• Balance Among Races
• Balance Among Units
• Summary
What makes WarCraft III a great game is its ultimate balance
throughout the whole game. This balance lies in serveral layers
and stretch a few dimensions within each layer.
Balance Among Races
First of all, Unlike “Age of Empires” or “Generals”,
WarCraft III is totally not based on reality. Instead, the story
is set on an unknown time somewhere between the ancient and modern
history; the place is some islands somewhere in the world. It
is in this abstraction where four races of unique identities and
styles are perfectly designed. It is this dream-like setting that
set up the puzzling atmosphere throughout the game. If Blizzard
stuck with the real world, many wonderful things won’t have
a chance to show up. I really admire those designers’ infinite
imagination and creativity, what make the unreal come true.
Among the four races, there are two pairs of forces against each
other: good against evil, realistic against mysterious. Human
is good and realistic; Orc is realistic but evil; Night Elf is
good but mysterious; and Undead is evil and mysterious. With such
a wide range of styles, every player will certainly be able to
find their favorite race, the one that they find shares some common
characters with themselves. A great game must suit as many kinds
of people as possible. WarCraft III makes it.
The most important one of balances among races is the different
ways each race uses to accomplish the common tasks. This is exactly
where the weakness of the “Age” games lies. In the
“Age” games, change is only applied to a small part
of the races. Sometimes this change is only made by disable some
common abilities, instead of creating different ones. Sometimes
only the looks change, sometimes even the looks won’t change.
Unlike the “Age” games, in “Craft” games,
variations are in every aspect throughout the whole race to make
their identities. To accomplish the same task, every race has
their different methods. Yet same amount of effort must be made.
This is the core of balance.
Also, balance is limited to various methods of doing the same
task. It also includes unique buildings, units and abilities that
are not shared by all races. These bring advantages and disadvantages
to every race. Yet the same total amount of advantages or disadvantages
is given to every race so that no net advantage is presented.
A game among any races has the potential to be a good game.
Balance Among Units
The population limit in WarCraft III is 100, only half as many
as in StarCraft, so balance among units race become much more
important. Unlike StarCraft, in which you can use mass number
of one type of unit to win the game, in WarCraft, you must balance
every type of units in order to win.
Balance between gathering and fighting is common and the most
basic one in all real-time strategy games. “Resources produce
units, units defend and fight for resources.” is the common
theme in all these games. With too many workers gathering resources,
you can’t survive long under attack; with too many forces,
you will exhaust resources soon, and lose eventually, if not soon.
To find the best balance point between these two is basic but
hard to master. This could be one of the most important criteria
whether one is a good player or not.
The balance between Melee units and range units are the basic
balance in battle. In combat, the most basic strategy is to involve
as many units as possible in it at the same time. And the easiest
way is to mix melee and range attack units. Often, units are arranged
into a pattern of three layers in WarCraft III: melee, range and
siege units. In this way, the whole battle field is yours, so
is the victory.
Magical abilities are largely emphasized in WarCraft III. The
meaning of balance in this dimension is hard to grasp. It has
two main meanings. First, these magic either advantage friendly
units or disadvantage enemy units. Both have to be used to maximize
the effect. Second, magical abilities can’t be used unlimitedly.
So the key lies in the making choices that balance offense, such
as damage, range, and defense, such as hit point, armor.
Summary
What an amazing game! It is the multilayer and multidimensional
balances that enrich this game into an almost perfect level. WarCraft
III is certainly a masterpiece that shines out in the game history.
|