Warcraft 3 Review - VGLN.com PC Reviews

In the videogame industry, it is very hard to maintain a perfect reputation as a game developer. Everyone has to have their two cents, whether it is beneficial to the industry or not, and most of the time someone out there will have a gripe with a game you've made. In this reviewer's opinion, there has been only one company that has escaped criticism on a large scale, and in the minds of gamers, has not released a stink bomb of a title yet. That company is Blizzard. It shouldn't be a surprise that Blizzard Entertainment has a flawless record when it comes to producing top-notch games for the PC. This is a company, that despite being one of the most popular developers out there, has managed to escape the corporate influence of releasing games every year despite a lack of quality. This is also a company that actually knows its limits and has on occasion cancelled titles that they believed would not received their attention, and would therefore degrade the title's quality, Pax Imperia 2 being a prime example. Blizzard is a company that, like a fine wine maker, prefers to wait and cultivate a title to its finest taste so that when a gamer "pops" the package and plays the game, they know that their $50 was well spent.

Warcraft 3 is Blizzard's latest creation and gamers have had to wait almost 7 years for this title since the venerable and highly popular Warcraft 2 was released in 1995. Of course in between 1995 and 2002, Blizzard has released a handfull of excellent (almost legendary) titles such as Diablo and its sequel Diablo 2, as well as Starcraft and a plethora of expansion packs for all of the afformentioned games. All of the games mentioned are some of the highest selling titles that have ever graced the PC gaming industry and as a matter of fact, it would be hard to argue that Diablo and Starcraft aren't in the Top 10 titles of all time for PC gaming. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to find that Warcraft 3, after all the speculation, delays, and rumors, is a grander title than even Diablo and Starcraft which makes Warcraft 3 Blizzard's best effort to date. That in itself is probably the highest praise this reviewer could give.

Over the course of five campaigns, split between four different races, and nearly 50 missions, Warcraft 3 will take you through an adventure so alluring and ambitious that it would have made Tolkien himself smile in respect.

The Warcraft Story

The Second War

The story of Warcraft 3 takes place about thirteen years after the second war between the Humans and the Orcs (Warcraft 2). During the second war, the human kingdom of Lordaeron was devestated by the infamous orcish warchief, Orgrim Doomhammer. Doomhammer managed to defeat the Elven kingdom of Quel'Thalas, and the Dwarven nation of Khaz Modan. Many of Lordaeron's inner provinces were burned to the ground. Only the efforts of humanities greatest heroes managed to turn the tide against the orcs. The human armies under the command of Sir Lothar, leader of the Knights of Azeroth, Uther Lightbringer, the leader of the Paladins, and Admiral Proudmore, the controller of the fleet, managed to strike with a decisive counter-attack that pushed Doomhammer and his orcish horde back into orc controlled territory.

The counter-attack succeeded in not only pushing the Doomhammer and his orcs back into orc territory but it also set the stage for the final battle at Blackrock Spire, the menancing orc capital. There, Lothar and his armies launched a vicious assault on the orc capital. Doomhammer seeing his forces wither in the face of an all out human assault took himself and his raiders to meet Sir Lothar in a desperate attempt to change the tide of battle. Doomhammer and Lothar met in battle on the field and fought ferociously. After a long and vicious battle, Doomhammer managed to slay the valiant Lothar on the battlefield. Doomhammer's victory however, failed to dishearten the human forces and caused them to only fight harder. With his back against the wall, Doomhammer was forced to flee the orc capital and return to the place where the horde had entered the human world, the Dark Portal. There the orcs made a brave last stand but they were outnumbered and routed. Finally defeated, the remainings orcs either ran into the wastelands or were captured. Doomhammer was captured and brought back to Lordaeron.

The Alliance Splinters

In the years follwing the Second War an easy calm set over the Alliance Kingdoms. However, without a need for an "Alliance", as least in a military sense, King Terenas of Lordaeron feared that the pact would fail. The Elves were one of the first to withdraw from the Alliance stating that the Second War had lead to the ravaging of Quel'Thalas, and that better human Leadership would've prevented the damage done to the Elven kingdoms. The King reminded the elves that the whole Elven kingdom might have fallen if not for the sacrifice of many human lives, but the plea fell on deaf, elven ears. Shortly afterwards, the human kingdoms of Gilneas and Stormgarde also left the Alliance.

A New Generation, and a new threat

Even with the departure of the Elves and the other human Kingdoms, Lordaeron remained the strongest kingdom of the land. With Uther Lightbringer leading the Paladins, and Admiral Proudmore controlling a vast fleet, the greatest threats King Terenas had to worry about were the occasional raiders, pirates, and orc uprisings. The memories of the Second War began to fade from the minds of the population. Even still, the heroes of the Alliance were still respected and revered by the people. King Terenas' son, Prince Arthas, who was only a child during the Second War, was quickly becoming an imposing figure. Young, and strong, the people saw who their next king would be and they had a new, younger hero to look up to.

Arthas' first real mission as a Prince, and Paladin under Uther Lightbringer, would be to investigate reports of a new orc threat on the outlying provinces of Lordaeron. Although the orcs weren't seen as a particular dangerous threat, especially now with most of the horde in captivity, King Terenas sent Uther and his son Arthas to investigate and report back. This is where the story of Warcraft 3 begins.

The Game

Long in the waiting, I couldn't put off rushing into Warcraft 3 and exploring what had changed and what was still here from the excellent Warcraft 2. What makes the game beautiful is that Blizzard kept everything that worked and added new things that would keep the gameplay new and interesting. You still have the basic control scheme, which requires you to either left click your mouse for specific commands such as healing a soldier, or right clicking for general commands such as mining a resource. For the advanced player, you can use keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks in tandem. If right clicking and left clicking gets too hard, Blizzard has still kept the pictorial command system where the player clicks a button with a picture and short descritption of what the command does. The resource system has stayed the same, in fact it's the exact resource system that has been in the Warcraft series since the original game, and there is nothing wrong with that because it works. Many RTS games now days spend too much time thinking of making "race specific" resources. What is the point? Most gamers don't care if they are gathering mothballs and used tissues as resources, as long as the system works. Warcraft's resource system works very well, and I'm glad they decided not to go complicated on this aspect of the game.

One of the few complaints gamers had with the last Warcraft was the Unit variety between the races wasn't varied enough. That is true to an extent. The Orcs and Humans had very similar units in Warcraft 2 and the main differences were only in the type of spells their magic users could cast. This time around, I'm pleased to report Blizzard has fixed this aspect of the game. There are four main races in Warcraft 3, and at least a dozen "minor" races in the game. The Humans, Orcs, Undead (think Zombies), and the Night Elves (ancient elves who are in tune with nature). Each race has their positives and negatives and although their is a pretty good degree of variation between the races, the gameplay is amazingly balanced, although I believe the humans may still be the strongest race which is just my personal experience on battlenet (which I will cover later).

The Night Elves are not powerhouses and must rely on hit and run tactics to survive in the game.

Each race has their basic resource gatherer, melee units, ranged units, flying units, and magic users. The variations are simple but unique. For instance, the Undead get a unit called the Acolyte which has the main role of gathering gold (it can turn into a recon unit later in the game). An Acolyte cannot gather lumber, that job falls to the basic Undead melee unit, the Ghoul. Now some might say that is unfair because melee units cost more than gathering units. That may be true but that isn't the case here because the Ghoul only cost 140 gold, which is about half as much as a human footman, or orc grunt. However, the ghoul is also a bit weaker than the footman or grunt. As you can see, Blizzard took a lot of time to balance things out so one race would not become dominant. Another major different between the races is in the aspect of gold gathering. The orcs and humans still use peons or workers to gather gold from the mines, and bring it back to the town hall. The Undead and Night Elves however must do some work on a gold mine before they can get to the riches. The Undead must "haunt" the mine while the Night Elves must "entangle" a gold mine for it to be usable. Another thing the Undead and Night Elves must adhere to is the 5 unit limit on gold mines, meaning they can only have five units gathering from any "one" gold mine at a time. This is balanced out by the fact that the Undead and Night Elves units can gather gold much faster than human or orc units. However, orc or human players can compensate by having more than 5 units gathering from a mine. The game balance is just beautifully orchestrated.

One aspect that might surprise Warcraft 2 and Starcraft players is the changing nature of the combat system. In games such as Warcraft and Starcraft, 20 units was considered a sizable army, but not a large army. In Warcraft 3, you won't build any army much larger than 20 units. To enforce this, Blizzard has installed a 90 unit food limit. This means after your food capacity has reached 90, any farms you build after the fact are useless (unless you're the undead and turn them into sentry farms). Out of this 90 food units, your peons, grunts, and mages must eat. Some units eat more food than others. For example, a typical grunt might require 2 food units to survive. However, the mighty Kodos beast requires 4 food units.You must carefully plan what units you build and learn how to carefully utilize them in your overall plan or run the risk or losing a mission due to lack of food. Another way that they enforce the unit limit is in the form of "upkeep". Upkeep is an amount of income you lose everytime a miner gets gold from a mine. Usually, a miner will bring back 10 gold for each trip to the mines. As your army grows larger then you lose gold to the upkeep of your army. An army that is large enough to consume 40 units of food must pay 30% of its income to upkeep, meaning a miner who usually brings back 10 gold will only bring back 7 gold if your army is that big. This upkeep cost grows as your army grows, so maintaining a large force can be costly. Use it or lose it is the name of the game here. This beckons back to E3 2001 when Blizzard announced that it would concentrate on making the combat more tactical than previous games. Definitely no more "Zergling rush". Additionally, because of the small army sizes, the game forces you to engage in combat much more sooner than you would in most RTS games. It makes you go out and explore more because you reach your maximum unit limit fairly quickly. This isn't as bad as it seems though because with the 20 unit armies, Blizzard has decided to give you more tactical control of your units. In previous games, the maximum number of units you could control at any one time was 6. In Warcraft 3 you can control 12 units at a time giving you great control over battles. Again, this leads back to the "tactical" battles that Blizzard wanted to emphasize this time around. I like the changes personally as they promote more engaging rather than defensive "turtling" which often annoyed this reviewer on battlenet during the Starcraft days.

The goblins are back but this time they offer their goods to any who are willing to pay the price.

A familiar element from the Warcraft 2 expansion and Starcraft that is present in this game is the concept of heroes. I found that this aspect of the game can be best described as a story driven "RPG element". For those who haven't played Starcraft, heroes are very strong units that have more capabilities than regular combat units and each of the four races has them. Hero units are not only more powerful than any regular unit but they make the units around them much stronger with their own auras. Heroes also grow stronger as they gain experience from combat, hence the RPG element. Perhaps this is a hold over from earlier development when Warcraft 3 was rumored to be an RPG/RTS hybrid. Heroes also seem to be the primary plot movers in the game, meaning the story revolves around the hero units. It works just fine though, and for the first time, I can truthfully say I was very interested in the story offered by this RTS game. For most Real-time strategy games, the story is just basically fodder used as an excuse to throw "aliens" or "clans" on a planet to fight it out. In Warcraft 3, I felt as if the story was actually carefully written and thought out. It has so many plot twist and surprising elements that later in the game I was equally interested in learning more about the story as I was about the new missions.

Speaking of the missions, they are different and varied compared to most RTS games. A lot of the initial ones are of the build a town variety, or destroy the enemy town, however there are a lot of missions that have you doing much more varied things when compared to most RTS games. One mission played as the humans, has you defending a town for 30 minutes until reinforcements can arrive. It's an exciting missions and you learn much about the strategies in defending a town. Another gameplay twist that has been added is the dynamic quest system. Basically, you have a main quest in each mission whether it's defeating a town or some other goal. However during the course of a mission certain events may trigger a "sub-quest". These sub-quest are completely non-essential to the completion of the mission but if you should choose to pursue them, they make the completion of the main quest much more easier. Also, don't forget bragging rights for completing all sub-quest, you have to remember that.

Your quest goals are updated throughout a mission. Sub-quest will appear when triggered.

The aesthetics

This time around, Blizzard has decided to give the Warcraft series a beautiful new 3D graphics engine that is both visually pleasing and used to great effect. All the units are rendered in 3D and surprisingly the game will run fairly well on the minimum system specs which is surprising. Our machine was an Athlon 1500mhz, and the game ran extremely well in high-res with all the details on maximum. Again, that is just very good optimization on Blizzard's part, kudos to them. There are so many graphical details in the game that it would be hard to list them all. Day changes to night seamlessly as the shawdows grow longer and your field of view lessens to reflect the nature of night time viewing. The magical spells that some of the units are able to unleash are fairly spectacular. My personal favorite was Thrall's lighting attack which can hit 6 units with one use. The environments themselves were given amazing detail. The towns are actually towns with living breathing denizens that have conversations with each other and will sometimes engage you in conversation if they are in need of help or are simple feeling friendly. Kids will run around your armies, playing tag and giggling. Water fountains decorate town centers, and live stock run wild in the city streets. I remember the first time I marched an army into a town, I felt so much power, but that will have to be left for another article.

The sound effects in the game are well done. From the crashing of steel meeting steel to the rumbling gallop of the Kodos beast, this game has it all. However, the best part of the overall sound package is definitely the voice acting. Most of it is a hoot! Clicking a unit will bring out a variety of responses from "Quit poking me!" to "Me so horny, me gore you long time!". I can honestly say that I have never laughed out loud more at a game than during the time I spent with Warcraft 3. Blizzard scores high here.

Buy it!

This is the first time I have ever written a review where I thought it was completely a moot point. Honestly, trying to ask people not to buy this game would be the equivalent of asking people to not grab the free Playstation 2 consoles across the street. Even with a 7 year series absence, the pre-orders alone make this game one of the best sellers in PC history, and the few copies that do hit the shelves will be bought before most gamers can get to the stores. Blizzard is one of the most respected PC gaming companies in the buisness right now, the AM2 or Shigeru Miyamoto of PC gaming if you must. Their products seemingly can do no wrong. Warcraft 3 delivers an awesome single player campaign complete with real-time and CGI cut scenes (which are superbly done by the way) backed by one of the most alluring stories ever told by a PC game. If the missions provided aren't enough, there's always the free world editor that you can fall back on to create even more missions, although it'll take a little practice to come up with maps on the same level as the ones Blizzard has provided. Add that to the fact that Blizzard offers free online gaming via LAN or through battlenet (sorry no Direct Connect, but battlenet is free! Free I say!), and you have a game that will keep you occupied for months or even years to come. Warcraft 3 is an amazing product and even if you are not the biggest RTS fan on the planet, if any game were to convince you that this type of gaming is worth your dollar, you couldn't do better than Warcraft 3. The bar has been set, and Orcs and Humans sit upon it.

--- Jolex Del Pilar, trying to collect each Warcraft 3 box on ebay

	Gameplay: [9.7] Excellent gameplay balance and level design. Varied missions and superb storyline.
	Graphics: [9.0] Slick new 3D graphics engine shows off orcs and humans in great detail.
	Sound: [9.5] Intriguing soundtrack and great voice acting. This is top notch stuff.
	Presentation: [9.5] Slick front end, and very good CGI cut scenes on level with any console game.
	Replay Value: [9.8] Let's see, battlenet is free with about a gazillion players, and a free, dynamic mission editor. I think we'll be playing for a long time.
	Global Score: [9.6] Warcraft 3 is the strongest candidate yet for PC Game of the year. Great job Blizzard!

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