Zug Zug

Multiplayer tidbits

The average game length will be similar to Starcraft and Warcraft, lasting about 25-30 minutes, which will give your hero enough time to reach about level 5. Pardo estimated that it would take an hour-long game for your hero to reach level 10. Like Warcraft 2 and Starcraft, upgrading units will be key in determining who wins the battles.

In past RTS games, there were complaints about players who specialized in obscure maps all the time, which gave them a severe advantage against "regular" players since they knew where everything was. Blizzard solves this by revealing what the map looks like as if you had explored it in Warcraft 2 and Starcraft, but if you want to see current events such as enemy unit movement through the area, you have to have a unit within sight of the area. Ladder games will probably require this feature to be enabled.

Warlord again, different spell

Graphics and Sound

It's no Final Fantasy, but the cinematic graphics are nonetheless amazing. The trailer, which can be downloaded here, is just a taste of how good the cinematics are.

Although nothing is absolutely final, the game graphics look promising. Some of the units we saw weren't that cool looking, but there's still a lot of time before the release of the game. Blizzard tinkered with Starcraft's units up until a few months before its release.

A lot of the units will be a blast from the past as half of the old Orc units and half of the Human units will be brought back with much better graphics. On top of that, the Warcraft 3 units are much more animated. You can observe them doing different things such as looking around in various postures, scratching themselves or performing other random actions.

Tauren unit

One of the more interesting animations was that of the Undead Ghoul. He stands up when he stops to fight, but he gets on all fours and crawls when he moves around. My favorite graphic is probably the death animation for the Undead Death Knight - the body dissipates and leaves behind an empty armor suit (you had to be there).

A lot of the buildings are 3D versions of the buildings in Warcraft 2. The building process is much more detailed with something like a 10-step building process more instead of the simple foundation, half-built, finished structure, 3-step process.

The music is as good as ever with the same quality tunes you heard in Warcraft 2. Just like previous games, Blizzard is also working hard on creating amusing responses from units when you keep on clicking them. As for the voices, we noticed that all the dwarves have a Scottish accent and the female units sound like they're trying to seduce you.