WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos
Description official descriptions
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a fantasy themed real-time strategy game with role playing elements set on the world of Azeroth. After the defeat of Orcish horde at the hand of the Alliance in the second war and the destruction of the Dark portal, the remaining orcs were rounded up and put in internment camps. The game starts with the Orcs being freed by a new warchief from their internment camps and leave for a new continent across the sea. The Humans are troubled by a mysterious disease that turns people into living dead. Meanwhile the undead are preparing for a way to let their Demon masters enter the world of Azeroth.
The game features five campaigns and four playable races: Humans, Orcs, Night Elves and Undead with unique units and buildings. Several heroes that can level up and learn new skills support your troops in battle. The game was followed by an expansion called The Frozen Throne.
Spellings
- 魔兽争霸3:混乱之治 - Simplified Chinese spelling
Groups +
- BestSeller Series (Cendant / Havas / Vivendi Universal) releases
- Fantasy creatures: Dragons
- Fantasy creatures: Dwarves
- Fantasy creatures: Elves
- Fantasy creatures: Goblins
- Fantasy creatures: Minotaurs
- Fantasy creatures: Orcs
- Fantasy creatures: Trolls
- Game feature: In-game screenshot capture
- Gameplay feature: Day / night cycle
- Gameplay feature: Fog of war
- Gameplay feature: Recordable replays
- Games pulled from digital storefronts
- Games that include map/level editor
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Protagonist: Royalty
- Retail releases with faction/character-specific cover variants
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
- Technology: amBX
- Video games turned into board / card games
- WarCraft universe
Screenshots
Promos
Videos
See any errors or missing info for this game?
You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.
Credits (Windows version)
363 People (320 developers, 43 thanks) · View all
Executive Producer | |
Team Lead | |
Art Director | |
Lead Designer | |
Lead Technical Artist | |
Producer | |
Technology Lead | |
Programming | |
Additional Programming | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 91% (based on 86 ratings)
Players
Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 221 ratings with 17 reviews)
You'll either love it or hate it...
The Good
WCIII goes a bit further into "roleplaying game" territory than any of its predecessors did. In Starcraft, you had "character" units, true, but they weren't much more than standard units colored differently, and with unique character portraits. Warcraft III goes hogwild, here, making Hero units VERY different from standard units, complete with colored patterned underlighting effects that make your heroes stand out no matter WHERE they are!
In the single-player game, heroes play an important role in the plot; in multiplayer, they're basically very powerful, very expensive units.
As if that wasn't enough, they've also added "creeps" -- random monsters that are neutral to all players, and wander around attacking or being attacked by you. Some have treasure and magic items that can improve your heroes... in a lot of ways, it felt a bit like Diablo Meets Warcraft...
The scenery is fantastic. The look of the game has been enriched in every way.
The Bad
1. No ships? No oil? Nope. This element of the game was dropped completely.
-
Upkeep. Depending on the size of your force, you get "taxed" -- a medium sized army means each peon is docked three gold before he even gets it to the town hall, and with a major force, he's docked even more. What the heck was THIS all about?
-
Any player now has a maximum food outlay of 90. This puts a SHARP limit on how many troops you can have, and what type. This is, I suppose, something that's supposed to make you play smarter, instead of depending on "zerg swarms" and "tank rushes"... but, well, hell, I LIKED tank rushes...
The Bottom Line
If you're a diehard RTS gamer, in the Age Of Empires and Total Annihilation vein, you will hate this game. Don't buy it. If you're an adventure/RPG gamer, you won't like this game. Too much RTS in it. ...but if you're the kind of person who can appreciate a delicate mix of the two, it's really quite good...
Windows · by Dr.Bedlam (55) · 2002
Live up to the word 'sequel' in every last negative sense.
The Good
Not to much. The units were well drawn and the animations were excellent. Also the voices were well done and the maps were varied but the good stuff but...
The Bad
The races, though different, all felt the same to me. Every unit felt like it was mirrored from another race with a couple different magic spells that ultimately did the same thing.
On top of that all the units seemed like mobile structures. How can 3 guys with swords take out a heavily fortifed tower when being shot at by 3 other towers at the same time. Base defences are supposed to DEFEND bases. Not act as temporary brakes on an attack.
People tended to do the same thing every game too. It was a sudden rush of a ton of units every game. No matter the map. That's not very much fun because it's just whoever can rush the fastest that wins the game. There are no tactics, just swarming.
What is the point of being able to rotate the camera? You can't do anything with the rotation and it recenters automatically. Plus you are stuck at the same perspective and zoom levels. The game had so much potential but it wastes it at every chance it gets.
The Bottom Line
Meets the quality of the last 3 [Blizzard]Craft games, being a boring and repetitive reincarnation of the same game just this time with fancy looking graphics.
Windows · by KFactor (76) · 2003
Fun to play once, but takes some time to get going
The Good
The story is really awesome and you can play it without having to play the earlier games first. Each campaign tells a different story and there is a lot of variety in the missions. Even to this date Warcraft 3 still has the best story in a RTS-game ever.
It has some pretty good voice-acting and animation. There is a nice balance between story in cutscenes and story in gameplay/dialog, but what amazed me the most was the voice acting. They got some really good actors for this because I believed every word they said.
The controls are just perfect for a strategy game on the PC. If you need to get some soldiers from A to B in a hurry, you don't have to go through a menu and wait for the soldiers to start moving, it is just two or three clicks and they are on their way.
The soundtrack is pretty damn sweet. The credits song actually got me to watch the whole thing. This is much better than just some black and white animation made in Windows Movie Maker!
The Bad
The first few missions of every campaign are boring and if you are like me and you need to delete games from your PC on a regular basis you will see those levels a lot.
The difficulty curve is rather annoying, some missions are incredibly easy, but the one after can be unbelievably hard. That got on my nerves quite a lot because you don't notice that until you are already thirty minutes in and about to die.
The fights are really small because you can only have like fifty units on the field and this includes your peons. Personally, I prefer my RTS fights to be a little more chaotic, but to the game's credit this does make for a more tactical approach.
The Bottom Line
This is one of the best RTS games out there and if you are a fan of the Warcraft games (especially the MMORPG) or strategy games in general you might want to check this out. People who are more interested in action and chaos will most likely get bored during the first few missions and find the later ones to be too difficult, so my advice to them is to stick with other games.
Do I like this game myself?, yes, yes I do, but only every once in two years when I completely forgot what the story was about.
Windows · by Asinine (957) · 2011
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
credits completeness? | Rola (8483) | Oct 11, 2012 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Cut races
The game was originally to have six fully playable races. The sixth race was never revealed, and the first to be dropped. The Burning Legion was originally to be a playable race as well, but due to the effect it would have on their appearance in the game (the idea of having to give them peon units and balancing them out with the other races would diminish their "all-powerful" image), they were dropped down to being non-playable.
Development
WarCraft III originally debuted at ECTS 1999 as a much different game than the final product. The original idea was to make it a RPS, Role Playing Strategy game, incorporating both RTS and RPG elements together. Although some RPG elements are still present, many were cut. Originally you exclusively controlled heroes, with your extra units being "attached" to them. The game was in more of a 3rd-person perspective (which you can see if you zoom the camera in all the way), and you would explore with your hero (camera fixed on him), completing quests and defeating your opponents. However, due to various reasons (one being that the game was turning out to be very similar to their MMORPG, World of WarCraft which was being worked on as well), the camera angle was scaled back and the game was turned into more of a traditional RTS with some RPG elements.
Pre-order version
For those who ordered this game from EBWorld.com (now EBGames.com), they got an extra WarCraft III DVD that contained all three trailers for this game, plus the cinematic trailer for World of WarCraft.
References
- Blizzard put three Starcraft units into the game. These units are Zerg Zergling and Hydralisk and Terran Marine.They can be accessed from included map editor or at the end of the last campaign.
- In chapter 7 of the Orc Campaign, your tauren units will eventually encounter a lizard named Hungry Hungry Lizard, a pun on the old board game Hungry Hungry Hippos.
References: Full Metal Jacket
The game features at least three references to Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam war film Full Metal Jacket:* The Tauren Chieftan in the game claims that "Only two things come from Texas, and I've got horns". This refers to a line in which drill sergeant Hartman tells a Texan recruit that "Only steers and queers come from Texas. And I don't see your horns" * "This is my owl, there are many like it, but this one's mine", spoken by a Night Elf Huntress, is based on a mantra used by recruits to refer to their guns. * The Orc Grunt says "Me so horned. Me hurt you long time", based on a line I can't repeat in the potential presence of children.
Thrall
The character Thrall has origins in the cancelled Warcraft Adventures game, which was to explain how he escaped from captivity, freed many captive orcs and helped rid them of demonic corruption.
Awards
- 4Players
- 2002– Best PC Game of the Year
- 2002– Best PC Strategy Game of the Year
- 2002– Best PC Game of the Year (Reader's Vote)
- 2002– Best PC Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
- Computer Gaming World
- April 2003 (Issue #225) – Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
- April 2003 (Issue #225) – Best Cinematics of the Year
- GameSpy
- 2002 – PC Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
- 2002 – PC Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
- 2011 – #18 Top PC Game of the 2000s
- GameStar (Germany)
- February 01, 2003 - Best Strategy Game in 2002 (Readers' Vote)
Information also contributed by Ace of Sevens, Aian, Itay Shahar, Martin Smith, MAT and Warlock
Analytics
Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!
Related Sites +
-
Epic Story Meets Real-Time Strategy in Mac OS X
An Apple Games article about the Macintosh version of Reign of Chaos, with commentary being provided by a Vice-President of Blizzard North, Bill Roper (June, 2002). -
WarCraft III
Official Site - Blizzard -
Warcraft 3 Walkthrough
A complete walkthrough for Warcraft 3 on normal difficulty. Includes how-tos and reward information on all optional quests.
Identifiers +
Contribute
Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.
Contributors to this Entry
Game added by MAT.
Macintosh added by Xoleras.
Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, phlux, tarmo888, Carl Ratcliff, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack.
Game added July 4, 2002. Last modified March 22, 2024.