Since most of the sales are directed to people playing single player, I assumed that Blizzard worked on the single player before the multiplayer. When Blizzard told CalBear and I that they start developing games from the multiplayer before the single player, it should not have been a surprise. Whether it is Diablo, Warcraft 2 or Starcraft, I've always found Blizzard's multiplayer to be more than stellar.

First off, the ambience of the game was totally awesome. It's seemed to have the best of Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft all wrapped into one. The isometric 3D view looked more like Diablo, the visuals made it feel like War2, and battle variety reminded me of Starcraft. Originally, Warcraft 3 was going to have automatic scrolling, but they've changed that to free scrolling, which was probably a very good move.

The rest of what CalBear and I saw, we really liked. Since I played Starcraft very competitively, I was very happy to see Blizzard tweaking a lot of what I felt were flaws in Starcraft. I was even happier to see Blizzard take measures to create a more interesting multiplayer.

Blizzard made 2 significant changes in the multiplayer, which make it greatly differ from Warcraft, Warcraft 2 and Starcraft. What stood out the most was that Warcraft 3 was focused less on map control and more on the individual battles. This really is different from Blizzard's previous strategy games, like Warcraft 2 and Starcraft, where controlling the resource flow was a one of the most important if not the most important part of the game. This leads to how Blizzard tried to make the battles more interesting… the introduction of playable heroes. Yes, imagine playing Starcraft using Kerrigan and Raynor in the multiplayer! If you're thinking that something like that must be too powerful, Blizzard's solution is that heroes have to earn their stats and skills through battle. For example say your hero is the Paladin - he will have to do X amount of battles before he levels up. At that time, you'll have a choice to increase his attack power, hit points, maximum mana, learn a spell like Exorcism, or a special ability.

It's not the spell or the stronger character that makes that much of a difference but your strategy and style of play that makes the difference between victory and defeat. Deciding to protect a specific unit could significantly swing the outcome of the battle. You see that sort of thing in single player, but nothing prevents you from holding that one character back. Now if you hide your hero in the back, you could lose the battle.