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First Warcraft 3 Reviews Trickle In
Mortin writes "Several reviews of Warcraft 3, set to be released on July 3, are up at Icrontic, Tweakers.com.au, and of course IGN. Looks like Blizzard has yet another killer game on their hands."
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Are you sure it's supposed to be released on July 3? I mean everyone I know has it already.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Ummm.... is the boycott still on ?
You Are Being Lied To.
after the dissapointment of having pre-ordered Neverwinter Nights I'm going to wait for demos from now on... argh...
The RTS genre is one of those that i found interesting at first, but after playing six to eight quite similar games, i've kind of lost interest in the genre. I had quite a lot of fun with Starcraft and Myth 2 for a short while, but mostly only when i could find someone i knew to play with, like at a LAN party or something. Eventually, i got kind of tired of these. I don't really play these games anymore.
:)
Give me one reason why i should care about WarCraft 3, given that? Is there any reason that this is different or would catch my attention? I'm reading the reviews. Nothing is particularly catching my eye.
If no one can come up with a good answer to this question, i think i'm just going to go back to bed, pretend i'm boycotting Blizzard because of their unethical attempts to use barratry to crush people legally reverse-engineering their games' communication protocols, and eagerly await this fall, when the mac release of Neverwinter Nights is out, and i will also be able to play Star Wars Galaxies on my girlfriend's PC
-- super ugly ultraman
Sigh... to be expected... I guess the Slashdot editors are only interested in preserving their rights when it doesn't involve any action on their part.
I've been playing the Beta since Spring. It's wonderful. I've got the Special Edition on order from EB. I've got it ordered for one day delivery. I've got.... I've got no life do I?
Having played for a couple weeks now I must say I am pretty damned impressed with what Blizzard has done with the game. It's not revolutionary or anything like that, but the single player campaign is just pure fun. The storyline is great, the battles are great (Though mostly easy up until the last one), and the cinematics are beautiful. The new hero systems is pretty neat as well, it adds a completely new dimension to the genre. I wasn't impressed with the beta multiplayer on battle.net so I'm looking forward to getting a real copy and seeing how it performs. Now the wait begins for Worlds of Warcraft...
Sure hope it'll run on my 533... the beta sure as hell didn't.
chdir("c:\\con\\con");
...and am looking forward to a nice long weekend of being a complete dork in front of my computer.
This is what I do every weekend.
Strategically, the undead are very strong. Somewhat akin to the protoss from Starcraft, the undead buildings can only be built on what is known as blight.
:=)
Surely they mean zerg?
"The cut scenes are movie quality"
;).
well, right. Blizzard always made best cutscenes. Those in W3 are compressed with DivX, to be more like real movies
Warcraft is really good game. And the additional scenes after credits - simply rocks. Just to say - there are many short scences, one of them is Warcraft2 intro redone in War3 engine.
The game was cool, alhrough my mouse wheel didn't worked. Running under wine and winex was unsuccesfull - big minus.
:wq
I was so not impressed with the Beta. Warcraft 2 came out in 1995. So basically they've had 7 years to come up with a third installment worthy of its predecessor. Instead they squander those 7 years, and at the last minute spit out what is basically Warcraft 2 with some new graphics and a couple new races. Most disappointing, there was huge potential for something so much more. GG Blizzard.
The all time best Real Time Strategy game is and continues to be Total Annihilation. Better luck next time Blizzard.
I also assume that this week we like Blizzard and next week we're back to hating them for wheeling the DMCA on Bnetd?
I mean, i just get around 3 or 4 buildings on the screen at once.. it's just unbeareable. In the old days you could see much more of the map at once.
Confining the player with this sort of fixed camera view seems to be a silly move - there's still the fog-of-war (tm) to limit your vision.
... crusher[kreaPC]
First it was the MPAA. We hate the MPAA because they're taking away our fair use rights, destroying our freedom. But then we go nucking futs over Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings,
Kohan (http://www.timegate.com) is the best RTS ever; I doubt something like Warcraft 3 could ever compete. It's a shame that TransGaming picked up the rights to make a few modifications to the code with Visual C++, modify wine a little, and then call it a "Linux port." 1.3.1 forever, I guess.
The storyline looks like if was written by a little child.
The storyline is horrible. It feels like if a little child wrote it. I'm not kidding when I say the storyline is very very bad.
There's also an excellent "first impressions" at Gamespot.
The evidence is in the players. All the rts hardcore players have played in the beta and have quit. Why? Cause the game lacks a lot of depth due to a lot of built in "features". Like for instance, creeps. The idea of AI controlled units around the map for you to attack and guard things such as mines and shops might sound good. However, creeps has an adverse side affect. It gives experience to your heros and gives you gold (Heros are another new concept, which is a big buff unit that can gain experience, level and have very powerful abilities and spells) . How is that an adverse side affect you ask? Well, it turns out, early on in the game, you *HAVE* to go creep hunting to give your hero that experience edge. Heros have the ability to turn the tides of the battle and a level 1 hero is much weaker than a level 3 hero. Right now, I rarely engage combat with the opponent until my hero is at least level 3. After creep hunting for a couple hundred games, it gets mundane and boring. Some people brush this off as "another resource" to get. However, this resource takes the first 10 min of the game. Before in previous RTS games, the focus of resource gathering was maybe the first 1-2 min of the game. Another big flaw many players see is upkeep. Upkeep is another new concept by Blizzard which cuts down the amount of gold a peon will bring out of the mine. At 30 units, you enter low upkeep which reduces gold to 7 and at 70 units, you enter high upkeep which reduces gold to 4. Blizzard implemented this because they didnt want 200 zerglings running around on the map. However, many players despise this limit saying low upkeep is annoying and they never really enter into high upkeep, which defeats the purpose. This also affects expanding because the extra peons cuts into your upkeep. Oh, that reminds me, 5 peons *MAX* per mine. These are two of the most controversial ideas that Blizzard has brought in. There are others as well. Many players complain that these limitations limits the depth of the game. IMHO, the game is fun and interesting. The 3D is done pretty well. However, it's not a Starcraft. Starcraft has depth and it's a very strategic game. It captivates players even today (I think it's been out for 4 years?). Will I buy War3? Yes. Will I be playing it after 6-12 months? Prolly not.
I already downloaded off one of the many binary game groups. Hint: it was a "clonecd" binary game. HEHE
I'm going to put this game in the same catagory as Doom 3, and say that this is what's wrong with the American game industry.
There is too much convergant thinking in PC games anymore. War Craft 3, and Doom 3 being prime examples. Neither game sets off to be a good game in their own right. They want to be the perfect example of what a game in their genre would be. Neither Id nor Blizzard look at a game anymore and go "what would be good for this game?" they go "what would be good for a RTS or FPS?" Instead of trying to give the player a totally new experience, and make it something worth my time to play, I just get new polish on the same games that have been released for years. Most of the "improvements" in WC3 weren't because it would make it a better experience in the world of Warcraft, it's what would make it a more "perfect" RTS. The same can be said for Doom 3, which is going toward what a "perfect" FPS should be. It seems like the companies just seem to say "let's make a RTS, do what would be a perfect RTS, then just theme it with whatever franchise we should have a sequel to. Id being the same way, just so happens the Doom was the next franchise to get an update to approach that "perfect" FPS.
Is it really that hard anymore to actually try to create a game, and then design an interface to the game that would be best fitted to the experience you wanted to gamer to have? Show me something new before I put down $60 for a game. Or has the US gaming market have become so braindead that if a game doesn't fit perfectly into a given genre, it's "too hard and confusing". Excuse me if I don't want the same game 50 times, and have to have my hand held though a game. Give me something new, and I'll go put $60 to get a copy.
mod that bitch up! I hate blizzard for Bnet crap they pulled, so i just downloaded the game for free off my ISPs USENET server in the clonecd group. Thanks to the AC above!!!!!!!
The IGN article (didn't even look at the others) is a preview, not a review. Anyway, I'm too busy playing a much better game.
My other
Beat single player in 2 days >:) It plays like a movie... If you had a good movie that lasted 48 hours, it'd be praised :)
:)
:) Blizzard listens to player suggestions, and changes based on them. I know like several dozen changes in the beta happened on stuff I was suggesting. Might not have been direct, but I felt like I was getting some respect in it.
Thing is it lasts multiplayer too, bad ass game... Nothing new, just more of the same, refined better
I write occasional articles in warcraftstrategy.com under the nick crazy jim.
One of the best parts of battlenet games is that you meet alot of friends on it. I have a clan, so people chill in our channel, and talk about shit and hang. Its a whole lot of fun and even more so if you get involved with the communities.
The game plays like a new game of chess, there is no way of knowing what will win 100%, and if you know what wins 100%, then we evolve the game by letting Blizzard know about it.
Blizzard is a great company that respects its players highly. I submitted a ton of bug reports in the beta, and got a free copy of the game because I finished in the top 16
I don't know about Vivendi, but I do know all Blizzard's titles have quality behind them. If you don't know what to buy in the store, a Blizzard title isn't gonna suck.
God spoke to me
I just finished the single player campaign and now I'm moving on to FSGS for online play. I'll say that its a good game but it isn't worth $102 (canadian).
if you know where to look. I've uninstalled it, and tossed the disk. Reasons are,
1) It won't play smoothly on a P3 500 laptop (with 384 meg of RAM and an ATI Rage Mobility). Blizzard usually tries to get the low-end of the market. Not any longer
2) In the past, Blizzards games were evolutionary (but not revolutionary). This one is not even that. It's just another Real Time Strategy game, but with heros. Warlords Battlecry 2 did the same thing, and I bet there are others.
3) This thing is selling for $90 Canadian (about $60 US) even in the "no one beats our prices" electonics stores.
Screw it. If this game had come out 5 years ago, maybe. But Starcraft is better, and so is Age of Empires 2.
These posts (posts involving lawsuits against hackers) are always riddled with persons who want you to boycott these products, be they games, CDs or Movies. Personally I like games, CDs and Movies. However I don't like the tactics being employed by The RIAA, MPAA, or Vivendi any more than the next slashdotter. What I propose is not a boycott, but to give an equal or greater amount to the EFF Whenever you purchase one of these items. That way Every dollar you contribute to Evil is equally matched by one for Good. So At least your not contributing to the net evil.
Just my $.02
Now I hate them and I have pirated war 3 and distributed it too all my friends and everyone I know. This will teach blizzard to mess with open source. (Actually it probably won't but at least I got the game for free)
The games in the genre are just getting better. I think that War3, with it's hero system and it's group/subgroup system takes a big step forward.
:)
The way I see it, RTS's come down to:
Resource management: Getting the resources you need without wasting any resources. Not making too many workers or mining more resources than you need.
Unit Managment: Moving and fighting your units, controlling them efficently. Making sure your weak units are protected and getting your units where they need to be.
And...
Army Building:
Having the right units and unit combos to offset your oponent and get the job done with the least losses or cost.
In multiplayer the winner is the one that is better at most of the above. I don't see that changing. War3 adds a bit, tho with the Hero system. In previous games the winner had a large, massive army. Some people killed there workers so they could get more warriors in under the population cap. With the heros you don't have to have as large of an army so it's easier to manage. Unit matchups and other real 'strategic' elements will become more important than being able to control huge armies.
I've been playing War3 for over a week now and I really like it. I think it's the current 'king' of the RTS's.
If you need to play an online game to meet new friends, that's pathetic.
All they did (showing some of that wonderful Blizzard Creativity) was take the main character from Diablo, and put it in the middle of Warcraft. The trouble is, the heros are so essential to the game, and so hideously overpowered the rest of the characters are reduced to sideshows.
Warcraft III is designed to be a quick and dirty game where the fights are over in 30 minutes or less. Gone is any hope of a epic back-and-forth fight, it's a lets get the game finished as quick as possible.
The first person to lose their hero has lost the game in 90% of the cases, because their hero is out of the game for 2 minutes, while the other hero is running around levelling up and getting more items.
In order to get the game over as quick as possible, the game is exaggerated - if you lose, you come into the next fight at a disadvantage. If you win, you are more likely to win the next time, because the game is adjusting the hero's strengths. Add to that the Upkeep rules and the game is saying "You will play me this way or not at all - I will not let you deviate from the designers vision"
Strategy games should not do this - It's like playing a game of chess where when you capture the oponents pieces you get to put them on your side. Fun ? Maybe once or twice for the low-attention span crowd, but it's not strategy.
Personally, I'd look to a company that doesn't have a history of screwing over the open source community, or trying to steal your personal details from your system registry - say Creative Assembly, who will be releasing the latest Total War game in the near future - Medieval Total War which is more a computerised table top wargame then anything else.
If you want to play Starcraft, Blizzard has announced no plans to discontinue support for it on Battle.net. You should be able to continue playing it indefinitely.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
The reason I like the 5 peon per mine limit is that it forces everyone to expand early so they can get in more cash flow. War3 isn't the first with this. Empire Earth did the same thing and to me it just seems natural now. You have to explore in a RTS anyway... Why not do it with your hero and a few troops and open the way for a 2nd and 3rd base at the same time?
I don't know... Maybe my brain has been warped by the hundreds and hundreds of hours I've played War2, C&C, AOE, EE and other games. I just think they are getting better.
Let me spell this out for you: this article is about Warcraft 3 being a killer game. The bnetd project has nothing to do with it.
It's obviously possible to think Blizzard's actions against bnetd are wrong, and think Warcraft 3 is a killer game at the same time.
What you seem to be proposing is that Michael should lie or omit the truth about Warcraft 3, because he disagrees with Blizzard's actions against bnetd.
But the game penzlizes you for expanding through upkeep. Everytime you expand, it's another 5 towards your upkeep.
You're like the morons in PCU who pick a new pet issue to protest every week. War 3 is reportedly surging to record sales despite your misguided crusade.
Grow up, get a life, etc. etc.
don't buy the game.. it seriously, utterly, sucks. played it, beat it in a day, threw away the cd. hopefully starcraft 2 will be worth buying unlike this one.
LOL seeing as it still completely, applies, I'm simply going to repost (with some edits and additions) an earlier post of mine concerning WarCraft 3.
It seems to me that spending $65 on the "WarCraft 2 Graphics Upgrade Pack" would be like buying an expensive gift for a way-too-spolied child. Let's think about this for a minute. A company offers a product, gives us a date for it, lists a ton of features. Sounds like a good deal. Until they start pushing the date back. Still, no big deal. Then they start cutting features...like mad. Now if this was any other company, we'd all be panning their product and despising him, but for some reason everyone LOVES Blizzard for it
Countless people have called games like WC3 and SC some of the "greatest games ever". I am standing up right here and preparing to argue it soundly. This is not a troll, it's a statement of belief. Warcraft 2 was a great game; it was innovative for its time and introduced a brand new game setting. Since that point, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them. Why would I want to play StarCraft or WarCraft 3 when I could play larger, richer games with far more depth (ohh...say...Total Annihilation comes to mind).
Now, to be fair, these comments relate to WarCraft 3 only through my experiance with the beta version. I honestly do not know if the game has changed since then, and if it has my opinions might change as well. But here is what I saw. The game was very pretty, it looks quite nice. However, the game mechanic hasn't changed or evolved at all since WC2. Same extremely limited unit selection, same "rock-paper-scissors" unit balance that makes "strategy" equal to "Just build some of each and run at each other". The "Hero" units were unimpressive and seemed to only be more powerful normal units that could somehow use Town Portal. The "Unaligned NPCs" were just weak units you killed to get at some resources. Games were fast and pointless, the races were unbalanced at that point, there was no strategy at all as you could never have enough units to enact a given strategy.
Maybe TA has spoiled me. I'm used to massive 2000-unit battles where you actually USE all 9 unit hotkeys, feint and probe, battle across a massive map. Strategy and production were vital tools as you pushed forward to conquer territory. Admittedly, maybe such things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I don't understand how the RTS genre has remained the exact same game since the original C+C (which, I do know, wasn't even the first RTS). Many people have tried to innovate somewhat, but where's the evolution? Shouldn't we demand MORE instead of eating up what's only vaguely satisfactory?? To put it very plainly, Blizzard's RTS games are no more interesting or complex then playing War or Spit. Sure, those games can be fun sometimes too, but a deck of cards is a lot less then $65, and so is the number of broken promises and lowered expectations.
Keep in mind, this is all just opinion. :)
:)
:) And I'll definitely want to see how they do StarCraft 2; I'm hearing rumors of another race that is a mix of Protoss and Zerg...
As a huge fan of the first two games (especially the first one), I'm somewhat disappointed with this one. It actually kind of bores me. At its core, WarCraft 3 seems like just a mixture of StarCraft and Diablo, like they just decided, "Hey, we'll mix our two biggest money-makers to make a mutant third one." StarCraft kept my interest for a while, but Diablo absolutely bores me. And now I'm running around in War3 doing little pointless sidequests and investigating towns and building experience levels and gaining inventory items...whatever happened to the big, massive battles? The game is party-based now!
Maybe it'll grow on me, who knows. I never really liked the storyline to begin with once I heard it, but playing the single-player campaigns, I'm even more turned off. A large amount of characters just talking, not very many cinematics (as in, stuff not done in the engine itself), and some downright cheesy stuff (for instance, the meeting with Jaina made me roll my eyes...and peasants running up to me, "My lord, legend tells of a *whatever pointless thing you should get that your character will say "Hmm, that could prove useful" about*). I feel like I'm just running around exploring more often than I'm planning attacks or doing any other war strategy. As in WARcraft.
Worst of all, the graphics retained their cartoonish look of War2. I loved War2 and tolerated the comic book look as just the theme of that particular installment, but the goofy humor and looks still exist in War3, and I'm kind of tired of it. Especially with the Orcs, who used to seem so badass and evil in the first game.
I miss the building tension of seeing the first few troops of a huge army slowly marching toward your base. Where's Bill Roper's "Yes, my lord" gone to? What about a recognizable war theme instead of the more ambient soundtrack of this game? Stuff like that. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but it seems like Blizzard was concentrating so much on changing the gameplay and throwing so much stuff into it to make it different (heroes, hiring troops from the huts, running little sidequests, and more) that I miss the old classic simplicity of just two sides building bases and sending troops after each other to win instead of following some story about how the Orcs just happened to have revived themselves as a culture and, oh, by the way, some firey things are suddenly coming down from the sky to kill everyone and the dead are rising and the Night Elves are coming out of the trees. I guess I was hoping for just one last, huge, epic battle of Orcs and Humans, with all the neat little gameplay enhancements but without all the pointless features and unnecessary races to bog it all down. Though I'm sure a bunch of you disagree with me already.
At least there's Red Alert 2.
I'll go ahead and give War3 another try, promise!
Too bad Blizzard can't come up with a killer Battle.Net =(
Still can't connect half the time, and when I am connected, all the servers seemed to be desynced and I can't ever see my friends. We can't get a game going. When bnetd was around at least we could play on our private server. And LAN games don't seem to work well when you're 1500 miles apart.
Whats the attraction to blizzard?
I've had nothing but buggy games and crappy internet service from them. I played Diablo2 a lot (worlds all time most unbalanced game) and I actually counted the number of bnet outages in one month (24 out of 30 days). Now the one side says since it's a free service I shouldn't expect better, but I say if they want me to spend my hard earned money on their product then they need to make a better impression. Don't even get me started on the bugs in their games.
I could care less about then suing the bnetd folks, that's just business as usual in America, however distributing a shoddy game(s) and tauting lousy service not to mention the complete lack of customer service is in my opinion not acceptable.
I could write a book about the lousy communities their games create, with people stealing other peopls accounts, kids running around in games telling everyone to fuck off for no particular reason. The rampant pk'ing that goes on. The game hacks that blizzard never does anything about, the cheats etc.....
Crap company, crap products bloated reputation. I can always tell when a game is gonna suck when the company promoting it uses CG animation trailers instead of in game footage.
Blizzard won't see a dime. I just gave $100 to the EFF just to kick Blizzard in the ballz. Have a nice fscking day.
I think Penny Arcade said it best - back in 1999!
Experts agree: everything is fine.
That's right, spam your mindless drivel as much as you can! That'll change the fact you're a moron, alright.
Keep up the crusade, we all care. Really.
Maybe you should build some more models, fag, you sure don't seem very calm.
I played warcraft 3 at Fry's a bit today in Sunnyvale. They had 4 really nice warcraft 3 setups available for anyone to sit and give a try.
My impressions: Graphically, it's amazing. The sound completely rocks. The unit AI is the best I've seen in an RTS yet. For instance, when your peasants are done building, they will go and do something useful like chop lumber or mine gold. This eliminates a great deal of micro management.
I can't say more than that because I only completed a couple of battles, but it filled my soul with the urge to upgrade my hardware.
FYI.. Fry's is also selling it an hour before the rest of the west coast... 11PM on the 2nd.
In none of those articles you linked to did Slashdot ever take the position that there should be a boycott. They were presented as news, not calls to action.
The only people calling for a boycott were in the comments. Don't put words in the editors' mouths.
Sarcasm mode on.
You mean like the lawyer stomping that they gave bnetd?
Keep it up Blizzard legal dept, we love you!!!
Sarcasm mode off.
You must be really, really new to the internet.
Of course this wouldn't be as much of an issue if bnet wasn't being sued.
I was a big fan of Total Annihilation, but I finally tried out Empire Earth and was pretty impressed. The first couple games against the computer can last a LONG LONG time. Once you learn some strategy it's not so bad.
The very first time we played it, it was two of us vs. one computer and it was a 13 hour game. We sucked!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Okay, sure. But that just makes it a tradeoff between how much cash flow you want and how much of an army you want. What I tried a couple times against a buddy was to explode at the start and make 8 bases as soon as I can. Well, not bases just gold collection points. I kept my a small army at my main base and used town recall scrolls to jump to any base that was in trouble. After a little while it became a bit too much trouble to defend all of them but by that time I'd sucked most of the gold away anyway. So that when I had to build a larger army to offset my opponent I had more cash to do it with.
:)
Plus, warping in with an elite army is pretty fun.
I think 'low upkeep' ends at 70 food? That's still a pretty good force. 25 on gold at 5 bases. 5 more on wood maybe? That leaves an army of 40. That's not 40 units because the better units use more than one food, but it's still a sizable force.
People here act like this game was supposed to change the world or something.
Only Warcraft1 was evolutionary. Warcraft2, Starcraft, and Warcraft3 are nothing new. Orcs and humans, grunts and knights vs. orgres and orcs. Its been the same since those old pixalated days. So why when Warcraft3 comes out with the same exact thing does everyone throw their nose in the air condemning it?
ID software just kept remaking doom. First it was quake1, then quake2, then quake3. Now doom3. No changes there either. Another example of a solid company just doing what they do best.
Warcraft2 and starcraft proved pure quality even though they didn't evolutionize anything. So why can't warcraft3? Quake1/2/3 showed quality (to a lot of ppl, not everyone) and Doom3 will almost certainly show quality with its engine.
Just like in the movie industry, its extremely hard to find something new that create a large new base of fans. Ska and techno slightly did it in music recently but its extremely tough.
I know all the critics will disappear six months from now when its recognized for being a solid game to play over and over. And the single player plays like a good movie offering 2+ days of gaming.
In conclusion, if you call yourself a gamer and don't hate the rts genre then this is a good buy.
Blizzard had said that they wished to create an RTS where mass producing legions of units and rushing them against the enemy wasn't the primary (and only effective) strategy available. Well, I think, in that regard, that Blizzard has failed to make the combatting armies smaller and tactical decision making more important.
I say this from playing the WCIII beta for two months. Compared to Starcraft and WCII tactics, WCIII has similarly large armies and tactics, whereby you pump out, as fast as possible, as many units as you can and send them all in one clump towards the enemy. Of course, one produces a diverse type of army to counter any of the enemy's forces, but the resultant tactic still says the same. Push your army into the enemy's base and keep the guys coming.
With the large amount of hitpoints of most units, it is very hard to employ any effective defensive strategies. No longer can 12 archers (or any long rangers) all target one incoming melee and kill him before he reaches your defensive wall. No longer can cannon towers or other defensive structures play a significant role in actually defending your base. Employing a defensive position and constructing defensive structures along with an appropriate mix of units no longer even remotely effectively defends one's base.
My experiences come from playing against both skilled and newer players in the WCIII beta. I found that the skilled players employed the all crushing, mass producing rush of 80 guys as soon as possible. Unlike in SC or WCII, attempts to form concentrated defensive kill zones where the enemy would attack completely failed to even remotely repel an attack. Against the newer players, armies meeting midway in the field would often just hack at each other with little strategic input into their actions. It was hard both to control which units attacked another and what spells to fire off in the ensuing melee.
I look forward to the single player campaign, however, because, without the unescapable lag and the mad rushing, WCIII could be a great game.
I just wasn't all that impressed with the multiplayer, though. Sigh.
Favorite
I've been a Blizzard fan since Starcraft came out..now Warcraft III came out already..how about Starcraft 2? Is Blizzard dropping their Starcraft line?
http://www.palmzone.net
There are a few neat things, and single player has much needed improvements (though it still boils down to plopping a bunch of units on the screen... hero development is ehhhn), but it is not as engaging as StarCraft.
I don't know what it is about SC, it just seems to have the right, "natural" balance of individual unit power, strategy skill, manual dexterity/reaction skill, and game length.
No doubt, WarCraft3 is entertaining to play, and having played StarCraft for however many years, its refreshing to have a new game by the same company to play with, but ultimately I think it is forgettable and I fully intend on returning to StarCraft once single player is out of the way.
You'd never manage this against a player with skill.
And this entire thread is retarded. It's harder to effectively utilize resources than it is to obtain them.
And that whole thing about leveling your hero as boring, all I can say is that in case he hadn't realized the entire start of a game is redundent, as are most in-game strategies. Big surprise! StarCraft is incredibly redundent, especially if you're a top 20 ladder player.
Also if it takes you ten minutes to level your hero to level three you have no future with this game.
Apple have a quicktime movie showing off some game footgage here [ High Bandwidth ]
Actually, some companies did try originality. Let's take, say, Looking Glass. Those guys made *EXCELLENT* games. Thief revolutionized the FPS concept. Thief 2 is one of my fav games ever, and one of the very few remotely recent games that I consider worth my time.
Next thing you know, Looking Glass bites the dust.
Why?
My idea is that if you're reaching for the masses (and if you want to make money with a $50 game, you'd better reach for the masses), you'll have to aim for the masses' Lowest Common Denominator. Kind of like McD, if you want: they sell cheap crap that is successful worldwide because it's the lowest common denominator of food. Maybe it goes the same for games, and the suits, whose priority is to make the most money out of the game, will only approve games with the most basic gameplay...
Sad, indeed. Good thing there are mods...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
The real reason many hardcore RTS players quit was because they couldn't pull off the rush tactics as well. Everyone knew that the zerg were the best in Starcraft because you could fsck ov3r your opponents with 100 cheap zerglings 5 minutes into the game. The reason they changed some of these things was to stop "hardcore" RTS gamers from degenerating these great games into a simple match of who can build the crappy units faster. That happens with each RTS once people play it long enough.
To cite precedent, it's a lot like when battle.net first spawned into being with Diablo. At first, everyone played fair and square, and competed in a level playing field. Once people found nuances they could exploit in the game, they fsck3d all the p00r, p00r n00bs that didn't have a chance to defend themselves. It's not quite the same, but the analogy fits. I personally agree with this move and it makes one a bit wiser with the dispersion of resources, making it a better arena to compete in.
It looks the way I thought (and hoped) WCIII would look. The lighting is awesome. Warcraft compared to Sacrifice looks like Heavy Metal compared to something like Messiah. The figures look like rough sketches - the arm joints are ugly, the mapping isn't smooth... I'm disappointed.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Tournament Management Online &
Here it is, I was waiting for the obligatory "Why aren't games these days more original?" post.
As another poster mentioned, Looking Glass Studios made some incredibly original games (he forgot my personal favorite that even beats out Thief, System Shock 2) and they went out of business.
Then how about Ion Storm? Daikatana was meant to be original, and it bombed, which just shows how hard it really is to be original and still make a good game. On the other hand, Deus Ex (the same team that's now in charge of the Looking Glass Thief franchise) was very original and clever and did extremely well.
Neverwinter Nights is redefining what an RPG on the computer can be.
And then there's Black and White.
And the Sims.
And Grand Theft Auto 3.
And probably a whole host of others that I've forgotten. Your choice of Doom 3 is a poor one, because that game is more of a proof of concept for the engine, which will then be used to make the real games by others. This was done with the Q3 engine and the UT engine and will be done once again.
There is plenty of innovation happening in the gaming industry. You are just choosing to ignore it.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
What, so it stopped sucking sometime in the last few weeks between when the closed the beta and when the game code was shipped?
/I/ played it, and even my hard core blizzard buddies agree.
:)
I mean it sucked last time
(I do mean HC though, as in waaaaay to big of fans of the company for sanities sake, really freaky line fans of Blizzard. They say it sucks.)
You want a review of the game? Ok here you go;
It Stinks. Period. Tada. End.
Looks great though.
Actualy it is like enjoyable for the first few days, but it has NO staying powering. Definatly NOT another StarCraft. Blizzard has limited the games playability to the point where they FORCE YOU to play Their Way.
And it sucks. Period.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Having already beat the first campaign. I've forgotten that it has yet to be released ;) technically.
It's truly a fantastic game based on a tried, tested and true model. One feature STILL being forgotten in Blizzard games is the ability to zoom in and out, they have now added perspective (scrolling mouse wheel elevates and tilts the camera). But in 1280x1024 I would like to see more than 640x480 worth of units and buildings.
Just my 2 cents.
"Failure of Windows operating systems is extremely rare. If it happens, it is usually due to operating system file c
So it is true, Warcraft III is supposed to be released on July 3rd. But oddly enough, my friend already has a fully working, pirated copy of WC III. Maybe he got it from the same people that gave him LoTR and Star Wars EP II on DVD. I had it on my laptop till I had to do a sys recovery - go figure...
Everyone has been going on about how great the graphics are.
I disagree. I think they suck.
Due to the number of units on the screen at one time, each unit has to have a relatively low polygon count. This results in having units which don't look very impressive at all.
I like the lighting. Spell effects are pretty good. Environment looks cool. Units look like ass.
Here is one case where the move to 3D has really hurt the game. When you went from 2.5D in Doom / Duke Nukem to full 3D for Quake + clones, you incorporated the Z-axis, levels started to take it into account etc. In general, this was a good thing.
In WC3, its still essentially a 2D game. There are 3 levels of play, just like Starcraft, but the ramps are so large, that for the most part have no strategic value.
Next, you need a brutal system to play this well, and you have to turn down the details. It may be nice and smooth and pretty when you're starting out, but as soon as you have a battle (and remember that these battles are much smaller now... > 50 enemies is rare) your FPS drops like mad. Wouldn't be a problem, if you didn't need to click on your troops to tell them what to do. End result? Whoever's got the better system wins.
I love Blizzard. I own WC, WC2, WC2X, SC, Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II:Lod, and I'm not going to buy WC3 (I played the beta, and it doesn't seem like its changed significantly since I have)
I could rant about this game for a while, but bottom line... multi play kindof sucks. It won't hold your attention.
If you are into the whole SP thing, then maybe it will be ok, but don't buy into the hype. Blizzard's games are critic proof, and for good reason... up till now they have made games that were either amazing (Starcraft) or seriously addictive (Diablo).
I'm waiting for their next personally.
Captain Frisk out... all this ranting makes me sleepy
Any half-decent starcraft player can easily thwart a zerg rush. Example: Put a couple photon cannons in a strategic location such as a choke point leading into your base, then back those cannons up with 5-10 zealots. Make sure each zealot is attacking a different zergling, don't fall in the trap of assigning all your zealots to a single zergling. The p00r n00b need to get some practice because, rush or no rush, they're going to get trampled quite thoroughly until they do.
Now, as for the 'features' blizzard implemented; the original poster makes them sound pretty terrible, and since I'm not going to buy war3 for a while anyways I'll just have to wait to find out. NWN will be good for a while.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
Ever heard of spoiler space?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Starcraft 2!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Kinda, is it $60 fun? For that high of a price, no, its not $60 fun. Maybe $40, but not $60.
As a beta tester, I've been playing the game for months. The final version was released to the beta testers. So here's my review:
Great game! Only three things wrong with it:
1. The human archmage casts blizzard way too fast. It should require more mana to cast, or should take longer to cool down.
2. Starfall is way too powerful against buildings. It's fine against humans since it's stopped reasonably easily, but it's pretty lame how you can sneak a priestess into an enemy base while they're distracted and completely level it with a single starfall. It would be great if starfall only did half damage to buildings. It would still take out towers, but wouldn't destroy barracks and town halls.
3. Offensive towers are LAME! In Starcraft, it was a lot more difficult to OT, even with Protoss. At least then you either had to:
a) build on creep with zerg
b) fill a bunker with marines
c) build a pylon first to make canons
And in Starcraft, 'towers' were much easier to defeat. In Warcraft, however, towers are not only inexpensive, but are extremely difficult to take down without siege units (Which all require upgrading the town center first). They should make it much easier to take down towers without siegecraft. This won't hurt using them for defense since you can place them behind other structures to prevent non-siege units from reaching them early in the game.
The unit cap in the game should be changable. I suspect they only allow 90 control points because the game is graphically intense and they didn't want to alienate those without extremely fast hardware. However, for those of us fortunate enough to own GHz+ machines with GeForce 2 or better graphics hardware, it would be nice to be able to be able to use more units.
Other than those four things, it's a very fun game. I highly recommend that everyone interested in the RTS genre try it. As for bnetd, well, we all know that was just their (failed) attempt to curb piracy during the beta test. I'm confident that the suit will be dropped.
A good Zerg player will rush before you have the chance to build cannons or zealots. Now, there aren't very many really good Zerg players, and it gets very difficult on larger maps. But a really fast Zerg rush is pretty unbeatable, unless you can do a faster one.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Rushing is still rampant in war3, but not in the same form. Hero harass works the same as the zergling rush. If you're a n00b, you're gonna get owned in any RTS from rushing. No RTS to date has prevented rushes.
Blizzard worked really hard at preventing rushes for war3 but they still cant prevent it. One example of this was creeps at the entrance of every base. They took that out because it detered from the game rather than add value to it.
To say hardcore players do not play war3 is just plain foolish. Hardcore players will win in any game they play, and they dont need rushes to beat the average player. They just think the game is boring.
Yes, the zerg are in Warcraft III if you know where to look.
And if anyone's in the mood for strategy with great storytelling, may I humbly suggest Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis for Game Boy Advance?
[o]_O
Write in Moderation, +10 funny.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
"1) It won't play smoothly on a P3 500 laptop (with 384 meg of RAM and an ATI Rage Mobility). Blizzard usually tries to get the low-end of the market. Not any longer"
On my A750s with TNT1s, which are "super-duper" for 3 years ago, the play is acceptable like Starcraft on a P120. It's slower than top-of-the-line, but very playable. If you want to play a game released in 2002, don't have a machine from pre-1999. Is that hard to accept? If so, try console gaming. They can have much larger windows of games (release + n years) than an arbitrary computer configuration.
Also, a Rage mobility isn't exactly a great 3D card to be using in a 3D game.
"Screw it. If this game had come out 5 years ago, maybe. But Starcraft is better, and so is Age of Empires 2."
If it had come out 5 years ago, it wouldn't be Warcraft 3. The Voodoo2s of the time (very high-end for 1997) can't do it acceptably. Starcraft and AOE2 are better for you because you have an old 2D-capable system. Essentially what you're saying (in your own words) is that you wanted something that worked on your old computer, and you're disapointed when it doesn't work like a game released 4 years ago (Starcraft). Again, I have to say, if you want to play games for computers released this year, own a computer with hardware from a maximum of 3 years ago. Try a desktop P3 with a GeForce 2 MX 400, I'm sure it'll do it more than acceptably.
Or move to console gaming. You sound like you'd enjoy that a lot more.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Beetlejuice, beetlejuice, beetlejuice!
And the most horrific thing?
To quote one reviewer:
"Whilst on the subject of multiplayer modes, it would be remiss of me to not cry aloud about the lack of TCP/IP play in Warcraft 3. In previous blizzard games, TCP/IP was my favourite method of multiplayer play. You don't have the hassles of battle.net, and you don't have to be connected over a LAN to the person you want to play against. It's perfect, it's simple. That said, I can guess straight away why Blizzard didn't include TCP/IP play: Piracy. On Battle.net Blizzard can track and restrict people not using legitimate copies of the game. Over TCP/IP they can't. By removing TCP/IP play you effectively block a large group of people from playing multiplayer, unless they go out and by the game."
Oh. Wonderful.
I don't see any review at that IGN link. It's their first impressions of the final version.
There is a difference.
Having played WC3 since about the second it was available, I'll add this:
It is no WC2. It is not worth your 90$ Canuck, 60$ US, or whatever they're gouging you for. Jacking up the price for an anticipated title is nothing new, and people will continue to fall for it, but for the love of *insert diety here*, don't let yourself be a victim!
Pure and simple, this is a rather confining version of WC2 with updated graphics and little else. Confining, because you're now stuck with Heroes upon whom your game ultimately depends (as plenty of people have griped already), and a food restriction which is limited to 90 units of food. Since the lowliest offensive unit consumes 2 units of food by itself, and others as much as 4 gone is the ability to create a massive army of Ogres, bloodlust them up, and smash your opponent into the pavement. Blizzard's attempt to limit the size of your force basically means you're limited to using raiding parties buttressed with catapults for your offense, and lots of guard towers around your base.
Which is all fine and well, and Blizzard may have INTENDED forces in WC3 to be on a smaller scale, but IT ISN'T AS MUCH FUN . The entire single player quest is restricted by this food limit. It's not just smaller maps or easier missions. Add in the fact that it relies heavily on heroes as well (good luck getting anywhere without him or her, folks), and you've got two restrictions too many, given the amount of impact they have on gameplay.
A third restriction comes in the overuse of "missions". Gone is "purge the enemy", here is "chop 15,000 units of lumber", "find this", and "protect that". It's been seen before, but makes up too much of Warcraft 3.
As for the aforementioned GFX:
The 3D maps are nice, but bad polygons make on-screen characters look awful. The movies are very well done, but animated cut-scenes look downright horrid. These in-game scenes occur far too frequently, and butcher the pace of the game. I felt, especially in the intro episode and the human campaign, that I was spending more time watching these "cartoons" than actually playing. You can opt out of them, however. Oh, and the voice work isn't up to par in comparison to Blizzard's previous efforts.
Grolm Hellscream (whose name I'm now using, RIP to WC2's Hellscream), has become a wuss, dejectedly taking orders. When he does show initiative, he comes off looking like an idiot (I see many possible flames stemming from this comment, lets see who's creative enough to come up with one first). The story is predictable in the beginning. Gee, heard of Anakin turning to the darkside?!? Your main character in the human & undead campaigns is annoying (Arthas). You will want to slaughter him yourself. His is the predictable storyline, and it's made all the worse by the lack of reaction it draws (or at least drew from me).
Now I've griped and griped and expect to hear plenty about my expectations being too high, and that I'm playing the game for free. Well, I buy the games I do play, bought all the classics, WC2, Beyond the Dark Portal, ID stuff, and actually, a lot of small games most people wouldn't (everything from Sheep! to Duck Hunter Pro to Full Strength Challenge). Even when they weren't great games, they were reasonably priced. Honestly, though I've had WC3 for about two weeks, I've played it maybe five days out of that, and am a third of the way through. Enough to know that it's on the way off my hard drive. Probably as soon as I post this, unless the female elvish warriors I'm currently battling offer up some hot elvish lovin'.
Kidding aside, this game isn't worth the money, isn't as good as WC2, and 4.5 million people or thereabouts are probably going to be disappointed. Actually, really only about .5, most will be happy enough with it, since there's a market willing to buy just about any shoddy game made these days. Compared to shoddy titles (Space Bunnies Must Die, anyone?), WC3 is pure gold, yet compared to its own franchise, its a dismal followup.
Oh, and all the boycott comments are stemming from http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/151022 5&mode=thread&tid=127
"!)." "Update: 06/13 15:16 GMT by M: Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game."
If you're going to make a comment like that, expect people to yell boycott. The fact that I'm forced to use battle.net is one of the reasons (aside from the overall lackluster impression I've had thus far) that I won't be buying the game. Lack of choice = lack of money leaving my wallet. I'd love to host my own WC3 server (if Blizzard releases a patch killing off food restrictions and addressing other issues)...
Hey, I wonder if this is a patentable concept?
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
If you think you will like WC3 then do yourself a favor and check out Warlords Battlecry 2. It is a very good fantasy RTS with heros that can go up to 50th level over a 100 units, over a 100 spells, and twelve playable sides. It is just a great RTS. Just doesn't get all the free press of WC3.
s sg.com.au/wbc2/
http://www.warlordsbattlecry2.com/
http://www.
SB
I mostly agree with the previous poster, though i would be harsher: after the disapointment that Battle for Dune was, i was hoping that wc3 would be at least as good as starcraft...
It isn't. Not even close. their solution to big armies is a rather more vicious limit to how many units you can build... but the hp's screw that up. Cannon towers (in humans) are quite useless... It's almost impossible to create an effective killing zone...
Tactics consist of as manny melees and ranged fighters as you can build divided into two main teams... and that's it!
I got so disapointed i went back to Shogun...
Its an undeniable fringe benefit of the game. You're not gonna sit at home playing final fantasy and have friends that like the game chillin with you.
:)
With warcraft, you get automagically hooked up with other fans
One of the many reasons the game rules
God spoke to me
But Aquaman +you cannot marry a woman without gills! You're from two different worlds!
Well as i'm sure you all know.. it's been out for some time now.. (bootleg) but i must say.. i am VERY impresses with the game... and ever moreso with the cinema movies that they use to express the game. I have a good monitor and a Gforce4 Ti 4200 and i'll tell ya.. these graphics are fucking killer!
:)
gameplay is great too.. nice featurs.. interesting plot, etc... it's worth a shot.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
Thanks, Slashdot editors (and readers), for simultaneously proferring and undermining any sense of community or worthwhileness amongst those who oppose DMCA-mongers like Vivendi Universal, owner of Blizzard. Oh, sure, editors, you covered it in your FAQ: "You take your yin with your yang," yadda yadda bullshit. The notion of "objective journalism" is inherently false, a logical fallacy. When you pick facts, events, or say GAMES for your readers out of a vast pool of potential content, you're already unobjective from square one. And this material in the FAQ hides behind the same shield as the mainstream newsmedia who take cover under "objectivism." The Slashdot editors are trying to avoid responsibility, something everyone who influences the views of others is cursed with, justify it or not.
So, editors and readers alike, you DO have a responsibility, and you can't "Have you Cake and Eat it Too" as the most highly modded post for this story suggests. How typically American to think that you can support a corporation that undermines your rights and on the same day support a nonprofit that fights for those rights and expect the karma to all balance out in the mix. We want the instant gratification of getting what we want, and the morally bankrupt ease of not having to answer any hard questions in the process.
There's no real sacrifice involved here. To boycott this game wouldn't involve an expenditure of money, or effort, or anything. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that dire. You just sit there on your ass like you always do, perhaps playing a game from a company that won't sue you for developing software that support their products. YOU COULD DO NOTHING, AND BE DOING THE RIGHT THING. But every free Slashdot promotion for Big Media output continues to pull a consumer revolution right out from under the feet of the people who started it.
Big Media isn't scared of the Slashdot crowd. They know they own your geek bitchasses like they own the Britney Spears cheerleader crowd. You're just another target market, willing to gulp it down at a pretty price. Every story like this, littered with comments from drooling otakus ready to fund Vivendi with mommy's Visa, makes that abudently clear.
I usually don't complain about mods, but who ever modded this as a troll is a fucking idiot. I can see no portion of this post that could be considered trolling.
At least with Starcraft and Diablo 2, I remember tons of patches that kept trying to rebalance units... they didn't have the balance right when the game launched and they never got it right.
The unit AI is the best I've seen in an RTS yet. For instance, when your peasants are done building, they will go and do something useful like chop lumber or mine gold. This eliminates a great deal of micro management.
That's pretty sad if that's actually "impressive AI".
Among many reasons I dislike Warcraft III, the top has to be the unit voices. I mean, Starcraft/Warcraft was bad anough, but these guys say longer phrases, more annoying phrases, and in more annoying voices. And they say them every time they get clicked. After about a month of it I kicked my roommate out because he wouldn't turn the damn voices off. Why couldn't they leave it a little more subtle?
Money from W3 purchases funds the lawyers they use to attack the bnetd project!
Look at the top of the ladder, look at the Korean tournament players. There are a good number of protoss and terran players there. The game is pretty balanced. You can NOT win every time(or even close to every time) against a decent player by following some strategy by the book and not adapting to your opponent's moves. The fact that you think that Zerg are unbeatable shows that you're a starcraft noob.
No, you won't. You're probably one of those fucking cheap lunix users that pirate their games. Stupid fuckers.
If you *REALLY* want this game, but could care less about the fluff around it (packaging, etc.), dragons.ca has the 'small box' edition of the game for $39.99 + Shipping. They already sold out the first three shipments of this edition, however I have not seen anywhere come even close to that price.
-Chu
What's new since Warcraft II? Huh? Storytelling? A bunch of new units? A pinch of RPG (heroes with an inventory and levels)? It's the same game. Ah, no, I forgot, 3D! Yeah!
Honestly, if you remember the RTS genre timeline, after Warcraft II, Total Annihilation came out, and since then no game was ever a match for gameplay, and depth of strategy. Don't even talk about starcraft. If you do it means you never played TA.
Blizzard is just milking the Warcraft cow. And the buyers of the game that is. Huh.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
I think I'll order an extra WC3 box to account for you.
Too bad you're too poor to afford one copy, very much one of each race and a collector's edition.
Looks like Blizzard has yet another killer game on their hands
It'll go well with their killer lawyers.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
Yes I agree. That's why I'm running so much pirated software right now! yay open source!
I found a bug in the game that makes it really easy to finish the last battle.
The AI cannot detect "tree buildings" like "tree of life" when they are uprooted.
So just put a dozen of uprooted trees in front of the gate, destroy every other building and troop and wait 45 minutes.
Game finished.
The game is great but there arent Sea Units... no transports... no battleships... :((( it would be 10/10 if it had it...
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
Mind you, I am still very new to WC3. I have barely played the thing as much as some players. (300 hours, cripes!?)
However, I have played at least 20 games of melee combat (just me versus a computer) on a variety of different maps. I lose every single time. Why? Because no matter what I do, the computer is always there first with more units and a souped up hero that trounces anything I can build. The comp. players are don't have this nuisance of having to click around to build things like we do. But given WC3's interface, it's hard to click around different structures like a hyper 10 year old.
The end result is that their army is always at least twice the size of my army. And when they attack, and I fight back, they retreat with half their units intact and none of mine. Then they come back in with double the size and I am still trying to build 5 units.
I have not played against human opponents yet, and from what I read here, I already don't want to. It seems some people have already learned how to trash you in 5 minutes just like SC with zergling rushes. Stupid.
WarCraft III is a clickfest. It is not a strategy game.
Why bother.
Finished the single player last night, although I'm not entirely sure why.
The maps are effectively all very simple mazes. There's so much blocking terrain that the amount of actual usable space is small, even on the big maps. Defensive towers are so cheap and effective that your "strategy" on most maps is just to build 8-12 towers on each of the two or three very obvious approach routes (that might as well be signposted "Very Obvious Approach Route") and massacre the desultory trickle of understrength AI attacks. A small flying squad of infantry (or flyers) to deal with the token seige engine in some attacking groups, plus a patrolling group of repairing peons, and you're impregnable for all practical purposes.
And this works on every map. Every single map. The "game" is just wandering your hero around, hoovering up goodies and picking fights until he stops levelling. Then you can pretty much take the enemy down any way you like. Grunt rushes, creeping artillery barrages, suicidal hero charges, it's all good, and it all works, as long as you concentrate on taking out buildings instead of wasting time engaging the enemy.
The AI is as pathetic as always. It's actually sad watching the small groups of mixed troops going down in the meat grinder of your tower fire, and the sallies are even worse. If you want to know one of the actual "tactics" for a base assault, it involves sending in a couple of units to snipe the enemy base. The enemy sallies everything out to engage them, then you just rush your actual attacking force right past the melee into the heart of their base and smack their town centre. Works. Every. Time.
On the special quest maps with no construction, it's (if anything) worse. Because your hero regenerates faster than any enemy, and because their AI's are crippled so that they only pursue you for a short distance and then return to their home, you can defeat all opposition with hit and runs. There's no skill involved, only patience. The only troops that are actually beneficial are artillery; the infantry you get gifted (generously) on these maps are largely irrelevant, as your hero can solo them. The plethora of healing wells scattered around just imbalance it further. How come the enemy never uses them?
Multiplayer isn't a bundle of laughs either. There's none of the StarCraft distinctiveness among the races. They're all fairly generic, and the Night Elves are pretty obviously an "oh yeah" addition that serve no purpose. The single player Night Elf campaign really does seem tacked on and anti-climactic.
Because of the unit limit, you have to choose between trick supporting units or combat units. Guess what? 10 powered up combat units will beat any combination of combat and support units, because the support units are feeble, and their effects are either underpowered or require too much micromanagement, and they go down before they can make a difference. Sure, that sorceress might polymorph one of your grunts into a sheep, but then your other nine grunts will smack her, both sides have lost a unit, your grunt will recover, and you still have more total hit points. In fact, most battles are just meat grinders where the winner is the side with the most total hit points. "Tactics" means using "attack" rather than "move" to get in some first strikes, and then the old saw of concentrating on one enemy at a time. Forget flanking, forget advantage of terrain, forget posture, it's just grind, grind, grind. Take out the peons and the town centre, and you've won, as always. Heck, if you're human and you're getting bored, ring the alarm bell, turn your peons into pathetic militia, and just make it easier for your opponent to snuff them as they charge mindlessly into combat.
In other words, we've seen it all before, and better. The graphics aren't even anything to write home about. You'll only ever view the game from one angle anyway, with the units on mostly level ground, and so they might as well be pre-rendered. You'd lose the lighting effects, and that's about it.
Sorry, I am sadly disappointed in Warcraft III. The engine and gameplay have evolved not one bit from StarCraft, unless you count the multiplayer Hero Rush (either to attack, or to loot and level). All the work has gone into the graphics and the token humorous unit poke-poke responses. To give you an idea of how derivative this is, they even lift sounds straight from Diablo.
This is a sequel by the numbers. Stick to the same old formula, give people what they know they like, sell to the same market, don't introduce anything that would require actual strategy or tactics like unit posture, significant terrain advantages or bonus damage on enemy that are in "move" rather than "attack" mode. Oh no, just keep on churning out the same old same old, and keep counting the profits. Bah.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
With a few days to go,I wonder if blizzard will have fixed this feture.
StarCraft was good broodwars was ok the story was prity good in BroodWars the game itself was uber cheese
WarCraft 1 and two were far cleaner, how ever WarCraft 3 might be ok I hope visualy it doesn't suck as much as Myth 1 and 2
Blizzard is still trying to make a buck by putting the screws to their customers, but they make good crack cocaine, so everyone is hooked and won't stop buying. To quote one user "Man this it outrageous it's wrong i can't believe your can stay in business doing shit like this you suck and won't stand for it, uh, dudes can I Jones a couple hours game time though, I'm good for it, really I am.". Go ahead mod me down, then go run out and get your clickfest fix, just don't lie to yourself.
My cable provider has been giving me shitty quality picture and no digital channels for the past week. So, I cancelled my service and am going with a satellite provider. In the same way, I have not watched a movie, bought a CD, or played a video game from a corrupt company in more than a year.
You DO know that cable providers and tv channels pay the movie studios (and the MPAA) BIG BUCKS to show movies, right? Also, TV companies pay the record studios (and RIAA) BIG BUCKS to use songs in shows and in ads.
So if you have cable or satellite TV, you are supporting both the RIAA and MPAA directly.
Yeah, good thing his post was only two sentences long. Piracy is bad. "Yeah, let's pirate these commercial Lunix games because we don't want any more commercial games h4w h4w"
The cutscenes and editor didn't work. There were about 50% framerate loss and a lot of troubles of getting the right 'focus' on the window.
Greetings there Bonch. I can kinda follow you on the new feel for the game myself. If you can recall from the days of old, this game was always going to be a "mixture" of RPG and RTS combined, originally something along the lings of what Shiny's Sacrifice (sp?) was. (Hero follow view, hero's regenerate in rown if killed, units must be linked to the hero, etc.) During the evolution of the game Blizzard backed away from such a change and stuck with the tried-and-true method, but kept some of the RPG elements around to differ the game from it's precessor somewhat. In a way, what you said "Hey, we'll mix our two biggest money-makers to make a mutant third one" is correct in that StarCraft was a RTS and DiabloII was a RPG. WarCraftIII was designed to be as such. It does not make it a bad game though, I myself enjoy the side quests and RPG features the game has, you don't. Hey, to each their own. As for the graphics, I always liked the cartoony look. Sacrifice (sp?) was very cartoony, and a great game all the same. WarCraftIII is very cartoony as well - something I like. Graphics have never made the game however, 3D or not. Heh, I still play commodore 64 games, and the original Quest for Glorys (Sierra). (Go EGA!) I guess the storyline wasn't to your liking either. Heh heh, I liked it very much, much more complex than the tedium of "side A vs. side B" scenario. Again, to each their own.
Not to be a troll or anything, but whoever wrote the Tweakers Australia review needs to use the spell checker next time. It's hard to take a review seriously when it has errors every other sentence: "the Undead Scourage," "heroes gain experiance," "damage abilitys," and "regain slowy," all in first paragraph.
despite being 4 or 5 years old Starcraft: Brood War still has more people playing it online at this very second than any other game on the Internet, let alone RTS's. Counterstrike barely crosses the 50% mark.
So how about them apples.
-daniel
personally i think the original command and conquer(Tiberian dawn) was far more balanced most of blizzards games (mammoth tanks were invulernable to everything except infantry, no unit caps, no grouping caps, a better support structure), unfortuneatly later verisons just had too many features and units. It took blizard 2 games before they worked around creating two sides which were clones of one another. The only new gameplay element which blizzard added was the build queue and magic(i don't like magic after playing c&C).
personally i don't like blizzards games because of rushing. rushing doesnt work in a westwood game, because of more powerfull defensive units. usually you win in tiberan dawn because you were able to sneak an engineer in and take over the guys construction yard, while he was busy defending against a rush.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
what blizzard needs to do then is to provide more defensive unit options. have more static defensive structures(they had them in WC2). add units like command and conquers engineers to take over units, or commando's which can blow up a building in one shot.
make destroying support structures a priority (for example taking out a power yard in c&C takes down powered base defenses like rocket towers, or tower of nod). implementing this would be easy, destroy a house for peons and you loose control of those peons supported by the house or it takes longer to build units as a result.
sure with more defensive options, that might encourage some players to try to overcome a base with a huge rush, but when you have a strong defense, a crafty oponnent will try to distract you and sneak in an engineer/commando to destroy/sell off your base from within(or take over a building and build a rocket tower in the middle of it).
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Warcraft 3 Review - By WndrBr3d (wndrATirev.net)
Overview:
Out of all the games released so far in 2002, I must say that the biggest overrated hype and most disappointing delivery has to be Warcraft 3. What it boils down to is this game is a successor to Starcraft and NOT it's predecessor Warcraft 2. Unfortunately I feel that Blizzard was banking this game on the success of Starcraft in today's market. This game was rushed to the market and many vital items that would GREATLY enhance game play are missing.
Races:
Orcs - Hard to go wrong with this race. It's basically humans painted green sans technology and intelligence. Actually, think of them as an inbred Swiss family Robinson.
Humans - Some things never change. Footmen, Knights, Healers, blah, blah blah.
The Undead - Remember the Zerg ? Change their colors to Green/Black.
Night Elfs - Warcraft 3 equivalency of the French. You could kill off an entire Night Elf base with one-foot solder and then proceed to rape and pillage their trees.
Graphics:
Decent. I'm impressed with their graphics for an RTS game. But in all honesty, HOW many RTS games have been released with >WarCraf2 Graphics. Besides, this graphics engine couldn't hold a candle to other graphics engines today *cough*Quake3*cough*. The texture quality is very high though and there didn't seem to be any low frame rate issues.
Sound:
This is where I don't care. Seriously, I have something I like to call, A LIFE. And in this life (for some of you, I'm referring to IRL) I honestly don't give a crap if my computer can play a RTS in 5.1-surround sound. But for some reason, this seems to be a MUST for Uber-dorks out there. Stereo is fine for me. But I will say that the Music/Sound is very nice. Pleasing even.
Campaign Game Play:
I feel that Blizzard again took the high road on this one. Maps are of course wonderful and crafted well, but the flow of the story leaves LITTLE to be desired. In StarCraft all cut scenes were done with MASTERFUL 3D Video Scenes, which were just AMAZING. Proof that Blizzard did take their time with Starcraft to make it rich and feature full for all users.
WarCraft3 on the other hand took the high road. You will only get one cinematic clip in the Beginning and End of your Campaign. Instead of the key placed clips, they've decided to just place animated scenes using the game engine before/after/during your missions. To me, this is Blizzard basically saying FOAD.
My reasons for saying this product was an attempt to follow StarCraft and not be an ACTUAL sequel to WarCraft 2 is basically these two reasons. Sea Units? Gone. HOW THE CRAP CAN YOU NOT HAVE SEA UNITS IN WARCRAFT 3 ?! They were in One and Two! That's like not having the humans in the third! WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING ?! I WANNA HAVE A BATTLE OF MIDWAY GOD DAMN IT!
In one mission you actually go around destroying BOATS.. meaning the Models and Objects are actually IN the game, but they decided it would be best not to implement them. So this would be an example of Blizzard being lazy and just pushing their product to market without actually implementing ALL features/units.
Second reason, Resources. Oil? Gone. Reason: NO SEA UNITS. Yes, again in Warcraft 3, as in Starcraft, there are only TWO resources. Gold/Wood. Because apparently my mechanical units burn liquid gold (or you would assume so by their cost). This to me, doesn't make any freaking sense what so ever.
Custom Game Play:
This section should just be titled, 'Game Play'. There is seriously next to NO customization options. You can select your map, fog of war options, and that about sums it up. You cannot even modify the skill level (Bunny Hunts are sometimes FUN!). Modify Game Speed/Starting Units/Starting Resources? Nope.
Summary:
I feel that WarCraft3 is basically Blizzard shitting on all our chests. And with a $60 price tag, it wants us to swallow said shit and call it candy. I'm severely disappointed in this release and am honestly considering visiting Blizzards offices and peeing on their doorstep.
I'm sorry, but I'd like to comment that Warcraft 3 did NOT invent heroes. They've been done in RTS games for years in the Warlords: Battlecry series.
Walmart. 12:34 am. Tuesday. "Hey, do you guys have warcraft iii?" "Yeah, but we're not supposed to sell it, yet." "Today is Tuesday, and its after midnight." "Ohh, it is after midnight!! here you go then!! " ka-ching. I got my copy 24 hours early. Bitchin.
Wendell
Well, the biggest over-hyped game I played so far has been Dungeon Siege. I also wouldn't call three years in development exactly 'rushed to the market'. The game feels complete to me, the races could use some more tweaking, but I'm guessing that in the years to follow patches will follow to smooth things out. (By tweaking I am not taking away from the finished feel. The races units all have their roles laid out for them, some minor exp improvements and balance issues should resolve the remainder. (i.e: StarFall, or Dispel Magic) First off, this is WarCraftIII, not StarCraftII. The units are supposed to be similar in function, not radically different. If you were expecting completely different races I'd suggest waiting until 2011 when StarCraftII will most likely be out. Um, thank goodness for that. What did you want from the humans? Space Marines? Siege Tanks? lol. Since the game is based after a fantasy setting, and since it tries to follow some sort of story line the unit progression would need to be somewhat similar. The concept is the same, however again, the units are very similar to each other in regards to tech level and purpose, a footman = grunt = ghoul, with various unique abilities to differ their function. The undead can not be the zerg in this case, and are not from playing them. lol!!! Now this I HAVE to see you accomplish with a lone-footman. Make a re-play file of your game with your lone footman, I'm very eager to see it. WarCraf2 Graphics. Besides, this graphics engine couldn't hold a candle to other graphics engines today *cough*Quake3*cough*. The texture quality is very high though and there didn't seem to be any low frame rate issues.> Odd, I've found that the cartoonish animations and unit movement to be fluid and pleasant. Reminds me of Ssacrifice. The unit portaits are by far better than others I have seen for any RTS out there. As would I, a bit too ambient though. Er... you HAVE watched the cut scenes in WarCraftIII right? It doesn't sound like you have. They are up to Blizzard's standards. I see nothing wrong with the lack of placed cut-scenes either, but others will disagree. I'd rather have scenes explaining that which the game can not, than every 2 games interrupted with fluff. (Nice looking fluff, but fluff all the same.) To me, it's Blizzard showing off the game engine, which they seem to have a wonderful job at using btw. The cities are eye pleasing, landscape is believable, and voices done well. Riiiiggghhttt. Well first off there were NO SEA UNITS OF ANY KIND in WarCraftI. (Perhaps you never played WarcraftI, or this game I am beginning to believe.) In WarCraftII you could build land units whenever you wished, but sea units only for water maps. StarCraft did not possess sea units either, I see no reason for their inclusion in this game. If you want to add sea units, I would recommend learning how to code and using the WorldEditor which can supposedly allow you to do anything you wish with the game. See the above. Um, see the above. The emphasis on this game was not base-building, but combat/skirmishes. Um, I wouldn't know why you're examining why mechanical units burn gold. Do you question why knights magically pop out of barracks, or why you know how much gold is in each mine exactly? Er, as I have not yet played the custom games, I can not argue. Er, if you don't like the game return it for a refund and save for Doom3, Unreal Tournament 2003, or some other game. No one is forcing you to play this game. If you pee on Blizzards doorstep you'll be arrested btw, so I wouldn't do that.
They're not "super super" like some of the Starcraft ones, but I'm still not all the way through (I've played through Stracraft + expansion twice :)).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Besides, this graphics engine couldn't hold a candle to other graphics engines today *cough*Quake3*cough*.
That is because Warcraft 3 is a very large world, and to have Quake3 equivalent graphics quality you would need some sort of supercomputer.
Seriously, I have something I like to call, A LIFE.
LOL! Dude, you are a loser.
Sea Units? Gone. HOW THE CRAP CAN YOU NOT HAVE SEA UNITS IN WARCRAFT 3 ?!
Why are they necessary? They took sea units out because they would have detracted from the gameplay. Are you just pissed because you can't amass 50 battlecruisers and own the map?
In one mission you actually go around destroying BOATS.. meaning the Models and Objects are actually IN the game, but they decided it would be best not to implement them. So this would be an example of Blizzard being lazy and just pushing their product to market without actually implementing ALL features/units.
See point above. Now your prejudice towards Blizzard is showing.
Second reason, Resources. Oil? Gone. Reason: NO SEA UNITS. Yes, again in Warcraft 3, as in Starcraft, there are only TWO resources.
Why is this bad? It simplifies resource management, leaving more time for unit micro.
There is seriously next to NO customization options. You can select your map, fog of war options, and that about sums it up. You cannot even modify the skill level (Bunny Hunts are sometimes FUN!). Modify Game Speed/Starting Units/Starting Resources? Nope.
That is what the SCENARIO EDITOR is for!!! Are you stupid or something??
Basically, your so called 'review' was nothing more than a regurgitation of your opinion on what the game should have been. "Wah, I can't amass 8 million units and shift attack on the mini-map! Wah, the graphics aren't good enough! Wah, there aren't enough cut scenes!"
Proof that Blizzard did take their time with Starcraft to make it rich and feature full for all users.
Warcraft III is 'rich and feature full', it's just that a) you played it for about five minutes and were disappointed over a few superficial reasons as above, or b) were too stupid to realise the potential of the scenario editor in creating mods.
The whole tone of your 'review' could be summed up as 'I wanted the game to be like this, it wasn't, now I'm chucking a temper tantrum!'. Dude, grow up. The game is damn good in its own right. If you wan't to dislike the game, fine, just dislike it for what it is, not what it isn't.
Silence mortal! None shall oppose the might of Blizzard Ent. All hail the dawn of Warcraft III!!