This game is very special to me.
I'd played Starcraft before, but this was the first strategy game I really put a significant amount of time into, and the first game I ever took competitively. I didn't enter tournaments, but with the addition of its ranked ladders, something unheard of at the time, I threw myself into this game and grinded it for literal years.
The game's balance was solid, and the strategies were varied and interesting, especially in 2v2 formats.
That said, it wasn't just a game to be enjoyed competitively. Warcraft III truly was a complete package. The story and campaigns were solid, with top notch cinematics and voice acting for the time.
However all of this pales in comparison to the custom maps. Yes, I know I'm saying basically all of the game didn't stack up to its own custom maps, but honestly that's the truth. As amazing as this game was, the map editing tools the game offered dwarfed it a hundredfold. Blizzard basically gave every player dev tools to create their own games then made a battlenet that facilitated sharing and playing those maps. Any player could create a map, boot up a lobby, and the game would automatically make any player entering that lobby download the map, allowing for quick and easy access to any and all maps that interested you.
These were not basic maps though. The access to game tools allowed players to significantly alter the game, leading to all sorts of custom games, like Vampyre (A more in depth game of mafia), Tower Defenses, RPG campaigns, Angel Arenas, and of course the birth of the entire MOBA genre: Aeons of Strife. You thought I would say DOTA, but it went through several iterations, like Aeons of Strife and Tides of Blood, before finally becoming the DOTA we know and love today and spawning an entire e-sports genre.
And these were just a few of the many, many maps created constantly. There were entire clans dedicated to developing new maps. In fact, I helped develop a Warhammer based MOBA in these custom maps.
To this day, there is nothing to my knowledge that comes even close to what Warcraft 3 Battlenet was. The closest comparison would be if you could boot up Steam and just join any game for free after a 2 minute install. It was a hub for competition for the most battle hardened RTS and MOBA players, as well as the most casual place to try all sorts of crazy game modes and maps. It truly had something for everyone, and was somehow the best possible version of all of it.
I'd played Starcraft before, but this was the first strategy game I really put a significant amount of time into, and the first game I ever took competitively. I didn't enter tournaments, but with the addition of its ranked ladders, something unheard of at the time, I threw myself into this game and grinded it for literal years.
The game's balance was solid, and the strategies were varied and interesting, especially in 2v2 formats.
That said, it wasn't just a game to be enjoyed competitively. Warcraft III truly was a complete package. The story and campaigns were solid, with top notch cinematics and voice acting for the time.
However all of this pales in comparison to the custom maps. Yes, I know I'm saying basically all of the game didn't stack up to its own custom maps, but honestly that's the truth. As amazing as this game was, the map editing tools the game offered dwarfed it a hundredfold. Blizzard basically gave every player dev tools to create their own games then made a battlenet that facilitated sharing and playing those maps. Any player could create a map, boot up a lobby, and the game would automatically make any player entering that lobby download the map, allowing for quick and easy access to any and all maps that interested you.
These were not basic maps though. The access to game tools allowed players to significantly alter the game, leading to all sorts of custom games, like Vampyre (A more in depth game of mafia), Tower Defenses, RPG campaigns, Angel Arenas, and of course the birth of the entire MOBA genre: Aeons of Strife. You thought I would say DOTA, but it went through several iterations, like Aeons of Strife and Tides of Blood, before finally becoming the DOTA we know and love today and spawning an entire e-sports genre.
And these were just a few of the many, many maps created constantly. There were entire clans dedicated to developing new maps. In fact, I helped develop a Warhammer based MOBA in these custom maps.
To this day, there is nothing to my knowledge that comes even close to what Warcraft 3 Battlenet was. The closest comparison would be if you could boot up Steam and just join any game for free after a 2 minute install. It was a hub for competition for the most battle hardened RTS and MOBA players, as well as the most casual place to try all sorts of crazy game modes and maps. It truly had something for everyone, and was somehow the best possible version of all of it.