Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos

Title: Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: July 3, 2002
Date Played: Summer 2002
Time Played: 30 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
I remember going to an internet cafe with some friends to play some Counter Strike, and seeing that basically every single computer there had the Warcraft 3 beta running. There definitely was excitement in the gaming community for the next chapter in this legendary franchise. Having spent countless hours playing Warcraft 2 I too was pretty excited to see the next iteration.

Warcraft 3 is the first Blizzard game to make a transition to a 3d engine, and although great looking it is not as detailed as drawn sprites we have seen so far. Less detail is a well worth trade off through when you see the camera views and perspective changes that having a 3d engine allows. Now instead of looking at things from the traditional top-down perspective the camera can zoom in on character faces or key events during gameplay. It also allows for dramatic camera sweeps and in-game in-engine cenematic sequences, which in turn cuts down on production costs, which in turn allows Blizzard to have a lot more of them in the game, which in turn makes for a much more epic story... wow thats a lot of turns in-turns...

Speaking of story, Warcraft 3 features one of the most epic and interesting stories in any strategy game, even by today's standards, and it has been over 10 years since it's release. Granted if you examine the story it is nothing more than the Anakin story in Star Wars, but then again its not like that was an original idea either. Nevertheless I cant think of anything Blizzard could have done better with Warcraft 3's story. Everything about it is perfect, the setting, the characters, the voice acting and cinematic. It has a decent amount of plot twists and epic moments, all of which lead to an amazingly epic ending.

The Warcraft franchise yet again took the reigns and pushed the real time strategy genre forward. It raised storytelling to a new high, and introduced a hero mechanic. Now in addition to grunts you have heroes (named characters), you can level them up and get them gear in order to make them more powerful. This was something new in the RTS genre. The new engine allowed users to create intersting and creative mods, some of which went on to be as popular as the game itself (similar occurrence with Counter Strike and Half Life 1). One of these mods is DOTA (Defense of the Ancients). It is played by thousands every day and went on to spawn DOTA2 from Valve and a new DOTA game from Blizzard (due out sometime within the next year or two).

Warcraft 3 and its expansion are a must have in any serious video game player's collection. Even for those that are not fans of the RTS genre the story will be interesting to play through. Warcraft 3 holds up very well a decade after its relase and is still one of the best real time strategy games out there. If you have never played it, I would recommend checking it out. You can pick it up from the Blizzard online store for $20. Not only is it great on its own, it also sets up the events leading to the World of Warcraft, so for the WOW players out there its a cool little prequel.