GG: Warcraft III

This game is a personal favourite of mine; I waited four years from the time I first heard it was being created and played it devotedly for several years. The only aspect of the game I have not seen fit to play and replay is the ‘melee’ (read: vanilla gameplay, with no rules added or changed) multiplayer format. The reason for this is simple: the game is unintuitive. In another strategy game (Starcraft, for example), a player new to the game might be able to see the synergy between a unit that is a weak fighter but is capable of healing its allies and say, any other unit. In Warcraft, that player would be making a mistake to see synergy. The best target for this healing ability is another healing unit! In a multiplayer game, having a ‘balanced mix of units’ means not having enough resources to upgrade each of those units to their full potential and increases the likelihood that you will be mowed down by an army of squishy magic-wielding spell-casters.

My love for Warcraft is based on an entirely separate feature of the game – its map editor. The editor allows players to tweak rules and maps in such a way that a new and different game can be created. Warcraft has reignited the ‘tower defence’ genre, the success of the ‘Defense of the Ancients’ map has spawned games in its style like ‘Demigod’ ‘League of Legends’ and ‘Heroes of Newerth’.