basically, in my opinion, Blizzard forced you to by the xpack for D2 by forcing on the bad parts of it on you.

      I just hope they don't pull something similar with W3.
  • It wasn't mentioned in the Press Release, but a while back I saw this on the page that shows the updates to the strategy guide:

    http://www.battle.net/war3/pandaren/ [battle.net]

    The screen shots make them look like Furbolgs with different texture, but they don't show any of the heros.

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