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.
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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.