Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos Interview

It has been quite some time since we had any updates on Warcraft III, so we decided to speak to Rob Pardo, Warcraft III lead designer, about their current progress and several gameplay elements that seemed interesting...

Action Trip: Dates, dates, dates... everybody is eagerly expecting Warcraft III for ages now, can you give us any dates???

Rob Pardo: We are getting very close to going beta and are planning to ship out the beta CDs in early January. After we go beta, it should take 3-4 months to complete all the outstanding work and bug fixing.

AT: Tell us about your progress. What are you currently working on?

RP: We have been working hard on getting the game ready for the beta. Making the game install from CD, fixing any nasty bugs we can find and adding Night Elves to the game for multiplayer.

AT: Now, for some gameplay topics; catapults will be able to destroy trees, but they won't be able to destroy neutral buildings. What about gold-mines?

RP: Gold mines are also impervious to attack.

AT: Heroes advance through levels by gaining experience; in what ways do they gain experience (kills only/inflicted damage/casting non-offensive spells)?

RP: If one of your units delivers the killing blow on an enemy unit, then all your nearby heroes share the experience for the kill.

AT: You mentioned Giants as one category of units. Tell us more of unit categories and what are other categories in that respect?

RP: Unit categories are mainly used for spell casting rules. For example, some spells can only be cast on "organic" units. There are several categories in the game like "mechanical" and "summoned". Ironically enough, we no longer are using the "giant" category since it contained very few units.

AT: You stated that Warcraft III would be a primarily offensive game. Does this mean that you are tweaking all the races to be offensive, or will some races be more defensive than others by default?

RP: When I say "offensive" I don't mean it to be any more offensive then StarCraft. The 'Craft games have also been faster paced then most other RTS games (for good or bad) and that is a feel we wish to maintain.

AT: Probably my biggest concern... rumor has it around the net that Warcraft III would only be multi-playable over internet. This would be a real shame as it would mean that Starcraft wouldn't get a true successor as THE game for home LAN-parties. What can you tell us about this?

RP: That is incorrect. We definitely support LAN through TCP/IP protocol. Currently we are not planning on supporting direct modem connection however.

Well, thanks for your time Rob, and we wish you guys at Blizzard the best of luck (and speed) with Warcraft III. If it turns half as innovative and playable as Warcraft I, Warcraft II and StarCraft had been in their own time (and still are), this will be one hell of a game to play.