A Diablo Player's Look at the WarCraft 3 Beta - Griselda

First of all, I must admit that this is the first RTS game that I've played, and without Single Player mode, I've had to learn what I can about the game from online games, mostly vs. people I didn't know. So, instead of comparing WC3 to WC2 or StarCraft, I'm going use what I know- Diablo. At this point, Blizzard has not announced another game in the Diablo world, and I think a lot of the elements of WC3 demonstrate that they're trying to draw Diablo players into the WC world; to merge their fanbases into one. This is obviously the case with World of WarCraft, but I can see evidence of this as I play WarCraft 3.

General Notes

Heroes

There are many aspects of WC3 that will be instantly familiar to Diablo players. The leader of your army is a "Hero," who can level up, wear items, read books, and cast spells ("abilities" in WC3-speak). Many of the spells, such as Blizzard ;) may look familiar as well. Each race has three different types of heroes, and you can have up to one of each hero type. The hero has three attributes:

Strength, which increases attack rating and hitpoints,
Intellect, which increases mana and mana regeneration, and
Agility, which increases defense rating and move speed.

These attributes increase on levelup, but you don't get to choose where to put the points. Each hero type's point distribution is fixed, but you can find items that increase a stat while worn, and tomes that increase a stat permanently. You can also choose which abilities to focus on as your hero levels, and decide how many heroes to train. Heroes don't stay with you from game to game, so the maximum level a hero can reach is 15 (so far, I haven't gotten close to that), and the skill selection is much more sparse than in Diablo 2. But, the strongest ability available to your hero, their "ultimate" ability, can be learned at level 5. Since you can only put one point into your ultimate ability (the rest max out at three), many players have been choosing to wait until their first hero is level 5 to train a second hero. The heroes divide experience from a kill if they're close to the battle. Some of the abilities are auras, which, like D2, affect all units within range.

Creeps

Creeps are monsters that are generated by the game, and are hostile to all players. You can see their type and their levels, as well as any auras, when you get close enough. They can supposedly be from levels 1-9, but I don't usually see creeps above level 7 (can't remember seeing one higher, but maybe they appear on a tougher map). Generally, each "starting point" will have a few low-level creeps guarding the roads out. Gold mines tend to have only a few low level creeps, and "house" type places seem to have the toughest ones (once again, this will vary depending on the map you're using). So, it's fairly easy for a young adventuring team to take out the creeps from nearby gold mines and begin expanding. At night, when the creeps are asleep, it is possible to sneak around them and use the buildings that they are guarding.

Some of the "typical" creeps you will find around a gold mine (note- you can't see all of their descriptions at once)

 

A typical drop from the gold mine creeps.

 

You will want to have access to the "houses" on the map because (depending on the house type) you can buy items and hire mercenaries. You can also find fountains that heal your units. But, if you kill the creeps around a building, then your opponent can use the building too, unless you guard it.

 

You can expect to find guys like these guarding the "houses" on the map. Shh! Don't wake them!

One of the most important items that you want to be able to buy is the Town Portal scroll. A town portal will let you teleport your hero, and its party, to any of your Town Halls. This means that your hero can be out gaining levels (or attacking your enemy, of course), but still only a TP away from defending a town should the need arise. Knowing that you have a TP handy can help you resist the temptation to turtle. Each hero starts out with one TP scroll.

Welcum to the Temple of Boom! Creeps can also have auras, and the aura enchanted creep surrounded by a pack of lower-level creeps is reminiscent of a D2 aura enchanted boss mob.

 

But, they drop better stuff than the little guys. :)

Shifting from Diablo to WarCraft 3

I think the hardest thing for me to adjust to as a RTS newbie is getting used to having several different things happening at once. This may sound obvious, but in Diablo, if your sorceress is fighting Hephasto, Diablo doesn't sneak out and attack the Pandemonium Fortress (wouldn't that be an interesting twist!). I find it very hard to resist the temptation to both micro-manage and do only one thing at a time before starting something else. For me, RTS is a whole new way of thinking (at least while playing video games), and, while I know where I tend to make mistakes, fixing them seems to be easier said than done. Just watching your gold build up if you're a little bit short for what you want to build/train can be tempting, but this can add up to a lot of wasted time.

I know that I spend way too much time just gathering my army before I set out. One way to avoid this is to put your "rally point" onto your hero. You can set a rally point for each building, and newly trained units from that building will automatically head to the rally point after they're created. If the rally point is your hero, they will continue to follow your hero, even if you haven't had a chance to (or don't want to) put them in your hero's "group". One drawback, though, is that you have to trust your units to use their own pathfinding and find your hero safely. I will need to test this further, but I think that the rally point functions like the "move" command- units will continue to move to the rally point even if they are being attacked. They may also move right through hostile territory, if that's the shortest way to your hero.

Also, how closely do you want to watch your hero when the army is out exploring/creep killing? I tend to be either focused on the army or focused on the town/towns, and I need get better at being both places at once. I hear that WC3 is supposed to put more focus on micro-management, when compared to other RTS games, but, as a Diablo player, I need to remind myself to keep track of the big picture. On the other hand, we may be better prepared to play an RTS that requires careful targeting of spells and attention to other such details.

It's also tricky for me to adjust to the idea of attacking my friends!

As a Diablo player, I also can't resist the fun of item hunting. :) There are not as many items in the game, but here are some fun ones that I found while I was taking the screenshots for this report:

Variants

With the availability of 3 different heroes per race, ability selection, plus ground and air attack and defense, I think that there will be ample room for us to explore variant builds, at least in private games. The main hurdle, as I see it, will be to maintain both surprise and balance. This can be a great opportunity for two players to play the same variant against each other, and compare notes afterwards. I think that team variants are also promising. As Diablo players, we have lots of experience playing cooperatively. Let's use that to our advantage!

Also, testing a variant can be done in several relatively short games; we will no longer need to play our variants through to Hell difficulty to find out how they do. Restarting a variant to try a different strategy is also much easier in WarCraft! :)

That's about it for this time around. I hope to be adding more stuff as I learn new things, play new races, or take some interesting screenshots.

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