WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

aka: Muoshou Zhengba: Hunluan zhi Zhi, WC3, WC3:RoC, WarCraft 3
Moby ID: 6860
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a fantasy themed real-time strategy game with role playing elements set on the world of Azeroth. After the defeat of Orcish horde at the hand of the Alliance in the second war and the destruction of the Dark portal, the remaining orcs were rounded up and put in internment camps. The game starts with the Orcs being freed by a new warchief from their internment camps and leave for a new continent across the sea. The Humans are troubled by a mysterious disease that turns people into living dead. Meanwhile the undead are preparing for a way to let their Demon masters enter the world of Azeroth.

The game features five campaigns and four playable races: Humans, Orcs, Night Elves and Undead with unique units and buildings. Several heroes that can level up and learn new skills support your troops in battle. The game was followed by an expansion called The Frozen Throne.

Spellings

  • 魔兽争霸3:混乱之治 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

363 People (320 developers, 43 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 91% (based on 86 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 219 ratings with 17 reviews)

A quality game which comes close to being classic, but doesn't quite go all the way.

The Good
Warcraft II proved to be the game which really cemented Blizzard’s legend status among RTS fans world-wide. With Warcraft II, Blizzard added features and game-play options which really pushed the boundary of RTS games and paved the way for their next game, Starcraft which would remain the granddaddy of later-day RTS for a long, long while. Thousands still play Starcraft to this day, so it was not with little fanfare that Blizzard announced their return to the Warcraft universe (and RTS), with Warcraft III.

Warcraft III includes all the features that were included in Starcraft, such as unit group and building hot-keying, vertical ranged fighting, strategic team play, and of course battle.net support (out of the box). It adds a whole slew of new features, the most notable of which is the inclusion of two brand new races - The Undead and The Night Elves. The Undead are included as the game’s new resident bad-guys, forcing the Humans and Orcs to ally, in the face of great danger. In fact, this danger will force them to sail from Azeroth to lands across the sea, where the ancient race of The Night Elf is encountered.

Like Starcraft, the single player experience is plot driven, with campaigns book-ended by pre-rendered animated sequences. If you were impressed by Diablo II and Starcraft’s CG sequences, you’ll be blown away by Warcraft III’s – they are cinematic in quality, being not just eye-candy, but also serving to set the scene and drive the plot in a very impressive manner. Within the actual game, the plot is unfolded by way of in game sequences which utilize the existing graphic engine, albeit from different camera angles. These sequences are very good and the voice acting even manages to maintain a pretty high quality (although the script sometimes leaves a little to be desired).

Taken alone, these sequences don’t pack quite the impact of their pre-rendered brothers; however since they work seamlessly during the mission progression, they really keep the game from becoming just a rush to complete the necessary objectives. The story becomes key and keeps the single player campaign as a story based experience and not merely a tutorial for the player before they try the multiplayer game. To enhance this plot driven dynamic further, a role-playing style sub-system has been added whereby “hero” characters have experience points, special skills that can be learned and an inventory. As the player progresses, so do their heroes. This turns the game into a welcome blend of RPG-come-RTS.

In terms of the meat and potatoes RTS game-play, Warcraft III is a very good addition to the genre, with good and varied races and imaginative units and abilities. One of the best new features that has been introduced, are automatic abilities which can be toggled on and off. This is something that was toyed with in Starcraft’s Broodwar Expansion (Terran Medic) and has been extended here. Once clicked on these abilities will automatically kick in (but will use mana in most cases) until clicked off by the player. This reduces the amount of frustrating micro-management that must be used to get the most out of units’ abilities during a heated battle.

The Bad
The progression to Warcraft III has not been all glory and shiny helmets, however. It seems that the introduction of four races has been more troublesome than the three which inhabited Starcraft. Blizzard seems to have spent much more time balancing units and abilities between the races since the game’s release. Even now, balance changes occur on a regular basis. It’s no disrespect to Blizzard, as the challenge in pulling off four distinct races in the one game must be immense, however it can be a bit frustrating for players to be continually beaten (in multiplayer) by people willing to exploit the latest game imbalance. In some ways, the game might have benefited from dropping either the Orc or Human race (which are quite similar) and concentrating on three very different races (ala Starcraft). From a plot/universe perspective this won’t work, however “The Naga” (a planned fifth race) do appear in the expansion pack, but not as a playable race, for these very balance issues. This was a wise decision by Blizzard, as they have their hands quite full enough as it is!

One major gripe that ex-Starcraft aficionados will mention is the new, lower unit limit and the upkeep system. In Starcraft players were imposed the quite generous unit limit of 200 basic units at once. Warcraft III drops this to 90. This change is almost certainly a technology related one, rather than a considered game-play choice. The prospect of rendering 200 units per player on screen (with each unit having in the order of 200 polygons each), would blow the minimum system requirements sky-high and so the limit is a necessary one. A less necessary change is the addition of “upkeep”. This upkeep kicks in when the player hits various population milestones and acts a tax on the income of lumber and gold. By the time the player has maxed out their units they are losing around two thirds of their income to upkeep! The driving force here is to stop players stock-piling large numbers of units, and to force earlier attacks with a more tactical intent. However it does change the game-play dynamic quite a bit, and may not be to the liking of all fans.

The final point is the experience of multi-player and the battle.net service. Long after everyone is sick and tired of the single-player game, it will be the multi-player aspect which ensures long term success. With regards to Warcraft III, the experience is a little inferior to that of its predecessor (Starcraft) for one reason. Players will quickly find that to stand any chance of winning a battle.net game, they have to follow a specific set of steps at the beginning of every game. This essentially involves building a hero and as many units as possible, as quickly as possible and then “creeping” (i.e. running around the map killing NPCs to gain experience on the hero, before launching an attack on an opposing player. Starcraft included enough different low-level units that any number of strategic paths were open to the player from the outset. Warcraft III is not designed in this way however, generally there are only one or two units to build right away and success is reduced to the choice of hero and effectiveness at “creeping” the map. This is quite a big miss, and one that can’t be patched by a balance fix – it’s an inherent part of the game structure.

The Bottom Line
All in all however, single-player or multi-player, Warcraft III is a very engaging RTS, with a good story and high production values. Most of all, it shows that Blizzard have made a successful transition to 3D whilst adding game-play enhancements to their premiere RTS formula.

Windows · by Tibes80 (1543) · 2003

A wonderful chunk of RTS goodness :D

The Good
I loved everything about this game. The storyline is so juicy and full of plot twists and all things. The massive amount of units you can have is amazing. And the addition of Hero units with upgradable powers is all the more sweeter. And Blizzard went out of the box with the map maker. You can program events and attacks or whatever you prefer. Program an explosion and just sit back and wait for the explosion. One hundred percent awesome.

The Bad
The only thing i didn't like is that some troops cost more food than others.

The Bottom Line
A perfect RTS experience for any lover of strategy and combat. A must have and must buy. It never fails to amaze.

Windows · by Lord Dayin (9) · 2007

Fun to play once, but takes some time to get going

The Good
The story is really awesome and you can play it without having to play the earlier games first. Each campaign tells a different story and there is a lot of variety in the missions. Even to this date Warcraft 3 still has the best story in a RTS-game ever.

It has some pretty good voice-acting and animation. There is a nice balance between story in cutscenes and story in gameplay/dialog, but what amazed me the most was the voice acting. They got some really good actors for this because I believed every word they said.

The controls are just perfect for a strategy game on the PC. If you need to get some soldiers from A to B in a hurry, you don't have to go through a menu and wait for the soldiers to start moving, it is just two or three clicks and they are on their way.

The soundtrack is pretty damn sweet. The credits song actually got me to watch the whole thing. This is much better than just some black and white animation made in Windows Movie Maker!

The Bad
The first few missions of every campaign are boring and if you are like me and you need to delete games from your PC on a regular basis you will see those levels a lot.

The difficulty curve is rather annoying, some missions are incredibly easy, but the one after can be unbelievably hard. That got on my nerves quite a lot because you don't notice that until you are already thirty minutes in and about to die.

The fights are really small because you can only have like fifty units on the field and this includes your peons. Personally, I prefer my RTS fights to be a little more chaotic, but to the game's credit this does make for a more tactical approach.

The Bottom Line
This is one of the best RTS games out there and if you are a fan of the Warcraft games (especially the MMORPG) or strategy games in general you might want to check this out. People who are more interested in action and chaos will most likely get bored during the first few missions and find the later ones to be too difficult, so my advice to them is to stick with other games.

Do I like this game myself?, yes, yes I do, but only every once in two years when I completely forgot what the story was about.

Windows · by Asinine (957) · 2011

[ View all 17 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
credits completeness? Rola (8486) Oct 11, 2012

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cut races

The game was originally to have six fully playable races. The sixth race was never revealed, and the first to be dropped. The Burning Legion was originally to be a playable race as well, but due to the effect it would have on their appearance in the game (the idea of having to give them peon units and balancing them out with the other races would diminish their "all-powerful" image), they were dropped down to being non-playable.

Development

WarCraft III originally debuted at ECTS 1999 as a much different game than the final product. The original idea was to make it a RPS, Role Playing Strategy game, incorporating both RTS and RPG elements together. Although some RPG elements are still present, many were cut. Originally you exclusively controlled heroes, with your extra units being "attached" to them. The game was in more of a 3rd-person perspective (which you can see if you zoom the camera in all the way), and you would explore with your hero (camera fixed on him), completing quests and defeating your opponents. However, due to various reasons (one being that the game was turning out to be very similar to their MMORPG, World of WarCraft which was being worked on as well), the camera angle was scaled back and the game was turned into more of a traditional RTS with some RPG elements.

Pre-order version

For those who ordered this game from EBWorld.com (now EBGames.com), they got an extra WarCraft III DVD that contained all three trailers for this game, plus the cinematic trailer for World of WarCraft.

References

  • Blizzard put three Starcraft units into the game. These units are Zerg Zergling and Hydralisk and Terran Marine.They can be accessed from included map editor or at the end of the last campaign.
  • In chapter 7 of the Orc Campaign, your tauren units will eventually encounter a lizard named Hungry Hungry Lizard, a pun on the old board game Hungry Hungry Hippos.

References: Full Metal Jacket

The game features at least three references to Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam war film Full Metal Jacket:* The Tauren Chieftan in the game claims that "Only two things come from Texas, and I've got horns". This refers to a line in which drill sergeant Hartman tells a Texan recruit that "Only steers and queers come from Texas. And I don't see your horns" * "This is my owl, there are many like it, but this one's mine", spoken by a Night Elf Huntress, is based on a mantra used by recruits to refer to their guns. * The Orc Grunt says "Me so horned. Me hurt you long time", based on a line I can't repeat in the potential presence of children.

Thrall

The character Thrall has origins in the cancelled Warcraft Adventures game, which was to explain how he escaped from captivity, freed many captive orcs and helped rid them of demonic corruption.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2002– Best PC Game of the Year
    • 2002– Best PC Strategy Game of the Year
    • 2002– Best PC Game of the Year (Reader's Vote)
    • 2002– Best PC Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) – Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) – Best Cinematics of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2002 – PC Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • 2002 – PC Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • 2011 – #18 Top PC Game of the 2000s
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • February 01, 2003 - Best Strategy Game in 2002 (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Ace of Sevens, Aian, Itay Shahar, Martin Smith, MAT and Warlock

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by MAT.

Macintosh added by Xoleras.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, phlux, tarmo888, Carl Ratcliff, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack.

Game added July 4, 2002. Last modified February 13, 2024.