Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne

[Ice]

Does anyone still play this game? The guy I'm living with gave me a free copy, and I haven't been able to put it down. Ladder games are so much fun online, although I do get throughly wipped 60% of the of the time.

[Ramses II CP]

I was never even able to finish the SP game. The hero dynamic gets very annoying after awhile, like a watered down action game added on top of my RTS for no reason. I know some people dig the MP, but IMHO the older Starcraft is and always will be superior.

[pevergreen]

Great game or greatest game?

try this map: http://www.epicwar.com/maps/77094/

Its a great custom map, and this game has survived because of the custom maps.

The above map gained a small cult following on the private aussie server I used to play on, Bored Aussies.

[pevergreen]

Starcraft doesnt have custom scenarios.

I don't know how battle.net goes these days, but Bored Aussies has a few thousand regulars.

edit: pretty good for an invite only private PVPGN, where invites are about once a year, if that.

[Beskar]

I like Parasite 2 and other variations of WC3 inspired Mafia games like sleep town. I used to play those a lot before playing Mafia in the gameroom.

Also, problem with Starcraft is the dated graphics and other things. Starcraft 2 will hopefully breath some goodness there with similar style of play.

I still remember my first Starcraft battle, I was playing around with Protoss then this guy comes up, I start sapping him with a worker, but he escapes, after dropping a pylon then dumped tons of defence turrets in my base, killing me.

[Ice]

People still play WC3? I thought they had all either moved on or reverted back to the (vastly superior) Starcraft by now.

Warcraft has more variety (4 races), heroes, and items.

[Whacker]

People still play WC3? I thought they had all either moved on or reverted back to the (vastly superior) Starcraft by now.

By the gods sir, have you been living under a rock?

Blizzard still demands $40 for both the Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 battlechests, and $20 for the Starcraft battlechest, and they still sell like hotcakes.

For games 9-10+ years old.

[Ice]

By the gods sir, have you been living under a rock?

Blizzard still demands $40 for both the Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 battlechests, and $20 for the Starcraft battlechest, and they still sell like hotcakes.

For games 9-10+ years old.

Really? My roommate picked it out of the bargin bin for 5 or 10 bucks.

[Whacker]

Really? My roommate picked it out of the bargin bin for 5 or 10 bucks.

Check Target.com. Couldn't find the D2 one, but WC3 was $40 and SC was $20 still. I think wallyworld is roughly the same, and I know Gamestop is since I was just there a few days ago. Your homeboy must have got a used version or it wasn't the battlechest.

[pevergreen]

The battlechest goes for about 60 here, you'd be lucky to get wc3 at 30 and TFT a few dollars less. If you are lucky.

[Meneldil]

Warcraft 3 and Starcraft have little in common. Comparing them is mostly pointless.

Warcraft 3 is a tactical game with a few roleplaying elements. You barely use more than 1 hero and 11 units in a MP game. Starcraft is a strategical game with little tactical elements.

While I agree that Starcraft is slightly more entertaining when it comes to basic multiplayer, Warcraft 3 is IMO much better as a whole.
The solo campaign is way better. The setting of the game is much more developed than Starcraft's one ('onoes, the Ancients/Xel'Naga created guys, who are fighting eachothers'). The multiplayer is much more amusing because there's a freaking lot of different kind of maps. The RPG elements and the powerful map editor allowed the community to create dozens of new mini-games, while Starcraft only had a handful of those.

Honestly, regular multiplayer gets boring quite quickly, wether it is with SC or WC3. But WC3 offers so many mods that you can (or could) find something to your linking inbetween two ranked games.

I'm currently going through Starcraft solo campaigns, and then I'll complete WC3 once more, this time in hard mode if I can manage it. Both games are great, though I prefer WC3 (then, I heard fantasy is more popular in Europe than in the US, that might explain why you guys prefer SC).

[Beskar]

Buy WC3 from the Blizzard store, I am not sure on the price, but I am think it was only like £10.

[pevergreen]

Warcraft 3 is a tactical game with a few roleplaying elements. You barely use more than 1 hero and 11 units in a MP game.

Wc3 is much more than that.

Watch Moon, Grubby, Sky et al playing and you will see how they play.

Starcraft and warcraft share the same basic things, remove grapics and you have a number of different tech trees and units that fight in different ways. Wc3 just adds super units that get stronger and more expensive, that can hold items.

edit: watch this series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTHM...eature=related

Imbalanced Video was good while it was going, SeeD is a good commentator, though its only highlights. The other guy is annoying, but it all gets better as it goes on. You see some really classy plays as well. Best of Wc3 imo.

[Meneldil]

Whoah, I thought the Starcraft Plot was far more deep and enjoyable than the Warcraft 3 plot. WC3's plot struck is me as shallow and drawn out. Even the characters were irritating. Throw in the horrible irritating gameplay and the ridiculous amount of filler-missions and it was pretty bad.

I don't find the gameplay irritating. I find the whole hero stuff to be quite entertaining and offers nice gameplay possibilities, and the game got rid of some of the most tedious parts of SC (like clicking on units individually to cast a spell. I'm glad Blizzard introduced automatic-casting).
The game is IMO much more balanced, and doesn't have completely 'zomgwtf?' units, such as Arbiters, Ghosts, Lurkers, which would screw up your SC game in less than 10 secs if you dared to not pay full attention for a few seconds.

As for the plot. SC plot is a complete rip-off of Warhammer 40K plot. Replace the Xel'Nagas by the Ancients, the Protoss by the Eldars and the Zergs (who are already a complete rip-off of the Tyrannids) by the Necrons, and there you go. Though it's perhaps less cheesy (let's admit it, anything fantasy is cheesy), the world is less fleshed-out. You never get to hear or learn nothing that's not completely related to the main events.
You have to wait Broodwar to hear about the Earth Federation, and even then, you're like 'hum so what?'. It looked like the world was created without any real will to have a whole mythology around it.

[ElectricEel]

Playing through the single player campaign, I've felt Warcraft 3 is the better game - Starcraft had a more interesting plot and characters in my opinion, as opposed to Warcraft 3's so-very-generic fantasy stuff, but I felt it got bogged down towards the end between a tedious slog through huge scenarios that took forever to complete. Starcraft also had more micromanagement, which I disliked. I only have the original game currently, but will probably end up getting the Frozen Throne expansion soon, as the game has delivered pretty decent entertainment for my money.

[Beskar]

Half the micro-management is due to bad coding which they then stated "It is not a bug, it's a feature!".

It is like those films where James Bond is running in front of a firing squad with machine guns and they aim at his feet. That would be micromanagement in real life.

[FactionHeir]

The only reason I still got the game is for Lanning with friends for some dota

[pevergreen]

New version sucks. Booo.

Havent played it though.

Isnt anyone going to play that awesome map I posted?

[FactionHeir]

We play the 6.59b with AI anyway so not seeing much of the 6.61 yet

Re your map, I think I played that online a few years back, or something looking quite identical.

[pevergreen]

All the maps like that look the same, but this one is the best.

[Pantsalot]

I really don't think it's the game itself that gives Warcraft 3 it's prestige but the multiplayer
custom maps. Plenty of ppl still play them & I once played a full month on them, though I
only play the RTS ones like Lords of the realm, Europa & my favourite Desert Storm III (although
no1 hosts it anymore) though with DOTA being every1 else's favourite it appears.. -.-

Annoyingly my router just can't host games anymore & having a new computer means that I
have to download all those maps again.. that would probably be the main issue of it >.<

[Veho Nex]

I really don't think it's the game itself that gives Warcraft 3 it's prestige but the multiplayer
custom maps. Plenty of ppl still play them & I once played a full month on them, though I
only play the RTS ones like Lords of the realm, Europa & my favourite Desert Storm III (although
no1 hosts it anymore) though with DOTA being every1 else's favourite it appears.. -.-

Annoyingly my router just can't host games anymore & having a new computer means that I
have to download all those maps again.. that would probably be the main issue of it >.<

I hate DOTA, but the custom maps are what had me coming back to WC3:FT for over 450 hours. I played so many and hosted so often that I had a group of regulars who would join me every time I hosted.

[pevergreen]

Thats not that impressive, I had a group of followers for every map I hosted.

Civilisation Wars
Helms Deep
Lost Kingdom

[Meneldil]

I played a Europa Universalis (or some similar name) W3TFT map yesterday, and what a blast it was.

Each player chose a country a la MTW. You get to attack and capture neutral cities, the more cities you have, the more tax income you get and the more units you can field.
Funnily, unlike what happens in most SC/WC3 games, there was a lot of intrigues and stuff. People betraying eachothers as the game goes. You can trade stuff, upgrade your towns and what else. Heck that was fun.

I know there was a quite similar Middle Earth map at some point, but I couldn't find it. Does anyone know if it's still played? Basically you had to chose one faction, improve your cities to spawn more and better troops each day, and either defeat Sauron or find the one Ring. One player was even able to play as the Fellowship. Great fun it was.

[pevergreen]

I've played a map like that. The type of map is a risk map. Lotr risk, Z day and so forth. There are many good ones around.

War of the Lost Kingdoms is the same, but oh so awesome.

[Veho Nex]

Thats not that impressive, I had a group of followers for every map I hosted.

Civilisation Wars
Helms Deep
Lost Kingdom

No it's creepy when you start the lobby and ten seconds later it was the entire team from last game with maybe one or two other unknown people, and then I would get the spam of "Hey can you kick someone for me" and its not just 5 or 6 people it was in the upwards of 30-40. A huge portion of the players i didn't even have on my friends list.

[pevergreen]

I've had someone contact me now asking me to help them make a new Helms Deep map.

Is it one of you guys...

[Veho Nex]

I've had someone contact me now asking me to help them make a new Helms Deep map.

Is it one of you guys...

No...

[pevergreen]

I'm glad, cause this person's a bit of a racist.