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Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
Warcraft III runs on Windows 95/98/2000/NT and Mac OS. My setup was easy as pie, which was surprising since I run WinXP. And, on a side note, I was running it on a LCD screen and had no problem. Blizzard has an effective video setup that allows you to customize the game to match your hardware by changing the resolution, model detail, animation quality, texture quality, particles, and lights. This is especially helpful if you're running on an older machine and still want your game to run fast. The sound setup even allows you to have Dolby Surround!
I'm always disappointed that Blizzard's betas only let you play multiplayer, but that's life. In multiplayer mode, I found my abilities only let me get about 30 minutes into the game before I was demolished by the hard-core players. Maybe it was me, but Warcraft III seemed to have a faster pace than the previous two releases. The pace is a double-edged sword, because some players like their video games to be fast paced while others like to take their time. I think Warcraft II is somewhere in between Urban Terror and Civilization III. So, until I can take it low and play in a single player campaign mode, I'm counting the days until Blizzard releases Warcraft III 1.0.
Most important, if you're looking forward to the game, be assured: the gameplay is cool. This time you have a choice between four races: Human, Undead, Orc, or Dark Elf. Your race really doesn't matter in multiplayer mode; winning basically comes down to building everything up quickly and creating a massive army with which to crush your opponents. Or in my case, getting crushed.
This is where one of my favorite features comes into play. When enemies are attacking you (or your allies), the map flashes, letting you know that there is a throwdown and you should send in backup. Features I'm looking forward to in the upcoming release include: LAN games (five laptops, five six-packs, you know the drill), the single-player campaign, map editors, and polished cinematics. I realize that cinematics may not really be a game feature, but I can down a tub of popcorn when I'm watching Blizzard's cinematics, they're just that cool.
Warcraft III gives new meaning to strategy RPGs. If you like to play pure strategy games where your only goal is to be the last one standing, this game is for you. If you like games where you can take a character, build him up, and watch the character grow over the life of the game, this game is for you. Warcraft III is a successful cross between the two genres. You can build your basic Orc Grunts and go fight the enemy, but you can also build Heroes. Each class has different Heroes with which you can gain experience, attain new levels, and learn new skills. Warcraft III even lets you carry around an inventory!
I think the biggest improvement that Warcraft III has over its predecessors is Blizzard's ever more impressive graphics. With a decent video card, the graphics are crisp and clear. Nowadays, 3D is the name of the game, and Blizzard again comes a step closer to reality with this strategy role-playing game.
will Blizzard sue me?
Did we already forget?
I mean really.
I can't wait to re-visit my little Orc buddies. I'm not even sick of StarCraft yet!
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
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All armed with ) and wearing ]
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
How is this game at all like urbanterror? An RTS compared to a FPS? Im not sure I understand. Could just be me :)
Not a bad idea, assuming they never let you out again.
That's how it was designed (the Upkeep). :)
Prepare to be crushed by mighty intelligence of RTS and Blizzard fans
Most important, if you're looking forward to the game, be assured: the gameplay is cool. This time you have a choice between four races: Human, Undead, Orc, or Dark Elf. Your race really doesn't matter in multiplayer mode; winning basically comes down to building everything up quickly and creating a massive army with which to crush your opponents. Or in my case, getting crushed.
RTS is dead. Its all about who's the 1337 D00D that can build up his army faster and rush the enemy. Adding 3D and new races isn't helping. You need to force strategy on the opponent. Games like Conquest:Frontier Wars is a game thatforces stratgy on the player, and removes the micromanagement. That needs to be done to bring RTS back to life.
I'm afraid WarCraft3 is nothing more than an upgrade of Warcraft2. Sure, its pretty, and will entertain for about a week, but it'll all come down to who can rush faster.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I've been playing WC3 beta for a little over a week, what race you're playing as *definitely* has a bearing on how you do at what point in a game, the Night Elfs don't have a good late game for example, but the Humans have a good mid-late game. Different races are able to harvest resources faster or have cheaper units. Maybe this is why he got "crushed" =)
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
How about we set up a petition, Because i refuse to use XP. XP is so insecure that a day ago I found a way to break into almost any XP box with certain features turned on.
What I want is for Blizzard to work with transgaming for a port.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
about Blizzard being the bad guy because they shut down bnetd, YES, it is possible to hate the messenger but enjoy the message.
Just like Louis Farrakhan [sp] and the million man march,
just like the MPAA and LOTR or the Matrix or Tron or SW or whatever,
just like the RIAA and [your favorite band here],
it's perfectly possible and not hypocritical to hate Blizzard and want to fuck them five ways from Friday and still enjoy Warcraft III.
[o]_O
Blizzard has always been a company that's lagged a bit behind in making use of new computer power, ie they lock you into a specific screen resolution, limit the options for tweaking eye candy, and for a long time would only make games that used sprite animation.
:p
I always feel cramped playing blizzard games in their enforced low resolutions, to the point where I really don't enjoy playing them. The control panel takes up too much screen space, the buildings are too large, and I end up fighting with the interface when it comes to getting done the things I want done.
In other words, does anyone know? I notice the faq says they're upping the available resolutions.. but that doesn't say much as you could have 1600x1200 and still have a graphic rendered to take up one third of the screen.
If the game doesn't provide zooming out and camera rotation, ala Myth, count me out.
Check it for yourself if you have it.
You still need WineX to announce that you have DX8 support. After that if you are NVidia user WC3 picks up OpenGL as a renderer.
The will be problems authenticating with BattleNet but hopefully next WineX release will be able to deal with them.
Nonetheless, this looks very cool. the Screenshots are impressive but I hope that you can adjust the viewing size of the area you look at.. that was my only problem with WC and SC. I'll be downloading ths beta very soon.
thelikesofwhich.com
The major problem with their earlier multiplayer games was the complete lack of strategy. It was all based on speed. The first to attack in strength was going to win, period. (As this was often me, I didn't mind :)). Blizzard has claimed to have solved this in one of their news releases during development. To anyone else that's played it, is it timothy's (admitted) lack of skill that leads him to believe it's build up and crush? Or is it still speed kills?
uhm, have we forgotten? what about all those calls for boycott? large company crushing opensource and using the DMCA?
Uh oh.
Features I'm looking forward to in the upcoming release include: LAN games (five laptops, five six-packs, you know the drill),...
... but you didnt here that from me...
There IS a **coughLANPatchCough** floating about
From the WC III FAQ: Are there any plans to port a Linux version?
We are currently developing WarCraft III for the PC and Macintosh and have no plans for versions on other operating systems.
Would have been nice to know if was going to be available under OSX or Classic. Perhaps I just missed where it was listed??
Have you heard of WineX? I'm sure that Warcraft III will be running in WineX very shortly after release...
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
Your race really doesn't matter in multiplayer mode; winning basically comes down to building everything up quickly and creating a massive army with which to crush your opponents.
IMO Blizzard has always done a good job differentiating the races. In Starcraft, for example, you could not play the Protoss and Humans in the same way. They were so different that a new strategy was required for each. I can't see them taking a step backward with their flagship product in that respect.
I'm looking forward to in the upcoming release include: LAN games (five laptops, five six-packs, you know the drill), the single-player campaign, map editors, and polished cinematics.
Hmm. So you're expecting the game to be finished? Come on now, what are the neat features that those of us who haven't been following the beta forms don't know about? What innovations has Blizzard come up with this time? Undoubtedly they have something more than a flashing map, "letting you know that there is a throwdown and you should send in backup." That feature has been in several previous RTS's. Where's the meat in this review?
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
but will it be OSX native or are we going to have to rely on classic for it to work?
:)
either you support them and buy their product or you dont. In fact, it is a testimony to your principles to not play the game especially if it is good. It doesn't take much effort to stand by your ideals if the game is crap now does it? Hypocritical.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Don't just jump on the bandwagon. I can't believe I'm responding to a flame from an AC, but seriously, they had their reasons. RTF press release. Follow the story, don't just read what the flamers on slashdot have to say about it. Blizzard is a solid, well-rounded company that develops great games. Show some respect.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
By buying the game, you're supporting the messenger. Saying "Man, I hate Blizzard, but hot damn, I love this game!" is hypocritical.
Blizzard is evil; here, take my money.
If you hate the messenger, don't support him/her/them by giving them money. Make a stand and say, "No, I'm not going to give you my money because you are trying to crush the little guy." If you tell them that you won't let them do that, they'll soon learn to embrace their user base.
Until then, they'll keep walking all over us. And while they do that, I'll continue to not buy any Blizzard games, simply because I won't stand for that kind of corporate abuse.
I too am a beta tester... I was an avid Warcraft 2 BNet player and am now an avid Starcraft BNet player. I thought that Starcraft brought an enourmous amount of innovation to the RTS scene, and thought that Diablo was an incredible game with potential. Now that I have played those two to death, Diablo II and Warcraft III seem to be the same game all over again, yet with even more detail graphically only. But one must think... what sort of game would Blizzard need to develop to avoid being accused of re-hashing or re-packaging? I cant think of anything... Other than a change of theme perhaps. Just like Hollywood, the game Industry is running out of ideas.
Honestly, if they're such warlords, why didn't they write the review?
:\
The races are definately different and have a big impact. And also I have to note the fact that the beta has been out for months, and just now you're decideing to "review" it?
I hate to seem like a flamer but sorry. I thought _everyone_ had played it a month ago!
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Did you use heroes at all? For those who haven't played the game, each race has a different choice of "heroes" to choose from and level up. Each Hero has skills that they can learn (like Diablo 2), which can make an army of any size much more powerful.
In fact, if you have a lvl 5 hero with a modest army, you can take on much larger armies and easily be the victor. Blizzard has worked really hard to make sure that the "build an huge army" strategy isn't nearly as effective as building a clever army.
BTW, among the other cool features of the game not mentioned in this review is the way that the multiplayer system really helps allies become dangerously effective by providing opportunities for synergy among teammates; you can share control of units and buildings with your allies, so that you can each specialize. You can also donate resources to them, allowing one guy to work hard on mining and another to work hard on lumber. Very cool, and a very exciting release.
They are human. I go to Hope College. Up in Michigan where the slashdot gang came from. I was about 4 years behind them so I only met one (Cowboy Neal) and just met all of their friends who were still there. But they are gamers too. And in case you didn't notice, Blizzard makes great games. The best in some people's opinions. So give them some slack if gamers like to play the best computer games ever.
First off, war3 is just about as fast as war3. Unfortunately timothy probably only played campaign mode in war2 and never learned the keystrokes, so war3 feels faster playing it multiplayer with good players. Comparing war2 to a first person shooter and a turn-based game is the oddest thing I've seen on /. in a while.
Second, you don't have the *option* of getting heroes, you *must* build heroes. If you don't, you will most definitely lose.
Third, complimenting Blizzard on their graphic's is silly, they are way behind everyone else. Dark Reign 2 had basically war3's without 32bit 2 years ago. World War III came out months ago and it is better than war3's in many ways (has rotating of the camera, which is *very* useful.
Fourth, this game is great guys, and you'll love it. The Heroes make the game much more fun, and also with Upkeep (the more units you have the less income you make) is a huge improvement to the game. You now have smaller battles with more strategic varied engagements.
See you on battle.net!
Btw, until war3 comes out, I hope you're as excited as I am about dungeon siege (made by the guy behind Total Annihilation).
Here's an older and simpler Conquest game, which is pretty much all tactical, very Risk like and can be had for a pittance in shareware (remember supporting shareware?) registration fee. Available for WinCE (not that I have one or have tried one), too.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I've always played RTS games strategically. I would always play against a friend of mine and our games would take hours. The other night I played some friends I had never played before and guess what happened? By the time I was getting steady resources coming in and was able to maintain their level no matter what I built, here comes a massive army from 2 teams (allied) rushing me.
It wasn't fun at all, and the game lasted 20 minutes (the only reason it lasted that long is because I had some fishing boats and kept them moving, heh).
I agree with you 100%.
proton != antielectron
I know I can't be the only one that refuses to play RTS games until they come up with a decent AI for your forces? For me, the real question about the beta is what your forces do when they are finished with their assigned task? Do they stand around waiting for another order, or do they do something intelligent?
;-)
Until RTS games have decent enough AI that when your grunt is done building that fort you assigned him to build he goes and either returns to his previous job or starts doing some other productive job, I won't play them. I don't want to micromanage a bunch of grunts, that's my boss's job
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
...and I choose not to use them. One serious porting effort by one of the games companies was killed because it "ran" in WineX, never mind that it requires a LOT of machine to run any game well in WINE or WineX. I'm sure there's more to come.
WINE is a bandaid. It's NOT a solution.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
There won't be one.
From their FAQ:
Are there any plans to port a Linux version?
We are currently developing WarCraft III for the PC and Macintosh and have no plans for versions on
other operating systems.
But, I myself have played the Warcraft III beta, and I don't think I've ever been so disappointed. I was expecting very large innovations in gameplay, and a whole lot more from the graphics, for the amount of time they spent developing it. What I essentially feel I got was Warcraft II with a few minor changes.
Perhaps I'm just bitter. My friends and I spent many many hours playing Warcraft II, and while an updated Warcraft II is nice, I was still expecting more.
Lacking, to say the least.
"winning basically comes down to building everything up quickly and creating a massive army with which to crush your opponents. "
Yawn. Boy how original. In 1984.
Hmm, theres combat, and that part of the screen flashes, gee just like every other RT strat. game.
Yawn.
Has Dolby Sound, could be cool, unfortuanatly a very small percentage of there payer will have a speaker set up for this. I'd hate to think the game took so long to develop because of this.
Detects your hardwaye, now thats new. oh wait, no its not. Yawn
"Warcraft III gives new meaning to strategy RPGs. If you like to play pure strategy games where your only goal is to be the last one standing, this game is for you. If you like games where you can take a character, build him up, and watch the character grow over the life of the game, this game is for you. "
didn't you say its all about building up fast earlier in your review?
How where the graphics? did you need to look up anything in the manual, or was the interface intuitive? did you try it with different settings, on different machines? in which way is it better or worse then WarcraftII?
When Considering the reputation of Blizzard, and comparing it to the reputation of Slashdot, I'll believe the reviewer just isn't any good at doing a review and assume Blizzards game is going to be good. Mind you, thats only because I've enjoyed their *Crafts series so much.
Although I couldn't stand Diablo.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is slashdot, CMDR Taco and Hemos aren't allowed to use Windows!!
Did you use a bnetd server, or an Official Blizzard BattleNet server?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Can't wait for when Warcraft III comes to a theater near you and /. does the review.
Blizzard is part of Vivendi/Universal. Just want to make sure everyone knows this before handing their money over to a member of the MPAA.
dinner: it's what's for beer
obviously it was a paid review. This kind of "game review" is about as realistic as a fanboy post.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I have been playing since the beta was shipped .. and 95% of the games follow the exact same pattern.
.. walk around map killing creeps .. the idea is for your Hero to gain experience .. but you need to back your hero up with troops as well which can become costly ..
.. MASS troops and rush!!
First part of game
and while your doing that the person / team that is going to win the game is simply MASSING troops for a huge rush.
Second part of the game
Even with the Upkeep system in place it still seems that the teams with the most troops wins.
As the subject says - Transgaming's WineX does support (fully) War Craft 3 and it works perfectly with the current CVS.
However - you DO need to subscribe to WineX in order to use the final release of WarCraft 3 due to the fact that WineX will support the copy protection that will come on the WC3 CD.
Subscription is $5 - worth every penny IMHO.
Hetz (Heunique)
Granted it's only multiplayer, but the gameplay is only glossed over. So what happened during those 30 minutes you played? How was the networking? Was there lag? What about the interface? Argh... this review was written by Brittney Spears. Damn it... Where's my -1 voting button when I need it?
It's not the first time they lock you inside a closet and force you to do something, right?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
The fact that Blizzard is owned by MPAA member Vivendi/Universal is reason enough to boycott them.
dinner: it's what's for beer
Heh... its like a video game...
DUO TROLL ATTACK!
"I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States of America "
Well then you won't mind producing papers to that effect will you!
Papieren Bitte!
This flamebait brought to you by the Office of Homeland Security. "Making Today a Better Place Tomorrow."
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
When are they comming out with StarCraft 2? At most LAN parties we play SC far more then WC2.
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
That review was terrible. If slashdot wants us to read content, they really should ask timothy to actually play the game first.
,the addition of Neutral units (in that they hate all players equally), and Upkeep.
/dev/null for 'upkeep' of my units. If I am ready to attack and I pump out a pile of Necros, Gargoyles and Meat Wagons, I'll prolly move into 'High Upkeep', where 70% of my gold is going into /dev/null. This discourages building tons and tons of units and turtling in your base. Unless you maintain a lot of expansion bases and mines, your income would be slowed to a point that losing your army would mean very little money in reserves for a rebuild. This gives the nimble conservative player the opening to pick you apart.
I'm beta-testing also, so let me give you a better explanation:
There are 4 races (already mentioned). Each one of them have very particular strategies that make them suited for different players. The real twist on WarIII that breathe life into a dying RTS genre are the Heros
Each race has 3 heros available. Generally one is a melee, one is a caster, and one is a mixture. Your first Hero only counts against supply (food), but the next one will cost money. Heros gather experience from battle, and you can level up their skills (similar to Diablo II). These skills range from the area-effect spell Blizzard to 'auras' that enchance all the units around your hero. At level 5 your hero gains an 'ultimate' ability that can turn the tide of battle. One of the undead heros can raise all the dead bodies in an area to fight for him, that's pretty powerful.
Neutral units and buildings are scattered around the maps. You must fight the units, and you can use the buildings for hiring mercenaries or buying potions/buffs/spells. This doesn't sound like that big of an addition, but attacking an enemy player who just finished mixing it up with a large group of 'creeps' (the slang for these units) can give you a huge advantage.
Upkeep is the single most revolutionary part of the game. Those familiar with RTS games know all about supply/food/houses or whatever. Traditionally you can only support finite number of units, and to handle more you must invest more money into your base. Upkeep slashes a percentage of your gold relevant to the size of your army. For instance, I might have an undead base with a pile of ziggurats (undead 'farms') that allows me to support 90 units (the game max). If I only have say, 10, I'm in 'No Upkeep', which means that 100% of the gold my acolytes (undead peons) mine goes into the bank. If I decide I want to beef up my defenses with some abominations (undead heavy melee), say 5 or 6 of them, I'll move into 'Low Upkeep'. At this point 30% of my gold is being diverged into
These features, coupled with some really cool little ideas (Orc Raiders gain resources from enemy bases each time they attack a building, human peons and be turned into militia, elven bases can uproot and attack enemies, and undead units heal when on their own land, just to name a few) make WarCraft III much more pleasing for any player. Sure, you can play fast, or you can be defensive and prepare for a long game. Either way you will marvel at the graphics, laugh at Blizzard's sense of humor, marvel at the huge number of strategic possibilities, and have a smashing good time.
*troll on*
I don't wanna hear a single comment about the bnetd stuff, I'm happy to pay them $50 for hours and hours of mindless-computer-fun, and I understand them wanting to keep the online play within their control.
*troll off*
Moderators, see if you can replace my text with that slop that timothy called a review...
Features I'm looking forward to in the upcoming release include: LAN games (five laptops, five six-packs, you know the drill)
Just five six packs? That's not even enough to get you wasted (assuming there's 5 of you, if it's just you, well then you really now how to party). There's nothing like 5 computer geeks, thoroughly hammered, playing Quake 3 Tournament(or whatever your game of choice may be).
Why don't you go write them a letter instead of caling me a whore. With all the crappy games out there, making a good one into a success by buying one is far more important to me.
"Gee, we only sold 400,000 copies, must be because we shut that site down."
Talk about Karma Whore.
"Derp de derp."
What I want to know - and this is important - is this; are there sheep that I can click on until they say "Baa, Ram, Ewe" and explode?
It was these comic touches that made WC2 really enjoyable. It was the icing on the cake....
"I come to serve"
IMHO, as per
Jason
Oh well, no point in steering now.
This reminds me of the Slashdot reaction to Tivo's privacy violations.
It amazes me that people can't think through why this is the case. Put yourself in Blizzard's shoes (ok, brrr). If you release a Beta that's a stand-alone game, why would the tester every buy the full product when it comes out? People are cheap, and that's why there's rampant copying of the Beta (hell, even I have a cracked copy).
The purpose of a beta program is to test the product (interface, network utilization, balance), test the market readyness, and expose any critical bugs that might hinder a good rollout. If you're players are on your network you can get a pretty good idea of a lot of these things (I wonder if the program does a callback if there's a crash/etc.). If it's standalone, not only would you have to have finished standalone missions (hint: they're probably still being produced/tested), but you'd lose out on any ability to monitor critical statistics. On the other hand, if you people do warez your Beta, and connect to your network, at least you have more useful stats from determined fans.
On the side of the BnetD v. Blizzard, I can see their point of view. They make great games, cater to the user even after the sale (battle.net, custom maps), they make sure that their games are reasonably compatible with older hardware (I can still play Starcraft with my 5 year old laptop)... and what happens? Major Anger because people want to steal their beta program and play it off their network? Of course, I understand the problems with Blizzard's position in this case, and I support the EFF. I've made my donations in the past, but I'm just a bit iffy on this case.
On a side note, I hope they fix the balance issues with the Undead. Undead are way overpowered.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"Slashdot was lucky enough to get a beta copy of Blizzard's upcoming Chutes and Ladders: Vertical Assault. So, CmdrTaco and Hemos locked me up beneath a stairwell and forced me to play for the last week..."
"This time you have a choice between two races: Chutes or Ladders. Your race really doesn't matter in multiplayer mode; winning basically comes down to building everything up quickly and creating a massive army of chutes (or ladders) with which to climb to the top. Or in my case, get climbed over."
Play the game.. love it.. but just don't buy it. Like you all do with most of your Games/Programs.
fight the good fight, get hired as a programmer @ blizzard and crack open battlenet for the masses?
hmmm....???
I think the biggest improvement that Warcraft III has over its predecessors is Blizzard's ever more impressive graphics. With a decent video card, the graphics are crisp and clear. Nowadays, 3D is the name of the game, and Blizzard again comes a step closer to reality with this strategy role-playing game.
Reality? I thought this was a fantasy game.
In my opinion this game isn't a large change over Warcraft II. Among the options that make this game excellent and greatly increase the gameplay is the Max number of orcs,peons, warriors etc. etc. Warcraft II had an unlimited supply, the faster you made farms the faster you could make guys. I really wish Blizzard would have stuck with the original idea in which you had total control over each characters abilities. Giving you more of a FPS type game. The graphics in this game among otherthings which include gameplay, maps, and races aren't anything drastic and in no way should they have taken this long between Warcraft II and Warcraft III.
You (the Slashdot "editors") just gave me the biggest laugh of the day. After all the hype about Blizzard's attacks on Battle.net clones, you guys come out with a fanboy, suck-up article for Warcraft III. Not unexpected, but definitely a sign that Slashdot is losing its relevance.
This article leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like a Jon Katz polemic. So much for Slashdot's "reputation" as a "defender of freedom." I wonder if Katz will write an article about how people let fanboyism get in the way of their putative idealism?
As for me: I'm donating the purchase price of a Warcraft III to the EFF, and I'll find other fine games to play. Morrowind looks terrific; Heroes of Might and Magic 4 should be fine, too.
Until now, I've bought and played heavily every game Blizzard has produced. But no more; I don't need Blizzard, and I won't support their misuse of copyright. In my book, Blizzard is no better than the Scientologists, in that both breed cults of ill-manner folk, and then get their dander up when anyone dissents.
All about me
Well yeah, if you oversimplify anything, it sounds uninteresting doesn't it?
The problem with most genres is that few companies seek to truely innovate. "We need the next Quake Killer!! Okay, we'll Quake, add 2 more new features, it'll drastically change the game!" -- the market suffers from that. Westwood's Command and Conquer series somewhat suffers from 'cookiecutter-itis' where they rehash the game a few times too often.
It's easy to say "well, I guess the genre is dead because it's all more of the same", but when you do that, you're forgetting about games like StarCraft and Age of Empires. Those weren't just subtle upates to the theme, but drastically different strategies can be used in those games.
I would agree with you that RTS is basically dead when all the companies make 'me-too' products, but when Blizzard comes along and reinvents the genre, I wouldn't be willing to call it dead yet. If anything, it'll inject fresh life into it. From what I've read so far, Blizzard has been hard at work making this into a new type of game. It will be really disappointing if they prove me wrong.
"Derp de derp."
Blizzard shuts down innocent websites and programmers, and you guys go promote their fucking products?
Well, I don't know much about that, but what I DO know is that I paid $25 for Starcraft/Brood Wars and I get to play an unlimited amount of networked multiplayer (on their server) pretty much, uh, forever. Pretty good value, no?
Blizzard has always been a company that's lagged a bit behind in making use of new computer power, ie they lock you into a specific screen resolution,
Yeah, well that's because they've focused on the gameplay. I laughed when Starcraft came out because it was almost exactly the same as Warcraft II. But, five years later I'm still playing it, 640 or not, because the gameplay is so fucking solid.
Although I have to say, Diablo II is another story indeed.
I'm afraid WarCraft3 is nothing more than an upgrade of Warcraft2. Sure, its pretty, and will entertain for about a week, but it'll all come down to who can rush faster.
I agree. It doesn't take long to learn how to use the UI efficiently. After that, it's all about how glazed-over your stare is, and how often you clean your mouse. I don't enjoy competing on that level.
I've been waiting about 5 years for a game that has AI scripts for controlling the units. You know, "go attack that base, take out the men first, then start nailing the buildings." Wouldn't be hard, but I think they're afraid of alienating the hyper-reflexive pre-teen set.
By the way, some of the Use Map Settings games on battlenet are entirely cerebral, no rushing/reflexes whatsoever. Once again, $25 you get it all.
You've got yourself snowed reeeal good. You can sit there, smugly assuring yourself that a boycott will somehow destroy Blizzard, an huge company which has not agreed to conform exactly to your idealistic worldview.
I'm opposed to most boycotts for the same reason that I'm opposed to most recycling programs, or political chain e-mails. They give a person the mistaken impression that they are actually accomplishing something, so that's where their interest stops -- "hey, I'm a fucking ENVIRONMENTALIST, I recycled my soda can" or "Hey, I'm a pro-choice ACTIVIST, I forwarded an annoying e-mail to all my friends," or "Hey, I'm an elite EFF open source free software GURU, I refused to buy Warcraft III!"
Warcraft III is going to succeed because it is a superior product. In a free market, that is the way it should work.
You know you'll buy it... eventually.
released a new "great" game, I lost my job, both girlfriends and reality.
More units ==> less gold ==> less units you can build on top of that.
So NO, its NOT about building mass units. Its about making a tradeoff between units and upkeep, then managing the limited units you have effectively in battle.
FYI, Upkeep kicks in at 30 and 60, with the unit cap at 100 supply.
Do I really want to ruin this AC's day by telling him/her that Slashdot is a diverse group of people, each with their own principles and opinions ?
Slashdot's editors are free to post whatever they think is worthy. If that means CmdrTaco and Hemos post a review of WC3 while Michael reports on the crushing of bnetd, so be it. Face it, it's better this way. If it were just Rob & Jeff's Droolworthy Games, or Michael's Anti-Microsoft Rant of the Month, the site would have gotten stuffed a long time ago.
This sig intentionally left blank.
So, CmdrTaco and Hemos locked me up inside a closet and forced me to play for the last week.
Life is rough.
(-;
Maybe it was me, but Warcraft III seemed to have a faster pace than the previous two releases. The pace is a double-edged sword, because some players like their video games to be fast paced while others like to take their time.
Gosh, you're obvervant. Just as you can only do multi-player mode, you are also stuck at "faster" as the speed (or fastest? been a week since I've played...). Next time you're starting a game, look at the screen for a moment. There will be a place where, in the final version, the speed can be actually changed. Its set to one of the fastest possible right now, and unchangeable. Why? To get the errors to occur as quickly as possible, I guess...
So no...its not just a Warcraft3 thing. Its a beta thing, just like the fact that you can't play multiplayer.
Nowadays, 3D is the name of the game, and Blizzard again comes a step closer to reality with this strategy role-playing game
Umm....3d has been the "name of the game" for a very long time now. The relative lack of it years ago was Starcraft's biggest weakness (though Starcraft is still one of my more favorite games).
We may be whores, but at least we're not mindless zealots like you, who jump to angry conclusions without understanding JACK FRIGGIN' SQUAT. I'd imagine the only information you even HAVE about bNetd is that which you've gleaned from this and similar sites.
So unless you're a lawyer, or have some grand information source that none of us know about proving that Blizzard is in fact Satan's kingdom on earth, do us a favor and shut up.
If you hate blizzard, boycotting won't hurt them a bit. There's only a few thousand copies that they'd lose if you tried to start a boycott, hardly noticeable compared to the millions they are going to sell. If you think they are bad people hurt them where it counts. Write serial number generators, start free warcraft gaming servers, or write your own, heck, writing hacks and cracks for the game would be more effective even.
when you like the product (ooh, shiny!), and to not tolerate it in others (DVDs on Linux), that makes you a hypocrite and will never get you anywhere.
Unless you have a valid reason for your difference in opinion. For example, you can be in favor of abortion rights in cases where the mothers health is at risk, and against it in all other cases. That doesn't make you a hypocrite.
Dinivin
I will not be buying Warcraft III or any blizzard products.
"it's perfectly possible and not hypocritical to hate Blizzard and want to fuck them five ways from Friday and still enjoy Warcraft III. "
That may be true , but it is hypocritical to whine on about companies doing 'bad' thing's,(you do not agree ), and then to go out and buy the product.I would even go so far as to say that it would be hypocritical for some who diss agreed with what blizzard did to bnetd to even play the pirated version of Warcraft III .
_________________________________________________
No Soup For You.Next
Lameness Filter
Filter of Lameness
Lame ness Filter
La men ess Fi lt er
Lamenes s F ilter
Lam
eness Fil ter
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
... which seem like "selling out"
/. tries to help them sell the WarCraft III product.
We totally trash Blizzard for, well being assholes and shutting down a project like BNETD which people use for legitimate purposes using the DMCA, then
Am I the only person who thinks of Mozilla whenever anyone talks about Blizzard releasing software? Yes, I know, I've played Warcraft (both), Diablo (both), and Starcraft, but any time I see mention of a new software release from Blizzard, I automatically think of Mozilla, not games.
After having been addicted to Starcraft for the past 3 years, I was damn excited to receive my beta of WC3. The short and sweet is that it doesn't live up to my expectations. This isn't to say it isn't fun, but I'm not yearning to play it every chance I get.
The one thing I found difficult about Starcraft was playing Terran and managing my army effectively. It takes considerable concentration and experience to utilize the advanced units effectively (lockdown ghost, EMP sci vessels, optical flare medic, etc). This is the type of control you need for Warcraft III. You need to be in the mindset and constantly moving, doing things. Resource gathering has been completely deemphasized.
Another difference is that when I'm attacking, it doesn't feel so much like I'm actually killing anything. You see their little health meter go down, but to me, it doesn't FEEL like I'm kicking ass. In Starcraft, it actually felt like I was kicking ass, or getting my ass kicked.
Visual Observations
The graphics look good, but aren't what I would call spectacular. Although, it looks amazingly sharp on my 17" LCD w/ GF2 Ultra. I'm still trying to figure out why zooming would ever be useful. You see, it's basically a top-down view like SC, but you can use your mouse wheel to go from top-down to a 3rd person type of view. It's somewhat neat, but useless IMO thus far.
Hardware Requirements
I loaded WC3 on a P2 400 to see its performance and man was it slow. I must have been getting 10 FPS. You're going to need at LEAST a 600 MHz processor with a decent video card (GF2MX).
Overall
There are tons of cool things about WC3: Heroes, auras, multiplayer game auto selector based on your rank, etc. If you're curious, check out a full blown review somewhere.
A good game, but not as good as I was hoping. I'm hoping the final version will have something the Beta is missing that will make me change my view.
I've tried it on Windows 95 OSR2, and it refused to install.
Blizzard has provided me with many many hours of amusment for little cost. If you don't like it go back to Russia!
Haven't you ever seen Seinfeld man? Of COURSE you keep going back because the soup is that damn good.
You would think Blizzard could have written a better review for their own game.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Oh for fuck's sake!
Why does everyone with something to say that isn't 1000% pro-Linux have to put in this pathetic disclamer?
Afraid the Slashbot Gods will eat your karma?
Be a man, think for yourself and say what you think.
Let's have less of this weedy "dont get me wrong, as much as I love Linux" crap!
That was a review?
/.
I would expect a little more meat to a review from someone at
How about some pros/cons? Or at least go into some more depth in one area.
For example, the idea of heroes is intriguing to me. What sort of skills do they possess or can learn? How does that help you in the game?
Anyone else agree?
I worry about Blizzard. They seem to be locked into a never ending cycle of making sequels to pre-existing ware. I'd like them to branch out into other franchises but the sheer length of time needed to make these sequels seems like we'll have quite a wait ahead of us
From the review I really can't get very excited about their feature list. Consider that Warlords Battlecry was the first to introduce a really solid hero paradigm into RTS. Imagine taking a diablo character with its skills and advancement through experience and adding it to warcraft. In Battlecry your hero can cast spells, summon more units, create items etc. Not to mention the extremely wide variety of character selection. If you think warcraft is going to make you happy I highly recommend buying Battlecry II. It's already out, you don't have to wait. Here in the office we are fairly well addicted at this point.
Obviously, if an opponent rushing you easily defeats you, then your strategy is flawed. This complaint is just like saying Chess doesn't allow for strategy, because an opponent can always rush with a bishop and a queen and you lose in 4 turns.If rushing is a better strategy than what you use, improve your strategy. I think your complaint is that you can't sit around as long as you like builiding up cool stuf without setting up a proper defense. When you have a small group of friends it is cool to build yourselves up until you have massively advanced units beating the crap out of each other, it may be fun and time consuming, but don't mistake this for strategy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You could have said pretty much the same things about Half-Life. A great single-player campaign gets you only so far. And HL deathmatch gets real old real quick. But what happened? Mods. And Warcraft III supports mod-like custom scenerios. Using this ability, some players converted Starcraft into an RPG. With Warcraft III even more open-ended, imagine what they'll be able to come up with. Sure, making huge gameplay innovations is great. But what matters, and what Blizzard games have plenty of, is community.
Because you have no idea what you're talking about. Don't listen to this slashdot 'review', wait and play it yourself. It's so much more than WC2 it's scary. Check out this reader review for a much better look at the game.
8 064
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=29873&cid=320
Don't you people have _ANY_ pride!?
You bash the DCMA, SSSA(or whatever it is called) and all the others, but then you don't boycott blizzard for killing bnetd?!
You even write a god damn review!?
Eh. I played the Beta for a few hours, but was unimpressed: the game plays like a real-time version of Heroes of Might and Magic. Like most Blizzard games, it is fun, but not terribly revolutionary (and only minorly evolutionary).
I'm sure the game will sell well, but it just isn't that interesting to me after hundreds of variations on the RTS genre.
I want something new and interesting.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
that Blizzard would have supplied Slashdot with a better review. Guess they figured it wouldn't be believable once Timmah! threw his name on it. Sell out fucks.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"Warcraft III runs on Windows 95/98/2000/NT and Mac OS."
Nowadays, saying "Runs on Mac OS" is like saying "Looks fine in Netscape". Uh, Netscape 4 or Netscape 6 or Netscape 6.2 or do you really mean Mozilla...?
Bottom Line: Will there be Mac OS X support out of the gate?
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
You seem to be under the impression that Slashdot is some kind of crusade or political pressure group. It's not, it's a forum, a site where people submit things that others might be interested in and then comment on them.
Guess what? Some of those people are interested in Warcraft III. Some of them don't care or even agree with Blizzard's actions over Bnetd.
You assumed that the posting of a previous story was some sort of editorial stand, when in fact it was just another story.
If you want to give money to a 'cause' give it to the EFF or GNU or someone like that.
Anonymous Coward: What the hell is wrong with you people?
/. has no problem doing product reviews for a company that uses the DMCA like a baseball bat, why not be open about it and do some product reviews for the fine folks at Microsoft, Rambus, the RIAA and Monsanto? They've got a lot of nice, shiny toys too...
Blizzard shuts down innocent websites and programmers, and you guys go promote their fucking products?
How about SHOWING SOME BACKBONE?!?!!
Boycott Blizzard!
If
Fairness cuts both ways...or should we just give up the pretense of fairness?
Build Build Build, Resource management, Kill, Build Build Build.
If Warcraft III is just Warcraft II with omre units and 3D, I will be disappointed. It will be like starcraft.
I'm sorry, the Myth series ruined the whole Real Time Strategy genre for me. Having a game where the combat, which is in the end how the game is decided, under your control is just awesome. Things like terrain height, distance, etc. all affected how effective combat was. The fact that archers missed their targets was awesome.
Does Warcraft III have any semblance of a physics engine at all? Or is it just 3D artwork with pre-defined strike damage, etc. ?
The article starts with:
"Robo writes:"
What the fuck is going on here??? Robo, CmdrTaco, and Hemos are just a bunch of dirty whores. Any self-respecting Slashdot reader should be ashamed to even click on those links, much less read the f*cking articles.
-dbc
... I'm opposed to most recycling programs, or political chain e-mails. They give a person the mistaken impression that they are actually accomplishing something, so that's where their interest stops -- "hey, I'm a fucking ENVIRONMENTALIST, I recycled my soda can"...
Yeah, we should all boycott recycling, since it doesn't solve every environmental problem.
I believe the original Command & Conquer[*] worker peons would finish a job, then look around for something to build/repair/harvest. The worker Imps in Dungeon Keeper have a priority list of things to do if you haven't assigned them anything (claim any unclaimed ground, reinforce any un-reinforced walls, scavenge dead bodies, etc).
Right now I have a hard time keeping track of my Citizens in Empire Earth because if something needs doing within their line of sight, they wander off and start working, and then I can't find them. (I have the most efficient, productive, confused society ever!)
[*] Made in the bad old days before Westwood could hire professional actors. I believe the man who plays the bad guy (Kane? Cain? sp?) works in the Westwood financial division or something. That's really cool. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Weren't we supposed to avoid Blizzard due to DMCA abuse, like we're supposed to stop going to movie theaters or buying CDs?
If there is no financial penalty to their actions, what will get companies to stop trying to destroy 'fair use'?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Too bad you can't be a Dark a.out, too.
sorry.
You should give "Majesty" ( www.cyberlore.com/Majesty/ ) a try... You decide what you build and you can "influence" your characters (called "heros") to do stuff. But you don't control them; they have a mind of their own... Rangers are more likely to explore the map for you, some other types of heros will stay close to you base. When your heros are badly hurt, they use healing potions, when they run out try to run away from combat to heal at home and buy more healing potions. Heros can advance levels and buy their own weapons, armors, potions with the money they win in combats. You can influence them with rewards (attack flags and explore flags). The bigger the rewards, the more likely they are to "apply for the job". You make money with some of your buildings (marketplace, etc.) and tax collectors going to collect there.
is there anywhere i can do a feature request? since we have all these neat features, and half the people i know use dual monitor displays, is there any way i can set up warcraft III to display the map on a second monitor, somthing like a minimized version of the entire map, with sprite-ized versions of the units. not as helpful as some more advanced AI, but still extremely helpful
moox. for a new generation.
Universal Plug and Play, I can take over your entire machine if its turned on. Yes your entire machine would be OWNED.
Wheres your security? Even Windows95 wasnt that bad.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Re: I'm always disappointed that Blizzard's betas only let you play multiplayer, but that's life. The reason for that is at the beta stage usually the AI for the computer player isn't finished yet - partly because that's usually the hardest bit to write & takes the longest.
Video Game cheats, hints a
I've seen a fair bit of Warcraft III (although I haven't really played it myself much) and I thought I'd offer a few insights...
First, the graphics. Very cool, but at the same time a bit dissapointing. You can't rotate the camera. At all. All you can do is zoom and tilt from a near overhead view down to an angle closer to the ground... but the camera ALWAYS faces north.
That being said.. it works great. The game plays just like Warcraft II, but with much cooler graphics, and more unit diversity. Extremely easy to dive right into if you've played Warcraft II or Starcraft. I disagree with the reviewer that it's all about the rush. It's not. Blizzard is going for a smaller, more diverse army approach. Unit limit is 90. Which brings us to heroes. (I can't BELIEVE the reviewer didn't talk about heroes)
Heroes are what really make Warcraft III more compelling that its predecessors (which is very high praise) These are like RPG characters.. they have experience, they level, they can collect magic items, they get really powerful magic spells. They ALSO increase the combat effectiveness of any group of creatures they lead into battle.
All this means that instead of hordes of faceless grunt swarms, you have smaller, more carefully built and selected combat groups, led into battle by a character you've worked building up, who actually has a name, who you actually care, yes care about his welfare. You will know despair when you see the message "Lord Darkthorne (Lvl 8) has been slain in combat".
Despite the lack of camera rotation, the 3D graphics are VERY well done. Creatures don't look like polygons, they look almost hand drawn. I just wish they had pushed the envelope with the 3D technology a little more. Ground Control is a perfect example of how to do camera control in a ground based 3D RTS. And camera control is everything. It's what made Homeworld so amazing.
Overall concluding thoughts? I was dissapointed with Diablo II, I thought it was almost a (very large) expansion to Diablo I, with a stupid quasi-3D graphic gimmick. I am NOT dissapointed with Warcraft III. It shines of Blizzard quality. The legendary Blizzard play balance and more importantly, personality, is here, and here in spades. Warcraft III is going to FLY off the shelves when it's done. And they have MONTHS left to improve it even more! I can't wait to see what the campaigns are like.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I'm not one to drag Microsoft into every argument, but this one is appropriate. I'm not pandering to Slashdot by saying this, I'm simply stating truth.
Does someone cue up the Roxanne and turn on a red light when you post stuff like this to slashdot?
Total Annihilation and Total Annihilation: Kingdoms which followed before seem to be ahead of their time (Total Annihilation came a year before Starcraft) considering that they used 3D units that behaved differently based on terrain, planes that actually seemed to bank to the side in order to turn et cetera.
The artificial intelligence was fairly advanced for it's time and units could be automatically ordered to perform certain tasks such as patrol using predefined way points or guard areas (even before they were produced by giving these orders to the manufacturing facilities).
The game allows for more units (or seems to) then Warcraft III, had a higher resolution and is the first game I know of that allowed for Air, Sea and Land battled at the same time. It seems a shame that it took so long for Warfact III to be released only to seem slightly more advanced then something that was released seemingly ages ago.
I actually know of a place (a country, as a matter of fact) where people actually spend for Linux games (including shipping costs, etc.) and pirate Windoze games intentionally. Amazingly, it's not even a small group of people but a diverse one that just decided individually to do just that.
It's a country outside of America, of course. They're much more tech-savvy than Americans.
Fer cryin out loud, do your homework. Slashdot has a collection of authors, at least 3 of which have been posting about Blizzard. It is possible for a single media entity to have different authors with differing points of view about an issue, or a company.
MICHAEL has posted critical content about Blizzar and bnetd
HEMOS has as well.
TIMOTHY, who posted this, has not been critical of Blizzard, but has tried to show Blizzard's point of view. See "the challeng of making a Multiplayer game".
SLASHDOT has no single point of view given the postings I can find.
Timothy is consistent with his earlier postings when he posted this one. Michael remains consistent with his point of view. Hemos, ditto.
I get so sick of people pretending Slashdot is one guy with one point of view, and whining every time they find an 'inconsistency'.
Sheesh.
http://www.kohan.net
Other interesting titles that may be very similar
to warcraft III is Warlords Battle Cry. (http://www.warlordsbattlecry2.com/)
The warlords series has always had good hero development. It has 12 races each of which has access to a certain group of hero classes. The heros are persitant across games. The developer SSG has been very good at hero development since at least the early 90s when warlords II came out. (the battle cry series are RTSes the plain warlords are turn based)
But WBC2 doesn't have upkeeps or progressive costs,if you're looking for that try Cossacks. (http://www.cossacks.de/) It also has insane unit limits (I've had over 1000 individual units) none of these 90 unit limit things. This makes for some epic battles. Of course there are no heros in Cossacks and it's set in the real world.
All three of these are very good games certainly in the cream of the crop field. But they have different styles of play. So you might like one more than the others. I'll wait and see how Warcraft 3 rates up to them.
Starcraft, unless you play on that bloodbath math built for zergs, its easy as hell to defend against a rush.
Dont play on big game hunters with unlimited minerals, and strategy is the only thing which works, rushing is a strategy but only newbies rush. Its easy to defend against a rush and once you do defend against the first few marines, zerglings or whatever, you'll have tanks and from there you scout them to see what they have, if they are still building zerglings and marines go air with cloaked wraths and kill all their workers
if they have alot of marines, then you expand and get a mineral advantage and let them waste their resources on building ground troops.
Its all about strategy, resource management, timing, and tactics.
Tactics such as bringing SCV with your marines to enhance your attack and building bunkers in front of their base, so they cannot use a ground counter attack or use an worker to scout you, or properly positioning a tank so it can hit their workers from a cliff.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Uh oh, posting this on /. will probably get me modded down faster than just about anything as a Troll or something...but given that the original "Article" was doing the trolling, I'm willing to give it a go.
Aside from the various issues with the review itself--which has been commented upon by quite a few posters already--this opening line just baffles me:
"Warcraft III runs on Windows 95/98/2000/NT and Mac OS. My setup was easy as pie, which was surprising since I run WinXP."
Oh please. Enough with the lame-ass cheapshots, OK? I can't think of any reason why installation of ANYTHING would be surprising on WinXP. It's got to be one of the most installation-friendly OSes ever created. Aside from the fact that I have been able to plug in EVERY piece of hardware (everything from ancient value USB scanners to brand-new stuff) either myself or any of my coworks have without having to install a SINGLE driver manually, I have yet to find anyone who has had trouble installing a program.
If you're gonna bitch and moan about something, do it with valid points. Is that so hard to understand?
-Jayde
What's a sig?
Sure, if your opinion is logically consistent and can be turned into an actual amendment to the DMCA.
If you knew how to play you'd know the proper build order to stop a rush.
Yes BUILD ORDER.
6-7 on mineral
Barracks
build 3 more scv,use an scv to find the chokee point then build a supply dupot on that choke point
and put the other two scv on mineral.
build a bunker and marines, fill the bunker with marines, build another supply dupot in front of a new bunker, then fill that with marines, have 4 marines in each and when you get rushed by the zerglings and whatever,they will attack what they see first which is your dupots, your marines will use bullets and shoot them, you can repair the bunkers if they get past the dupots (zealots) as they attack you repair, if the bunkers blow up, use all your scv in the attack, no rush gets through this, then put your scv back on minerals and rebuild for the next wave.
Your partner all during this time should be teching up and expanding. So when they finally do destroy your base if they are double teaming you, you can escape to your partners base, your partner can then come in with air, game over, rushers lose.
This is why rushing only works on newbies.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Actually I do know them, I watched Cowboy Neal play Starcraft across Hope's lan in a cook dorm room. He told me about their vending machine idea for producing cds (he told me about a script they made to burn a cd and then send the cd label to the printer to print at the same time. all they needed was a vending machine to make real copies). Ask him if he visting Cook when the Diablo2 beta was going on? His friend got in the beta and allowed me to play.
/. people are the leaders of some huge underground movement or revolution. Hell, they aren't even 30 yet. You guys have no more impact on world events then any other small ragtag group. Your voices are forgotten and your money isn't needed to keep Blizzard alive.
You guys act like the
I totally sympathize with Blizzard for keeping their product from getting pirated and used on open source servers. The Internet is proof that if you can get it for free then 9 times out of ten you will. Music became big only when mp3 made it possible. Once possible, theft came. Movies still weren't possible until broadband. Once broadband came, movies became stolen. Now I don't like the MPAA or the RCAA. Actually I hope more people steal singles until they broker a real online deal with people. But lets get this rant straight, FU to all the people who think Blizzard shouldn't have cd-key checks. I love Blizzard's battle.net service and it has provided me more than my money's worth in all of their games that use it. I don't want them to lose a large part of their money on pirates since the employees work their ass off and do a quality job.
And Mods, please give me a 0. I don't want a favorable impression if everyone here hates Blizzard, rags on gamers for playing one of the top 5 games of 2002, and goes crazy political anytime a small issue comes up.
You people like tactics.
You know, massive groups of units using tactics to kill each other.
Strategy is planning, and yes rushing is a strategy.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
you have weighed your priorities and made a conscious decision about what means more to your ideals. The original poster was saying that you can scream bloody murder about a company's policy one day while continuing to support what they do with a shrug of your shoulders, and I must agree that that would be very, very hypocritical.
If mouse accuracy swamps strategy, it's not a strategy game. Warcraft would be a good game if you had the option of giving orders while it was paused.
Still, until I see an apology from Blizzard saying "we were totally wrong to invoke the DMCA, which is obviously unconstitutional", I'm not buying any of their stuff.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Thats TACTICS!!!!!
Strategy is in building, planning, and managing resources
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Actually, Starcraft (1998) didn't innovate a damned thing. It came out after Chris Taylor's Total Annihilation (1997), and TA was and is the better game.
TA has beautiful 3D-units, nice ballistics, build and order queues, and much more.
Starcraft... <chuckle>
Belief is the currency of delusion.
www.war3pub.neta d :)
www.geocities.com/war3betadownlo
It's already cracked for the current version 1.13 and I've been playing it multiplayer for a month and a bit as well as the rest of the world
So when Sony admitted that they had invented a fake reviewer to generate favorable quotes for movie ads, did you write a venomous missive to your local newspaper, calling them hypocrites for a good review of "Black Hawk Down"? Because that is real journalistic integrity. They didn't let the misconduct of Sony's marketroids alter their opinion of the film. (Hypothetically speaking. For all I know, your local rag hated "Black Hawk Down".)
I don't seem to recall a post stating that all the editors got together and agreed that Vivendi/Blizzard are a bunch of soulless corporate bastards, and shall never get good press from Slashdot again. (Come to think of it, I don't seem to recall a post stating that all the editors got together for any reason. Unless a lan party at CowboyNeal's place went horribly wrong, and they're all sworn to secrecy. <g>)
Slashdot has no collective editorial opinion. It's quite possible that, while Michael loathes Blizzard for daring invoke the DMCA to squelch an Open Source project, Rob may agree with Blizzard that bnetd will let punks war3z them out of business. I don't know that for sure, but it illustrates the point that the editors are individuals. Each one posts what he thinks is important, and let's the reader make his or her own judgements.
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I agree with what you just said - except for one thing: what the hell do you do that's so much better? Please clarify, because just tearing down other people's ideas about activism without mentioning what they should be doing instead is completely crazy. In fact, let's take the specific example of recycling, which you seem to have a beef with. What could you possibly be doing to cut down on waste that's better than that? Did you fire off a big fat check to some sort of Sanitation Reform Committee? I can't even imagine...
Most RTS games today are purely "by the numbers". If two competent players sit down and play a modern RTS game the winner is usually predicted by the player ever has more resources and who can get it faster. There are no "alternate" strategies for almost all RTS games out there now and it sounds like WC3 is going to be the same. Any other path is less efficient and results in defeat. The only "defense" against this is being more efficient(ie the same strategy).
Even in the fastest Chess "rush" strategy there is a counter(take a piece or take a spot that is key to their strategy). There is nothing to counter a Starcraft "rush" besides beating them to the "rush".
Not very interesting in my view. I'll probably get WC3 too because it will be fun but give me Civ and Alpha Centari if you want to talk about strategy.
Sorry I did not make myself clear in my first message, it was poorly written. When I said "opposed" to recycling I didn't mean "don't recycle". But, if you think that stuff your recycling is even making a dent in the massive environmental problems our world faces, you are fooling yourself. I see recycling as a red herring -- probably not harmful, probably not very helpful -- and detracts energy and attention from solving much worse problems.
Personally I like to take my cans and bottles, and go out to the beach twice a year, and dump it all in the ocean. I force plastic 6-pack tops over the heads of ducks and otters, too.
-AP
As has been reported recently in many places (including Slashdot), Scientology is using the DMCA to edit Google and other sources of imformation about their cult. In a similar fashion, Blizzard is using the DMCA and the threat of lawsuit to stop people from the legitimate fair and reverse engineering of Battle.net. Both companies are using the DMCA for "bad" purpose, which makes the comparison valid.
As for my "breed cults of ill-mannered folk" comment -- spend some time on Battle.net, and you'll see what I mean. I play lots of games, and Blizzard attracts the most childish fans of any company. Living in Clearwater, Florida, the "spiritual home" of Scientology has taught me much about the poor behavior of Scientology.
All about me
So, CmdrTaco and Hemos locked me up inside a closet and forced me to play for the last week.
So does this mean that Timothy is admitting to be coming out of the closet now?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Your right. This guy doesn't seem to know jack about games really. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll into a fps mode, but everyone says.. wow it looks kool, but im not really gonna play like that. It's more a mesh of Diablo2 and Warcarft2. Your heros have lots of the same abilities that your characters did in Diablo2, such as chain lightning, mirror image, thorns aura etc. Not to mention tombs of town portal. Anywho this isn't really great news since people without the beta have been playing it for months. www.geocities.com/war3betadownload or python.railbait.com and check out war3pub.net.
I'm passing on Warcraft III for the same reason. Warcraft II was okay, but Warcraft III would have to be a quantum leap for me part with my $.
Anybody else feel the same?
it seems everyone sets their games to the fastest setting. If you set the game to "normal" speed (God forbid), it takes longer to build your initial army. But you get to use strategy, tactics, and unit micromanagement in battle without having to memorize 70 hotkeys. At the fastest setting, Starcraft is all about economic micromanagement and rushing with hordes of units. At the slow setting, Starcraft is a tactician's wet dream. (At the slowest setting, it's a tactician's nap time.)
weeps bitterly. However I guess since my arm is twisted behind my back I will play this... and I will play for 8 hours straight and PROTEST LOUDLY with my flurry of clicks! come on final release!
There's nothing but love and support here, not judgement! We love you regardless of what society thinks!
I forgot that if you go against the flow here, you get modded down. So let me reclaim my karma points:
"MICROSOFT SUCKS! They don't do anything right."
"LINUX RULES! Linux is in fact, not imperfect. The flaws in it are really the users's fault."
"BLIZZARD IS EVIL! The fact that they make great games is of little consequence."
"OPEN SOURCE IS GREAT!! Microsoft is evil because they don't use it, yet the benefits are quite obvious! I mean look how great Linux is! Just be sure to see my earlier note on it."
There, I should get my Karma back. Sorry for having an individual opinions!
"Derp de derp."
does this classify as a troll? or does it classify as just another stupid fucking idiot lashing out at America because he has been programmed (willingly) to do so. Oh for the day when we let the world go fuck itself, and when everyone is crying for help we just shoot the bird... or a couple of nukes
There's nothing but love and support here, not judgement! We love you regardless of what society thinks! It's okay to be you!
I couldn't agree more. I once polayed an SC game where I was pusjed back to an empty corner of the board, BUT I wn in the end because I had mined soe F'ing much money that I was able to bilud and pumpout units like CRAZY!!
The only game i have ever seen that tried to make it alittle harder to do a super Grunt rush was cossacks. They keep increasing the cost of barracks each time you build one. makes it very hard to have more than 5( no that is not much in a game where you can have armies of 10K+)
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
Have you ever played Total Annihilation?
It compares with Warcraft/Starcraft/C&C/AoE/others like Counter Strike compares to Mario Bros: it does not compare! Try it. Real physics. Lot's of possibilities. Never-ending variations. I love it.
EXACTLY, I'm not *really* a beta tester but from my, *ahem*, less than legal experience, Hero's make the game massively different, with a limit of 90 there is no such thing as a massive army. (btw, a human hero can also perform area resurrect). All that bitching about no one player feature is retarded, it's quite simple to play a game with one other person for fun and there's more than enough NPC's to reach level 5...
Actually, it's called karma whoring, and it usually works, damn it. Slashbots like to touch themselves while thinking of transgaming, so I thought it might work.
liberal: why are you so judgemental?
person: I am not and actually CAN NOT judge, I merely say I think this is bad/good
liberal: you evil closed minded conservative! You suck! I'm gonna see that legislation is passed so that you can't think that way or voice your opinion... you are BAD!
person: uhh, I'm confused now
the fun is in interacting with people... the game itself sucks, and is shallow and weak
your point is valid, both from the aspect of anti-ms trolls here and the actual game (although I personally do not really like it and regret buying it). You DARE! to inform the emperor of his nakedness? You are marked for de-mod'ing fool.
Here is a quick comment about about the graphics, though:
The game looks great, but one thing that seems to be lacking is a real justification for the 3d graphics. The gameplay is still largely the same 2d game with a few different elevations (like Starcraft), so there doesn't seem to be much of a real gain in switching to 3d graphics.
Of course, one big drawback of switching to 3d graphics is that the minimum system requirement is much higher now. Starcraft ran on my old Pentium-133 really well, whereas Warcraft 3 actually requires a halfway decent machine by today's standards. In order to keep the system requirements reasonable, Blizzard did make the models fairly low poly, though. Hopefully multiplayer performance won't bring decent machines to a crawl (Are they planning on allowing 8 player games in the release version?).
In my opinion, they should have kept the game a 2d game to keep the system requirements extremely low since the game is still effectively a 2d game.
From here:
"The Bnetd issue is the hot topic of discussion again in our forum. I've already said right here exactly how I feel about it so I don't see any reason to go into that again. However I would like to mention something about the EFF. In there press release they offer a link to our cartoon on the subject. I mailed Tim Jung and let him know that without our new posts on the topic the comic strip was out of context. He was very cool about it and removed the link right away. He sent me a couple e-mails asking why I don't agree with them but he wasn't really a dick about it. I felt like the problem had been resolved. Then I got a mail from Will Doherty. I'll just post it here so you can see it:
Dear Mike Krahulik,
We received your email regarding linking from the EFF press
release on the bnetd case to the Penny Arcade cartoon
on that case.
Linking is a lawful activity and EFF does not intend to
remove this link from the press release or from our
website.
Will Doherty
Online Idiot / Dickless Wonder
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Web http://www.eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation - Protecting rights in the digital age
This guy actually put the link BACK in the press release! It had already been taken out, the whole situation was cool and then this guy goes and fucks it all up again. I am seriously done thinking about the Bnetd issue but this got me pissed off again. Not at Bnetd but at people like this idiot who think that just because it's legal to do something that means its okay. What the hell ever happened to common fucking courtesy? I told him if he liked linking so much he should link to our rants on the subject but of course he didn't want to do that. He wants it to look like we agree with the EFF which we clearly do not. Needless to say we resolved the issue in our own special way but it still bothers me. I am not exactly sure who's rights they are "protecting in the digital age". It certainly wasn't mine and it sure as hell aint Blizzards."
-----
Oh yeah, the EFF is a GREAT place! Really, whose rights ARE they protecting?
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
Unlike the college boy hypocrites who earlier this month were foaming at the mouth over Blizzard fucking with bnetd, but now are eagerly awaiting their chance to throw their 'ethics' to the wind as soon as they can purchase their copy of W3, I won't be playing this game. Not now, not ever.
So, how many of the rest of you are going to remain true to your word, and how many are going to act like crack whores offered a hit off the pipe? Bet quite a few more of you fall into the latter category rather than the former.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The resolution goes higher than that actually-- some people have it up above 2000-and-something X whatever (hehe)
although the beta is pretty choppy if you crank it too high on a crappy system mostly because the code has a lot of debug info enabled
1024x758 is fine-- I've tried higher but my poor eyesight makes things hard to see
Duh! Who should win then, if not the person who is better at building up and managing their troops? I suppose next you're going to complain that you can usually predict who's going to win a race by noting which competitor is fastest?
A fancy trick^H^H^H^H^strategy might look pretty and be fun to do (as long as your opponents leave you alone and let you pull it off), but it doesn't mean that that player deserves to win because of it. The winner should be the person who is better at micromanaging, can launch an effective attack, and defends themselves adequately. If they are strong enough that they can pull off a couple fancy tricks on top of that, then great.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
i'm boycotting this simply because of blizzards past history of abandoning games after they've made their money.
see the problems in diablo2 which hardly get addressed in the following:
hacking of 'secure' realms
big rant
Essentially Blizzard made Diablo 2, got money, said "fuck you" to the consumers of it, and abandoned it.
So did you legitimately get into the beta and play on Battle.net, or did you (ahem) "get your hands on it" and play on bnetd for the review?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
All of a sudden you get a chance to play the "new game on the block" and you throw all of your scruples out the window? This sickens me. I could see someone playing the game if they don't care about the DMCA (this group of people includes some of my technically savvy friends unfortunately) or don't know about it, but if ANYONE should not be promoting this company it should be /.! You guys are such fucking sell-outs.
It's likely Carbonized, so it will run great on both. The beta of this game was quickly demoed at the last Macworld Expo in January...
> Your race really doesn't matter in multiplayer
;)
> mode; winning basically comes down to building
> everything up quickly and creating a massive
> army with which to crush your opponents. Or in
> my case, getting crushed.
Just what the world needs, another racing game.
That's the main problem when RTS. They're just
racing games. Chop the wood fast! Mine the gold
fast! Build some cannon fodder fast! Throw out
those buildings FAST! WE HAVE TO DO IT FAST OR
OUR FOES WILL OUTRACE US AND WE'LL LOOOOOOOOSE!!!
I hate racing games. Master of Magic 0nz j00
Quzah.
Well, I'm not so sure about the EFF myself... maybe I'll just take my $50 and buy a competitor's game, or donate it to a home for penguins -- anything but give it to Blizzard.
It isn't so much that Blizzard doesn't have a point about bnetd -- it's how they made their point that bugs me. The DMCA is a bad law that is misapplied in this case; it is a bad precedent at best.
All about me
First of all you need to understand what Blizzard was attempting to do with War3 before you critic it too much. I was at a LAN party the other day and it was about 9pm when someone called out a request for a game of EE. Since I really had to leave by 2 am we thought seriously about NOT playing because we didn't have the time (an EE game can possiably take longer than 5 hours).
One of Blizzards goals here was to make multiplayer games last between 30-60 mins. Because of this time requirement some game ideas are more likely. Rushing is a large part of the game Early Game Rushing (definition subjective I know) is supposed to be discouraged. They are attempting to balance toward that effect. To the goal of making a fast playing RTS I think they have done a bang up job.
That said I got bored of the game after about a week or two. Truth be told bugs that crash the game after 30 minutes really made me quit (I wasn't playing legally anyway). I was planning on buying the game regaurdless until I found out that EB is pre-selling the standard game for 60$!!!! The collectors edition is 80$!! Lord have mercy I am really starting to Loath the business practices of Blizzard.
Matt
WTF? >>Blizzard has an effective video setup that allows you to customize the game to match your hardware by changing the resolution, model detail, animation quality, texture quality, particles, and lights. This is especially helpful if you're running on an older machine and still want your game to run fast. The sound setup even allows you to have Dolby Surround! Yeah, every game has that, buddy, it's called Options. WHAT ABOUT THE GAME? Building? Weapons? Strategy? How long is a typical game? WHat's the best part? What's the worst part? What surprised you? Don't quit your day job, and Slashdot: quit giving him the games, send them to me.
I don't think the War3 beta reflects what Blizzard intended. They promised more strategy and less massive attack type scenarios, but so far it's just like Starcraft with less units on the map. You don't really get enough time to focus on the role playing elements because someone else will just smash you down. That's a real problem with RTS style games... you just don't get enough time to strategize. I guess
I won't pass final judgement until the beta is
over though.
Yeh I agree, except it's Blizzard North.
I guess we'll just have to crack their software so we can enjoy the game without paying them... What a shame...
We will not forget what has been done to bnetd. We will not be fooled by flashy graphics, by a company that has never shown any balance between races (Ogre Mages. Protoss Carriers.).
We are few, amidst a sea of fud and hypocracy, but we will not forget what Blizzard has done.
Long live the coders of bnetd.
Slashdot has no collective editorial opinion.
y
Ahem, you took a lot of words to basically say these 6. If Slashdot has no collective editorial opinion, then why don't they post any stories or reviews that are complimentary to the DMCA, MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, Rambus, Scientology or other hot-topics that 90%+ of the time get negative news coverage here? Why Keith?
Clearly, since there's zero to little collective opinion between the editors here, you'd certainly expect to see some complimentary news stories about anyone from the group mentioned above.
Frankly, if the Slashdot editors were more collectively minded than they already are, they'd be accused of being an inbred family from Yokel-land, but hey, judge for yourself. Give yourself 30 days and see how many stories from the non-collective Slashdot editors praise any of these groups (the groups, not their toys):
DMCA (yeah, I know it's not a group)
RIAA
MPAA
Microsoft
Rambus
Scientolog
The point? If you and other apologists want to make excuses for the editors because they enjoy reviewing the bright and shiny toys of companies that use the DMCA club, cool! But, don't for a minute expect us to believe it's because they're a diverse and non-collective group of minds, because they're not. Big bad companies, BAAAAD! Their bright shiny toys, the DMCA huh?, GOOOOOD! Welcome to the new Slashdot generation.
Greets ...
I can't believe the "Blizzard Haters" here on these boards ... you bunch-o-opensource-blind-3rd-eye-freaks :-)
As stated in a previous post ... Blizzard games have given me and hundreds of thousands of players more bang for their buck then just about any other gaming franchise on the face of the planet.
Half-life and it's mod community are the only ones that I would say have given more.
Proof? I just point you to your the hundreds of thousands of gamers that bought starcraft umpteen months ago for $49 and still play it 10+ hours per week. The overwhelming majority of games out there don't have that staying power.
So ... get off your "personal" problems with Blizzard protecting what they created ... they are right in doing so ... welcome to the real world ...
Hero out
Blizzard didn't do anything with bnetd, but make sure that they're not going to be allowing people to play war3 for free after the release.
You can play war3 all you want now, just go to war3ips on dalnet MIRC.
Its try before you buy, but with the knowledge, that the game isn't even remotely finished
God spoke to me
It infuriates me to here people say the game is about who can build the biggest army the quickest, at the same time saying they always get trounced.
Having been accused of cheating [in other RTSs] so many times it hurts, I want to tell you: better strategy wins the day in RTS. Not twitchy fingers. Not rushing. No fixed approach will work.
You always lose you say? Until you always WIN, you have no basis to talk about what is or isnt a good strategy, or to say silly things like RTS is dead.
You were not thinking hard enough. Most readers don't give a rat's ass about bnetd, the few who do are one group, those that are excited about war3 are a different group.
Wow, looks like the /. crew is at it again.
The way I see it is this...Blizzard is arguably one of the top software gaming manufacturers worldwide. The gameplay might not be a huge improvement over SC and WCII, but there is a change in the hero char. aspect, inventory, and from what most of the review sites say, less need to mindlessly gather resources.
I know that the company is backed by some shady roots that throw the DMCA around like it's thier own personal problem-solver. Does that mean I'm not going to buy thier game, No.
I'm a gamer, and I support Blizzard. They make great games. The simple fact that it seems everyone is missing is that BnetD and the like are putting out a software that has the direct repercussion of cutting into Blizzards profits. Why that is being overlooked is beyond me. Sure they engineered it from the ground up (or so it's being said), but the fact still remains that BnetD is a pirate utility promoting NOT purchasing a full licenced version of W3.
If any one of you owned a business which produced a software, and some outside source put up a utility that basically let any jackhole on the web download an ISO of your CD-ROM and play it multiplayer (which, let's face it, is the entire premise of these types of games) for free, effectivley pissing on your bottom line (monitarily that is), you'd be irate to, and find any legal loophole there was to shut them down. Blizzard did just that, and I say Bravo.
BnetD asking to use Battle.net's CD-Key verification was a total farse. Blizzard saw the fact that if they opened up that kind of information that it could be much more easily exploited...who knows how secure the BnetD guys really are...would you risk your couple hundred thousand dollar investment on it...hell no you wouldn't. Do you know how easy it would have been for BnetD to just overwrite any CD-Key you typed in with a valid one and send that to Battle.net for obviously successful verification?
Think it through guys, they are protecting thier investment and any one of you would do the same think if you had that kind of money riding on it.
Bottom line...Blizzard makes great games, to continue to do that, they need to make money. To make money, they have to shut down those out to exploit thier product for free.
Sorry for the rant, but that had to be said
-Grover
So does this mean that since I agree with the Slashdot editors on the DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Rambus, and Scientology, that I also agree with them on 100% of the other issues in the world? Just these six topics mean that I agree with them on EVERYTHING?
That's a legit question, I'm just a little confused at your logic and would love to have it explained a little further.
I've been waiting for ages for Blizzard to release this game. Yet Blizzard's actions force me to boycott all of their products until they change their stance.
:-(
To re-establish our rights to do with purchased products as we please (without a fight in the courts) do your part by sending a note to change their stance on this abuse of the DMCA and our rights as consumers to Vivendi Universal Publishing's corporate communications contact at:
benoit.liva@vupublishing.net
and
Or - preferably - contact them via snail mail at Blizzard's corporate headquarters and copy Vivendi Universal, and if the 34 cents is too much, fax them - I couldn't find a fax number for the responsible division
Chilling Effects - DMCA and BNetd has the best answers to what Blizzard's use of the DMCA against ISPs, and the DMCA's provisions, really mean to all of us.
It looks like that link to the Penny Arcade comic from the EFF site is being redirected now :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Is this the same package that you can run The Sims under?
...
If so, I must say it's cool to use. I bought the Mandrake Linux package that bundles in The Sims and it rocks!
Now if I could just get the Hot Date expansion set for Linux, I'd be really happy.
Unfortunately, since I have a steady girlfriend now, I haven't been able to devote much time to testing it out - but that's not bad either
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
OK, wise guy. Give yourself 30 days, and see how many of these groups do anything worthy of praise. While you're doing that, I'll keep an eye out for flying pigs.
This sig intentionally left blank.
One - it would be nice if a game supposedly high on RPG actually allowed units to act "native". In other words, when you leave your orcs alone, they start killing people and monkeying around, and when you leave your peons near a forest they start logging it.
...
Maybe this could be done with Intelligence Management Points (IMPs). You only get so many per unit type - then you can create true leaders - and they could be followed by the rest of the crowd.
Two - it really s.cks that the Neutrals attack everyone. What ever happened to the days when you could have neutral druids who'd mind their own business living in harmony with the forest creatures - and if you messed with them they'd zap you six ways to Sunday - or Berserk clans that are friendly and don't get in your way - but attack one and they raze your village to the ground and hunt you down until you're totally destroyed.
Ah, for the golden days of yore when we game designers actually created, not borrowed
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I'm not jumping on any bandwagon. Blizzard may have "reasons", but they're NOT GOOD ones.
Shutting down innocent programmers is NOT
I _DID_ read their "press releases" - it's pure bullshit.
Blizzard MAY make good games, but their business ethic stinks. I'll show them some respect when they start doing the same!
We may be whores, but at least we're not mindless zealots like you, who jump to angry conclusions without understanding JACK FRIGGIN' SQUAT
You're the mindless one - the mindless sheep.
I have all the information I need to know that Blizzard sucks. Go fuck yourself.
...then pirate the game! That way you're saying, "Blizzard sucks, but I like the games, so I'm not going without, but they don't get my money!", then Blizzard can wield that DCMA thing some more and...oh, wait...
Finally a moderate, common sense take on the issue. It's the same with the MPAA. For all you hypocrites out there calling all /.ers hypoctrites for buying tron, I say sod off. I really doubt that you've not seen a single film since the whole debacle started. Trying to claim that would label you LIARS
You know, just because some companies don't want to let the open source "community" run completely over their business models it does not make them the "Great Satan" you make them out to be. I value the existence and upkeep of video games like WarCraft and other Blizzard titles so much more than some trivial and irrelevant bnetd project that its not even worth debating.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
There is no way a player can win any non-beginner with ONLY troop massing. Player which explores around and gains experience with two heroes can easily upgrade at least one to his ultimate spell (not to mention collected hero items and auras and hired healers...)... and with help of some defensive structure, moderate troops and 4-5-6 spellcasters kill any MASS of troops lead by loser hero at level 1 or 2.
:). And I will spend $50 on WarCraft3 same day when it ships.
My favorite is to wait for that type of player to attack one of my expansion towns and while he finishes my towers just teleport two heroes with 4-5 footmen/knights and 2-3 spellcasters set on autocast of heal/innerfire/slow.... It's pretty funny to watch demon hunter (even on higher levels) trying to escape while three priestesses are casting slow on him and Paladin level 7 beats sh*t out of him.
And yes - I am playing on bnetd server
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
While I appreciate much of what you say, at the same time, getting rid of that menial stuff can have a negative effect. What made Starcraft as good as it was the the skill required to micromanage. If micromanagement in that game wasn't what it was, then the bar to greatness would have been set way lower.
Also often when grunts finish doing work, most RTS games (these days) allow you to make him go do something else. I also like Battle Realm's approach in that it gives you a visual cue to let you know that one of your peons is slacking off with nothing to do.
So I guess there has to be balance between micromanagement and pressing start and letting the computer play the whole game by itself. It can be a tough line to find.
You know, this is the first time ever that I am actually looking for his extra posts to mod him down. Because of my tactical zeal, I am now inventing the term "karma slapping"-
Karma slapping: (v). present tense. 1. To bait trolls into carefully questioned counter-traps where they respond several times, and subsequnetly draining all of the karma out of their flamebait and response posts. 2. To de karma a troll comment with maximum force. Opposite of karma whoring.
Please feed the trolls. I'll keep a slappin' away when they post back.
Slashdot is many tales told by lots of idiots...
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/previews/0,10 869,2854500,00.html
I believe Blizzard's original intention was quite different from what they actually produced for WC3. Early on they were talking about game that would be truly revolutionary. It would be truly 3D and emphasize more up-close combat, etc...
Interestingly enough Shiny (Interplay) beat them to it about 2 years ago with their game Sacrifice which was very similar to what Blizzard had originally described. If you really want to see how they should have made WC3 check out the Sacrifice site (http://www.sacrifice.net/screenshots.htm).
It's amazing nobody mentioned Battle Realms. So this is a Battle Realms clone or something? Well, perhaps not because it looks like once the resources are gone, game over. Battle Realms has 4 clans to choose from and "Heroes/"Zen Masters. I haven't seen this game, but micromanagement in Battle Realms is very simple, collect water and rice.
Battle Realms also focus in terrain strategy, which make use of the forest/trees for cover and altitude for farther vision, reduce endurance, and peppering.
For more info, use Google. If it's just a "clone," it's better to play Battle Realms.
What do you expect ?
Look at real life example of Soviet Union defeating Germany 50 years.
For each dead German soldier there were 9 dead Russian - exactly the kind of "rush" like you are talkig about.
Wrong you can defend rushes on open maps, I admit its much harder to do so, but it CAN be done, build your barracks and supply dupot in a circle formation with two bunkers one protectingn your workers and one protecting the other side is one way, another way is to bring your barracks right into the corner of your enemies base since its an open map, and build bunkers inside the enemies base and counter rush them, both sides will rush each other in this situation.
Really though, its not wise to play on small open maps, if you play on maps like that, expect a rushing kinda game
Play on large strategic maps with choke points and expansion points, if its a large open map you still have enough space so they wont be able to find you and if they do, you can move your base.
Expanding is important, rushing is a weak strategy because of expansion
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
First, dont play on bloodbath against zerg.
Second, play a fair map which isnt too small, which has a chokepoint or two, big game hunters the big map everyone likes, its EASY to stop 6 zerglings.
You learn the build order, I usually have a barracks and a bunker by the time they get their 6 zerglings to my chokepoint, usually theres a supply dupot in front of the bunker, and 2 marines in the bunker.
This is on big game hunters, zerg using the fastest build order, vs my build order.
Zerg rushes are the easiest to stop, a marine rips zerglins apart, 6 zergling can be stopped without a bunker if you have 2 marines and serveral scv and know how to properly use them
tricks like attacking with the scv and hotkeyingg to attack with the marines when the zergs fight the scv back, attack, run, attack, you can kill the zergling and only lose a couple scv
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
is not that it's innovative or nice.
As mentioned by others its features have been implemented in less hyped games long ago, and the graphics is just a warcraft + starcraft combined.
But, when it comes out you know that everyone and their little brother will be playing it - giving a large multiplayer base, mod/map community, etc, and this will make it the next big thing in RTS.
Whether you agree with the editors or not has nothing to do with what I said - you're not an editor that I'm criticizing. My points were twofold:
1. They are terrific examples of collective thinking - bad companies, good toys. See Blizzard and WCIII, Microsoft and XBox and the MPAA and various films, for some examples. Way to pump up enthusiasm for the consumer goods that fund companies who are pushing for the DMCA and the SSSCA...
2. Keith stated in bold that Slashdot has no collective editorial opinion. I've never seen any series of stories that indicates they have any sense of difference either regarding the company/toys issue. If it shines or sparkles, you can count on the news-posting editor to slobber over it regardless of how their producers behave towards the public.
My point isn't that these companies are praise-worthy (they're not), but that each editor posts what he thinks is important. Yet, the editors posting these stories usually follow the same dichotic company/toy formula. We already HAVE group-think...I don't need to WANT it.
I am in the beta, haven't played for two, almost three weeks now.
::evil grin:: ) no ADVANCED late game strategies.
:( :( :( )
I was realy happy when I got the game, but the unit limits (mabye removed in the last patch????) and the overall. . . . pace of the game made it boring as hell for me.
I did play all the way through advance wars in the last two days.
Actualy I just got over a GBA gaming spree (well, ok, played almost every game on it, so I _HAVE_ to be through with it, right???) that took the place of Warcraft 3.
Seriously, EVERYTHING is balanced to hell in it. WAAAAY too balanced.
I was never one of those freaks screaming "balance the game balance the game!!!" but rather one of the few going "heya, cool, I LOVE this mega-unit dude. Adds challenge when the other poor SOB uses a ton of them!"
Of course out of my first 30 games losing 29 of them didn't help my spirits any either, LOL!
The thing is that War3 goes COMPLEATLY against my normal playing style.
I am a resource whore.
Plain and simple.
I SUCK DOWN resources like nothing.
But Warcraft3 has MINIMAL resourcs per map, everything is flash boom bang and then over with.
Hell I barly get STARTED and all of the mines on the map have ran out.
The way that I like my games to go is all night strategy/tactical fests. Not the "sh00tz0r shnitz!!!!" way that Warcraft 3 does things. Everything is just. . . . . over with so fast. No time to sit around and ponder grand strategies, no walling in entire enemy bases (heh
And well hell, I happen to LOVE the late game.
(doesn't help any that I suck at donkey balls at mid-game. I get assloads of resources within the first few minutes, manage to fuck up the mid game, and then I can kick ass in late game. This is almost any RTS. Problem is, Warcraft 3 has no late game.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
To be fair, I didn't really give it a fair chance. It was definitely as good and addicting as the first one. I suppose perhaps because I liked the first one so much, my expectations were higher (perhaps unreasonably so) for the sequel, and it didn't "grab" me in the same way that the first one did when it originally came out.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
You know, I think that the real problem here is that Mr. Omnifarious is upset that he can't play blizzard games for free. That is to say, he can't pirate them and expect to play multiplayer games.
Well boo fucking hoo. I'm so very sorry for you because Blizzard actually found a way to legitimately make sure you pay for a game that you actually like to play. Especially since I've obviously fallen into the trap of actually paying for the game myself thus giving my hard-earned money to a bunch of driven, hard-working, and spectacularly creative people who clearly deserve it. I must be some kind of a dumb animal for voting with my money for the deranged psychopaths at Blizzard - who's only goal in life is clearly total world domination through big corporate control.
Stupid sheep. Keep bleating "four legs good, two legs baaaaaad."
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Now of course, MS is the avatar of Eevil, and I like every other /.'er hate 'em. However, I still like to play Age of Empires, which is their unoriginal baby.
You don't like Blizzard now because they shut down an open source project that threatens the balance of their game? Fine. I still like Blizzard, and I'll still buy their products when it suits me.
Can you make a better open source blockbuster than Blizzard? Go ahead, punk. I dare ya.
Hi Sllort,
I've no idea if you'll notice this reply or not, but I just wanted to ask if you'd noticed that every post you've made has had a -1 attached to it.
A -1 that falls out of bounds on standard moderation, no less, since I can't even see the moderation type used to downmod you.