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WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos

List Price: $29.99
Your Price: $29.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: G R E A T!!
Review: An excelent example how a good game can be improved by using the ideas of the previous versions and similar games (starcraft).

While playing WC3 the first thing one can notice is the superior graphics and the live movies, the second is the huge variety of options a player has in order to achieve his goal. Heros with various abilities are gaining experience with time. They can also acquire items which empower them with new abilities and they can hire mercenaries.

Nevertheless this is only the start.

Superior artificial intelligence helps computer enemy to organize his army and to avoid traps.

Variety of tasks: You never get bored because the various tasks are really different. Some examples: destroy your enemies, survive for 30-45 mins, go to a special place (sometimes with time limit, sometimes like an adventure game where you have to find special items), a race of killing between you and your enemy etc.

The creators also demonstrate enormous creativity in designing 4 races with many differences between each other. Many heroes with various abilities. You use 11 of them and you can find very few similarities in their abilities. There are countless magic items and many neutral races.

All these are combined in such a beatiful way that avoid unnecessary complexity and micromanagement.

Furthermore:
New strategies are required by the player. Attacking with vast armies as in WC1, WC2, SC is not possible any more because of the rules of the game: Maximum 90 soldier units (Knight counts for 4, footmen for 2 etc.). With 71-90 you pay 60% of your gold mined. With 41-70 you pay 30% of your gold mined. Result: You have rather to organize your army not just to build vast armies.

The element of cooperation is also included. In 3 situations you have 1-2 computer allies. You cannot command their armies but you can realise their plans and help them (i.e. send your armies to attack when you see that your ally moves his troops).

Finally after many games one can realise the psychological impact. Movies and dialogs even during battle makes you to feel the situation. i.e. i)Kel'thuzad: "At last the mighty infernals are coming to our help" (4 infernals have just came from the sky) or ii)Arthas: "Hold my braves. This is the time of our victory" (you have to survive for 30 mins and remain only 2 but the massive attack of the enemy is due).

No doubt that the creators have though of everything and have fullfilled their task to create something we have never seen before.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A wonderful strategy game to revolutionize computer gaming.
Review: I purchased this game, Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos on July 3rd, the day it was released. I expected it to be wonderful like other Blizzard games, however I was pleasantly surprised at the attention to detail that Blizzard has put into it. If you are new to the World of Warcraft, the game is about a medieval-themed fantasy world in which several races exist battling for domination. The game-play is that of a real-time strategy game, one has to think quickly and in advance to slaughter the competition. This game appeals to a large age group, however is generally geared toward players from their teens up. (due to some animated violence and the complex thought involved in playing). Warcraft III has two main elements, a rich, bold, and exciting single player campaign filled with an intricate plot and stunning cinematics as well as a free online multi-player strategy network second to none. The highlight, in my opinion is the online aspect of Warcraft III, dubbed "Battle.net" which accurately describes the premise of the online gameplay. On Battle.net there are also several types of games to choose from, single player mêlée games (facing anonymous players world-wide), multiplayer team games (fighting exciting battles with friends) and custom games. (In the custom games the sky is the limit, there is such a plethora of diversity among custom game types that one could play forever.) Many games have exciting action and enjoyable gameplay, however Warcraft III is unique in the computer-gaming world, it has a tremendous replay value, it is hard (at least for me and all the players I know) to ever stop playing. The online element of Warcraft III is a secure, anonymous network in which the player creates a special alias to play warcraft, this protects the computer of the user as well as the user's privacy. As I mentioned earlier, there are different races involved in the wonder of Warcraft III. Four Unique Races armed with distinctive units, magical abilities, and weapons of war face each other in brutal and extremely fun combat. Each race is carefully balanced to have equal advantages and disadvantages when playing other adversaries. In addition, the 3D engine is wonderful, it shows a vivid, third-person vantage point which looks marvelous. Unlike some similar games, Warcraft III does not require a supercomputer to run, although it does look better with a good video card. The requirements are as follows:

-- 400 MHz Pentium II or equivalent
-- 128 MB of RAM
-- 8 MB 3D video card (TNT, i810, Voodoo 3, Rage 128 equivalent or better) with DirectX® 8.1 support
-- 700 MB HD space
-- 4X CD-ROM drive

Something I neglected to mention is the awesome map editor included with Warcraft III. The feature-packed editor allows the users to create their own adventures and games to play solo or online with friends. Blizzard entertainment also provides excellent customer support, should the need for it ever arise from such a well-designed game. So all-in-all, Warcraft III is a genre-defining game. With it's stunning graphics, never-ending gameplay, fast-paced strategy, and unique theme, it is a must-have for avid gamers or computer newcomers alike. Have fun! :-D

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Good Game Yet Confusing to Starcraft fanatics
Review: A good game which I had difficulty to adjusting to since there are many confusing options. As I progressed through single player (and beat it) I fell in love with the game. I enjoyed the deep class system , and warious options and special abilities. Yet the only thing that made me score it 4 stars is that I miss the simplicity of Starcraft... Definetly a must buy!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Dramatic Next Step for Blizzard
Review: I've played Blizzard games for almost 10 years--beginning with the first Warcraft way back as an undergrad when my friends and I would get a case of beer for every 1-2 people, hook up our computers in the house and play for an entire weekend. The game was incredibly challenging, but like the rest of the real-time strategy games from Blizzard since then, after a while the game turned into a contest of who could move their mouse the fastest, crank out as many units as possible, and win a war of attrition.

Warcraft 3 combines the incredibly addictive and challenging features of the first 2 Warcrafts and Starcraft with the hero development of Diablo I & II, stunning new graphics that fully exploit the power of DirectX 8.1, and new gameplay features to produce what will be the next generation of real time strategy games. In Warcraft III, you must still be fast, anticipate (or engage in) the "rush", and build units quickly, but the Upkeep restriction that taxes your productive capacity as your army gets bigger requires you to think about strategic moves two and three steps ahead.

Additionally, you must fight "neutral" races and creatures for new gold mines and can also fight them for mercenaries for hire, level-ups and enhancements for your hero. There is an incredible complexity to the possible strategies while a simplicity in execution that the old versions of WC and SC didn't provide. The AI of the creatures means that you don't have to continually re-focus your forces on the enemy when one gets killed, but you still have to be in charge of every battle.

Battle.net for WC3 is dramatically improved, and you don't have to spend an hour just finding people to play with (if you don't have a group already set up) because Battle.net does it for you.

Blizzard has mutated from a "game shop" to an "entertainment" company--the one-player campaigns are as much fun as playing against human opponents and more fun than watching a video. And, the night elves KICK [tush]!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Amazing!!! Such a terrific game
Review: Probably inspired by Lord of the Rings the Warcraft series has amazed all the computer gamers, and this is no exception.

This game has got to be the coolest, most awesome and best strategy game ever made. The four races you get to control (humans, orcs, night elves and undead) are completely different from each other and are well balanced. The units you build/train to attack and defend are very different fom one another. You can build casters(necromansers, clerics, shamans, etc), you can build ground units(grunts, footmen, archers, etc), you can build flying units( gryphon raiders, hippogryph raiders, wyverns, etc), you can also build siege units to attack from distance ( mortar team, catapults, etc) and many other more.And one of the best features of this game is that you can control some units called heroes, that level up, get more powerful, learn new spells and improve them, and get items. They are almost as good as the characters of Diablo II!! T

The graphics may be just little square but the game itself trully makes up for it.

My favorite thing about this game is the online multiplayer mode, in which you can play with persons from all over the world for free. You battle them, ally them, be their friend and form clans and fight together, fight each other, make tournaments or make wars agains other clans. Another feature of the online multiplayer mode is the costume game, in which you can play with other people's maps edited or made by them, or play mini games actually made by them, or even you! It's like playing Mario Party or bits of other games! Some of my favorite of the mini games are Sheep tag; in which the sheeps have to build farms and run away from the evil shepards and the shepards have to catch them, I also like a game called helm's deep, from LOTR: TT (just like the movie) in which one team are the orcs and one team is Rohan. Rohan has to protect Helms Deep using human/elven armies using edited heroes of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. And there will be even more mini games in the future.

It is extremly entertaining.This game is fabulous and if you dont buy it you'll seriously regret it. I'm almost sure that this'll be the game of the year

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: wise words of warcraft
Review: ... you can go into different fantasy worlds,such as the orcs and the haunted undead and the humans and the last one ancient night elfs.The 3D buildings and warriors make the game more enjoyable.This game is challenging because some teams are stronger than others e.g. orcs.It is rated 11+ but i'm younger and can easily play it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hard work results in the best ever PC game
Review: Taking ideas from previous versions, similar games (i.e. startcraft), "Lord of the rings" and probably many other myths and legends, the Creators succeeded to build a game without a match.

Four unique races: Humans, Undeads, Orcs and Night elves with different but balanced strengths and weaknesses. 3 heroes per race with 4 special abilities each of them and few similarities between the 48 special abilities, 8-10 unit types per race, about 8 different buildings per race, countless special items which empower the heroes with new abilities and many neutral races and buildings demonstrate the creativity of the warcraft team.

Althougt the units and the buildings for different races are similar, there are various special features for many of them. Also they are suitable for each race (i.e. necromancer and graveyard for the undeads, musketeer and lumber mill for humans etc.) Although there are strong and weak units, every type of units can be the most suitable in dependence of the defences of the enemy army or fortress. But usually an effective attack or defence requires the combination of various units.

The superior graphics and the live dialogs are the first things which impress the player but what the player finds out later is much more important:

1)An interesting storyline based on an apocalyptic scenario, revealed gradually like a movie where you should not know what will happen next. The graphics and the dialogues are so real that you are feeling how important your task is.

2)Various types of tasks like i)destroy your enemy, ii)survive for 30-45 minutes, iii)A race of massacring between you and your enemy, iv)Fullfill a task without expecting reinforcements (or maybe expecting only few reinforcements) similar to an adventure game, with or without a time limit etc.

3)Enemies with various abilities and strategy.

All such things make the campaign very interesting and the player never feels bored. The basic rules of the game are:

1)Good strategy is better than building vast armies. This was the case in previous versions as well but now it becomes more important. You have a limit of 90 units (strong units can count even for 7). With more than 40 you are wasting the 30% of the gold you mine and with more than 70 you are wasting the 60%.

2)There is not a fixed way which leads to the victory. There are many but everyone of them is hard.

These rules exist not only in the campaign but also and in custom games. There are many maps where you can play custom games against 1-11 opponents. Each man for himself or in teams.
There is one more rule in both campaign and custom games: Heroes acquire experience, i.e. become more powerful as long as your army kills. Consequently in a custom game where every man plays against all the others, it is a really bad idea to stay doing nothing but waiting the others to kill each other. Soon or later you'll face an enemy with too powerful heroes and you'll have no chance against him.

There are various battlefields but the superior artificial intelligence and the various races, units etc. make every game unique even if the battlefield is always the same and your enemy(ies) is the computer. Ofcource a human enemy is much more unpredictable and the game supports multiplayer battles.

As overall impression I would say that the warcraft team succeeded in combining whatever one could imagine in a really beautiful way. Everything is important, micromanagement has been reduced as much as possible and no feature is overfocused. The result is a game without a match.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Definately Lives Up to Its Predecessors
Review: I wasn't too excited when Warcraft III first came out. After all, my computer had no prayer of running it. When I upgraded my machine in December 2002, this game came to mind. I bought it with high expectations, having played and loved the previous three (I include the Warcraft II Expansion Set). I was not disappointed.

This game has tons of pros. First, it's a visual treat. While the graphics aren't as stunningly realistic as C&C Generals, they are great for the fantasy theme of the game. Some people claim that they're cartoony, and I agree, but what's wrong with cartoons?

The sounds are also wonderful. You hear each wonderful crack of steel on steel during the fighting, the realistic falling of chopped-down trees, and there's always the great angry unit sounds Blizzard is famous for.

Gameplay is solid. There's a perfect mix of buildable and limited unit levels. The game requires strategy, which is more than I can say for some RTSs (Age of Empires).

The storyline is typical Blizzard: breathtaking. Full of twists, turns, and human drama. The cinematics, which are visually stunning, help further the well-written, detailed plot. My only gripe here is there aren't enough of them! I would have liked a second disk if it meant more cinematics.

The races are well balanced, with Blizzard taking a lesson from its previous success, Starcraft: Races don't have to be the same to be balanced. As great as the first three Warcrafts were, let's face it: The Orcs and Humans, aside from some spells, were the same species. Warcraft III breaks this chain.

So, why didn't I give it five stars? Warcraft III suffers from the current ugly RTS trend: each campaign is TOO DARN SHORT!!! Why is this?!? The longest Warcraft III campaign is nine missions! What happened to fifteen levels per campaign? Granted, the previous Warcrafts had ten levels per campaign, but why so short? Are we afraid to have two disks? At least Frozen Throne is out now, to help remedy this problem, but that doesn't excuse this ugly, ugly trend.

Aside from that, and the fact that I personally suck at Battle.net, Warcraft III is perfect. I would recommend it to anyone who appreciates a rich, shocking storyline and solid gameplay. Three more levels a race and it would have five stars.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Want to see something real scary? Then read these reviews.
Review: I feel compelled I suppose to bunk some of the other reviews that have been posted for Frozen Throne. The one's that state "this game will rock" I need not say anything about, cause you already know to take them with a grain of salt. But for the one's that are written by actual beta testers (like myself), I need to update you on the facts, and correct some mistakes.

First off, it's hard to really rate or give a knowledgeable review of Frozen Throne because those of us that are beta testers are only getting to see the multi-player, on-line aspect of the game. There will also be an extension to the storyline of WC3, of which we can only guess at until the game is out. To give a really in-depth review of the whole game, a person would need the complete expansion.

Another thing that I find upsetting is that one of the reviewers has gotten a lot of helpful votes, just for the simple fact that people don't know whether he's correct or not. His review would have been appropriate when he wrote it. He wrote his review in March, and the game has made some drastic changes since then. So, for example, saying that Orc Batriders are overpowered is no longer applicable. To be honest, people rarely use them anymore.

Also, there is no Night Elf hero that can change Day into Night. That is an item that the Night Elves can buy from their own specific shop. To explain this, each race has the ability to build their own shop, which is very inexpensive at the moment, from which they can buy items, such as scroll of town portals, heath potions, etc. Each race has certain item specific to them. Like the Night Elf item to change the time of day or the Undead item called a Wand of Necromancy that can summon 2 skeletons from a corpse. But for some reason Blizzard decided to give Undead that item, but take away the Wand of Negation from the Original WarCraft 3. I haven't understood that move (taking away the Wand of Negation) since the beta started.

There are many other changes as well, but if I was to try and list them all, it would take me quite a while. Just rest assured that Blizzard has done a bang up job of not only making it feel like an expansion, but also adding the excitement back to when we first got WarCraft 3 and got to try out all the "new" stuff. And if I listed them all, I would take away some of the excitement of when you first pop it in and play it yourself.

Okay now that I got that off my chest, my opinion on FT so far is that it is fantastic! Bear in mind that I am only reviewing this game from the multi-player, on-line, battle.net aspect of it; I have no idea what the storyline will be to the game.

Veterans to WC3 will find some very interesting changes in Frozen Throne. While still not complete, the game seems to be reaching its home stretch. Blizzard does an excellent job of fixing balance issues, as many WC3 players already know. So that's why it was not a good idea for someone to post in March on how powerful certain units were, because Blizzard has since fixed that issue and it's no longer true. Recently they changed it so that you can get Wyverns at tier 2 now, but whether or not that will stay in the final edition, I can't say.

I personally give the game 5 stars because it excels at what I loved about WC3 so much. The on-line aspect. In all my years of gaming I don't remember a game that has pulled me in as much as WC3 has, and now Frozen Throne.

There is however a nice learning curve. Even if you are very good at WC3, you will run into some bumps in the road with Frozen Throne. But this is to be expected with new units, new heroes, new buildings and new creeps. Be warned though, a lot of the newer creeps are very, very tough and are not to be fought unless you have quite a few units. I say this mostly in the vain hope that I don't get to hear "our alley's hero has fallen" to creeps. So don't say I didn't warn you, he, he.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Maybe I was expecting too much, but I liked Warcraft II much better. I don't care for Battlenet because then the game is no longer a strategy game and becomes a race to produce fighting units. In Warcraft3 I finished the Human campaign, played a couple of chapters of the Undead Campaign, and lost interest on the game. The main problems that I have with this game are the following:
1 - Resource management is not as critical as in previous Warcraft and Starcraft games
2 - The Heroes are just too powerfull and over power anything else. No longer you need a nice balanced force.
3 - There are no water units, which added more strategic depth in Warcraft II
4 - Air units are kind of wimpy
5 - They switched from the Apple media player to the Microsoft one, which does not run in older machines
6 - A lot of compatibility issues with CD-ROM drivers

I was very disappointed by this Warcraft game. I recommend instead "Imperialism" for those who enjoy extreme resource management and strategic planning.


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