Graphics

Yes it’s pretty

WarCraft III is Blizzard’s first attempt at a fully 3D engine. StarCraft and Brood War were among the last of the great 2D RTS games, restricted to a 640x480 resolution with a 256 color palette. Though SC and BW are still played extensively today, Blizzard has fallen behind other RTS game developers in terms of graphics. Blizzard felt the pressure to move ahead with the times, and thus the change to 3D. WarCraft III’s engine is undeniably gorgeous, featuring detailed units and heroes on screen with many frames of animation. Hero units can be fairly large onscreen, with their weapons giving off a subtle colored glow to help distinguish them on the battlefield. Aerial units cast shadows on the ground underneath, and hug the contours of the terrain. You can zoom the screen in for a better look at unit detail, but this is impractical from a control standpoint – the default viewpoint is as zoomed out as the game will allow. No rotation of the screen is allowed, unfortunately.

It's night...the creeps are asleep

Kill them anyway for goodies

Tomes of Experience are important in early game

Each of the four races has a unique look and feel that extends through the interface. The framing of the interface components as Humans features a chiseled stone look; the Night Elves sport a woodsy, leafy foliage; Orcs have a rough hewn wood/metal/horn combination, while the Undead have a skull/bone/metal motif. It’s a subtle detail, but one that adds to the atmosphere as you play. The uniqueness extends also to the building art and manner in which each of the race’s units are animated. The Elves have a more fluid grace than other races in the way they move about, with the Wisps floating around, and Huntresses and Archers gliding across the map. The Orcs, who emphasize raw power over speed, move in a more lumbering fashion, punctuated by thundering footsteps from their bigger units like the Taurens and Kodo Beasts.

Spell effects in the game feature good use of lighting and particles to distinguish them from one another. Seeing an Arch-Mage cast a Blizzard spell seems to be a good deal more intimidating than it was in WarCraft II because of the huge size of the ice blocks falling from the sky. Plague Clouds spread by the Undead Abominations engulf enemy units in a sickly green haze. The Tauren Chieftain’s Shockwave spell visibly distorts the ground underneath units as it moves in its linear path.

Rampaging in a Night Elf town

They're back. The Elves should win this fight easily

And they are

But at what price?

Right now the beta hasn’t been optimized for performance, and Blizzard claims that as the beta moves forward, lower end systems will eventually be able to play. As it stands right now, the game is somewhat of a resource hog. You’re allowed to tweak the resolutions from 640x480x16 on up to 1600x1200x32. Initially I tried playing at 1024x768x32 with unit detail, animation, lighting, and particles all turned up to max. This proved to be rather laggy in terms of performance on our test systems, even an Athlon 1.1GHz, 256MB RAM, GeForce 2 GTS. Knocking the color depth down to 16 bit improved performance greatly, with an unnoticeable decrease in image quality.

Even at 16 bit, with most of the settings turned up, things slow down, especially in team matches when multiple armies clash in battle, 30+ units pile up on screen, and particle laden spell effects fly left and right. The performance issues have an effect on gameplay, at least among the more skilled players who need to carefully aim their spells and micromanage their units in battle. WarCraft III may represent the first time I ever upgraded my computer to play an RTS.