Being the game
that catapulted the Real-time Strategy genre into the limelight, the
Warcraft series certainly is on the receiving end of very high
expectations from fans of the series. Many of us have lost countless
hours of sleep trying to build up our forces just a wee bit more before
going to one last battle before bedtime. Warcraft has been a
series that really eats up a lot of gamers’ time, both from wanting to
do just a little bit more, and, of course, clicking like crazy people on
all of the characters just to see what they’ll say.
Now
Blizzard has Warcraft III in production. Unlike its predecessors, this
installment is going to be in full on 3D. With a largely overhead camera
view players will have a good view of what’s happening on screen. On
top of this the developers are working with a skeletal and skinning
animation process that is intended to give a very fluid style of motion
in the animation.
One of the
biggest changes coming in Warcraft III is the implementation of
Blizzard’s Role-Playing Strategy game style. Here RPGs and RTS
game-styles will be hybridized. Instead of dealing with enormous armies,
and depending on the rush, players will have smaller groups who
adventure together, heroes leading the way, while fighting wandering
monsters, completing quests, and finding ways to defeat their enemies
through strategic means.
As far as the
age-old conflict between the Alliance and the Orcish Horde is concerned,
these two bitter enemies have bigger
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things to worry about. A race known
as the Burning Legion has come. They are forced to wander the realms in
search of magical power to consume in order to sustain them. As such
they’re the Alliance and the Horde are in big trouble and must
make defeating the Legion their first priority.
This
time around players will five races to choose from, including the Orcs,
Humans, Dwarves, and the Undead and Demons. So this means that many more
little idiosyncrasies to get used to as players try to find their
favorite fighting force. Characters can be operated independently
of the heroes, and will have their own special attacks to help
distinguish their particular unit type.
There
is also to be a thorough world design tool so that players can customize
to their hearts content, being able to dabble with tile sets, character
art, quests, mission objects, unit types, AI, attributes, special
abilities and spells.