Warcraft 3, is it fun/good?

[Jarulf]

OK, for some "strange" reason, I am now the owner of the add-on to WC3. So I was wondering if I should perhaps go get myself the original game too. Now, I have not been that much a fan of RTS games. I did however play WC2 quite some time ago and enjoyed it and have tried and had some fun with a few others over the years.

So, can anyone give me some good reasons why I should go out and get WC3? How does it compare in game play and such with other RTS (preferably older ones I might know). And no need to tell about the graphics or such, that is of minor importance to me, I am only interested in game play and if I can have fun.

Do there exist some difficulty setting for example? Also note that I will use it for single player only, not multi player.

[[wcip]Angel]

I didn't care for it.

I have also enjoyed countless hours wreaking havoc on the rivalling race in WarCraft II, but the sequel just didn't 'do it' for me. First off, I didn't think much of the storyline. I wasn't able to become interested in the heroes and their stories, unlike our heroes and heorines from StarCraft/Broodwar. I like to think I can play games regardless of its graphics, but WarCraft III was too 'animated' for me. It felt like I was playing a cartoonish version of WarCraft II, only without the plot.

I also didn't think so highly of the different races. The forest elves and the undead might have been a good idea on paper, but some of the units and buildings just didn't make any sense to me. (It's been a long time since I played it, so I can't actually be any more specific than that.)

I don't think I have that much more to say. I have a friend who loves it and tries everyday a little bit harder to get me to buy the game (which is now available in some stores in Norway for 50NOK, which is about $6.)

StarCraft is still one of the best games I've played, mostly for its characters, music and storyline. WarCraft III was, with the exception of its impressive cinematics, a bit of a disappointment.

[Occhidiangela]

I enjoyed it. There are two difficulties, IIRC, normal and Hard.

The single player campaign can be run through a little bit at a time.

One thing you can do to change the challenge is to change the camera angle. If a mission is too easy for you, zoom down to where you are looking at an almost FPS PoV. It changes combat a bit to do that. :)

Since the cost of the original has come down a bit, I would suggest you get WC III and enjoy it. Get a bargain bin version, for the money spent, I got good entertainment value. I will say that I don't play it much anymore, but that has to do with my Diablo II Variant habit and my son's preference for WC III and The Frozen Throne.

Worth a look.

[diablo1ks]

Trying to help Jarulf . . . what an honour :o

I haven't played War3 myself for some months now but I seem to remember that if you fail a mission on 'normal' mode you can reduce the difficulty to easy, but I may be wrong. In my opinion it was well worth the £20 paid for it, but it did have slightly cartoonist graphics, though the good game play, storyline and award winning cinematic made up for it.

PS - If you do decide to buy War3 then be sure to try the 'scenario maps', there are 2 bonus games, one of which is an addictable RPG . . .

[kandrathe]

Compared to other Blizzard games I'm still somewhat a newb. I bought it and Frozen Throne after playing it at my nephews house this summer.

IMHO, it is just like Starcraft with the exception of;

- more colorful and vived graphics
- a little cartoonish and the sounds are very humorous (if you like that sort of thing -- it's a big hit with my 12yo nephew)
- the story/plot (as with many of Blizzard games) is an even thinner veneer for getting to the game play.
- Heros which add a variable strength vastly upgradable unit.
- Fantasy characters (er, uh, like Zerg, and Protoss are in any reality...)

My beefs with it (tainted by my WCII and Starcraft play);
- the Hero's start at level 1 without stuff in each game so they become just another Unit/Strategy
- the Computer AI is insane! The computer AI has the Hero's scream around the map taking on
everything, sacrificing their units, grabbing all the loot, and leveling their heros at blinding speed.
It seems like every minute I get a message saying that the computer has lost their hero again.
Anyway, I play it on "Painfully Slow" speed, just so my human reflexs have a chance.
- I was hoping for something more like Heros of Might & Magic IV -- its not, but that may not be bad.
- not enough RPG -- but then again I like RPG's more than RTS's so that may just be me.
- removing the naval combat component -- that was a very fun aspect of WCII and is a big hole in WCIII which
makes WCIII more like SC in that you only have ground units and air units.

I really love;
- Night Elves -- the whole tree thing is just amazing to me. Trees that throw rocks are very cool.
- Undead Spirit Towers - sap/drain the life out of enemy units -- cool.
- I didn't have to learn all new unit commands and interface (mostly the same as SC).
- Taking on 1 computer AI player on a really big map, so I can get to some of the loot.

Summary: For them to spend the moolah to make this thing they didn't deviate too far from what they already have in Starcraft or Warcraft II. Anyway, this is a serious RTS, with a fun and humorous face on it. The back story is a bit morose and is a pretty dark cover for what is really a quite bright and funny game. It may be that they wanted to strike a compromise between the vast differences in their demographics and failed to deliver to either. It may be too twinky and light for a serious game, and too dark and "adult" for the (parents of ) children. I have a good friend that loves to play Starcraft and he is pretty good at it. He is very frustrated by how ineffective he is at playing Warcraft, so it is in many ways a different game and will need to learn new strategies. He often says "Lets just play Starcraft."

[NERDmanWhippy]

I play only Tower Defenses....the rest of the game is not anything great.....TD is a custom game...lots of fun...kinda like a puzzle type of game....

J

[Wapptor]

I enjoyed it,

Warcraft III is basically a much updated version of WCII. Hard-core strategy fans seem to think its a "wimpy" RTS, but for someone like myself (wimpy RTS player :P ) it was great fun. What drew me in was what turned some other away. The game does have a thickly woven and interesting storyline, and you play different parts of it with hero characters, however heroes in this game level up and gain skills (which you pick) adding a very diablo-esque element to the gameplay. The cutscenes of course are incredible, both visually and uhm sound-ey (whats the word?), I think Blizzard really could consider making a film of some sort in the future. Overall it's a fun RPG/RTS, kinda light on both but it's a nice balance and adds something more to the monotonous building units and swarming the other base that you may be used to. Was never a big SC fan since I prefer the fantasy stuff, I'd say its worth what you'll spend for it.

-Wapptor

[Catflap]

Play the original, RoC, untill they fix TFT a little more.right now its too much of a "do this and this and this, for 100% win" situation.too many 'uber lame' combo's.what the game needs is balance.
I really enjoyed the single player campaigns though.especially UD.

[Jarulf]

Play the original, RoC, untill they fix TFT a little more.right now its too much of a "do this and this and this, for 100% win" situation.too many 'uber lame' combo's.what the game needs is balance.
I really enjoyed the single player campaigns though.especially UD.

I will probably only play single player. I think I will try to find some cheap copy somewhere, so far 149kr is the cheapest (that would be some 16 Euro). Seems enough people seems it might be worth to get it :)

[Haider]

It is a lot of fun. The Single Player story is very entertaining and well told. The races are very different and well designed (as you can expect from Blizzard). The missions range from "destory the opposing base" over "stop this elf" to "escape with your hero" - especially the Expansion adds a lot of new missions to this. The only thing I don't like so much is the high micromanagement factor (which is true for all Blizzard RTS-games). As long as you don't play on Battle.net against other humans this is not really an issue, and I am tainted by Rise of Nations and Medieval: Total War, and both of them are more about strategy than about micromanagement (who clicks fastest).

[Sir_Die_alot]

If you are into hardcore RTS games this isn't it. Starcraft BW even for how long it has been around IMO is the best of that catigory. The melee of this game is good for kicks but it is too hard/impossible to make comebacks (IMO the funnest part of RTS) to be its selling point. This game is all about custom games. With the editor you can do a lot and people have, making the games you can play with it very diverse. Most are defense AOS or RPG type maps but, for me at least, well made maps of these types can keep me busy for hours.

[Dozer]

I always had the most fun in WC3 playing either the all-RPg missons, or just ignoring the hero aspect and playing it as a straight up RTS... the combo thing never got me in the fun department.

[Sjafi]

I like and still like RoC and TFT. If not for multiplayer, just buy it for the single player campaign. I think they were tons of fun and were somehwhat difficult on hard. Not to mention the cinematics, those are a great prize for beating a campaign :) Although, I did find the TFT campaign lacking towards the beginning, but it picked up later and gave a sweet ending.

I haven't played TFT since the 1.10 D2 beta came out, but I know what people are talking about as far as balance issues in TFT. But, to me, the whole point of getting a RTS game is to play online with friends. And even with the imbalanced combos that are abused right now, the game requires far more skill than D2 EVER would, which is appealing to me.

If you liked any elements of WC2/RTS games, its a fun game to play. Just don't expect it to be a replica of SC or WC2. It shares elements of the games, but is different in its own way....Blizzard just needs a better patch team =\

-Sjafi

[Tommi]

Yeah, I think WCIII is good to get. However, it is not perfect by any means. The original one has a better storyline, but poorer scenarios. TFT has better scenarios but a poor storyline. The difficulty level is rather ok in normal. You don't need to learn to use every unit to its maximum effectiveness. It's still basic RTS, which culminates into making a force and strategy that kills your opponent's units most efficiently, while keeping yours alive. There are some more RPG style missions, but I think they are even more boring than normal ones. However, the greatest strength of WCIII is its 3D engine, which makes it possible to play in-game cinematics for storytelling purposes. I greatly like that feature. :)

Some rant then:

What bugs me most in TFT (not so in RoC) is that its new creep design is just horrible. I wonder if the QA team ever checked how the creeps were designed. It seems that the designers have randomly cut and pasted stats on them and given them more or less random abilities. Not to mention many mistakes and bugs in the data, such as gold costs, build times, which they have forgotten to change. :\ Although these things do not show in the single player campaign, they are annoying, if you develop your own scenarios.

Cheers,

Tommi

[SwissMercenary]

My opinion of SP War 3: Obvious, and cliche.

My opinion did not falter with TFT.

My opinion of multiplayer - The standard BNet trash. Sometimes, you get a close game. Sometimes, it's just a smackdown. Sometimes, you are smacked down. Most of the time, though, it's fairly close.

[Strom]

I agree that Warcraft 3 was extremely cliched, especially in the beginning it was like a pastiche of typical fantasy themes that will seem very familiar. It doesn't help that you end up playing characters that the plot forces to do things that seem totally ridiculous.

Most of Warcraft 3 single player was simply too easy as well, even when playing on hard (this from an experienced RTS perspective) most of them are still pretty easy. There are a couple of quite challenging ones thrown in though, so it isn't a total walkover.

The Frozen Throne has a much more original storyline that draws on the Warcraft universe rather than random pulp literature - even if it wasn't fantastic it at least didn't make me cringe like the first one did.

The single player missions on Normal difficulty are much more reasonable, but generally just a little bit too easy. A lot of thought has gone into making the Frozen Throne maps different, and I no longer cringe if I have to play a limited unit dungeon crawl style map. On Hard difficulty, however, they're just not much fun (imho). The computer gets to cheat a ridiculous amount - it can build troops in a fifth of the time that you can and gets infinite money. This means that fighting in an enemy base is nigh on suicidal because the computer can trickle in infinite reserves during the battle. I played through the first of the three campaigns (except the last mission) and stopped because it just wasn't fun. I may go back and try again though.

The custom maps are great fun, I particularly like the Aeon of Strife ones, where you have two computer controlled armies that attack each other in endless waves and you have to turn the tide of battle with your one hero.

Overall it's probably worth giving it a try, but don't build up your hopes too much if you play mostly for the single player. And do try seeking out some of the better custom maps out there, they can significantly prolong the life of the game.

Strom

[MachX]

I would say go download the demo, and save yourself from reading a buttload of flamer posts, but hey......

[Archon_Wing]

The demo is a 100 mb file and not everyone has a broadband connection. Regardless, there's nothing wrong with asking about a game before purchasing it. ;)

[Archon_Wing]

I've never thought much about single player RTS. ( OTOH, I haven't played too many RTS too be honest) The computer is either stupid or cheats. That happens in games of all genres. It's perfectly fine in a game like Diablo, but you're supposed to be playing on equal terms. It's really hard to program a good AI for an RTS. It's just a matter of time before someone finds a way to exploit its flaws in a way that one normaly shouldn't be able to. The real challenge of these games are your human counterparts- the computer is a stepping stone.

BTW, is there an RTS with a AI that is worth playing? :P

[WarLocke]

Hey, some of us 56kers manage the big downloads. Bit Torrent + overnight connection = B)

For the record, I'm no pirate. ATM I'm downloading a fansub of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which was never officially released in english (no, the Disney bastardization Warriors of the Wind doesn't count). I've gotten around 610 of 726mb so far over three nights.