Was Warcraft 3 historically considered bad?

[catfood]

The Warcraft 2 campaigns are garbage. Saying anything else is revisionist lies. I don't blame the designers for it, after all the genre was still in its infancy, but let's not kid ourselves thinking the campaigns were any good.

 

[catfood]

I played Warcraft 2 long after Age of Empires and Star Craft and it felt very primitive and basic in comparison. The campaign missions felt a little boring too, most were very straightforward and the early ones were very slow in giving you new toys to play with, it takes a long time until the campaign actually becomes good. Also controls and pathfinding were far worse than later RTS games.

Still, I recognize its popularity at the time it came out and understand why it happened. It was a solid RTS for its time, but was easily surpassed by later ones. Doesn't make it any less solid for its time, especially in multiplayer.
"It sucks now compared to what came later so it was never popular" is a retard take.

I agree with you on the controls part, but I found the pathfinding to be be a lot better than many other RTS games, even those that released at a later date. Just compare the pathfinding of WC 2 (1995) and AOE 1 (1997) and you see a massive difference.

 

[Hellraiser]

The Warcraft 2 campaigns are garbage.

Still play and enjoy them over 25 years later. They're good for what they are, just like the campaign of Tiberian Dawn is. Grey Goo OTOH is a game with a campaign that deserves to be called garbage.

 

[catfood]

The Warcraft 2 campaigns are garbage.

Still play and enjoy them over 25 years later. They're good for what they are, just like the campaign of Tiberian Dawn is. Grey Goo OTOH is a game with a campaign that deserves to be called garbage.

No problem. I also enjoy plenty of games that have glaring defects. I just like remaining objective and acknowledging those faults.

 

[Storyfag]

The Warcraft 2 campaigns are garbage.

Still play and enjoy them over 25 years later. They're good for what they are, just like the campaign of Tiberian Dawn is. Grey Goo OTOH is a game with a campaign that deserves to be called garbage.

Tib Dawn's missions are much more complex and neat than WC2's. I think Blizzard figured scripting out only in SC1.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That game looked so ugly and played much worse than starcraft.

Both statements are absolutely false. W3 looked fantastic as far as early 3D goes, not as in "this texture is really high res" but in how the game had tons of various visual details that all blended toghether perfectly. The Reforged disaster just demonstrated the amount of artistry that went into making WC3. The fact you could have dozens of shit going on in the screen, from units to spell effects to backgrounds all of them just filling up the screen and yet still be able to understand everything at a single glance is a testament to how much care they put into making those visuals.

The same applies to the gameplay as well.

But WC3's success wasn't just about how well made the engine was, but it was also based on how great the game actually was in multiplayer. While the singleplayer was fairly well done with maps that were actually more complex and advanced than anything in Starcraft, the multiplayer is really where the game shined.

Now sure, there are some aspects of the game i would consider inferior to Stacraft. Aesthetically, Starcraft had an edge. The music in Starcraft was more inspired and the game generally had a superior atmosphere. For me Starcraft has that kind of perfection Doom had, where the game is as close to flawless as any game has ever gotten, with only the writing being more on the pedestrian side (probably still a bit better than WC3). WC3 was a bit more generic in places, but as far as i'm concerned it's the last truly great Blizzard game ever made, and it was all because how great the game was in multiplayer and how DIFFERENT it was from Starcraft too when played online.

 

[ArchAngel]

WC3 was successful as it was easier and nicer looking than Starcraft. Pathfinding was better and there was no abilities like Psi Storms, Plagues, Scarabs or Tanks that almost instantly wrecked your shit. It was nicer for casuals to have longer battles were you could micro more easily and focus was on creeping instead of attacking your enemy.

Personally I didn't like the whole Hero gameplay.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The Warcraft 2 campaigns are garbage.

Still play and enjoy them over 25 years later. They're good for what they are, just like the campaign of Tiberian Dawn is. Grey Goo OTOH is a game with a campaign that deserves to be called garbage.

Tib Dawn's missions are much more complex and neat than WC2's. I think Blizzard figured scripting out only in SC1.

Wacraft 2 is a typical Blizzard game in that it was "dated" already when it came out. Polish is where it shined, but it wasn't as forward looking as C&C, which had stuff like asymetrical factions already, and as you said more involved single player maps (i also think the AI in skirmish was better in C&C but my memory is vague on this point).

What made Warcradt 2 for some of us WAS the polish though. The game had a real fun atmosphere, came out in svga on day one if i remember which helped the already colorful visuals even further, and the game had some of the attention to details Blizzard became known for (unit sounds were fantastic, which was also one of the best things about Stacraft. Just look at the Zergs you could tell what everything was instantly even though it was all just hissess and roars. There was some real talent in the sound department there that went completely missing i SC2). And of course, it had one of the best soundtracks ever made in a game.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Personally I didn't like the whole Hero gameplay.

This sentiment usually come from people who had wished the game had been the same as Starcraft, not understanding that it was precisely this aspect that made Warcraft III such a novel experience, that it was basically an RPG nestled inside an RTS. This added a lot of new variables in the game that made Warcraft 3 stand out and offer a completely different kind of experience from Starcraft.

 

[Alex]

That game looked so ugly and played much worse than starcraft.

Both statements are absolutely false. W3 looked fantastic as far as early 3D goes,

Yeah, but early 3d mostly looks awful. Warcraft 2 on the other hand looked great and still looks great.

not as in "this texture is really high res" but in how the game had tons of various visual details that all blended toghether perfectly. The Reforged disaster just demonstrated the amount of artistry that went into making WC3. The fact you could have dozens of shit going on in the screen, from units to spell effects to backgrounds all of them just filling up the screen and yet still be able to understand everything at a single glance is a testament to how much care they put into making those visuals.

With the reduced unit amount, there was never that much going on the screen, though.

The same applies to the gameplay as well.

But WC3's success wasn't just about how well made the engine was, but it was also based on how great the game actually was in multiplayer.

Maybe, never played it. I only played the singleplayer campaing.

While the singleplayer was fairly well done with maps that were actually more complex and advanced than anything in Starcraft, the multiplayer is really where the game shined.

Such as? I played the whole campaign in W3, but I don't remember anything particularly memorable they did with maps. Except telling that stupid story every freaking other map, starcraft was already pushing it, but W3 was pretty bad in that aspect.

Now sure, there are some aspects of the game i would consider inferior to Stacraft. Aesthetically, Starcraft had an edge. The music in Starcraft was more inspired and the game generally had a superior atmosphere. For me Starcraft has that kind of perfection Doom had, where the game is as close to flawless as any game has ever gotten, with only the writing being more on the pedestrian side (probably still a bit better than WC3). WC3 was a bit more generic in places, but as far as i'm concerned it's the last truly great Blizzard game ever made, and it was all because how great the game was in multiplayer and how DIFFERENT it was from Starcraft too when played online.

So, it is a multiplayer thing?

 

[ArchAngel]

Personally I didn't like the whole Hero gameplay.

This sentiment usually come from people who had wished the game had been the same as Starcraft, not understanding that it was precisely this aspect that made Warcraft III such a novel experience, that it was basically an RPG nestled inside an RTS. This added a lot of new variables in the game that made Warcraft 3 stand out and offer a completely different kind of experience from Starcraft.

Well Sc1 was based on WC2 and that was similar to many C&C games.

WC3 was a big move from that kind of gameplay, of course a bunch of people didn't like this change. Also units were all very tanky and battles lasted noticeably longer than before which was also another big move.

 

[ghardy]

Just look at the Zergs you could tell what everything was instantly even though it was all just hissess and roars.

This is so true. I'm on Mission 4 of the Protoss campaign in the original StarCraft. Up to this point, the sounds of units have been

• distinguishable
• recognizable
• memorable

I still like WarCraft 2, nonetheless.

 

[Harthwain]

Yeah, but early 3d mostly looks awful. Warcraft 2 on the other hand looked great and still looks great.

It looked good for its time and for a 22-years old game it isn't looking that bad. 3D games not ageing gracefully is not limited to early 3D. That said, it's such a shame they fucked up the remaster... They really had GOLD on their hands there (similar to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition).

With the reduced unit amount, there was never that much going on the screen, though.

Heroes and spells made up for that. In fact, they were the key element of any encounter. Frankly, I never felt like nothing was going on. Even in the early game harassment (with less than 7 units and a hero) gave you enough of the action (or defending against a tower rush), with each units being really vital. So "not that much going on the screen" is not really true. At least for the mutliplayer. The singleplayer was less busy for obvious reasons.

Such as? I played the whole campaign in W3, but I don't remember anything particularly memorable they did with maps. Except telling that stupid story every freaking other map, starcraft was already pushing it, but W3 was pretty bad in that aspect.

You had some unique objectives (such as "kill X peasants" or "gather Y wood"), there were some hidden easter eggs (Hydralisk!), some "no base building" missions that fit heroes like a glove (yes, Starcraft had these also, but hero units weren't that special in Starcraft). The ability to get experience and items by visiting shops and killing neutral monsters (as well as a bit of gold) was also nice (although waaaay more important in mutliplayer than in singleplayer).

 

[Lyric Suite]

My admiration for the graphics of Warcraft 3 (aisde for the masterful care in functionality which again is evidenced by the contrast with Reforged) stems from the fact it was among the first early 3D games that DIDN'T in fact look like shit to me. I mean Quake was already there years before i'm talking about 3D isometric games specifically.

And i think the reason the game had that effect on me back then is that the visuals felt complete. That was one of the issues with early 3D graphics, that everything was just empty. Just empty terrains with a stretched over texture, few assets haphazardly placed over the ground and so forth. Warcraft 3 by contrast already looked close to a 2D game. Just compare Warcraft 3 to something like Dark Reign 2, the latter sort of epidomizing the problems with early 3D visuals.

This early 3D graphics vibe was still present even in some neglected gems like Battle Realms, which at the time i considered to be the main competitor of Warcraft 3:



Don't get me wrong it's a beautiful game and back then i played it to death but it still has that early 3D feel to it, while through a combination of details, shadows, colors, animations, number of assets on screen and so fourth Warcraft 3 was able to nearly overcome this to the point once you are playing it you no longer feels like early 3D anymore. If you still think it does it's probably because you are looking too closely on the character models while not considering the whole picture (literaly, as it were), especially once the game is in motion.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, WC3 is the only RTS game of its time (early 3D) that doesn't look awful. Also had actually good controls and good-feeling movement/attack mechanics (not sure how to describe it but if you play RTS games you know what I mean). The competition consistently fucked up all these things and made you long for the crispness, beauty, and playability that Starcraft had.

 

[Lyric Suite]

With the reduced unit amount, there was never that much going on the screen, though.

That's where you are wrong. There's a ton of stuff going on the screen and with an inferior developer things could have turned into an incoherent mess during the heat of battle. And we don't even have to speculate about this, since this is exactly what playing Reforged is like. Grubby made several videos on the subject which shows just how much work went into making sure everything in Warcraft 3 was instantly and easily readable in the original game. I like this one in particular:



Not because it is the most comprehensive one he made but just because there are things he discusses here that one might think is just nitpicking where as once you start to add in all those little issues and discrepanices it becomes a huge problem in the game.

Such as? I played the whole campaign in W3, but I don't remember anything particularly memorable they did with maps. Except telling that stupid story every freaking other map, starcraft was already pushing it, but W3 was pretty bad in that aspect.

I think the problem wasn't with them pushing the story as much as the story itself being utter shit. I think that's the biggest achilles heel of Warcraft 3, that "made by committee" feel of the story. Good production values with solid voice acting but it was so damn cliched.

In either case, if we are looking at the maps themselves, they were definitely tigher than in Starcraft, harder to cheese (as in, just turtle until you unlock your highest tier unit and mass produce that one, which you could do in Starcraft, less so in Warcraft 3) and more difficult as a general rule.

But i think the real step up occurred in Frozen Throne. There were maps in that one that nearly required multiplayer levels of multitasking. Take shit like Balancing the Scales which for me has to be one of the best maps ever made in an RTS game.

Now sure, there are some aspects of the game i would consider inferior to Stacraft. Aesthetically, Starcraft had an edge. The music in Starcraft was more inspired and the game generally had a superior atmosphere. For me Starcraft has that kind of perfection Doom had, where the game is as close to flawless as any game has ever gotten, with only the writing being more on the pedestrian side (probably still a bit better than WC3). WC3 was a bit more generic in places, but as far as i'm concerned it's the last truly great Blizzard game ever made, and it was all because how great the game was in multiplayer and how DIFFERENT it was from Starcraft too when played online.

So, it is a multiplayer thing?

I would say it's a multiplayer thing for both games. I think what i said about the perfection of the visuals and sounds etc is relevant specifically because of how crucial that stuff is for multiplayer. In single player jank is a lot more tolerable for me, where as jank can kill your multiplayer game out of the gate.

With that said, yes, Warcraft 3's best experience is in multiplayer. They definitely put a lot of effort in the single player but for me it wasn't as good as the multiplayer.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Lyric Suite since you're talking early 3D era RTSes, what did you think about Warzone 2100 and Earth 2150?

 

[cvv]

That game looked so ugly and played much worse than starcraft.

Both statements are absolutely false. W3 looked fantastic

W3 looked absolutely vomit inducing (apart from the cutscenes that were lightyears ahead of its time), it was the end of edgy, dark Blizzard of Starcraft and Diablo and the start of the infantile clown cart that it is now. It was also the first mutated cell that spread the retarded cancerous art style into the entire body of the gaming business.

Your revisionism and lack of taste is shamefur.

 

[Raapys]

Yeah, W3 was the beginning of the atrocious WoW style that ruined 3d games for decades to come. Very sad.

 

[Lyric Suite]

First off, we were talking about the graphics, not the art style, and the graphics in WC3 were just about as brilliant as those in Starcraft for reasons that seems to elude a lot of people who never examined the kind of work that goes into making everything be readiable and easy to grasp. The graphics in both Warcraft 3 and Starcraft was just as great as their sound design.

Second, it's Warcraft. Shit was always bright and colorful:

Third, the artstyle you are talking about started with WoW, not WC3. WC3 has a lot of shadowing and depth:

Sure the models look blocky and simplistic but that was because they had to cut corners somewhere to allow the game to run at all.

WoW meanwhile was all just flat and pastel. The only good thing WoW had going visually is the aesthetic variety of the locations, which was actually quite impressive all considered. Despite the fact WoW basically copied a lot of assets from WC3, the "WoW" art style actually starts with WoW.

In either case, anybody looking at those visuals and claim they are bad for a 3D isometric game in 2002 either doesn't remember what games actually looked like back then or wasn't there at all.

 

[eviltentacle]

Warcraft 2 is bright but it’s realistically coloured and gritty and bloody. Warcraft 3 adds glowy crap to everything. When you get big fights with all the neon auras and spell effects going everywhere and all the heroes glowing it looks like a rainbow vomited. Warcraft 2 didn’t have any glowy shit.

The Warcraft 2 original campaign is pretty easy except for a couple of missions and the AI is pretty primitive, but the Beyond the Dark Portal missions are way better and much harder. There is an unfortunate bug though in the game where saving/loading has a high chance to glitch the AI and they stop doing anything, so the true way to play it is with no saving. It was early RTS days and it’s definitely rough around the edges as they were figuring things out. But the satisfaction of melting shit with Death and Decay or obliterating everything with a few bloodlusted ogres or permanently ploymorphing a dragon into a sheep is real. Spells in Warcraft 3 are much more nerfed and things have way more hit points.

At least the focus in the Warcraft 2 campaigns is the gameplay, while Warcraft 3 campaign the cringe fan-fiction-level story is really shoved in your face. And look what they did to the orcs, my memory is they went from being savage and bloodthirsty to being misunderstood hippies. I recall The Frozen Throne orc campaign being super lame.

I definitely thought Warcraft 3 looked bad on release, but then I was not a fan of the push for every game at that time to be 3D. To go from the beautiful gritty graphics of Warcraft 2/Age of Empires 2/Diablo 2 to the hideous War3/Age3/Diablo3 was grotesque. Original Age of Empires 2 still looks better than brand new Age of Empires 4. I had fun with Warcraft 3 but it was definitely the beginning of the end of Blizzard.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Putting Wacraft 3 and Diablo 3 toghether already makes me question your old school credentials. Diablo 3 was 10 years later for Christ's sake was hardly part of the early 3D era. As for Age of Empire III, i never played it but i remember visually it was actually quite solid except for the excessive use in bloom. In fact Age of Empire III was one of the first games that made me wonder if 3D COULD potentialy get to the same level as 2D, and the game was released only three years later than Warcraft 3 so at the time i was thought it was impressive. Too bad the game itself was not as good as the originals which is why i never bought it back then.

As for Warcraft 2, i will agree it had a grittier setting than Warcraft 3 but i don't think that influenced the lack of "glowy" effects, since those kind of effects weren't possible in a 2D engine to begin with. A lot of 3D games added glowy effects because it was a new thing so they went to town with it (and helped compensate to the barebone quality of early 3D), kinda like early shooters used to put lens flares over every light source just because Unreal did it. With that said, since the discussion was about the graphics, and not the style, it's worth pointing out how amazing it was that you could still tell everything that was actually going on EVEN with those effects.

Now Warcraft 2 definitely had a much better tone than Warcraft 3, that part is absolutely true. Warcraft 3 added a lot of faggotry and retardation. Much noble savage orcs, muh corrupt and decadent humans (and don't forget humans in fantasy games are a stand in for white people), muh wimminz etc. Tyrande going on a retarded "whatever, i do what i want" muh feminist screed despite the fact Malfurion was right about everything was so ridicolous one wonders whether she was supposed to be a caricature of a third wave feminist.

Warcraft 2 was just about two bad ass factions beating the shit out of each other without making any fuss about it, which went for both the orcs AND the humans. Hell, Warcraft 2 even managed to make elves look bad ass. The absolute worst shit in WoW is when they retconned Proudmoore from Warcraft 2 into being an evil racist colonizer who massacred and enslaved the poor misunderstood orcs, where as anyone who played Warcraft 2 knows that Proudmoore was right and did nothing wrong. Orcs menace had to be dealt with for the good of Azeroth. Also one of the first things that pissed me off about Warcraft 3 is how they pussified the paladins and even the knights. The ones from Warcraft 2 were such bad asses.

With all of that said, none of this has anything to do with whether Wacraft 3 had great graphics or not, which it did, for all the reasons i explained. Complaining about the fact it was 3D is a lot cause. All games were veering towards 3D back then, you can't dismiss the visuals on account of the fact they were 3D and nothing else, you have to look how the game faired against other 3D games.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lyric Suite since you're talking early 3D era RTSes, what did you think about Warzone 2100 and Earth 2150?

Earth 2150 was solid, never played Warzone though.

One game i think was unjustly overlooked was the 2001 Dune game, Emperor: Battle for Dune or whatever was called.

Both Earth 2150 and Emperor still had that problem with early 3D graphics where all the assets felt like they were just slapped on top of an empty terrain. Warcraft 3 managed to make the blending of assets and enviorments feel a lot more organic. Ironically, i remember people complaining that Warcraft 3 "lacked" some of the freedom 3D could offer by forcing a kind of 2D-like perspective to the game (you could zoom in but there was no point doing it, the game played like a 2D classic RTS while some of the early 3D game were trying to capitalize on camera rotation etc, but ultimately it was all redudant).

 

[ghardy]

Also one of the first things that pissed me off about Warcraft 3 is how they pussified the paladins and even the knights. The ones from Warcraft 2 were such bad asses.

The very first thing that comes to mind when I recall knights from WarCraft 2 is the awesome baritone in their voice.

 

[Lyric Suite]

At least the focus in the Warcraft 2 campaigns is the gameplay, while Warcraft 3 campaign the cringe fan-fiction-level story is really shoved in your face.

But this is false though. All the Warcraft 3 maps focused on the "gameplay" too. It's not like there was nothing in between the cutscenes.

Hell, despite my burning hatred for Starcraft 2 and its "story" (which is several orders of magnitudes worse than anything in Warcraft 3, by a fucking mile, and let that sink in for a second), i was forced to recognize that from a purely gameplay point of view the single player maps were actually kind of great, and sort of continued the direction they took with Warcraft 3.

Generally, much of the complaint with Warcraft 3 is that a lot of the maps focused on gimmick gameplay set ups instead of a more basic skirmish style, but aside for "muh story" one of the reasons they did that is that they recognized skirmish singleplayer maps were often too easy to cheese because of the limitations of the AI. This was particularly the case if anybody compard single player skirmish with multiplayer. Because of the existence of the later i think they decide to make the single player play out differently, focusing more on unique gameplay set ups so that the single player maps didn't just feel like an inferior version to a multiplayer game with a braindead opponent.