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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.
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.
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.
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
"Slashdot" doesn't look hypocritical at all. Slashdot mearly posted a few articles (which were user submitted, BTW) about the Blizzard v. bnetd topic. I don't believe they took a side in the issue one way or another. Now they choose to post their review about Warcraft 3.
It's up to you to decide whether you're still going to support Blizzard or not.
It hurts when I pee.
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.
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
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)
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...
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
That's a bunch of shit.
Slashdot has posted quite a few articles about the evils of the DMCA. Since Slashdot has stated many times in the past that they believe the DMCA to be bad, that means they have taken an active position against the DMCA, as well as companies that use it to bully people into doing what they want.
And guess what Blizzard used to shut down bnetd? That's right! The good 'ol DMCA.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
You need to stop playing Blizzard games if you want evolution in RTS gaming.
Instead, try out Kohan: Ahriman's Gift. This RTS removes nearly ALL micromanagement and focuses gameplay on strategic buildup and battlefield.
Or even Warlords: Battlecry 2, which handily beats WC3 at its own game... and also removes a lot of micromanagement, and brings along better RPG elements.
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.
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.
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.
Microsoft's Age of Empires II does offer some form of 'intelligent' AI.
For example, the vast majority of the time the ore is spread out across the map. Quite often you'll find yourself telling 4 villagers to create a gold mine next to the gold deposit for mining purposes. You'll 'remember' that you did that oh 20 minutes ago when you run out of gold and they'll all be standing next to the mine scratching their asses.
The expansion pack 'guesses' that you want them to mine the nearest resource to the building-type you just built. So, those 4 villagers after creating the mine will go ahead and start mining gold. Giddy up!
Most RTS games will allow you to have units 'patrol' or 'guard'. MS AOE2 also has the ability to set threat levels for units attacking - attack and follow till enemy is dead, 'defensive' meaning that if an enemy gets close the units will attack but not past a certain range and will go back to where they were before, and 'stand ground' meaning your units will NEVER move from their position and only ranged units will attack. It requires micromanagement but it adds to the game play a bit since you don't have to worry about a bunch of foot soldiers chasing after a single scout cavalry unit who leads them back to an ambush to be slaughtered.
Thanks,
--
Matt
It IS a big change over warcraft 2 and starcraft. They've introduced npc creatures, called creeps, which provide experience to your heroes. What does this mean, as far as difference in game play?
It means that instead of sitting in your base building up lots of creatures, 2/3s of the game involves sending your hero unit, with support from a couple weenie units of your own, to go build levels and gain items against unintelligent monsters.
Suddenly, instead of a normal RTS, where you hurry to get the best units, and use them strategically against the enemy, you now hurry your hero around the map in a not-so-strategic attempt to fight the most npcs before they are all dead.
So as far as I can tell, there's actually less strategy right now in the beta test, than in starcraft, or even warcraft 2. It's all about who can run around the map killing creeps the fastest.
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
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.
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.
-AP
It will be OSX compliant.
You might have gotten the hint because they've already released a carbon Starcraft, BroodWar, and announced a carbon Diablo2 and D2XP.
Although that statement in the faq doesn't answer jack... For the "PC"?