Introduction
Since Battle for Azeroth Launched 2 days ago, it was only fair to revisit one of it's predecesors. Originally I wanted to revisit Warcraft 1 or 2 but due to the lack of purchase options I went with the obvious option of Warcraft 3. |
| Frozen Throne Single Player Main Menu |
A little bit of history...
Warcraft 3 was originally released in July 2002, Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment. A year later in July 2003 the Frozen Throne expansion pack was released adding several new units and buildings, reintroducing naval units to the series, 5 tilesets and neutral heroes among others. While the game kept receiving updates over the years, recently patch 1.29 added widescreen support and 12 new player colors. The game is also famous for the Defense of The Ancients fan map which was the first moba "game"and led to the creation of League of Legends and Dota 2. |
| Humans...so familiar! |
Gameplay
The gameplay is the standard rts formula of rock,paper and scissors with hero units and base building. The game has a small nicely explained tutorial mini-campaign and a few campaigns. The story is decent focusing on orcs moving to the new continent of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom of Lordaeron dealing with undeath. playing on skirmish, which is where the game shines, you choose one of the four factions available(Humans,Orcs,Night Elves and Scourge) each with it's own small race mechanics. You gather gold and lumber as resources then proceed to build more units and more buildings and attack your foe, hoping to win. The gameplay is quite fast paced and you can either play on lan vs other players or through Battle.Net . |
| Orcs? Tolkien? |
Audio and Graphics
While the game is quite old, I dare say the graphics have aged well, the game looking a bit chubby but still pleasant to the eye. Characters are nicely animated and a portrait in the UI animates the faces for each unit or building in the game.The audio on the other hand doesn't show it's age at all, maybe if you have an ultra high end sound system and you try to compare to something more modern but even then it would be hard to notice. The soundtrack is built to feel part of the world, the ambient sounds help you merge with the game and the characters are all voiced to a high standard.
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| EX-Humans |
How does it fare on a modern system?
Well you just download the installer from your blizzard account where you can also purchase it, install the game and run it. The game supports a wide number of resolutions, including 3860x2160, with the ui scaling perfectly. Though I must say that it shows the game is still supported and patched. |
| Hippies with point ears! |
Wrap-Up
This game made history. It paved the way both for the biggest MMORPG in the world an also it helped pave the way for the MOBA genre. The gameplay is kinda simplistic but it requires a bit of training and learning to really master it. Is it enjoyable? Hell yes! Does it look good? Well...considering the age.... yeah.Should you buy it? Well I wouldn't consider this classic expensive at 10eur for the base game and 10 for the xpac, especially since it provides a lot of replayability, a decent story, lots of fan made maps and well a standard rts experience.
P.S. don't forget to stay tuned for my Battle for Azeroth review which is right around the corner!
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