BREAKING FROM BLIZZCON 2018
https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/warcraft-iii-reforged?blzcmp=wcr_shop_hpbottom
KEEP IN MIND THIS IS A "REMASTER" OF WARCRAFT 3: REIGN OF CHAOS. SUPPOSEDLY THE PLAN IS TO BRING IN FROZEN THRONE LATER
old OP below
This is it folks, the last thread you'll ever need because why bother playing any other games? This is
the game Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. You can thank the rts/rpg hybrid for spawning the moba genre and inspiring tons of others to create other games we all love. That's right this is the grand-daddy. So what's new in grandpa's land? Well there actually was a patch recently:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20753797075
Apr 4
(Edited)
Howdy,
We'll be releasing version 1.28 of Warcraft III tomorrow at 2pm PDT. Expected downtime is two hours. Patch notes:
Specific Changes & Improvements
Added view options: windowed fullscreen (default), windowed (-window), and native fullscreen (-nativefullscr)
Added cursor clamping in game while windowed; unclamped in menus
Data migration now removes the need to run as admin to access saved games
Improved installation and patching performance
Bug Fixes
Fixed WorldEdit to include proper icon and strings for Map Script Validation
Fixed command cards to be hidden again with special coordinates (0, -11) and (-2147483648, -2147483648) within CommandFunc.txt; invalid coordinates will now be ignored
Fixed disconnects from Battle.net at the conclusion of games
Fixed the cinematic player to keep the entire video on screen at any resolution
Fixed an issue that prevented Windows GameDVR from functioning properly
Fixed various bugs and exploits
Known Issues
Players must run as admin during patching process
Players with Mac 10.11 may need to restart their computer the first time after patching/installing to successfully run the game
Q: Isn't this shit like 2 decades old? Who cares?
A: Well "friend" it isn't quite that old, google tells us (since who can remember anything older than 10 minutes ago anymore?) that RoC was released July 3, 2002 with tFT showing up almost exactly a year later July 1, 2003. A mere 15 years ago!
Q: OK so the game is old, why should I care now?
A: Well aside from the historical significance
AND THE FACT THAT IT IS GREATEST GAME EVER, Warcraft 3 is getting some attention since blizzard has been beefing up their classic team for some time (
https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/openings/all/all/all/all/classic/1). While the game isn't at the forefront of the esports world at this point in its life (afterlife?) cycle, it is still being played competitively and has several unofficial servers (w3arena, netease) in addition to b.net . As you may have noticed from the recent remaster announcement of StarCraft 1, Blizzard isn't abandoning their old titles and are instead updating them for a modern era.
Q: Fantastic, so we can play a super old game and a handful of people are still paying attention. Who still bothers?
A: More than you might think! Aside from bigger names such as Grubby (twitch.tv/followgrubby/ WC3, SC2, and HotS) and Happy (twitch.tv/yesitshappy SC2 WC3) there are a number of dedicated channels such as Back 2 Warcraft
http://www.back2warcraft.com/ twitch.tv/back2warcraft.
Back 2 Warcraft has done a lot of work in keeping the scene alive and cast a lot of events. For specific races and getting started videos there is a mega-thread on the subreddit (/r/wc3)with a bunch of links to youtube videos and some of the larger streamers. I didn't make the thread so you are kinda on your own there. Personally I watch back2warcraft whenever possible, and I found the rezzel build orders for undead to be pretty good.
Q: Events? Wait, like tournaments?
A: You're catching on. There are the Gera Cups, the Russian Brain Cups, there
was the WCA but that's up in the air for the time being, and there are rumblings netease is putting something together. This is in addition to other assorted smaller events. Typically these are held in Europe, China, or Korea and correspond to those time zones.
Although I was kinda sorta waiting for a larger content patch (namely one that has a map rotation or balance tweaks in it) the most recent one did allow for a better pipeline to deploy patches. Additionally it added windowed mode support so modern OSs can run full screen windowed or whatever else you may like.
Posts
I should see what the custom game scene is like, Starcraft 2 has some good ones but in some ways I feel like all the options for messing with stuff have sort of drowned out some of the stuff I liked in Warcraft 3. Not a lot of games like 12 Kingdoms and its ilk on Starcraft 2 that I can see, and there was this great game called Conquest that has something similar on Starcraft 2 but honestly I think the WC3 version is better, among other games. And who can forget Worm Wars?
Anyways, bought this for myself and also bought it for my younger 14 year old brother as he never experienced the game, seems like a good time to tell him we need to try it out.
hiveworkshop seems to be "the" place for custom game creators. dunno how populous the scene is on b.net for customs though. i primarily play regular 1v1s
now is as good a time as any! although i have to warn people there are some known bugs with the 1.28 patch (such as undead buildings don't show they way they are supposed to when being summoned). i don't know if they impact the single player but i am not sure if the new downloader automatically incorporates the new patch or if you are still expected to connect to b.net to get it. as you would imagine i've had mine installed for some time.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
i see people say wow killed WC4, and i can understand why they think that but i don't feel it is impossible to do warcraft 4 as a story and still have wow running. i think the lack of interest in RTSs is the bigger issue but maybe even then there is a chance.
regardless there is still hope for WC3HD or remastered or whatever they will call it. competitive WC3 has a variety of wildly different strategies and i think if everything was easier to maintain (part of the goal of this most recent patch) there is the potential they could simply do another xpac for it or something. maybe no story elements but fleshing out the factions with additional units or editing in the retcons.
or adding the other 2 playable races (burning legion and naga), although that's a long shot. unfortunately i was not a huge fan of the WC3 in SC2 map that was released. my understanding is that due to how the maps are constructed essentially trees for lumber were created as individual units, this means that technically there are some absurd numbers of "units" on the map and it just made the entire thing slow to a crawl.
if there were patches again, a remake, or a new installation in the series i'd love to see damage flattened (no ranges just X damage), a change in the drops on maps for less randomness or some indicator as to what items are where instead of merely the green/orange/red, and probably some tweaks to maps. balance wise there are debates that will last to the end of time but i think these would have a substantial change and allow everyone to get a better look at how things work.
plus all the QoL stuff from SC2 would be great.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
My understanding is that it is not just a port of BW to SC2. Apparently doing that would make people irrationally upset because SC/BW has certain "quirks" to the gameplay that the SC2 engine fixed or removed.
They really pushed the WC3 game engine to its limits with the "RPG-Lite" elements of that orc campaign. I'm pretty sure that their need/desire to add more roleplaying elements to this bonus campaign was the seed that eventually became WoW.
Also, Orcs rule and everything else sucks.
Back on the topic of WC3, I really hope it gets the inevitable HD port to the modern Blizzard launcher. Heck, I want WC2 ported also.
WC3 and wow were in development alongside each other supposedly.
my understanding is that the SC2 engine fixed the old pathing issues, and people complain about them being fixed because difficulty
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
Warcraft 3 was the shit though. I played well over 3000+ Ladder Games with it. It was such a great time.
That's one thing that annoyed me about that community was that the entire system was designed around getting and keeping players around ~50%. However, anyone that fell under ~50% was automatically "bad" and wouldn't play any type of ladder games with you. I just happened to get lucky, joined an active clan, and had an unlimited amount of people I could arranged team with. Most of the time we'd just play five to seven games and go X-0 in terms of wins/loses since the ELL system took time to analyze your skill level. Even switching out one player reset the process.
I also remember loving those full gameworld maps that would take like 4 hours to play unless someone important didn't know how to play and let the burning legion get the book then everyone would quit after 10 minutes.
I also remember playing Dota when no one understood how dotas worked yet so everyone just slapped each other for an hour.
God I had a lot of fun with this a decade and a half ago
Both David Kim and Dustin Browder have left their respective projects to move to a new one within blizzard. you could say coop looking suspiciously like Warcraft 3 and 2 individuals with a lot of experience in RTSs moving on (I don't think there's been any indication that they are on the same project though) to new assignments.
Maybe if we get enough likes/retweets/forwards blizzard will make it happen
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
Looking at their release dates and knowing the amount of work that goes into making an MMO I can believe it, it might even explain how that bonus campaign has so much WoW-like stuff in it in UI and other terms, they just took what they were doing with WoW and implemented it in Warcraft 3 basically.
I do wish we would get a Warcraft 4 but the problem for me would be that WoW has been going on for 13 years and it has retconned so much shit and and progressed the backstory so much (in ways I don't like but even that isn't necessarily the most important aspect of my issue) it's hard to know if Warcraft 4 would have any of the same feel as Warcraft 3.
I think a lot of things can be hand waved by the caverns of time. Or taking a different route since blizzard seems to be hell-bent of sticking story beats into non-wow media (novels, comics, etc) you could start a wow expansion with "many years later" and have wc4 be the bridge. Similarly they could have wc4 be the "army" side and wow be the hero side, so something where they tell the same story but you do it from different perspectives.
Like I said before I think it can be done from the story/gameplay side. The question is whether there is a market for it. Grey goo was the last RTS I remember seeing. Drop zone is a RTS/moba hybrid, and supposedly Dawn of war 3 will be a thing. While people.love to complain about SC2 I don't know if anything would have succeeded in its shoes due to changing market and rose colored glasses.
Given how.long it has been I can't imagine the hypothetical Warcraft 4 would be Warcraft 3 BUT MORE. It will obviously have new knowledge incorporated and different takes because...Well I don't know who is even left from that era at blizzard. That doesn't mean it can't be good.
As an aside I kinda wanna call it w4craft but that might be a little too much. Not sure.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
Give us Gnomish locomotives, Goblin factories, and a dark Victorian-esque industrial era Azeroth.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Those all kind of exist in wow. There's a train in some alliance cities, goblins have tons of factories and other facilities, and I think you could argue there are victorian-esque areas in wow already.
500 years is a long time. WC3 to the current expansion I think is like 15-20 years or something in game. At this point I don't know how there is even a population left at all. Actual Victorian era wasn't 500 years ago, I can only imagine what goblins or gnomes would come up with in that sort of time frame.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
However, DOTA was also the worst thing to happen. DOTA was the first time I actually identified toxic players as being real and DOTA definitely brought out the worst of them. Dealing with them and -banlist was pretty awful.
I never really noticed the exodus of players to be honest. At the time I was playing a fuck ton of 3v3 and never struggled to get games. I knew people who were heavy into DotA and to this day I can't really understand why as the game was/is super boring to me.
Oddly enough I still see people stream WC3 DotA periodically but no idea what version they are playing.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
actually 500 years is like 5 minutes in fantasy universes
night elf culture literally stood still for ten thousand years after the war of the ancients, zero changes or territorial expansions or nothing
there wasn't even a political upheaval, tyrande ruled for that entire period of time
While it is hand wave-y I think the night elves are an extreme case due to immortality, just having survived an apocalyptic event that is pretty much solely on them (and dealing with the fallout of it), reshaping their culture from arcane to nature, probably intentional efforts to suppress anything else, and a significant portion of the population being unconscious for a super long time. I mean I get that it's weird but you contrast say the humans and they went from vrykul to modern day alliance. Not everything/everyone was rooted.
Even aside from that the other trope is that it history so who cares. In the "active" part of Warcraft shit has hit the fan and I don't honestly know what a 500 year jump would look like. Again a handwave but it truly is up to what story blizzard wants to tell.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
somehow I never bought frozen throne
The competitive seen is what took the big hit. I have no evidence to prove it but I'd guess something like 2/3rds of the competitive base took off to play WoW. Entire Clans died as many players migrated over to servers like Tichondrius, Kel'Thuzad, Arthas, and Blackrock.
I was overall a big 2v2 and 3v3 guy. While those communities weren't as affected, we did lose a lot of our team compositions to WoW, which kinda sucked. It was a painful few months because I didn't immediately get into WoW and came back to Warcraft 3 and went full hipster when I was 14. I adopted the whole, "Oh WoW sux! War3X forever!" until my closest group of 3v3 and 4v4 AT Friends found me and offered to pay for WoW as a way to lure me back in. It worked and I left War3X forever.
Don't get me wrong, I totally believe that. I was just a random scrub then (and now) so shifts on that end of the scene didn't impact me as much. Now that I'm trying to play "competitively" (the reality is I'll never get there) I'm waaaaay late as that boat set sail a long time ago.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
I got fairly good at...I want to say the Banshee? She wasn't very strong and had a spell where you could mind control a single enemy unit like every five minutes. Nobody played her. But I would just kind of skirt the edges of battle and swipe an enemy unit and have him retreat back to our base. And when I stocked two dozen or so, I'd send them all to the enemy's vault and end their gold supply.
It took awhile but the payoff was awesome.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
Also I was better at it for some reason, so that helped.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website