WarCraft Millennium

Warcraft III Info

One of the questions I get asked a lot is "Where can I download Warcraft 3?" In short, you cannot. Warcraft III is a retail game made by Blizzard, and can be purchased at almost any computer store that sells software. Currently, Warcraft III is available in two versions - the collectors edition, which should be about $75, and includes a nifty cinematics DVD, art book, and prints, and the standard version, which just comes with cd + manual, which should run about $55 right now.

The gameplay of Warcraft III is similar to Starcraft, but is also very different in some ways. Most noticable is the addition of heroes into Warcraft III. Each player can control up to three heroes (depending on the level of their central town building) which possess abilities making them far stronger than any other unit in the game. The more foes your hero kills, the more experience your hero gains. As your hero levels up, he may also level up his spells and abilities. Heroes are an integral part of Warcraft III, and it is virtually impossible to win without a hero (or two) against a worthy opponent.

Another difference between Starcraft and Warcraft III is the concept of smaller, more effective attack forces. In Warcraft III, you are limited to 90 food consumption, as opposed to Starcraft's 200 max food limit. Further, in Warcraft III, at certain levels of food consumption, you start to experience upkeep. This means that you only take in, for example, 70% of the gold and lumber that you harvest (low upkeep), or 40% of the gold and lumber that you harvest (at high upkeep). This forces you to strike a balance between resource management and having a standing army. As such, there is much more strategy involved in Warcraft III.

Finally, Warcraft III has much better graphics than any previous Blizzard game. While the graphics may not be as good as Aquanox, they are certainly much more taxing on the video card than Starcraft or Diablo 2 / LOD. War3 supports resolutions up to 1600x1200x32, and allows you to select levels of detail as well. If you have an old video card (or a cheap video card that was the default packaged with your system), I would recommend considering a video card upgrade prior to purchasing Warcraft III. If you have anything older / slower than a GeForce2 MX or MX 400, the game may well be unplayable at worthwhile resolutions (800x600+), especially when a large number of units are on-screen. People have successfully played with a Voodoo3 3000 AGP, but even that is pushing it. If you have a GeForce3, you should be fine with at least 1280*1024, also probably 1600*1200 depending on the level of detail selected and the other specs of your computer (as well as the type of GeForce3). If you have a GeForce4, you should be fine for 1600*1200 gameplay, and if you have a GeForce4 Ti 4600, go ahead and enable 4x FSAA (force it in the driver advanced options).

For those of you looking for a page with a bunch of pictures of units, their statistics, build times, and so forth - I actually started work on info pages for the races, but I stopped after I realized that it would never be anywhere as thorough as Blizzard's own version. On many webpages you will see a table with unit costs and general descriptions, and I may well finish mine off just for the hell of it, but the fact is that none of them are anywhere near as compete as Blizzard's copy. Links follow: For neutral units, go here, for Humans, go here, for Orcs, go here, for Night Elves, go here, and for undead, go here. Click Heroes and Units at the top of any of the sections and you will get more information than you could possibly dream of.