Still Playing WarCraft

By Cyrris

Back when the first screenshots of WarCraft 3 were popping up over the internet and the hype machine started revving it’s engine, I began following its development with great interest. I hadn’t played much of the previous WarCraft titles but StarCraft and Diablo 2 had swept me up in enough Blizzard goodness for me to be excited about any and all future titles. As it progressed though, I became increasingly skeptical as it’s role-playing features were talked up and the series’ status as a pure RTS came to an end. I’ve always been a strategy fan, and while I enjoy a decent role-playing game, the idea of a “Role-Playing Strategy” game, as Blizzard coined it, didn’t take my fancy.

The game came out, it was quite alright, and the story (at least in my opinion) was top notch. However, I could never get really good at it. To be competitive I found that one needed micromanagement skills I simply didn’t posses, and a mastery of hotkeys I had no plans on acquiring. The whole game was too zoomed-in for my tastes, being the type of person who prefers to command vast armies and the like, without single important units like heroes. However, as the years have gone by (and especially very recently) I have found that this characteristic of WarCraft 3 is now the reason I play it quite often.

Of course, you won’t usually find me playing a normal custom map. Rather, I’ll be playing a user-made map which takes advantage of the role-playing aspects built in to the game. I’ve spent countless hours on Enfo’s Team Survival with my friends - a few of us seeing how long our single heroes can last against hordes of enemy monsters. I could start listing all the RPG-style maps made, but the list is far too huge. Even outside of that, random fun maps such as Tower Defense make for great fun at LAN parties. I do in fact believe that WarCraft 3 now has the status which Quake 3 has had for some time now - a popular game played by many, which still looks good and can run well on everyone’s PCs, and can provide quick but not quick-to-tire entertainment for everyone.

I haven’t see that kind of variety and longevity in very many games, and I dare say I’ll be playing WarCraft 3 in one form or another for some time to come. We need more titles like this.