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| Source // Moby Games |
The Real-Time Strategy genre, so says the 1001 entry to this next game, could have gone so very differently. While the Command & Conquer series kept churning out entries, sequels to Warcraft were thin on the ground. Both series had stamped their mark on the genre, but only C&C was parading it around the place, making its presence known.
It's now 2002, and someone has returned - with friends and enemies - to define the next stage of the RTS. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos sees Humans, Orcs, Elves and the Undead face off for supremacy in a game more personal than you might imagine.
Hotkeys at the ready, because we're about to micromanage!
Frustrations
Oooohhh... I knew it was too good to be true. I went to the website for Warcraft III and was surprised when the download button worked without me needing to hit the buy button first. When it was all installed, I was equally surprised at the response to clicking the launch button: that window up there.
So I don't own Warcraft III, and I don't particularly want to pre-order its upcoming remake, Reforged, just to be able to play the O.G. version, even if I were to then go and cancel it later on. That sounds like a hassle.
What, then, am I missing out on?
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| Source // Moby Games |
Fun Times
Just so that we're clear, I don't actually have a clue what is happening in these images specifically, despite having a playthrough of the campaign mode running in my peripheral vision right now. We'll try our best, eh?
Warcraft III appears to have decided that the story is key, and CGI videos set the scenes in dramatic fantasy fashion. I'm not hot on the Warcraft lore, so I don't know who is who and what they care about, but I know that there are four different factions, each with their own interests to be concerned about.
As you would expect, they play differently from each other, but the game as a whole appears to be trying to break away from the genre just a little bit.
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| Source // Moby Games |
Make no mistake, this is still an RTS. You'll still be selecting units, telling them where to move and who to attack, and there's still the fog of war and the black emptiness of an unexplored map, but the focus has shifted a little.
You build a base and units to farm resources, comprised of food, gold and wood. Food, I'd imagine, feeds people; gold, I'd guess, pays for them; wood, I suppose, gets turned into buildings, and other things that don't move. So far, so obvious.
New to this game, however, is the idea of upkeep. If you've got too many units, you'll start to incur upkeep costs to keep them all around. Gold is suddenly harder to come by, and so your focus needs to shift on getting what you need, when you need it, rather than amassing as much as possible before rushing the opposition with all you've got.
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| Source // Moby Games |
To help with that mindset, the units themselves are more capable, where a small band of fighters in Warcraft III is comparable to a large force in any other RTS. Key character units have names and levels and abilities of their own. All of this is flying above my head, by the way, but the idea is that less is more. You have control of everything, but your everything is more condensed and powerful than what you might be used to.
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| Source // Moby Games |
Also of note is that as well as your opponent lurking somewhere on the map - no doubt in need of being destroyed to complete a scenario - are third parties known as creeps. They're neutral units that guard gold deposits and the like - we wouldn't want farming resources to be too easy, would we?
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| Source // Moby Games |
Final Word
This zoomed-in view of an RTS, where you're controlling a few powerful units instead of a sprawling army dotted over the map, might make it more approachable for players new to the idea of real-time strategy.
Heroic units that level up as you learn, and contribute to the story in ways that don't just appear to be by destroying something or someone give Warcraft III the impression of having something more. It does things that other titles in the genre haven't really tried to do before.
Command & Conquer had stories and campaigns, of course, it did. They were wacky at times, but once the cutscene stopped and the gameplay restarted, you would go right back into farming for everything you needed before daring to launch that one decisive attack. Yes, some missions required you to get through a map with what little you've got, some of which even had named units, but none of which really felt personal to you - not in the way Warcraft III seems. You were always the general, never the boots on the ground.
Warcraft III might look a little too colourful or cartoony for your tastes, but it really does look like it offers something that nothing else has done, and it's no surprise that it's getting a remake - like a great many other key entries to the RTS genre, it seems.
So would I play it? I would like to try it sometime, yes. I'm not always on board with RTS games, they're a bit hit and miss, but this change of perspective might be what I was after. There's still base building, there's still farming, but when the weapons need to swing, they swing with meaning and purpose, by characters you might end up getting heavily invested in.
I've no idea of the plot, I'll have to rewatch what I've missed here, but I'm not expecting anything amazing. It's there to tie a whole load of RTS skirmishes together - that sounds quite limiting for the writers, but what do I know?
I might have to look into Reforged, but as impressive as the feature list to the game is, as I'm not terribly interested in the Warcraft universe, I'm not itching to dive in.
Who knows, though? This post might end up getting a remastered edition of its own.
Fun Facts
Moving to a new 3D engine meant a change in the art style, heading to a more cartoony look that would really be known by the later World of Warcraft - a futureproofed look simple enough to be run on less powerful setups without incident.
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, first released in 2002.
Version watched: PC, 2002 (Rythian)