Introduction

Sleep? Who needs it?

We’ve experienced another Blizzard beta release, and yet again, I have suffered a ridiculous decline in the time I allocate to other unimportant tasks, like sleeping. We’ve put the beta through its paces here at FS, going the extra mile and putting in plenty of out-of-office hours on the game. You must all be weeping with sympathy for us hard-working folks.

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the last week, Blizzard recently opened the beta test for WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, its upcoming real time strategy game. 5,000 randomly selected testers, as well as perhaps another several hundred members of the press, and friends of Blizzard are playing the beta, which has all the game’s units and races, but is only playable over Battle.net, Blizzard’s proprietary matchmaking system. Single player games and LAN play is not enabled at this time.

Starting out

The castle is animated

B.net interface

Battle.net makeover

The first thing we noticed upon loading the game is that the interface for logging into and navigating around Battle.net has gotten a facelift. Windows appear to be suspended on metal chains, and you can see smoke and fire churning behind the semi-transparent chat window. There are several new functions (currently grayed out). One of those is “arranged team” which allows you to create a prearranged team and be matched up against another team. No more setting up games and kicking out people who join up before your friends can connect to your match. There’s also a tournament button for entering one-day tourneys organized by Blizzard. A friends and clan list/finder allows you to keep track of which friends of yours are online, and where they are in Battle.net, whether it’s in-game or in a private channel. The GUI functionality for this is unavailable now, but you can still manage and see your friends via the command line.

Perhaps most important is the automatic game matchmaker. You can still go through a list of available games that players have created, but if you would prefer a faster method, the random matchmaker automatically seeks out players looking for the same settings you specify. For example, you can say you want to play a 2 on 2 match on the Golems in the Mist map. Battle.net will search out 3 other players of approximately equal skill who also want to play a 2 on 2 on that map, and throw all of you into the game immediately. You won’t know the race of your opponents until you meet them in battle. When the Ladder is implemented (stats are not available in the beta yet either), random match making will be the only way you can play for rank. This will prevent some forms of cheating, like creating dummy characters to automatically lose to your primary handle or avoiding players who play a certain race, etc.

Undead use Acolytes to mine and Ghouls to chop

Get to work!

The engine can zoom in close...pretty!

Teamplay

If you choose to join a game using the old StarCraft method, WarCraft III now allows you to set teams before the game launches. That way, your allies and shared vision (ability to see what your teammates see) are set automatically and you’re not frantically clicking through the interface to set teams when the game starts. As all hardcore RTS players know, efficiency in the first couple minutes is absolutely critical. Other teamplay enhancements include the ability to share units if you choose, (teammates can control the soldiers you build) and transfer gold and wood over to your teammates.

Blizzard even went so far as to allow players to automatically control teammate units and buildings in the event one of your allies drops out of the game before it’s over (voluntarily or due to network difficulties). Your dropped teammate didn’t even have to have shared units and resources set. It’s actually possible to win a 2 on 3 or 1 on 2 match now that you can take advantage of your departed teammate’s unit producing facilities and army. The odd thing is that his remaining gold and wood isn’t transferred over to you. The dropped teammate’s army still maintains a separate “bank” that you can use to build units out of his structures, but you cannot see how much money “he” has left in his bank.