I didn’t see any other thread reviewing the game. So, please accept my humble opinion. First off. Thanks to everyone who helped me decide about Morrowind. It was fun, while it lasted. But now the moment I’ve been waiting for. Warcraft III.
I think it lives up to its hype. At least to me. Things Blizzard did right:
Hero units (especially character Hero Units).
They really add a lot to the game, both narratively and tactically. Unlike Starcraft, you rarely venture out of your base without your hero leading the way. Because: A. you want your hero to level up higher and B. you don’t want your squad getting butchered by the other guy’s Hero. further, I think they successfully walked the line between “Uber bad assed hero that needs no army” and “non-issue”. I tried charging some units (not even a base, just some random units) with just my hero, and quickly got my head (well his head) handed to me.
Relative Unit strengths and Unit limits
Unlike starcraft where it was not unusual to have several full groups of 12 (or was it 10?) attacking, I’ve been doing quite well with just 15 or so guys. It is just enough where I feel like a commander and not so many that I lose track of stuff and can’t use my special units. 90 food is the limit, BTW.
Narrative structure
The way the game is set up, there are 9 or so scenarios for each race (haven’t confirmed yet as I’m not quite done). However, each scenario is split up into several smaller scenarios, so it is more than it seems. Each of them have a map and several in engine cut scenes. It makes you feel the progress of the action. For instance, as the undead, you have to assault an outer base (mini scenario one) to get to the gate which is heavily fortified (mini scenario two), to get to the interior city (number 3) to get to your goal (number 4).
Tool improvements
There’s a lot of new things to make it easier to manage your guys, includind selecting subgroups of like units within a group and a little icon telling you how many peons are idle.
There’s more too, but I don’t want this to turn into a book. I haven’t any complaints beyond a few minor things, I would recommend it very much.
You’ve reviewed it as compared to earlier versions of the game. But, if it’s not too much trouble, can you review it for an audience who’ve never seen a warcraft game?
Ok damn it. I started a WC3 thread in Cafe a while back and no one gave a s**t! Why is this one in MPSIMS?
Anyway, I love this game. I have always sucked at RTS games. I can never seem to balance defending my base with attacking the other base. This game is different because there is a much lower unit limit on your army than there is in other RTS games. The graphics are great. The controls are very easy to grasp. And I don’t feel overwhelmed by a million units bearing down on my town. Multiplayer is really fun too. I lose regularly but I have fun anyway.
I never played WC2 so I cant compare, but I can say that this one is easier than starcraft or command and conquer.
My only complaint about the game is the heros actually. I like the heros in the single player because they add to the story, but in multiplayer they seem out of place. Instead of everyone rushing to build up an army or town people spend the first 15 min trying to lvl there hero so they can single handedly decimate a base. Small gripe, but one none the less.
I seem to be in the minority because I play Undead in MP. I find them to be the easiest to manage and you can throw up a town ASAP. I also like the fact that you can send some acolytes to a remote goldmine and have them mine gold and teleport it to your home base, so you dont need to build up around the mine. I also like how the goblins grab 20 lumber a pop AND they are your basic fighting unit. Standing on blight will regen your HP much faster than any other race. Spirit towers own. The only down side to the undead IMHO is that they dont seem to be as strong as other races. But the benifits out weigh the disadvanatges. Most people use orcs on bnet.
Anyone wanna play me on Bnet? My player name is Assreeper. Look me up!
<-----Sucks terribly at WC3!!
I had to install it at work, so i can’t play it for hours each night, but still, it took 3 games before i won a freakin’ battle, and three days before i won a game!!! (i jumped right in to custum games, so i bypassed the storyline, but still…) I even had heroes get killed by creeps!!! (granted, it was a red dragon, and i was running from losing yet another skirmish with the enemy, but stilll…) I’ve tried 6 different build orders with the Orcs, and i still can’t match unit production with the comps, if they find my town, i get overrun 75% of the time in the first battle, usually outnumbered 2 to 1. My friends will get it soon, but i haven’t felt confident enough to go fight real people yet. I still have just done orcs, as i am most comfortable witht hem as i was orcs in WC2, but undead is looking cool, i may try them out soon.
I’ve played a few games on our LAN at home. I also played through the Single Player campaign.
The SP storyline sucked, quite frankly. It’s long, predictable and boring. The cutscenes using the game engine are so bad as to be funny – the acting and the graphics are equally hideous. OTOH, I loved the Starcraft storyline. That had a real narrative and flow. Oh, and the SP game is pathetically easy.
The multiplayer game is excellent. It seems Blizzard has thought very carefully to correct some of the SC imbalances. The upkeep concept is brilliant. It goes a long way to preventing early rushes. I like the heroes concept – like absimia, I appreciate the way Blizz has balanced them. The computer AI seems very good – I struggle to beat them even 2 v 2.
Most of the few MP games I have played have been as Night Elves. No tactical reason: I just love their appearance.
So far the only thing I don’t like about it is that my video card isn’t up to snuff so I have to go to Tark’s computer to play it. So…I’m sort of holding back on finishing the campaign until I can play the whole thing out on my system.
I like that it was very easy to take my grouping and hotkey skillz (hehe) from Starcraft and translate them to WCIII. I also love that peon management and rally points are more efficient and maintenence-free. The hero system confused me for a little while, but then I actually RTFM and I’m doing all right with it.
I still need to learn all of the little tips and tweaks that will help me not panic in multiplayer, but on the whole I have been enjoying the heck out of it.
I’ll try. WC3 is a real time strategy game much like others in that you must establish a base, gather resources, build an army, and kill, kill, kill. Like most RTS games it is all about economy and unit management, and it has many tools to make that job easier, like build queues, being able to stack commands, rally points, etc.
What makes it different is that Blizzard’s made an effort to limit the number of units you need and increasing the effectiveness of special units (Heroes in this game). In most RTS games the most successful strategy is having huge swarms of units and the only way to stop a huge swarm is to have another huge swarm. Blizzard’s effectively slowed down the action somewhat by making attrition units harder to kill and by making it difficult to build up a big swarm, thereby giving you some time to micromanage your Hero units (who, as another nice feature, have an autocast function where they will cast one of their spells whenever they have opportunity). In my opinion, this puts a whole new wrinkle on the RTS genre.
I would comment on Multiplayer, but I haven’t done much of it yet. I just tried out a custom scenario last night (as night elves, since I haven’t gotten up to them yet), but I quickly got stomped. A minirush with a hero is pretty darn effective when the computer does it. Heh. Hope that helps.
Narrad - I also like the upkeep concept. I read a review of the game where the fella liked it for MP, but hated it in single. I actually even like it in single player. It gives me something else to think about. I have, so far, found the single player campaign pretty easy as well. I’ve been playing in normal because I know I’ll be playing this twice through and I want to be able to step up. I got through the human campaign and up to the 8th undead before losing a battle (and then only by 5 seconds), but I know what I should have done better. However, I like the story line. Granted, I do prefer Starcraft’s (more of a SciFiGuy than a PhantasyPhreak), but a predictable story that sets up goals is better (IMO) than no story (Total Annihilation) or stories that don’t make me feel invested in the particular scenario (Dune).
I am wondering what video card you have? I have a friend that is going to purchase the game soon, however he has a rather outdated video card also, so i am interested in what your card is and what the minimum requirements for WC3 are.
Some friends and I have been playing for a bit, and I’ve been chugging through the single player campaign by myself. My thoughts-
I’m glad the naval stuff is gone. I never really did like it, it seemed tacked on to W2.
The Heroes are a cool addition, but honestly, the AI’s tactics seem to revolve around them. Our group usually doesn’t see a PC’s Hero until they’re at 5th or 6th level, and by then they’re brutally hard to kill.
Night Elves are my choice race, but they seem to move a little slower than the other races-not sure why. Could possibly be the need to entangle gold mines with a nearby Tree of Life, plus the fact they only get 5 wood when harvesting. True, the tree never falls so they can just go on getting their 5, but it still seems to make for slow going. The fact that about half of their buildings can attack is pretty damn cool, though.
Those are just my initial impressions. The AI has been brutal in our games-I don’t consider us to be slouches in RTS games, but we have terrible trouble in 2v2 or even 3v2. This probably comes from the fact that the AI orchestrates its forces perfectly when attacking, and we tend not to.