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Warcraft III: The Single Player Experience
Disoriented writes "Cool interview about the Warcraft 3 single-player campaigns. Has me drooling for a June release." Hopefully Blizzard will drop their attack against Bnetd before the release.
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Even with the whole thing about Blizzard and Bnetd. They are still one of the only Video Game Publishers that distribute their games for both Mac & PC in the same cd pack!
As companies merge and take-over there will be more and more sections in them with conflicting (or passively disagreeing) ideals and methods. Just because one section does one action doesn't necessarily mean that the whole company is bad.
*raises hand* Me. Good writing in a game improves the feeling of immersion, which is very important to my enjoyment of the game.
Sure, there are people who skip cut-scenes and don't read the docs, but I'm not one of them. When I pay $50 for a game, I want the whole kit and caboodle...good story, good art, good gameplay, good documentation, good UI...everything.
Gameplay and UI are what made Total Annihilation great. Storyline and memorable characters are what set Warcraft (and Starcraft) above the pack.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
A trend that I've noticed is that everything is multiplayer now. Great games are the ones that everything is designed and scripted out, random attacks, plots, and sucky players don't make a game great, they offer diversity and may make it interesting but a true game is one that plays like a book, unfolding a plot in front of you. I haven't seen any good multiplayer games do this yet.
Just a reminder to those of you who are boycotting Blizzard, but still want your fantasy gaming fix.
Neverwinter Nights will be coming out this summer, and while it is an RPG (rather than RTS), it should do a good job of filling the void left.
Though, personally, I was more excited about NWN than WC3 even before the lawsuit.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
>Gameplay and UI are what made Total Annihilation great.
And totally lame computer is what made any kind of skirmish game against the computer a joke. The programmer must have been a 3 year old. Its an offence even to mention it in the same paragraph as Starcraft. The AI in the Starcraft skirmish engine on the other hand was totally brilliant. It didn't just overrun you because it had more money to startwith (as in just about any other game), but it found weaknesses in your defences, tested them and then tried something else instead of boorishly trying the same thing over and over. And it ever boxed itself in (except on badly made user maps) it always found ways to expand, sourround and attack.
Gawd i hope they make Starcraft 2 - I've always been more partial to a laser than some old sword *G*
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
4. Give Blizzard an instant online community and pave way for larger acceptence of their game by the number of servers (which they don't have to run or maintain!) available.
This is what Valve has done with Half Life. Why is this such a hard concept? Sell the game, but make the server freely available.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
WarCraft II Battle Chest, $60.
Diablo, $55.
Diablo expansion pack, $25
Starcraft, $45
I remember paying close to top dollar, no bargain bin copies for me. At the time, I remembered thinking it was worth every cent. Hope no belittles me for reconsidering that sentiment.
Also, I find it unlikely that not playing their games will have any effect on their future actions. Not that I will play, just the principle of the thing. But I harbor zero illusions that I can somehow punish them.
What if you could pay $30 for just the gameplay and none of the cinematics or voice "talent"?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Warcraft I and II were downright boring in single-player mode. Every scenario, you'd build up some guys, dealing with the occasional visitor as you did so, and then wander out to an enemy infestation.
Create a formation. Send a fast unit forward to draw them out. Fall back. Swat them as they charge haphazardly into your formation.
The only time the game really got interesting was on the second-to-last scenario of each campaign, where both sides had a lot of stuff, the game was biased against you, and you actually had to struggle to stay on top. The final scenario usually had some game imbalancer that could be exploited, like the summon spell that let you destroy whole bases easily without risking "real" units.
Games like the original Command & Conquer and Total Annihiliation worked, I think, for a couple of reasons. One, the base defenses were formidable, and those were usually pre-set by the game designer rather than the AI. Either you came ready to rock & roll or the static defenses would tear you apart. Two, when the computer came to get you, it didn't come for a polite social visit. The computer would build up a large collection of units and then send 75% of them right down your throat. Without solid defenses backed by the right mix of units you were going to get destroyed, or at least crippled to the point where an immediate counterattack was out of the question.
Remember the dreaded Mission 7 in TA? You have a skinny piece of beach and about 10 minutes to prepare for an onslaught of enemy warships? That's good stuff.
Warcraft I and II had static defenses that you could ignore until it was convenient. Slow firing, low damage, especially compared to the NOD energy tower or TA heavy laser. The enemy units sort of wandered at you, one at a time, when they got bored.
Age of Kings did a pretty fair job, with the computer coming after you in force. My only complaint with AOE2:AOK is personal preference: I'm a "builder", and the bonuses they gave to the computer made it difficult to win a single-player scenario if you built up your forces instead of attacking quickly.
In many ways the original C&C got it right and many of its successors got it wrong. I've played every single-player scenario in WC1 and WC2, and because of that experience I never bothered with StarCraft. Maybe they'll fix it this time?