Warcraft III: Reforged - now with lowest user metacritic score of all time

[Preben]

Blizzard fucked up the game even before Reforgery. The patches that they released prior to Reforgery added bugs to the Reign of Chaos campaigns. For example the audio cuts out during cutscenes and sometimes the hero's inventories disappear.

Disappearing hero inventories is a known bug that came with the patch that merged W3 with Reforged client.

 

[visions]

So I've never actually played Warcraft 3, and recently I've had a hankering for a fantasy RTS with no bullshit that's just straightforward base building -> unit training -> chucking them at the enemy, but as I keep looking around for something to scratch that itch I keep coming back to Warcraft 3. But from what I can find you can't get the old version anymore, or it's shackled to the Reforged clusterfuck. Are there ways around this, or would this require alternate "purchasing" methods? Or should I just give Spellforce a try, even though that looks like it's a bit too much of an RPG to me?

You can also try Warlords Battlecry 2 or 3 (both are available on GOG). They're fantasy RTS-s with heroes and a lot of different fantasy races. They're not particularly well balanced though afaik. But if you just want to fuck around with fantasy armies in single player, they might be what you're looking for.

The campaign in 2 is Risk-like, you can play as any of the races and you have a map and can attack provinces there that are adjacent to the provinces you already own. Conquering another race's capital let's you use that race too in the campaign. The AI factions also conquer provinces on the map and can attack your provinces. Iirc the story was non-existent. The campaign in WBC 3 seems to still have an open map but also has a a bit more story. WBC 3 also has some extra armies, but it mostly seems pretty similar to WBC 2. I mostly played WBC2 myself though. Also from what little that I've played, WBC 1 seems more generic with a more typical linear campaign, so I guess you can skip that one.

As far as RTS vs RPG goes, they're firmly on the RTS side of things. You have a persistent hero that you can use and develop both in campaigns and single matches but that's pretty much it. Also your hero gets a small retinue of units that you can carry from scenario to scenario, until they (the units) die. When your hero dies, you lose the map that you were playing but iirc there weren't any longer term consequnces for that.

I had a lot of fun with WBC 2 in the 00's, tho that was quite long ago and my memories of the game are far from fresh. But from the little that I played it, it seems that WBC 3 might be the best place to start, since it seems to be mostly the same as WBC 2 but with a few more armies and some story in the campaign.

 

[Caim]

So Warcraft 3 is a mess and I'd need a very exact version for it to not be shit, got it.

Armies of Exigo

Gonna have to look that one up.

Warlords Battlecry 2 or 3

Found those, they're also on sale on GOG right now for a few bucks for the trilogy. There's also the regular Warlords I + II and III, but those look a bit less advanced.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

So Warcraft 3 is a mess and I'd need a very exact version for it to not be shit, got it.

Armies of Exigo

Gonna have to look that one up.

Warlords Battlecry 2 or 3

Found those, they're also on sale on GOG right now for a few bucks for the trilogy. There's also the regular Warlords I + II and III, but those look a bit less advanced.

As mentioned by Cyberarmy, Armies of Exigo is probably the best pick. But if you just want to throw mindless amounts of units against your enemies in a fantasy setting you could also check out Total Annihilation: Kingdoms.

 

[visions]

Found those, they're also on sale on GOG right now for a few bucks for the trilogy. There's also the regular Warlords I + II and III, but those look a bit less advanced.

Regular Warlords are turn based.

 

[Lagi]

warlords battlecry 4 is very nice, free, rts
https://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/downloads

i downloaded Protectors few days ago, works without problem on win10

levelling up hero is very fun, the tactical options are not as developed as in warcraft3 though. Its rather make million (click loop in barracks) of units and waypoint them to combat - Total Annihilation style a little.

Starting hint: your hero need to capture the resource points (ctrl + C. press R to check hero radius), then send workers into each mining points to increase income.

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I can not run Armies of Exigo. I like this game a lot.

i played it a lot back then. Very nice game, should be a hit, if it get better balanced (late game take too much attention just to spend your resources, upgrades are too cheap and research are done too quick). I was trying to alter some stats in game map editor, but lots of staff is hardcoded or change dont work.

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i know its not RTS, but Kingdom Rush scratch that itch of fantasy rts for me.

 

[Jigby]

Last time I played it with 1.31.1 and it was all fine. The pre-1.29 pre-widescreen I'd find difficult to play. Don't overthink it.

 

[catfood]

Last time I played it with 1.31.1 and it was all fine. The pre-1.29 pre-widescreen I'd find difficult to play. Don't overthink it.

Skirmish AI in 1.31.1

 

[Jigby]

Is there something specific I have to do to trigger the behavior? I tried Lost Temple and skirmish worked fine https://streamable.com/sxp2v8
Or is it Synergy specific?

Edit: Synergy https://streamable.com/q5nueb. It's kind of retarded because of the close spawn, I guess the proper way to compare would be to install 1.27. Synergy on 1.27b -> https://streamable.com/gexkku. When playing as orc instead of undead the AI is more aggressive and immediately attacks with the acolytes. I got roughly the same behaviour in PTR, the AI is just retarded and can't handle close spawn properly.

 

[Garyxeao88]

To be honest, WotLK Classic is the perfect nostalgia trip, I love it.

​

 

[whydoibother]

To be honest, WotLK Classic is the perfect nostalgia trip, I love it.

​

Imagine being nostalgic for the beginning of the end.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Warcraft peaked with 2.

 

[whydoibother]

Warcraft peaked with 2.

I liked Warcraft III and its expansion the most out of all the Warcraft games. Good gameplay, good UI, good visual and audio presentation, good netcode, good campaign, good modding tools, and obviously full of SOUL with all the easter eggs and the outro song.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Look at people still claiming that post D1 blizzard games had good production values, lol.

 

[Black_Willow]

Look at people still claiming that post D1 blizzard games had good production values, lol.

Starcraft was way ahead of its competition in everything, including production values.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I'm p. sure that a strictly 2d game running at locked 640x480 with piss poor animations/fx and no physics in sight was not ahead of proverbial shit in 1998, but you do you.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I'm sure you geniuses with the ratings will explain to me how and why I'm wrong any minute, right?

 

[whydoibother]

Look at people still claiming that post D1 blizzard games had good production values, lol.

Starcraft was way ahead of its competition in everything, including production values.

Starcraft was ahead in UI, responsiveness, the story based campaign, and just polish and stability. It wasn't innovative, it wasn't better looking or better sounding, it wasn't original.
Blizzard was known then for taking the best ideas from its competition, and packing them in a superior product. I'd argue also to appealing to the RPG crowd with non-RPG games, via story, the perception of choice and consequence, having characters instead of just Swordsman, Rifleman, etc.

 

[Black_Willow]

This is Starcraft:


This is its competition from the same year:


Starcraft clearly has better looking terrain, sprites and animations, and better VO and sound FX. This is one of the reasons it got so popular back in the days, it simply looked and sounded better than other RTS games.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

That's your example? And not like it's self-defeating one when it comes to "being ahead of the curve". Because as much of a second string boring cutout representative of a genre already well on a crash course with a concrete wall as KKND2 was, at least it mastered marvelous technology of scaling res, up to a fairly standard at that point 1024x768. But that's as far as you can go with SC - compare it to other basic 2d rts based on personal preferences and even on that arena it hardly shines - something like Dark Colony is a way sexier game imo, and it came out a year earlier.

When it comes to an actual attempt at a serious discussion, SC came out at a time when the market already saw multiple rt strategy/tactical games with: fairly intricate physics systems with huge impact on gameplay, rt lighting, dynamic camera (including completely changing perspective), high resolutions (including games that are natively able to scale to most resolutions even today), terrain manipulation/destruction, fully utilizing 3d acceleration (never was a fan, but that's beside the point) and so on and so forth and then we can start going into details of how, for example, pathetically "air" combat is represented in SC. And some of these games were already on a market for quite some time when SC launched. So, as much as you love "great animations" of thicc marine running and "great fx" of psi storm, stop making yourself look silly.

Starcraft was ahead in UI, responsiveness, the story based campaign, and just polish and stability. It wasn't innovative, it wasn't better looking or better sounding, it wasn't original.
Blizzard was known then for taking the best ideas from its competition, and packing them in a superior product. I'd argue also to appealing to the RPG crowd with non-RPG games, via story, the perception of choice and consequence, having characters instead of just Swordsman, Rifleman, etc.

I'd strongly contest the UI claim tbf. 12 units max at a time is enough to ridicule it, but when SC came out I was way too used to different forms of automation, queuing, selection, orders, formations etc that prestigious 1997 releases allowed for. Of course there's an argument that SC didn't need any of that, being the game that it was, but still.

 

[whydoibother]

I'd strongly contest the UI claim tbf. 12 units max at a time is enough to ridicule it, but when SC came out I was way too used to different forms of automation, queuing, selection, orders, formations etc that prestigious 1997 releases allowed for. Of course there's an argument that SC didn't need any of that, being the game that it was, but still.

Do you mean Age of Empires and Myth? Or older stuff, like C&C or Dune? Those are the period RTS I've played, and they all control worse than Starcraft, and the UI isn't as good.
And the 12 unit limit has to do with Blizzard's lean towards RPG, both in scale, in characterization, in unit abilities, etc.

 

[Black_Willow]

That's your example? And not like it's self-defeating one when it comes to "being ahead of the curve". Because as much of a second string boring cutout representative of a genre already well on a crash course with a concrete wall as KKND2 was, at least it mastered marvelous technology of scaling res, up to a fairly standard at that point 1024x768. But that's as far as you can go with SC - compare it to other basic 2d rts based on personal preferences and even on that arena it hardly shines - something like Dark Colony is a way sexier game imo, and it came out a year earlier.

Dark Colony being "sexy" you say???

With sphincter-like buildings, creatures shooting poop-balls out of their asses and gray pencil-legged aliens running around pantless, but in colorfull shirts?

I don't want to know what other things you find "sexy"...

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Great post. You're probably a big guy already, time to learn that making even more of a dumbass of yourself when you didn't have nothing to say in the first place is not the smart choice. It's fine to stick to butthurt rating mashing.

Do you mean Age of Empires and Myth? Or older stuff, like C&C or Dune? Those are the period RTS I've played, and they all control worse than Starcraft, and the UI isn't as good.
And the 12 unit limit has to do with Blizzard's lean towards RPG, both in scale, in characterization, in unit abilities, etc.

TA and Dark Reign are the best examples of classic rts that really raised the bar when it comes to options allowing for different unit behaviors, production/economy automation, queuing various stuff etc. But Myth is also a good example when it comes to different formations and their use, although its UI is nothing special in general (but boy, was it groundbreaking in lots of other ways). And the arguments for 12 unit limit are a bit too... outlandish for me, sorry. Like I said, that part alone is utterly ridiculous and I always felt like one of the actual reasons for it was that it was the maximum number of those small unit icons with dmg status they could fit in the window, which made it even more stupid.

 

[Olinser]

I'd strongly contest the UI claim tbf. 12 units max at a time is enough to ridicule it, but when SC came out I was way too used to different forms of automation, queuing, selection, orders, formations etc that prestigious 1997 releases allowed for. Of course there's an argument that SC didn't need any of that, being the game that it was, but still.

Do you mean Age of Empires and Myth? Or older stuff, like C&C or Dune? Those are the period RTS I've played, and they all control worse than Starcraft, and the UI isn't as good.
And the 12 unit limit has to do with Blizzard's lean towards RPG, both in scale, in characterization, in unit abilities, etc.

Yeah AOE2 the AI, and unit control are much worse than SC, after they've patched it for 20 years its now better but that's because Blizzard intentionally didn't 'improve' Brood War. When it first came out you had to manually replace every single farm and the hotkeys are based on their position in the UI rather than their actual names.

The only place that SC loses out was unit pathing for certain units around certain tight terrain (as Carbot has skewered the Goliath and Dragoon mercilessly).

Also holy shit Myth, haven't thought about that in a while.

CASUALTY

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The farm thing is a p. strange point to make in this particular comparison (plus, option to auto-reseed was added to the game very quickly). While AoE didn't really do anything interesting from the UI/AI perspective, AoE2 is imo very notable for the fact that it introduced formations that units were (almost) perfectly able to keep in motion even in very big groups. This is something that even most modern rt games seem unable to handle.