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August 9 - August 15, 2002
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Multiplayer Time: This Ain’t No ‘Starcraft’By the AsianWeek crewWhen Blizzard Entertainment sent us a copy of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, our first instinct was to get the game up and running on everyone’s computer so we could duke it out in multiplayer mode. However, unlike Starcraft, it doesn’t have a spawn version. So instead, we took it down to our favorite PC bang, Evo (in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district), and hit it up with the AW team, some friends and even the co-owner of the joint, Torrance. After everyone settled in, we immersed ourselves into the multiplayer world of Warcraft III. Here are our responses: Tony: If you’ve never played WC3 on a network with a bunch of your friends, then you’re missing the boat! No video game in recent memory has been preceded with as much hype as WC3. Add in the fact that it carries a price tag of $59.99, $10 more than the industry standard, and you’ll begin to understand the high expectations of many video-game players. Is it worth it? Well, WC3 is the best piece of eye candy to come along in computer games in recent memory. Other games may have attempted a similar look, but after playing for several hours, WC3 pulls it off without sacrificing any game speed with slowdowns. We never had a problem while playing, but an occasional computer would crash and delay the game. Gameplay, especially multi-player, is great! It is much more of a challenge to play against other human beings than the computer. Computer players are more efficient but lack strategy, creativity and battle savvy. With four unique races, the makeup of your team affects your multiplayer gameplay much more than before. Teaming up with allies of the same race will adversely affect your forces by hampering them with a narrow selection of attackers and defenders. In the end, the great gameplay comes out in 0ultiplayer mode. Go play! You won’t regret it.
All in all, I think WC3 is a great new game. But I know I’ll probably wind up being drawn back to Starcraft, because I’m just one of those guys who loves large-scale battles and massive amounts of screaming for medics.
Jennie: Playing team-battle mode against the computer is quite a challenging feat. If two or more computers are set to the same team, the game becomes almost a sure-fire loss. The computer’s hero was somehow able to advance to level 5 by the time it came in with the first attack, while our heroes floundered at level 2. We realized after a while that fighting the trolls and outerlying creatures to build up our heroes’ strength was the No. 1 priority aside from establishing a strong base. The computer also hit early on in the game, consistently attacking the same base, with a combined squadron of ground troops. At one point, we were playing an allied team of six players against three computers, finally managing to beat out the computer. Playing against each other is fun but somewhat short-lived, especially when everyone is at a different level of the game. Those who are just starting and are unfamiliar with the strategic aspects of hero-building, focus on building a massive ground platoon, which can easily be destroyed if another team has only a quarter of that amount of troops and two heroes at level 4 or 5. The technical aspects of slow-mining gold and lumber can make the game somewhat boring, and the cap of 90 units puts a damper on any attempts to build an impressive army. At the same time, however, this forces all players to focus on strategy over massive numbers.
Roy: WC3 has a step up in graphics, storyline and complexity when compared to other RPGs. It really requires strategy and efficiency to play. I liked the range of characters and abilities, but not the game’s tempo; it’s very slow compared to other RPGs.
Evo Entertainment |
Feature | National | Bay Area | Business
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