Warcraft III :
the frozen Throne
Other Text #3
The still a little nostalgic Adolescence
Type of Game
A game so fantastic that it relegates its legendary ancestor to the status of a poorly executed little project.
release date on our machines
July 2002 for the Reign of Chaos base game, July 2003 for the expansion, nice synchro.
Developer
Blizzard Entertainment Inc. The only ones who know how to create games that relegate their ancestors to the status of poorly executed little projects.
Publisher
Blizzard Entertainment Inc. The only ones who let their employees take the time to create games that relegate... well, they used to.
Burnout 2 : nowhere to be found. Gone to dust in a titanic accident, no doubt.
While I idolized Warcraft II and spent months grinding Starcraft's multiplayer, I naturally... mega-ignored Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos when it came out! No idea why I didn't camp out in front of my favorite store, impatiently waiting to get my hands on this ultra-anticipated blockbuster. Oh yes, I know, because Diablo II was already taking up all my free time! I still found it inconceivable to play anything else on the PC at the time. And anyway, it was all Blizzard, so... it was a bit like playing Starcraft and Warcraft too, wasn't it? No, it wasn't. But while Warcraft III almost ended up in the “Forgotten Sequel” tab, I bought it anyway, that brave CD-ROM. But just by a kind of improbable twist of fate.
Reign of China
Basically, I had to go to China for a “language internship” paid for by the university in July 2004, and show up at a kind of HMV of Best Buy that only sold pirated music CDs, but real video games, strangely enough. I went in just to compare with our French stores, and then I saw the Warcraft III box for five bucks. Five euros, boom! The same price as ten pints of local beer! Ah well, like in France actually, if you multiply the price by ten.
Spinning head, Stinging Turrets
When you buy the game in China, you have to understand it. Because everything in it was written in Chinese characters! The menu, unit names, mission objectives and scenario, everything! Fortunately, we didn't have any Mandarin dubbing, but we did have some very American V.O.S.T.CHN, which allowed me to grasp a modicum of what was going on in Azeroth. But not everything either. I missed the 2D sprites of my beloved little peons at first, but I did get hooked on the rustic 3D graphics, which were actually quite charming. As for the well-oiled mechanics of Blizzard's previous RTS games, here they are again, even more impeccable than before! When I finally discovered four playable races with distinct identities and heroes who GAIN LEVELS DURING BATTLES, I had the perfect combo: a good strategy game coupled with these progression systems I love so much. All set in a breathtaking adventurous setting, to make up some ground on that big glutton Diablo II. Now, don't ask me too many questions about the details of Arthas and company's adventures. When I was talking about little comprehension problems, I was just kidding myself.
Once I'd finished the story mode (rather quickly, given that I was skipping half my college classes), I quickly succumbed to Battle.net's multiplayer temptation. Again! After Starcraft and Diablo II, well yeah. I was particularly fond of 2 vs 2 matches, so I wouldn't have to take the blame for a crushing defeat on my own. I dabbled a bit with the undead, but ended up specializing in the Alliance. I don't usually play the good human beings in video games, but okay. I used to play the old mage on horseback who summons a water elemental. And most of the time, I'd build an army of riflemen assisted by priests, half of whom would boost the attack, and the other half would shower the troops with healing spells. If the game dragged on, I'd throw griffins into the mix. This worked very well for a while, until I came up against some big brutes who knew how to counter me in two seconds.
While I was taking one beating after another in official games, I discovered... MODS. And on Warcraft III, there were more mods than my weekend alcohol-soaked brain could imagine. I tried out several things before falling in love with one particular type: Tower Defense. Destroying endless waves of enemies with increasingly powerful constructions, I don't know, it just drove me crazy. I experimented with dozens of them, unable to quench my curiosity, overwhelmed by the number of good ideas, variations and subtleties to be found. And there were some lame ones too, but fun anyway. What's more, I wasn't particularly skilled, so it took me a long time to finish one. I tried modding the game myself, in an attempt to pay homage to Dungeon Keeper.
I was digging galleries, and creatures were crawling out of a portal on their own. It was a lot of fun, and got me a very good grade as a project in my game design school. But then, there were too many lines of code to write, and lines of code always gave me the creeps. The worst was yet to come, because a few months later, a good friend told me about another type of crazy mod that I absolutely had to try out. For that, you had to buy the Frozen Throne add-on... I didn't go back to the fake Chinese HMV for that. But the English add-on didn't work with the Mandarin game. So I bought it all back, making my language course obsolete in the process.
Because, of course, I have no other memories of this trip (huge lie). At last, I was able to take the hype train of the moment. A train called DotA, Defense of the Ancients, which would practically single-handedly determine the way I would approach the world of video games for the next twelve years. I both love and hate it because of that.
Frozen Songs
Ah, a quick digression about the music. I have no memory of it, almost to the point of shame. Warcraft III was the first game I installed on MY OWN computer. On which I also downloaded tens of thousands of MP3 files, and digitized my small CD collection. And well... I cut the game's soundtrack to play my personal playlists. Sorry Glenn Stafford, Derek Duke and others, nothing personal, eh! I listened to a few tracks while writing this text, and it's pretty good, I must admit. I should have looked into it a bit more, though, instead of playing some thick, fat American rap during my games. Or not, but I was already listening to thick, fat rap everywhere else, so... There's epic, grandiose, dark and creepy in there. Well, it seems that I prefer compositions associated with the undead. But nothing to do with my party-pooper tendencies, eh?
Mediocre Ooze Blatantly
Addictive - Moba
Back to DotA, the mod that defined a new genre: MOBA for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. Two teams of five face off on a symmetrical map, each player embodying a single character. You earn money by killing mobs (a little) or enemy avatars (a lot), buy equipment and set off to smash your opponent's base. Nothing original, except for the way you do it. The sheer number of heroes available gives you a headache, as do the types of gameplay. A whole range of tanks, assassins and supports, with varying degrees of nuance depending on the character. You start from the beginning every time you play, but the concept becomes so addictive that you keep coming back for more. I had my little favorites: Necrolyte, Visage, Puck, Spirit Breaker and above all Meepo, who with his clones could permanently immobilize any opponent, provided he was clearly relentless on the computer keyboard.
At first, I played with strangers, but then I infected several buddies, who started doing nothing else but that, just like me. We lost some of our sociability, and we multiplied our consumption of beer by twenty, but we had so much fun ( and lost our minds too)! Completely bewitched by DotA, nothing could dislodge me from it. I tried installing other games, but with a few exceptions, I'd drop them the very next day and fall right back into my addiction. How do I cure myself of this almost pathological habit? Nothing could be simpler. All it took was the emergence of a game that was even more captivating, even better designed, and that was going to drive me even crazier. And for free, too: League of Legends, or the gravedigger of what little was left of respectability in me.