From my brief (10 minutes) of watching it being played, I would say that if you like Starcraft, you'll like this game just as much or more.

i ordered the collector's edition through samgoody.com. the msrp is $79.95, they listed it at $74.95. when i added it to my cart, i got another 10% off bringing it down to $67.50. for an extra $8 you get the book, dvd, and such. you get an action figure too...

Ok, Warcraft III adds one more playable race (4 instead of Starcraft's three) but it is a lot more versatile. It also adds hero units, which can gain experience, and with that special powers. There are three hero types per race. There is an unadjustable food limit of 90 per map. The fighting units range in food consumption from 2 points to 5 points. The heros can be more. So, at most you could have 45 of the cheapest fighting unitsl... that is if you don't have any collector units. The newest addition is the upkeep limit. It depends on how much food you are using. If you have less than 40 (I am not exactly sure about the numbers) then there is no upkeep, but if you have between 40 and 70 then you have low upkeep and your collector units don't produce as much gold or lumber (gold gos down to 7, lumber I don't know) and if you have 70 to 90 units you have high upkeep; gold to 4. It can be very annoying trying to rebuild your forces if you have only been collectin 4 gold per collector unit. Other than that it plays pretty much the same as Starcraft. Oh, you can upgrade your main building, like the Zurg could in Starcraft. Now all the races can do it. You can check out www.blizzard.com/war3/ to find the system requirements.

-CM

Just to add a few things:

Lumber isn't affected by upkeep. And I think they even mention somewhere that you should actively seek out other resources to counteract the effects of upkeep. If you have two gold mines when you hit low upkeep, you are making more money than you would have with 1 mine under no upkeep.

All heroes are 5 food, and there is a special building dedicated to summoning and reviving those. If you played a bit of Starcraft, you shouldn't have trouble using any of the races, as their buildings and units mix and match different characteristics form the units in Starcraft. For example, the Undead are like the Zerg, in that they need to build their buildings on special ground; but they're also like the Protoss, in that you and summon a building, then forget about it - the builder can go on and do other things. The night elves have buildings that can move, like the Terrans, and shield generator-like buildings that restore your units' health.

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About the single-player skirmish; yeah, I got trounced too. I'd chalk it up to my turtle-style of play (I'm afraid to attack until I have at least 50% of my tech researched and 25 defense buildings guarding my base), but the enemy's hero units are always a bit unnerving. They're always 5 or 6 levels above mine, and I read that you're only allowed to do the ultimate spell once a day; well I saw a Priestess of Moon do her Starfall attack 4 times in the span of 10 minutes. It was insane...

I'm going to play a skirmish with an allied AI next time, and see how they work.

The 'cooldown' time on the ultimate attacks is 120 seconds. This site: http://www.battle.net/war3/ has descriptions for all the units, and a little bit of strategy for them as well. I really learned a lot from checking it out. Still didn't help me on my single-player skirmish games though. Actually I lasted an hour yesterday, rather than the 10 minutes that it usually took.

-Chad

Sounds cool, thanks for the impressions and opinions people. I'm gonna pick it up (hopefully if I find a deal). .

I tried playing a Multiplayer game against the computer and they are alot smarter and faster than with Starcraft. With Starcraft I can easily take out 2 computer. With WC3 it took me a few times just to beat 1 computer.

That's true - I STILL haven't been able to beat any of the computers in a fair match. There is a bug though - the computers can't figure out they need to cut trees in order to make paths. There is one map divided into four quadrants, each blocked by trees. I was able to take out three computers,one by one, because the trees blocked their way. However, I feel that such a bug also shut off the AI, because the computer kept all their units in the back of the base - I was able to slash my way through half of the base before they even responded.

This sounds like what happened in Warcraft II with both trees and the walls. Kind of a cheap exploit to whoop up on the computer though.

As for deals on the game, I'm going to wait for the Sunday ads after the game comes out to figure out who has it on sale. Between Compusa, Best Buy and Circuit City, one of them should have it for a decent price.

I'll be ordering this from Amazon.com tonight 6-28), if anyone wants some love for this email me at: [email protected]

This game has no sea battles? There are no boats? I'm not seeing anything about boats... wtf

I miss the boats too. Damn.

Just got a hold of a copy of warcraft III. The game is awesome! No , I'm not lying. I have a connection to someone in Blizzard.
There is one scenario where at the end, you get into a boat. Not sure if you can actually fight in a boat though. I'm only up to the 3rd human scenario.

nope, no boat fighting.....you won't miss it at all.

I liked the pretty boats

I wondered why I never saw any at E3, now I know.

There is a scenario in the human campaign where you have to destroy some boats. Strange why they would remove it from the regular game.

Just a guess, but maybe they're saving it for the expansion pack?

-David

The more elements you have, the more complex the game is. True, the boats in WCII were ok, but with all of the stuff in this game, it would be difficult to keep up if you had to deal with boats too. Just look at Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. There are something like 4 or 5 resources to deal with... food, multiple crystal types, etc... I think that they get all carried away with the many types of buildings and don't focus on the units enough. In SWGB all of the unit types from race to race are pretty much the same. The only thing that makes the game fun is the ability to have Vader or Darth Maul, or Luke. Once I built a custom game with only 2 units, Yoda and Vader. Yoda didn't even have a saber, just his cane, and he defeated Vader! It was pretty cool. But you throw in all of those resources and buildings... especially the fact that you have to keep replenishing your farms, and you have to have a unit at each farm to collect the food. Also they give you 3 different methods of getting food... killing a beast and having your units run back and forth getting the meat, building a corral and getting the food from the animals without killing them, and building and cultivating farms. Anyway, WCIII is plenty of fun without boats. Has anyone tried the Sheep game? How about the Hero game?

-CM-

I know that I can find the minimum requirements for WCIII online, but as we all know these stats are *bare* minimum. What kind of requirements will I *really* need to play this game (with smooth gameplay)? Thanks

i have a p3 500 with 128mb ram and an ati radeon 64 ddr and it works pretty good for me @ 800x600. I haven't really tried 1024x768 though

Hey cool. That's almost what mine is. Just need to upgrade my Video card (still got 16 megs ), but other than that, it's the same. Sweet

ok I have played thru the orc and human campaigns and am now on the undead one.

I like the game

The main question is what comes after the undead campaign?

do you just play them on a harder setting?

I tried out the online play and won my first match- after looking at the replay my opponent(Shadow of Death ) just made a few orcs and sent them at me right away. I guess he was hoping for a quick win.

I beat the 4 of them and he gave up and quit the game

I finished playing out the map so that I could see everything on it anyway

Isn't the Dark Elf campaign next?

I started playing the campaigns on Hard, so I'm still stuck on Human 5 (caravan).

I haven't tried playing multiplayer yet.

So far, I'm undecided. I remember WC II and Starcraft being much more fun than this. Maybe after I finish this damn mission!

It also seems like they cribbed a bunch of stuff from Diablo 2.

-David

I'm really glad the boats aren't in this one. For some reason, I never got into the water aspect of Warcraft II. I guess I like to keep things more simple.

I am now on the last Nightelf mission. I started on normal difficulty and am really looking forward to some battle-net games.

This game is a serious amount of fun. playing against the computer is going to take a lot of strategy, they are so fast.

I also love that you can get other peoples saved games and watch their strategy.