Blizzard Conjures Up a Master Piece

My Experience:
I got this game in a gift set for Christmas, after playing many years of Star Craft and Diablo 2, I felt it was time to move on to something new. Since both theses games were made by Blizzard, I though to myself I might as well try Warcraft. The gift set was $80 Cdn which was $20 more then the Warcraft 3 itself. The gift set included: Full version of Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos, Warcraft 3 Cinematics DVD, Warcraft 2 Battle.Net Edition, and Official Warcraft 3 Strategy Guide by BradyGames. Having got this game in 2002 and reviewing it in 2005, this game is still my most played game (well with the Expansion). Why you might ask? The online play. The online play has many different elements that will keep you addicted for a long time. First there is regular ladder play, where you clash with other people and play a BNet game which is then counted in your stats. Then there are the custom games, custom is where people play edited maps sometimes with totally different gameplay then the regular melee. Right now I play on Us East (azeroth) on the account Dx_monkey you can check message me if you any questions about strategies or just want to play me:)

System Requirements for this game:
400 MHz Processor
128 MB of Ram
8 MB Video Card
700 MB HD Space

If you just met these requirements I would not suggest online play due to how insane games can get. But this is good enough to play single player campaign

My Recommendation for smooth game play:
1 GHz Processor
256 MB of Ram
32 MB video Card
700 MB HD Space
DSL, Cable or ADSL

If you met these requirements then lag and delay problems should not be much of a factor. Online play can sometimes get hectic with 4 vs. 4 team play or 12 player custom games so you should meet these requirements (and come on! Its 2005 these requirements are low in today’s gaming world).

Story: (Campaign) It continues from Warcraft 2 where the Orcs and the Humans are fighting for survival and control. Two new races join the fray, the Night Elf Sentinels and the Undead Scourge. The Undead is led by Archimonde who is a Demon summoned back from 20 000 years ago. The Undead is led by Furion Stormrage who is a druid trying to protect Tree of Eternity where all of Humanity and Elf kind started. Archimonde leads an army of Undead planning to take over the Tree of Eternity but it is up to you to stop him. There are interesting cinematics as you progress through the campaign. All through out the campaign there are optional quests where you can do them to gain experience, gold, and items.

Graphics: The graphics in this game are 3D but have a cartoony look to them. Spells are greatly detailed and in many you can see what effects they have on the unit. Models are decently detailed, but when you equip a hero with any item (other then orbs) it does not appear on your hero like in some RPG’s. After all the graphic bashing, there is one bright thing; you can make your own model, upload it and use it in custom games. I have seen many make models as detailed as to change a few strands of hair and paint the finger nails on some heroes.

Sound: The sound in this game is decent, when a knight hits a building with his sword it will produce a different sound then a knight attacking a footman. Little details in sound is what this game has, when a rifleman shoots you can distinctly hear it is gun powder. So overall the sound is nothing special but Blizzard hasn’t been great in sound with most of their games anyway.

Interface: Like most strategy games, there is a mini-map on the bottom left, resource counter on the top right, and then you have the various menu and display button around. A neat thing is the cursor changes to a finger to a particular race, like when you are Undead the cursor changes to a small, boney, and ugly hand.

Controls: Having good control is important in a Real-Time Strategy games. The controls are based off of Star Craft. Left mouse button is used to select units and the right mouse button is used to move or attack. There is also “Hot keys” where it allows you to quickly build if you remember which key. The “b” button is used as build and the “f” button is used in conjunction with build to make a farm (applies to humans only). So you can press “b” then “f” then click on the spot where you want to build to quickly make your unit work instead of wasting time clicking build then farm.

Replays: Most RTS games have a replay feature where you can view your own rep of a game and see what mistakes you might have done. Also some sites have replays of the pros at action and you can watch what they do.

Gameplay: The category where this game separates itself from just another RTS to a truly terrific and awesome game. I am going to separate this into 2 main categories: What is the gameplay? And online gaming.

What is the Gameplay like?: Is most RTS games the objective is to destroy the opposing team without getting destroyed. Warcraft is no different. Blizzard introduced a new concept of RTS when they introduced the “hero”. There are heroes in Star Craft also but they do not look any different and they cannot level up. In Warcraft the heroes can level up, carry and use items, are much stronger then the normal units, and are just plain fun to use. Each race has 3 different heroes to choose from, you are allowed to pick one after you build your Altar and then you are allowed to get more after you upgrade your town hall. There is a food cap of 90 in Reign of Chaos which has many people arguing and saying that this is too low. At a newbie level yes it seems low because newbies do not know how to micro yet and just want to build build build. When you look at how the “regs” play, they keep a constant attack on the enemy and never need to reach 90 food. Also like many other games you need you harvest resources with your worker/builders, in this game you have to harvest wood and lumber to train your army. Units are split (in theory) into 4 main categories: anti-air, air, melee, casters. Usually a good mix of this will let you have an unstoppable force combined with a good level hero. Heroes differ from units because they have skill points in which you can use them to help your army out or to benefit your hero. A hero is like a general in an army, it is the strongest unit and in some games the level of the hero will decide who wins the game. There are 4 races in Warcraft. There are extremely balanced as Battle.Net provided a % of each race beating which and there were all at 49.5-50.5%. So about 50% of the games Undead are beating Elves and the other 50% of the games are Elves are beating Undead.

Human Alliance: Comparable to Terran in Star Craft. This race consists of Dwarves, High Elves, and Humans. This race is simple to use as it is straight forward. This race does have one specialty, co-op building. You can have many builders (peasants) build one building and have it complete in no time, the cost is more resources is needed. The three heroes for the Human are: Paladin, Archmage, and Mountain King. This is the first of a series of campaigns in campaign mode; the objective here is to build an unstoppable force against the Undead. Arthas who is a Paladin, gets into mind games by the Undead and turns on the Humans when he picks up a sword called Frostmourne. This sword grants infinite power but the consequence is you do not have full control of yourself.

Undead Scourge: Comparable to Protoss in Star Craft. In order to build buildings with this race you must build on blight. Blight is the area that is affected by Undead buildings and the area turns into a distinct dark brown which shows the area is inhabited or ready to be inhabited by the Undead. Unlike the other 3 races, 1 builder (acolyte) can summon buildings and therefore 1 builder and build as many building as resources allow. The three heroes for the Undead are: Death Knight, Dread Lord, and the Lich. In campaign mode, Arthas (a Death Knight you control) has turned on the Humans and is now on the undead side. The goal is to rebuild the Undead Empire, summon the Undead Warlord Archimonde, and destroy everything in your way.

Orcish Horde: This race consists of Tauren (huge bull like creatures), Trolls, and the main Orc (basically like human beings except much stronger and green). This race is the brute force race in Warcraft. This is the race where brawns is better then brain since they lack good spell casters but make it up with the strongest melee units in the game. The three heroes for the Orc are: Far Seer, Tauren Chieftain, and Blademaster. The third campaign, most of the missions here don't affect the storyline too much. In the first few missions you must: establish a base, amass 15 000 lumber, protect key points, and kill a Night Elf Demi-god. In the end, the Oracle speaks to them and tells them that they must team up with the Humans in order to stop and Undead rising force.

Night Elves Sentinel: This race consists of Elves, Animals, and Druids. Almost opposite to the Orc, this race specializes in ranged. One unique thing about this race is their buildings; most of their buildings are called Ancients. These Ancients are huge trees that can attack and be moved around. The Night Elves also have a special ability where they can hide at night and become invisible unless detected from various spells and items. The heroes for the Night Elves are: Demon Hunter, Priestess of the Moon, Keeper of the Grove. The final pit stop in the campaign. Like in all the campaigns in the beginning you must rebuild your base. You must rescue Furion Stormrage (a Druid Hero), awaken all the other Druids, awaken Illidan (Demon Hunter), destroy an Undead hero, and the final bout between the living and the dead begins. You control the Humans, Orcs, and the Night Elves and try to stop Archimonde from touching the Tree of Eternity. Though this may sound easy, Archimonde has unlimited resources. You just have to defend the Tree for 45 minutes and then you will have beaten Warcaft 3 Reign of Chaos.

Online Gaming: This is were gamers are hooked. Multiplayer is played on either Local Area Network or a server called Battle.Net. Battle.Net has been around for many many years and has been providing free use of their servers. When you’re connected to Battle.Net you’re able to make an account. There is no limit to how many accounts you can make so do not spend too long making your account name. Once logged in, you are able to enter chat, jump straight to a ladder game, or look for a good custom game. If you decide to join chat you are still able to chat with your friend from Star Craft or Diablo 2.

Ladder Games: There are many different types of ladder games you can play.
-Arranged team: where you pick your team and you head into a game and duke it out.
-Random team: where Battle.Net does anonymous match making and teams you up with other people and you head into a game.
-Free for All: where everyone battling for themselves.
-Solo: one versus one.

Battle.Net rewards you if you win games. Such as if you win 25 games using Human you get a Footman picture in your profile. This also displays when you are in the channel, you can collect them all but the more precious icons need a tedious amount of games (1500 wins). Your statistics are also recorded in your profile and your level. The ranking system is based on one’s level. Level generally determines the skill of one play. For example, a level 10 will most likely lose to a level 25. In order to level you need to gain experience by winning games, you can also lose a level and you keep losing experience.

Custom Games: These games are for fun and do not count towards your statistics. You can set up a game of melee to 1v1 or play maps that people edited. What is all this custom game I hype about? Well if you played Star Craft before you would most likely know games such as “insert name here” defense, or cat & mouse. There are games like Tower Defense where one builds towers in a maze to prevent monsters from reaching the other end. Hero Arena where you pick a hero and duel it out while you level up in a Gladiator like environment. Various RPG’s where you pick a hero control it and level up beating bosses doing quests and exploring. Azeroth Grand Prix where you pick a car and then you race around a map kind of like Mario Kart. Murder in the Mansion where one random person is a murderer and the rest try to survive by hiding and running for a certain amount of time and at the end guess who the killer is. Defense of the Ancients where there are 2 teams fighting to defend their main building, you control heroes and try to kill each other as you slowly reach the enemies town hall. As you can see the custom game potential is unlimited as more and more ideas spring up. You can even make your own custom game through the use of the campaign editor which comes when you install Warcraft.


Overall: This game has been one of my all time favorites as the ladder play and the custom games have gotten me addicted. If you like RTS games skip this and get the BattleChest; if you are so-so with RTS you should borrow this game from a friend and decide from there. This game is definitely a must get but I would recommend getting this in the BattleChest because it comes with the expansion. I hope you enjoyed my review as much as I did writing it. Game up it out there gamers :)