Warcraft III Updated Preview

Since we last reported on Warcraft III, the game has undergone a significant number of changes. Last month, Blizzard announced that the number of races, which had already been pared down from six, was being cut from five to four. The demons would no longer be a playable race in the game, although they would remain the preeminent villains of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

Although the demotion of the demons from a playable race to a nonplayer character (NPC) race is the biggest change in Warcraft III so far, it is by no means the only change being made to a race. The remaining playable races have also been tweaked, especially now that play testing is yielding better game balance. First, though, we'll discuss some of the new features we saw since our last preview.

Work has been progressing normally on the rest of the game, however, and the other races are being balanced daily. Multiplayer functionality has allowed Lead Designer Rob Pardo and the rest of the team to test many aspects of the game, and only a few days ago the team played its first four-player match. The first campaign-style mission was also recently played, revealing that Warcraft III's development is well on its way to completion. Blizzard still maintains that the game is about six months from releasing, and the build we saw showed no signs of crashing, although quite a few elements, such as unit graphics and animation, were simply shown with placeholder art.

The environment graphics are really coming together, and the tilesets look beautiful. We saw the Lordaeron tileset, which consists of green plains, cliffs, lakes, and forests. However, Pardo also revealed that there will be seasonal variations to each tileset, so there will be a fall Lordaeron, summer Lordaeron, and so on. The fall Lordaeron tileset we replaced the green grass with a more brown color, and the trees are a mix of oranges, yellows, and reds instead of vibrant greens. The winter Lordaeron tileset has snow-covered trees and snowy hills. There will also be other environments, like the densely forested Ashen Vale tileset, which depicts the night elves' homeland and the wastelands of the barrens, although we didn't get to actually see these other tilesets.

We also saw peons chopping down trees. Although trees will no longer be a resource, they will remain as barriers that you'll have to cut down to move across. The animation of the peon chopping the tree was particularly impressive, as the tree shook its branches with each swing from the peon's ax. Pardo also revealed that there will be rock walls that can be cleared away on some terrain in a similar fashion.

Among the other terrain features that Pardo showed us was the dual-depth water. There is now shallow water, which units can wade across (with attendant ripples and splashes), in addition to the standard deep water, which is impassable. The shallow, passable water is welcome news, since Pardo also revealed that there will be no water units in Warcraft III. Even water transports, which were discussed briefly during development, have been scrapped. However, Pardo tells us that the plan has always been to not implement naval units in lieu of more tactical ground units and some air units.

A New Resource, More Creeps, and Magic Items

In addition to seeing new environments, we witnessed changes in the game mechanics. The first change we learned of was the introduction of a secondary resource: mana stones. Every race will still use gold as a primary resource to buy units, build structures, purchase upgrades, and buy resurrections, but mana stones will now be needed to recruit heroes and pay for high-end upgrades and spells. Mana stones will thus be a coveted resource, since you can't buy a hero or achieve your ultimate upgrades without them. However, getting them won't be as easy as mining gold. You'll find mana stones in only two places: the neutral building called the marketplace and on the bodies of creeps, which are hostile neutral creatures that wander the map. You'll get most of your mana stones from creeps, though. When you kill a creep, it will drop between a few to a dozen or more mana stones. For perspective, it will probably cost about 100 mana stones (in addition to an unspecified amount of gold) to buy a hero. A high-end upgrade will cost considerably more. You'll start each game with enough mana stones to buy one hero, but after that, you'll need to hunt down a few dozen creeps to buy more.

Creeps thus become an even more important part of every game; they not only give your heroes experience points when you kill them, but they also cough up precious mana stones. And once you kill all the creeps and get their mana stones, that's it. Creeps won't regenerate, so you won't be able to get any more mana stones. However, Pardo says that mana stones won't be as necessary a resource as gas is in Starcraft. After you pay for your high-end upgrades and your first few heroes, you won' t need to use mana stones anymore, since they aren't necessary for purchasing any regular units and since resurrecting heroes costs only gold, not mana stones.

The role of creeps is thus increased, and in many cases you will find camps of creeps guarding treasure, items, gold mines, and neutral buildings. Some of the new creeps include golems and ogres. Yes, the two-headed buffoons are back, although they look kind of small in comparison to units like the tauren chieftain. Goblins are shaping up to be major players in every game, as they'll control the marketplace, where you can get mana stones as well as magic items. You'll also be able to buy goblin zeppelins, which now act as air transports, as well as goblin sappers from the goblin merchants. Other neutral buildings we learned of include the sacrificial altar, which lets you kill units and convert them to experience points for the controlling hero and the tavern, where you can recruit creep heroes, like a special kobold or perhaps even an ogre mage. One thing we noted was that neutral buildings will be invulnerable to damage.

Blizzard is just now delving into creating the magic items that will be in the game. There will be various rings--rings of speed, protection, and regeneration--as well as potions. These potions include healing, invisibility, mana, and speed. Other magic items include boots of speed; tomes of experience, which instantly reward experience to the purchasing hero; and day and night stones. The day stone changes night into day and the night stone changes day into night. These last two items are important because some races benefit depending on the time of day. At night, for example, night elves automatically cloak and undead regenerate. There will be many more magic items than the ones mentioned above, indicating that items will play a major role in Warcraft III and will be highly coveted additions to any hero's inventory.

Heroes, Orcs, and Humans

The next most prominent change we learned of was that the number of heroes has been pared down. Now, each race will have four heroes, not six. In many cases, Pardo says that some heroes were overlapping with units, becoming redundant. In those cases, those heroes were demoted to units, or, in rarer cases, the unit was dropped in favor of the hero.

Pardo showed us the human side first, and we saw several human buildings and units. We learned that humans must build houses--not farms, as was the case in Warcraft II--to increase the population cap. We also noticed that the place where heroes are resurrected is the altar of kings. At the keep, which had been upgraded from a town hall, we saw that the four heroes for hire were the archmage, paladin, mountain king, and ranger. The crusader has been dropped, because it apparently overlapped with the knight. Indeed, the knight now uses the crusader's art and animation, including the flag-tipped lance and longsword. In all the demos of Warcraft III thus far, we have yet to see any air units for the human side. However, now that Blizzard has decided to forgo any water units, Pardo says the team believes that it needs to beef up the air combat in Warcraft III. Thus, each side will have at least two air units, and there will also be air transports in the form of goblin zeppelins. On the human side, there will be a dwarven gyrocopter, which will be a bomber unit. There probably will also be an elven flier, mounted on some flying creature, which will be a superior air combatant.

The orc side has also undergone some changes. Their four heroes are the blade master, far seer, shadow hunter, and tauren chieftain. The spiritwalker is now the shaman unit. Although the shaman now has the look of the spiritwalker, it still has the abilities of the shaman, not the spiritwalker. The other former orc hero, the warlord, has been dropped and will not reappear as a unit, although Pardo suggested that the warlord might show up as a unique hero. We did learn some new information about the remaining orc heroes. The shadow hunter, for example, carries wards on his back, which are totems that he can drive into the ground. He uses these totems to cast wards, spells that affect the surrounding area. Two of his ward abilities are grim ward, which resurrects dead troops to fight for you, and null ward, which negates all magic in the area. Two of the tauren chieftain's abilities are ancestral guardian, which summons a floating ball of light that is a controllable unit and fights for you; and command aura, which increases the attack of surrounding units. As for buildings, the place where orcs resurrect their heroes is called the altar of storms, while their population cap buildings are huts, not houses.

Demons and Undead

The loss of the demon race was met with disappointment by fans who have followed the game's development, but Pardo explained, "We thought that the demons would be better as an NPC race." The demons have always been envisioned as the ultimate villains of the game, raining fiery death on the other races from above. Pardo was concerned that having to build in low-level functionality for the demons, such as low-level units and a beginning tech tree, would detract from the aura and mystery of the demon race and thus result in less-impressive villains. Now, says Pardo, "We can make them as powerful as we want. They'll be like demigods." He says that work had already begun on many units on the demon side and that we'll see six to seven demon units in the game. The only catch is you won't be able to play them; you'll have to fight them instead. We did discover, though, that the demons will be exposed in the map editor, so you will be able to create custom scenarios that let you play these ultrapowerful demon units.

Demons remain the core villains of the game, but the undead, who are loosely allied with the Burning Legion, is also an evil race bent on destroying the other sides in Warcraft III. And it has undergone significant changes already. It will no longer use corpses exclusively as its resource. Instead, corpses will now be a major component of nearly all its spells but will not be used in lieu of gold to buy units or upgrades. Pardo says that corpses will still be important to undead players, but for their special abilities, not as currency. For instance, the necromancer will have three spells to cast: summon skeleton archer, summon skeleton warrior, and corpse explosion, a la Diablo II. Each of these spells will require corpses, either as ammunition or the reagent for creating a unit. The frost wyrm unit, for example, will also be borne from corpses, while ghouls will be able to regenerate hit points by feeding on corpses. With corpses still playing such a big role in the undead armies, the banshee unit will have an ability called dirge, which stops corpse decay as long as she keeps singing.

Now that corpses are no longer part of the undead economy, the undead will be using gold instead, just as the other races do, to build structures, buy units and upgrades, and so forth. However, how the undead mines gold still remains to be seen. In addition, the necromancer, who used to cast all the spells to create the unit-producing buildings, is no longer the centerpiece of the undead tech tree. He is now just a skeleton-summoning unit, not a hero. Thus, the undead tech tree is also changing and might not be a result of major spellcasting after all. Pardo gave no word, though, on what the final undead tech tree or building model would be.

Like the other races, the undead now have only four heroes: the lich, abomination, dread lord, and death knight. The necromancer, as mentioned previously, is now a spellcasting unit, not the central figure in the undead economy. The crypt lord, formerly a female hero, is now a male unit that will have a role similar to that of the Starcraft reaver, launching spider hatchlings that infest enemy units. The antipaladin has been renamed the death knight, and the death knight as a unit is no more. We learned little else about the undead, as this side is still undergoing much fluctuation.

Night Elves, Multiplayer, and Final Thoughts

The night elf race is the latest one announced by Blizzard, and already some of the most recent information we have on this race is now obsolete, as Blizzard often changes gameplay and game balance during development.

We reported a few months ago that the night elves will have ents, which are peon-type units, and treants, which are the buildings that ents can grow into. However, Pardo informed us that the ents are no more. Night elf buildings will still be massive treants that can uproot themselves and act as units when they aren't fulfilling their role as buildings. However, instead of ents, the night elves will have wisps, which are glowing balls of light that are the dead spirits of night elves. These wisps are the basic units of the night elves, although they aren't used as peons or peasants. Instead, when you want to build a structure, you click on the wisp, and it descends into the ground. From that spot, a treant grows into the building you specify. As for how night elves will mine gold without any peon-type unit, Pardo says that the tree of life, the night elf equivalent of the town hall, will mine its own gold without the need for peons. When acting as buildings, the treant buildings are called ancients, but when uprooted, they become slow-moving but powerful treants and have the same hit points in unit form that they have in building form.

The four heroes for the night elf side are the keeper of the grove, the demon hunter, the priestess of the moon, who flies atop a giant owl, and the archdruid. The abilities of the priestess of the moon include twilight, a spell that turns day into night; searing light, an undead attack spell; moon glow, a soft light that reveals cloaked and invisible units; and true shot aura, which gives a bonus to all nearby units' ranged attacks. The keeper of the grove has the strangle vine spell, which creates an area of vines that immobilize and damage caught units; and the nature's touch spell, which can defoliate an entire forest of trees or regrow an entire forest of stumps.

Of the night elf units, we saw the archer, which is the beginning unit on the night elf side, as well as the assassin, flying hippogryph unit, the sentinel, and dryad. The dryad, which we haven't mentioned before, seems weak in comparison to the other units. It's like a centaur unit, with the lower body of a horse and the torso of a woman. Plus, it has a ranged attack. Most of the night elf units excel at ranged attacks, although a few, like the demon hunter hero with its double-sided blades in each hand, do have good melee attacks.

As we wrapped up our overview of the different races completed, Pardo did manage to reveal some plans for Warcraft III multiplayer support, especially since the team has already engaged in many multiplayer battles. The official ladder system will now have anonymous matchmaking. When you play a ladder game, you won't be able to create a game, but the system will create it for you. Before the game starts, you'll be matched with an anonymous player of roughly your same skill level. Those who join in a ladder game won't be able to see who is already in the game. Blizzard hopes that the system will result in balanced matches and let players of similar skill play rather than be ambushed by ladder bottom-feeders trying to hide their skill level.

When asked about an official release date, Pardo said that Warcraft III is on track to release in six months. Apart from a few crashes and placeholder art, we saw a game that looks great and is keeping pace to hit this release date. Plus, Blizzard's ideas for the game are shaping up quite nicely. We will keep you informed of more updates and information as this anticipated game gets closer to release.