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Warcraft III (WC3) launched at speeds excess of Mach 1 and never bothered to slow down or stop to look back. If it’s one thing Blizzard does well, it’s Real Time Strategy. WC3 seems to have met most all the expectations of the community, and then some. It was stable and relatively bug free at release due to an epic-sized beta test, and it was well balanced. It also runs on multiple platforms (including Mac), and already had a large community to support itself even before the game was released to the public. All of these factors, combined with a popular and proven game design, is why WC3 is now the fastest selling game of all time and will likely hit the “Top 20 most popular PC games ever” list.

You have several options on how you can play WC3: Single player Campaign mode, Single player (using ‘Custom’ game), LAN Multiplayer and Internet (Battle.net only) Multiplayer. There are four distinct playable races, which include the Humans and Orcs (of course!), as well as the Undead Scourge and the Night Elves. Each race has different strengths and weaknesses. Different racial units are not simply clones of each other (I believe RTS games have finally graduated from that cheesy era). The Human alliance is the versatile bunch, while The Orcs are the melee mongers. The Undead Scourge is more balanced between combat, magic, attack and defense while the Night Elves focus on speed and stealth, evasion and magic.

In Campaign mode, you can start off by playing either the Human Campaign, or a prelude introduction of the Orcs. The Orc prelude teaches you the basics of the game, and it also starts the introduction to the story. You’ll learn about building, moving around, gathering resources and be introduced to how Heroes work. Once you start the Human Campaign, the cinematics unfold with the Orcs and Humans at it again, as usual. Orcish and Human armies prepare to collide on the field of battle when a hailstorm of meteors rains down from the sky. A dark, ominous figure reveals its presence, and the epic story of Warcraft III thus begins. Blizzard has done an excellent job with the fluidity of the story presentation. Breathtaking cinematics combined with immersive in-game cut scenes really suck you in to the story and help keep the action moving forward without pause. After you have completed the Human Campaign, you may play the Undead Scourge next, then the Orcs followed lastly by the Night Elves. Each campaign is unique and tells part of the overall story. I haven’t even finished all the campaigns yet, and I usually power through stuff like that. The Orc campaign has been my favorite thus far, but the Undead are definitely my favorite race in multiplayer. Each campaign seems better than the previous. As more of the story unfolds as you progress, you can’t help but try to rush through the missions to see what’s going to happen next. The Human campaign is pretty dry, but as I said: the campaigns get MUCH better as you progress.

What makes WC3 different from past RTS games is the “Heroes”. Have you ever played Heroes of Might and Magic? Essentially, WC3 is Heroes of Might and Magic ‘lite’ on a Warcraft Engine. You may have up to three Heroes among your forces. If a Hero dies, you may resurrect them at a cost based on their level - the higher the level of the lost Hero, the higher the cost to raise them. They will reappear with all their stats and gear intact. Heroes can level up and gain ability points for special powers. They can also quest for artifacts that enhance their powers. This adds a nice RPG quirk to WC3. Your Heroes will gain XP in normal combat, but the popular alternative to leveling up your Heroes is to fight “Creeps”. These are critters that you can fight to gain experience towards leveling your Heroes. Creeps often guard gold mines, neutral buildings or other strategic points on the map. Creeps even sleep at night, so you can usually sneak by them if you’re careful. There are all sorts of “neutral” encounters throughout the maps. Some of these will be quests for your Heroes (mainly in Campaign mode), while others could be a shop or a place to recruit unique mercenaries for your army.

As far as building your army goes, it’s the same as previous Warcraft (and most RTS) games. You must harvest lumber and food to build units and structures. There are all sorts of cool upgrades to research and build. Some structures can be upgraded while others can do research to upgrade your armies capabilities or base defenses. You can create siege engines, increase the efficiency in which you harvest lumber, upgrade your units weapons and armor, even research new magic, plus much, much more. Upgrading and researching, along with powerful Heroes will be your definite key to victory.

Another vast improvement is how the game handles army sizes. No longer can you simply build hoards of units and rush your enemies, no sir… well, not entirely at least. That tactic still exists, but Blizzard has coded improvements to help reduce this lame tactic-less tactic. The more units you build, the higher your upkeep will be. Your upkeep cost is determined by the amount of food that your army needs. The more units you build, the higher the food level will become. There are three levels of upkeep: none, low and high. Once you reach low upkeep, a percentage of all the gold you mine is taken from you. If you reach high upkeep, then you may as well forget about building much else at that point, unless you’re mining several sites at once. It’s much more efficient to have a smaller army. You may be thinking: “well, I could just build and research everything, then pump out tons of units and launch a huge assault”. That may sound like a good idea, but if your assault fails, then you’re screwed. Your enemy will have a much larger stockpile to rebuild their forces and wipe you out before you can rebuild yours. It doesn’t quite always work out as simply as it sounds.

Besides upkeep penalties for large armies, you’ll also notice that the camera angle was designed for smaller armies. It’s really a close up view and almost feels claustrophobic. Good luck managing a huge army with the camera angle provided in the game. I find myself wanting to zoom out further and further, yet I’ve already zoomed out to the maximum distance.

Another reason why WC3 is so insanely popular is due to its low system requirements. Lots of people can play it. You’d think the graphics suffered a bit in order to bring the requirements down from your typical 1.5Ghz + GeForce 3(4) system that recent games seem to require… but they DON’T! The level of detail is amazing. The background and tile sets are immaculate. The graphics are borderline cartoony, but still fit the game. Blizzard detailed objects and models very carefully and it shows. The animations are blocky and not exactly fluid, yet oddly enough they still seem to work well with the game. The spell effects are top notch, and the spell casting looks amazing! The graphics aren’t ultra-realistic, such as you’d see in Dungeon Siege, but they’re still very impressive. The sound effects are respectable as well. They are very fitting, crisp and mood setting.

One last noteworthy tidbit is the World Builder. It’s included with the game, but is not officially supported by Blizzard. The World Builder allows you to create your own maps and set your own rules. The World Builder is simple and does what you need. You won’t be creating any sort of complex “Warcraft world” with it, but it gets the job done for multiplayer skirmish scenarios.

For a genre that’s been less than exciting for the past couple of years, Warcraft III breathes new life into real time strategy games. It’s a spectacular game and shouldn’t be overlooked with the attitude: “Oh, it’s just another RTS, same old stuff” – because it’s not! I suspect WC3 may even give Half-Life a run for its money as the most popular, non-MMORPG, online game. Warcraft III is an instant classic. Well done, Blizzard!