The Armchair Empire - PC Previews: Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos


	Platform PC Genre RTS Publisher Havas Developer Blizzard ETA Early 2002
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Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

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

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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

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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 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.

- Mr. Nash