WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

The Good
WarCraft III is a real-time strategy game with some role-playing game elements based in a fantasy world (which actually bears quite some resemblance to Games Workshop's Warhammer setting). Actually, the very definition of what genre this game falls into has caused quite some stir among fans, most people apparently expected a game that's closer to WarCraft II, or perhaps StarCraft, and apparently did not get it. I'm saying apparently, since at this point I have neither played WarCraft II or StarCraft; WarCraft III is the first Blizzard game that I have played so I'm unbiased in that regard.

You are in command of one of four fantasy races: Humans, Orcs, Undead, and Night Elves. After a short tutorial and an introductory cut-scene you start out playing the humans. The object of the game? We don't know yet, but the cutscenes that follow every mission advance a very enjoyable and engrossing storyline. You raise armies, erect structures, advance heroes in level, and advance on a limited tech tree to improve your buildings and troops - so far, quite the typical RTS game, but there are some differences.

First of all, the game's visual appeal is breathtaking. The actual game manages to be colorful and detailed, beautifully animated, without cluttering up the screen. I've played far too many strategy games where the main challenge came from me not knowing what's going on - all of the sudden there were too many units on the map and everything either slowed down or became completely confusing. Not so in WarCraft III. The controls are very easy, point-and-click, scrolling is smooth, interface is flawless. Thus, this game is easy to learn and intuitive to control, yet difficult to master.

Your units are twofold: Heroes, who much as in role-playing games, gain experience and advance in level, equip magic items, can be raised from the dead, etc., and regular troops. Your heroes are your main characters who are not only the focus of the storyline and the cutscenes, but also are quite buff and almost indispensable in combat. This is actually quite refreshing; I've played far too many games of "if character X dies you lose"-nature. In WC3, you don't protect your heroes, you make 'em wade into battle.

Your regular troops and workers (who gather resources and build buildings) require upkeep, anywhere from 1 to 5 units of food each, and the maximum food worth of units you can control at all times is 90. Depending on how close you approach this limit you'll get taxed quite a bit on your incoming resources. This little stipulation has caused quite some stir among gamers; it seems many did not like it. I firmly believe this limit has been put in place for game parity (and not, like some players have suggested, due to technical limitations - in WC3 - Frozen Throne expansion pack, this limit has been bumped to 100 and in certain missions you get to play 2-3 factions at once and the game still performs fine), and it's a welcome move. Do you stack up on troops and get taxed on upkeep, or do you put only light defenses into place and gather gold? Tactical decisions are everything here, and it's most welcome - I'm sick of games of "hoard the troops, then attack the enemy"

The missions are very much varied. Some missions require you to build units, advance tech, and kill the enemy before they kill you. Others require you to defend a certain area against a time limit, gather a certain magical item, explore a tomb, and so forth. Some missions feel more like a RPG dungeon crawl, and the maps are as varied as their missions. After each mission there is another cutscene to advance the storyline, and they're good. They do feel like a reward to a player for finishing the previous mission and keep the player going.

Oh, and what a storyline it is! It's simply beautiful and engrossing. As you will find out, each of the four faction heroes (Orcs, Humans, Undead, Elves) as well as the Demons (who are not a playable faction but are the main bad guys) have their own agenda, and there are shades of grey - no clear cut good or bad guys. The brave Paladin is so zealous in his pursuit of the undead he kills innocent villagers because of the risk that they might be infected, the undead wants to rule the world but doesn't like being the demons' pawn, the orcs are bloodthirsty brutes but want peace for their horde, etc. There's no good or bad, and until the last mission I was holding my breath as to who "wins" the game and how the story actually ends. WarCraft has inspired a series of paperback novels at this point, and I'm actually looking forward to reading them at this point.

Oh, and the easter eggs! The blowing up sheep, and witty comments the units make when you click on them repeatedly, etc. etc... it's refreshing to see that the guys at Blizzard enjoyed making the game as much as I did playing it...

The Bad
Well, there are some suggestions for improvement, but most are nitpicks. There is no unit experience (other than heroes). You cannot group units (you can control up to 12 units at once, but you can't make sure they are permanently grouped). You HAVE to play the four factions in specific order, you can't choose to play a certain faction. I certainly didn't mind, but some players would. There are some other nitpicks as well, but most got fixed with the Frozen Throne expansion set.

Other than that, most of the gripes from other players seem to come from the fact that the game, well, isn't WarCraft II. Or StarCraft. Well, duh. Remember the original Dune, the adventurish-style game by Virgin set in Frank Herbert's universe? Well, if Dune 2 hadn't been so radically different, the real-time strategy genre would never have been invented. I don't think the guys at Blizzard said "well, gee, let's take WarCraft II, pep it up a little, and voila! We have a successor!" They just tried to make a good game and in my book they succeeded at every level.

The Bottom Line
Argh! I just beat the game on medium and was presented with an awesome ending, and a very lengthy and funny ending cutscene which was a joy to watch... until the game told me to try and "beat the game on hard and then come back"! There's a different ending on hard and I've yet to find it, and with such a simple sentance I've been doomed to another couple of sleepless night so I can uncover this as well... oh, and bring on the expansion pack! Frozen Throne awaits, and I can't wait. I've spent many hours beating the single player missions and I haven't had enough yet. This game has the highest production values I've seen in a long time, is insanely addictive, and a tour de force in just about every way.

Highest recommendation.

The Good
Warcraft II proved to be the game which really cemented Blizzard’s legend status among RTS fans world-wide. With Warcraft II, Blizzard added features and game-play options which really pushed the boundary of RTS games and paved the way for their next game, Starcraft which would remain the granddaddy of later-day RTS for a long, long while. Thousands still play Starcraft to this day, so it was not with little fanfare that Blizzard announced their return to the Warcraft universe (and RTS), with Warcraft III.

Warcraft III includes all the features that were included in Starcraft, such as unit group and building hot-keying, vertical ranged fighting, strategic team play, and of course battle.net support (out of the box). It adds a whole slew of new features, the most notable of which is the inclusion of two brand new races - The Undead and The Night Elves. The Undead are included as the game’s new resident bad-guys, forcing the Humans and Orcs to ally, in the face of great danger. In fact, this danger will force them to sail from Azeroth to lands across the sea, where the ancient race of The Night Elf is encountered.

Like Starcraft, the single player experience is plot driven, with campaigns book-ended by pre-rendered animated sequences. If you were impressed by Diablo II and Starcraft’s CG sequences, you’ll be blown away by Warcraft III’s – they are cinematic in quality, being not just eye-candy, but also serving to set the scene and drive the plot in a very impressive manner. Within the actual game, the plot is unfolded by way of in game sequences which utilize the existing graphic engine, albeit from different camera angles. These sequences are very good and the voice acting even manages to maintain a pretty high quality (although the script sometimes leaves a little to be desired).

Taken alone, these sequences don’t pack quite the impact of their pre-rendered brothers; however since they work seamlessly during the mission progression, they really keep the game from becoming just a rush to complete the necessary objectives. The story becomes key and keeps the single player campaign as a story based experience and not merely a tutorial for the player before they try the multiplayer game. To enhance this plot driven dynamic further, a role-playing style sub-system has been added whereby “hero” characters have experience points, special skills that can be learned and an inventory. As the player progresses, so do their heroes. This turns the game into a welcome blend of RPG-come-RTS.

In terms of the meat and potatoes RTS game-play, Warcraft III is a very good addition to the genre, with good and varied races and imaginative units and abilities. One of the best new features that has been introduced, are automatic abilities which can be toggled on and off. This is something that was toyed with in Starcraft’s Broodwar Expansion (Terran Medic) and has been extended here. Once clicked on these abilities will automatically kick in (but will use mana in most cases) until clicked off by the player. This reduces the amount of frustrating micro-management that must be used to get the most out of units’ abilities during a heated battle.

The Bad
The progression to Warcraft III has not been all glory and shiny helmets, however. It seems that the introduction of four races has been more troublesome than the three which inhabited Starcraft. Blizzard seems to have spent much more time balancing units and abilities between the races since the game’s release. Even now, balance changes occur on a regular basis. It’s no disrespect to Blizzard, as the challenge in pulling off four distinct races in the one game must be immense, however it can be a bit frustrating for players to be continually beaten (in multiplayer) by people willing to exploit the latest game imbalance. In some ways, the game might have benefited from dropping either the Orc or Human race (which are quite similar) and concentrating on three very different races (ala Starcraft). From a plot/universe perspective this won’t work, however “The Naga” (a planned fifth race) do appear in the expansion pack, but not as a playable race, for these very balance issues. This was a wise decision by Blizzard, as they have their hands quite full enough as it is!

One major gripe that ex-Starcraft aficionados will mention is the new, lower unit limit and the upkeep system. In Starcraft players were imposed the quite generous unit limit of 200 basic units at once. Warcraft III drops this to 90. This change is almost certainly a technology related one, rather than a considered game-play choice. The prospect of rendering 200 units per player on screen (with each unit having in the order of 200 polygons each), would blow the minimum system requirements sky-high and so the limit is a necessary one. A less necessary change is the addition of “upkeep”. This upkeep kicks in when the player hits various population milestones and acts a tax on the income of lumber and gold. By the time the player has maxed out their units they are losing around two thirds of their income to upkeep! The driving force here is to stop players stock-piling large numbers of units, and to force earlier attacks with a more tactical intent. However it does change the game-play dynamic quite a bit, and may not be to the liking of all fans.

The final point is the experience of multi-player and the battle.net service. Long after everyone is sick and tired of the single-player game, it will be the multi-player aspect which ensures long term success. With regards to Warcraft III, the experience is a little inferior to that of its predecessor (Starcraft) for one reason. Players will quickly find that to stand any chance of winning a battle.net game, they have to follow a specific set of steps at the beginning of every game. This essentially involves building a hero and as many units as possible, as quickly as possible and then “creeping” (i.e. running around the map killing NPCs to gain experience on the hero, before launching an attack on an opposing player. Starcraft included enough different low-level units that any number of strategic paths were open to the player from the outset. Warcraft III is not designed in this way however, generally there are only one or two units to build right away and success is reduced to the choice of hero and effectiveness at “creeping” the map. This is quite a big miss, and one that can’t be patched by a balance fix – it’s an inherent part of the game structure.

The Bottom Line
All in all however, single-player or multi-player, Warcraft III is a very engaging RTS, with a good story and high production values. Most of all, it shows that Blizzard have made a successful transition to 3D whilst adding game-play enhancements to their premiere RTS formula.

The Good
Review Version: v2.1 - Remade my previous crappy review. Fixed grammar, html, and added input from readers.
Game Version: v1.0.0.1
Difficulty Setting Used: Hard
Tactics used: Total defence. Walls of towers. Units never exceed the 40 population cap.
Finished: Yes. Don't remember when.

When it comes to liking or disliking a product, or anything else for that matter, there are (possibly) 5 things that influence a person’s judgment:

[1] How much exposure the person has to similar products, thus able to compare the goods and the bads of this product with those other products. In this case Warcraft III in comparison to other games in the RTS genre, as well as its predecessors: Warcraft I & II;
[2] What novelties (eg. new improvements) has the product introduced (well, one thinks that the later product should have something new, eh?), compared to earlier products;
[3] How the product was marketed to the public. High marketing will no doubt substantially increase public awareness, but in consequence also demand those expectations be met. Low marketing successes will limit public awareness, but also in consequence require lower expectations from the public;
[4] How influence the person is to the product brand (if exists) and reputation of the manufacturer. In this case the brand is Warcraft, the manufacturer (developer) is Blizzard;
[5] And after all the above, whether or not the product delivers the expectations of the consumer.

Consider all of the above, whether that criteria is logical or not to you. Based on that criteria, I will begin my argumentation that Warcraft III is a product of disappointment and blasphemous to the series. As always, before I trash a game to kingdom come, let’s focus on the good things first, shall we? :)

Disclaimer:
Due to mounting pressure (well, not really :p) from fanbois with obviously no life nor girlfriends, the author takes full responsibility of any trashing involved in this review, including the use of swearing, cursing, personal attacks, global attacks, magical attacks by specifically a +7 Mythril Sword, intended to any person(s) or entities mentioned by the author. MobyGames does not hold responsible for content provided by the author, since MobyGames will probably disavow any knowledge of the author’s existence , regardless that the author is an approver and a long time contributor to MobyGames…er… no, I think MobyGames just suspended by role as approver and deleted my account. :)

Welcome to the Future: 3D Graphics
Warcraft III is the first installment of the series (or any series made by Blizzard, I believe) that uses 3D graphics. This was during a period where, although 3D graphics is no longer new, it was still the phase of experimentation, particularly in terms of gameplay adaptability.

It is a far leap from the 2D graphics of old Warcraft I & II, and despite many many games filled with bugs, crashes and other forms of programming incompetence, Warcraft III as far as graphical stability goes, passes with flying colors. Even with the least required tech specs, the game runs incredibly smooth (although the author does not know whether this applies to multiplayer).

The player will first notice this at the main menu, which is after you notice that the game doesn’t take long to load (Yay!). Usually, with limited tech specs for 3D games (during that time period), one would expect a few seconds of lagging here and there. That here and there does not occur in Warcraft III, what does occur is smooth meteors falling in the background of the main menu. So far, so good.

During gameplay, the art appears to change a bit, at least in theme. If my memory is correct, previous RTS games by Blizzard, including Starcraft, introduced a more “serious-mature” approach. Graphically, the artwork seemed to me a tad “cuter” than its predecessors. But this is of course, subjective.

What was new, in respect to the 3D graphics, was how buildings were created. Now, it seems that there is a step-by-step animation of the buildings being created. Although pretty much standard by “today’s” games, this was a new novelty in 3D RTS games.

Racial Selection
Warcraft III, besides using the standard Human, Orc and Undead Trio, introduced some new races (although only one is selectable), in addition to tweaks here and there to the pre-existing races (although I don’t remember if the Elves were ever a separate race?) The first new race is the Night Elves, which introduces several novelties unseen before in RTS games:

The first is a race has abilities in accordance to “time”. At night, the Night Elves may turn invisible (Hide) indefinitely (useful for hide-and-seek tactics and surprise attacks).

The second novelty of the Dark Elves is “mobile buildings.” Most (not all) buildings are living “treants,” a term familiar for you LOTR fans. These tree-creatures may root themselves as buildings, which then will operate normally as any other building, or they may unroot themselves and travel around. In mobile mode, treants act as other units, capable of attack. They also may eat trees, which will heal them over time, however they seem to be extremely vulnerable to damage in mobile mode, and moving around takes forever.

Night Elves also have buildings that heal and restore health and mana points. A bit too powerful in this aspect. This building is the standard “house” of other races. Compared to the humans, their house practically has no use at all. The houses of Dark Elves (Moon Wells) act as the ultimate defense structure for your defending units. In resource management, Night Elves have unlimited resources to wood, as they do not cut down trees. However, wood collecting by the workers (wisps) does take a bit longer than other races.

The other races, though not selectable (viewable only in campaigns or officially custom scenarios) are Blood Orcs (er…I think that’s what they are called): tougher and stronger than the average orc, fighting one is like fighter 3-4 ordinary orcs and the Corrupted Ancients, a darker version of the Night Elves.

Racial Tactics
There at least to my opinion, seems to be a quite imbalance for the Human race…which doesn’t seem to have any racial benefits attributed to them. Orcs for example, prompt the player to become on the offensive. This is because of the “pillage” technology, giving certain orc units the ability to gain resources (gold and wood) when damaging enemy structures. Their structures are well defended (if researched) may injure attacking melee units.

The undead seem to be balanced in both defense and offensive, if using summoned skeletons (via necromancer) as a primary source of tactics. The undead catapults (Meat Wagons) may collect and store dead bodies for future use. A full load of meat wagons with necromancers is the ultimate offensive tactic for the undead. Multiple graveyards in behind and front of towers act as sleeping defensive units until the necromancers beckon.

The Dark Elves, though one might be inclined to be offensive due to the “Hide” ability, seems to be better off being on the defensive, due to the Moon Wells. A wall of Moon Wells, backed up by defending units and Ancients (towers) is almost impregnable to a attacking force, even more so, as the Ancients have an area attack (like the Human cannon towers) but may also attack air units.

Grouped Unit Ability Mechanics
One additional feature I noticed is when you have a grouped unit, and want to use the abilities of one of the units within that group. By simply pressing “tab” you can select the next unit type within the group and choose the ability manually. In previous games (I think) you had to select the unit manually from the group, which of course is inefficient during combat. Er…is this a new feature or is my memory failing me again?

The Bad
Usually I save the worst for last, but the amount of incompetence in this area has boiled my blood pressure to temperatures unheard of by bloodthirsty orcs.

Game Mechanics
Bonk

That’s the illusionary word in your head when you see your units moving bumping into each (repeatedly) during combat. The artificial intelligence used in correlation of movement within this game, is equivalent to a really-really stupid unanimated doorknob, which is probably goes the same to whomever designed this specific feature.

Units don’t have much creativity when finding a path. They don’t go out of their way to find an unblocked path, nor do units make way for other units trying to pass. Now this is something that was never a problem in ANY RTS game. Suddenly it’s a problem now.

Due to this stupid feature, many units die useless deaths because they are either caught between a building and another unit, or they are just stuck because the path they want to go is blocked, so they just move around there in circles, waiting for the path to be unblocked or player intervention. Thus, a retreating war party during combat is bound to have accidental deaths, due to allied units being stuck here and there. I have one too many incidents where my heroes died, because he/she was obstructed by an advancing allied unit, which stubbornly does not want to make way either.

Why, oh why, didn’t they notice this?

This feature can only go undetected, depending on:
[1] what level of intelligence the player/developer is used to
[2] what level of intelligence the player/developer is used to
[3] what level of intelligence the player/developer is used to.
Did I mention intelligence already?
And what intelligence am I referring to? One word: Swarm.

Any RTS game where primary offensive tactic is swarming (winning by over-running the enemy with a bulk of your units) isn’t a strategy game, it’s an advanced platform game: ie. WarMario.

Let’s do a comparison shall we? Do you know what the best RTS game of all time, in correlation to strategy and tactics is? Starcraft? No, it’s amazing storyline and balanced units are close, but the game mechanics are pretty much standard. It’s Age of Empires 2. Though Microsoft may suck at making stable OS and browsers, Microsoft Game Studios went out of their way to create a standard of strategy, which was unfortunately ignored by today’s RTS gamers who have the IQ of the aforementioned inanimate object.

We’re talking about formations, we’re talking about units that have bonuses against other certain units, we’re talking about units smart enough not to engage enemy units when told not to, and don’t get lost when you send them to the edge of the map, cause you’ll know they’ll get there.

Did you know that in WarCraft III, there isn’t a “Guard” or “Defend” ability? You can kiss ambushes/surprise attacks good-bye, because they’ll just attack anything that comes close to them. The “Hold” ability is useless because it isn’t permanent, anytime you move them, the Hold position cancels itself. Now my strategic options come down to seeing my units bump each other all the time. Unless you change the “b” to “h”, now that would be interesting… :)

Units also do not have a "do not freakin' attack" option, which is quite invaluable when trying to "trick" the computer AI. Sometimes, your whole attack plan gets screwed just because one little unit get a wee bit too close to any enemy, and starts firing away...jeopardizing the whole group and alerting the enemy to your presence.

Bonk.
Boy, I hate this word now.

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I am not a casual strategy gamer. I am a serious hardened strategy gamer that demands complexity in a genre dubbed “strategy.” Now Warcraft III is a great game for only casual strategy gamers, which really don’t want any deep thinking involved like planning out your base, creating a wall of towers, using houses as barricades and other forms of creative use in strategy. That, strategy gamers is what strategy games is all about: planning and executing. If creating a bulk of units to swarm the enemy is what strategy games is all about, then I must agree that the next generation becomes more stupid the prior one, and my generation was pretty darn stupid as it is.

But how do you know that swarm is the only tactic in this game? Many reasons. Here’s some:

[1] Units die easily. Too easily. When a hero or unit can kill an enemy unit with a couple of punches or one magical spell, then it does leave much room of creativity for defensive tactics. In this game, much to Confucius disappointment, you SHOULD kill a mosquito with a cannon;

[2] Unit Upkeep Limitation. This is a new feature, and probably unwelcome by swarm or non-swarm fans alike. Anything more than 40 units will have a consequence of cutting your gold income by 30%. Now this is only applies if your actually collecting gold, it doesn’t apply if you pause your miners and max-out the unit limit. They didn’t have enough IQ to think about that either. So, if you want to keep a stable economy, it’s just 40 unit slots, which probably amounts to less than 20 active units…that isn’t a whole lot of units even for defense. This feature only exists if the developer wants to keep the “swarm” tactic in check. Unfortunately, they did not realize that the “swarm” tactic only exists in games that lack “strategy”.

[3] Weak Towers. Towers are remarkably easy to destory in Warcraft III. Which only means one thing: to support the notion of over-running the enemy with units, if defensive structures have can't resist against a group of infantry units, much less several catapults, might else well fill up the place with units. In "actual" historical warfare, walls and defensive stuctures were the ultimate defence in keeping a city from falling to enemy hands. Since Warcraft (all series) for some stupid reason does not have walls involved (I wonder why), it is pushing fiction a bit too fictionous if overgrown Orcs can destroy certain buildings in a matter of seconds. If the destruction is too fast, there really isn't time for a "counter-attack" plan.

Campaign Scenarios
Whoever created certain scenario missions, I’d really like to send an over-sexed Orc to his or her house. I do know whomever created the scenario’s was definitely not the same person who created the scenario’s in Starcraft, the utopia of RTS scenarios.

There are many scenario’s which are down right irritating because they have a time limit (I do hate time limit) and you have to brute-force your way with units to achieve that limit. So there you have it, the swarm tactic again.

First it was the Human campaign where I had to defend a town against the undead WHILE trying to destroy an enemy grain caravan. Next it was the Night Elf campaign where I had to wake up stupid druids guarded by unbelievably powerful spirits, which by the way you can only reach through the middle of an Orchish encampment. Did I mention you only have 2 days to accomplish it?

And you gotta really love that last campaign. Being over-run by the undead and demon armies. Sure you have allies, but they don't seem to be helping. I'm looking at their gold: around 10,000 gold pierces and they aren't freakin creating units in their barracks...hello, a little help here? I have a tight budget rebuilding towers, and not enough cash to build new units.

There was only one word for the last scenario: Frustration. So if you developers thought it was "challenging," then no, it was not. Challenging is a term you use, when you are in a hard situation and end up overcoming it because of your hard work. Frustration is a term you use when all your hard work really doesn't mean squat.

I really hate it when the developer’s idea of a “challenge” is either to:

[1] Limit resources;
[2] Add a time limit;
[3] Add another goal related to the time limit
[4] Did I mention time limit?

What do you people do for a living? We already have ^%$$%@# dead lines in real life, kindly not mimic that kind of nonsense in “games” shall we? Games were meant to be entertaining, not freakin’ irritating. I remember in Starcraft where scenarios that actually "have" a time limit, you probably couldn't go sight-seeing, but they didn't put you on a tight leash either.

Item Management and Planning
This is when you know that someone really didn’t plan this game out seriously enough, only because in past games, developers plan every single detail.

Heroes have 6 item slots. Those 6 item slots are by the way, not enough. One tends to wonder what all those useless items are scattered around when your item slot is already filled with items, which you have no intention of dropping or already filled with Quest Items you can’t drop either. It’s a minor thing really, but this “minor thing” made me lose respect for whomever designed this game, because simply, other past developers introduced a much-much higher standard of detail than this game offers…as a whole.

And one minor thing, when commanding heroes there's an irritating feature when your hero is (usually surrounded) and suddenly a dialog occurs, prompting the hero portrait to be replaced with whomever is talking to you. The problem is, now you lose information about your hero's Health Points because it's blocked by some bloke with horns talking nonsense. Next thing you know, the hero is about to die (or did) just in a manner of seconds.

The Bottom Line
Bear in mind, I am a Warcraft fan and a Starcraft devote fanboi. I have never been disappointed by a Blizzard product before, and to change from a fanboi to a hateboi, really takes a really lousy product.

Sure, it’s a good game…if you’re only 12 (or think like one). But it’s hard to like good, when you’ve been exposed to great. I mean it's not a bad game, quite good really, but like I said...it's mediocre compared to the "greats" of the RTS genre.

Starcraft…boy do we miss you.

PS. This is probably why the one-player hero RPG multiplayer games (like All-Stars) is a much more hit than the multiplayer RTS. The one-player hero version, however, is something I really love. This review does not apply to that.

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On that note, I would like to point out the RPG one-player-hero version of the game. There is an official RPG version of the game located in the scenario's folder (use the custom game option), which is pretty fun, since you only need to focus on one unit and there isn't a freaking time limit either. Yay!