

As a result of the orcs' newfound strength, they're now one of the most popular factions to play on.

The tauren is by far the strongest ground unit in the game and has the war stomp ability, which does damage within a nearby area of effect. While the other units have expensive air units at the top of their tech trees, the orcs instead have the tauren as their top unit. But they have plenty of other options as well, including strong heroes. With these changes, the orcs now have the option to rush opponents early in the game on smaller maps and can better defend against a rush. The undead haven't changed as much, and their skeletal armies often still reign supreme. The orcs also now have a separate defensive structure, the watchtower, which can hit air or ground targets. Now that any orc player needs burrows all the time, it's easy enough to just place them at base entrances when an opponent attacks.

Burrows were in the initial beta release, but they weren't used much since Warcraft III's relatively low maximum population limit is just 90, much lower than Starcraft's, and this makes it hard to permanently garrison bunkers. The orcs now build orc burrows to expand their population limit, and these sunken buildings also double as defensive bunkers. That basic structure from the days of Warcraft II was too much like the human farm. Perhaps an even bigger switch for the orcs is the disappearance of the pig farm. To some extent, as with the protoss zealot from Starcraft, the orcs' basic infantry unit, the grunt, is now dramatically stronger and costs proportionally more than the first units of the other three races. It's clear now that the orcs are the fiercest ground fighters. The orcs now have strengths and a style all their own. Many initially thought that the humans and orcs were too similar, since the basic units and structures between those races were roughly equivalent. It's no wonder, since the game underwent major changes in the release. The orcs are particularly different from previous ones.Īfter a couple of quick patches for balancing, there was a long gap in updates before Blizzard released the big recent 1.10 patch. Warcraft III has already undergone some big changes during the beta. And in addition to our hands-on impressions of what's new in the game, we have an interview with Blizzard's Bill Roper about how the developers have been responding to player feedback thus far. The fun of being in a Blizzard beta is seeing how radically a game can change as it goes through its last months of polishing.
#Warcraft iii beta Patch#
Shortly after its release, we took a weeklong look at the Warcraft III beta, but now that Blizzard has released its first major patch for the beta, there's plenty that is new or has been changed. It also didn't take long for players to find significant imbalances in the game's four very different playable factions. The initial beta release was missing a unit and a number of spells. Blizzard released a beta multiplayer version of Warcraft III to 5,000 testers last month, and as you'd expect from a beta, the game is very much a work in progress.
