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Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2002, is a real-time strategy computer game and the second sequel to Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. It is the third game set in the Warcraft Universe.

Details the second invasion of the Burning Legion and the origins of the Scourge, along with the fall of Lordaeron and the awakening of the Night Elves. In addition, the Orcs leave the Eastern Kingdoms, and on their journey to Kalimdor, save the Darkspear Trolls from destruction. When they arrive, they also assist the Tauren and officially form the Horde as a collective of these races.

Overview
One of the main innovations Warcraft III offers over the previous games in the series is the way the role of hero units has changed. Where before, heroes were merely very powerful variants of standard units, now they are unique, with their own special abilities that normal units do not have access to. For instance, heroes within the game can find or trade items to increase skills, defense, etc. With each kill of an enemy of a certain level the heroes gain experience points, eventually resulting in increased levels of their own, and new spell options (thus introducing role-playing game elements to the series). Heroes also can apply beneficial auras to allied units.

Another new innovation is the addition of creeps, which are computer controlled characters the player fights even in multiplayer. They guard key areas or neutral buildings and are designed to act as a resource for the players to kill to provide experience points to a player's hero and to provide hero items. The idea is to force the player to be aggressive instead of "turtling up" (refraining from adventuring outside of one's starting area).

Within the game there are four races at war: the Human Alliance and the Orcish Horde, who also appeared in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, and Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, along with two new character teams, the Night Elves and the Undead. As an April Fool's joke before the game was released, Blizzard announced that the Pandaren would be the fourth race. The company didn't reveal the Night Elves until a month later, and pandas are a running gag in Warcraft now (to the point that a Pandaren Hero — called the Brewmaster — was available in the expansion pack, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and Pandaren heads were featured on the glaives of Illidan and the rest of the Demon Hunter hero class). A fifth playable race, the Burning Legion, was changed during play-testing to a set of non-player characters and monsters (with a playable "cameo" on the last level of the Undead campaign, as Kel'Thuzad summons Archimonde).

Players meet other players over the Internet to set up multiplayer games via Blizzard's free Battle.net service, or may play against the computer.

A number of game and plot mechanics are a direct result of Blizzard's experience with StarCraft.

Warcraft III also includes a very thorough scenario editor. It uses a scripting language similar to the trigger system used in StarCraft. As well as providing the ability to edit any aspect of the units, buildings and spells, it has such advanced features as custom tilesets, custom cinematic scenes, dialog boxes, variables, and weather effects. Many custom maps, featuring a large variety of gametypes continue to be developed, and together with the expansion pack have contributed to the longevity of the game.

The game was developed by Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, and released in July 2002. Warcraft III proved to be one of the most anticipated and popular video game releases ever, with 4.5 million units pre-ordered and over 1 million additional units sold during its first two weeks.

A game demo also exists: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Demo.

Story
Similar to how Starcraft was told, the story in Warcraft III is told through all four races in a progressive manner. The order is Human, Undead, Orc, and Night Elf.

Prologue: Exodus of the Horde
The young Thrall awakes fom a strange vision, directing him to the prophet Medivh. Medivh tells him to rally the orcs from Lordaeron and travel to Kalimdor, where they shall meet their destiny. He frees the orcs from the remaining internment camps, including Grom Hellscream. The Horde steals the human fleet from Southshore and sail off. Near the Maelstrom, they are forced to land on a small island to repair their ships. There they are joined by the Darkspear Trolls, led by Sen'jin, but are soon ambushed and captured by a group of murlocs worshipping a Naga Sea Witch. Thrall and his people need to escape from their underworld prison together with the trolls and flee from the island before it is destroyed by an erupting volcano.



Human Campaign: The Scourge of Lordaeron
Prince Arthas, a paladin of the Silver Hand, The Captain and Jaina Proudmoore, Arthas' former lover and apprentice-Archmage, are investigating a strange plague that is spreading across the lands of Lordaeron. To their horror, they find that the plague turns unsuspecting people into hideous Undead warriors, and must move to stop the Undead's plans. After a string of hollow victories (many towns in the now Plaguelands being destroyed), Arthas decides that the best way to end the game was to destroy Mal'Ganis the (supposed) leader of the scourge. Mal'Ganis travels northward to the icy lands of Northrend, and Arthas follows him. There he aids an old friend, Muradin Bronzebeard, who tells him of a powerful weapon, a sword called Frostmourne. Arthas obtains Frostmourne, at the (supposed) cost of Muradin's life, and uses it to defeat Mal'Ganis. However, as a result, Frostmourne steals Arthas' soul and turns to ally the undead...



Undead Campaign: Path of the Damned
With their new leader, the Undead must move to complete their purpose in Lordaeron, which is to destroy the remnants of the Alliance and pave the way for a new invasion. In a series of quests, Arthas succeeds in reviving a former adversary, Kel'Thuzad, as a Lich, and the two successfully open an inter-dimensional portal for the true masters of the Scourge, the Burning Legion, to enter the realm of Azeroth (see the article on Arthas for a more detailed description).



Orcish Campaign: The Invasion of Kalimdor
After escaping Human captivity and fleeing to the shores of Kalimdor, Orcish warchief Thrall must lead his brethren to safety and ensure their survival in this strange and hostile land. Help comes from the Tauren, a nomadic group of Kalimdor-natives, and their leader, Cairne Bloodhoof. Unfortunately, fellow Orc Grom Hellscream falls under demonic corruption, and Thrall is forced to ally himself with Jaina Proudmore, now leader of the survivors of Lordearon. He also discovers (courtesy of an oracle) that his fate is to help repel the Burning Legion, and he and Jaina accomplish this goal, and also to save Hellscream. Afterwards, Grom insists upon battling Mannoroth, the demon who cast him into the corruption. Thrall and Grom succeed in vanquishing Mannoroth, but Grom is slain in the process.



Night Elf Campaign: Eternity's End
With the coming of the Undead and Burning Legion as well as the Humans and Orcs, Tyrande Whisperwind and her Night Elf Sentinels fight a desperate battle to save their beloved home of Kalimdor. She first reawakens her lover, Malfurion Stormrage, and then the Druids of the Talon and finally the Druids of the Claw. She also decides to free the great betrayer, Illidan Stormrage, and he is eventually instrumental in weakening the Legion. Finally, she and Furion join forces with Proudmoore and Thrall to delay the Legion's advance until a proper end can be arranged for their leader Archimonde (mirroring the final mission of StarCraft, in which the player commands a multi-racial force against a common foe).

Play details
The four warring races have different advantages, most of them similar to the racial attributes of the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss from StarCraft, another popular RTS from Blizzard. The different strategically significant traits of the races in Starcraft have been combined in new ways to form the Warcraft III races. The Warcraft III Night Elves, for instance, resemble the Terrans in that their buildings can move and their base fighting unit has a missile attack, but like the Zerg, their worker units are consumed when they create most buildings. The Undead have the Protoss's ability to summon buildings rather than constructing them, so a worker unit is not tied up in construction; also like the Protoss, they have a dedicated invisible spy unit, but their buildings have to be constructed upon dedicated infested terrain called Blight (like the Zerg Creep), and their army line-up is strategically similar to that of the Zerg.

However, unlike other RTS games, Warcraft III has introduced a new element of game play, special units called Heroes. Heroes are super units that have special abilities that expand as the game progresses (as they gain experience). For example, a Human Archmage hero can acquire the ability to (temporarily) summon water-elementals, increase the mana regeneration rate of surrounding magic casting units, create a blizzard over enemy units, and teleport friendly units to other parts of the map. In the course of a game a maximum of up to three heroes can be built, but if they die, they can be revived at an altar.

Between Heroes and a low food cap it is difficult to win through sheer numbers, and Micromanagement becomes more important. The upkeep concept also keeps armies small as it penalizes anyone who gets too big too fast. As a result gameplay is more tactical than strategic.

There are strong distinctions in the game between melee and ranged units; between air and ground units; and (particularly in The Frozen Throne) between mundane, magical, and antimagic units. Antimagic units, such as the Humans' Elven Spell-Breaker (only in the expansion pack) and the Night Elves' Dryad, have the ability to cancel the effects of magic spells cast on other units.

Gallery

 * Box designs:

Expansion set
On May 29, 2003, Blizzard announced that the expansion set, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne had "gone gold" (release version sent to presses). It was released in stores worldwide in multiple languages beginning on July 1, 2003. It includes an additional hero for each race and three to four new units per race, four campaigns, eight neutral heroes, the ability to build a shop and various other improvements such as the ability to queue upgrades. It requires the ownership of Reign of Chaos. Blizzard regularly patches both the original game and the more popular 'expanded' version to fix bugs, add new features, and balance multiplayer play. The latter is the reason Blizzard games remain popular long after their initial release.

Spin-offs
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in the Warcraft universe, entitled World of Warcraft, is the fourth Warcraft game in a series produced by Blizzard. It picks up the Warcraft storyline four years after the events of The Frozen Throne.

Custom maps
There are many player-made multiplayer maps (made with the World Editor tool, which can be used to make your own levels, even fan-made campaigns, that comes with the game) available for download and play on Battle.net as well as many fansites.

Popular maps include:


 * Defense of the Ancients and spin offs (primarily DotA Allstars)
 * The DOTA map genre consists of PvP gameplay where two teams of heroes support their respective AI-controlled armies in large-scale battles. It is based on the wildly popular "Aeon of Strife" Starcraft map, although the original consisted of players cooperating against a single AI-controlled army. Of the maps spawned under the AoS genre, "Defense of the Ancients" is one of the most popular in Warcraft III. Because the original AOS was a Starcraft map, and because of DOTA's own popularity, it has become the de-facto standard for this genre of custom map.
 * Defense of the Ancients AllStars DotA Website
 * A map originally created by Guinsoo, now maintained by IceFrog. Based on the original DotA by Eul.
 * Tides of Blood
 * Renowned for its unique "Blood Mage" hero that utilized triggering and special effects to create some impressive visuals for spells.
 * Farmer vs Hunter or "Tag"
 * A farmer makes farms at the start and eventually powerful towers, while the hunter must find farmers and kill them before their bases become too big. Tag games often pit the players against an AI-controlled hunter. There are innumerable variations on this theme, inspired by the old "Cat and Mouse" Starcraft maps.
 * Sheep Tag
 * There are many different variations on the basic Sheep Tag formula, such as Panda Tag, Tauren Tag, Tree Tag, and Jailbreak (not to be confused with Prison Escape).
 * Footman Wars
 * The "Footman Wars" genre of games is based on the old "massing" games of Starcraft, where players are given absurdly large quantities of units at given intervals, and can send them out to engage in massive conflicts. The map designs are usually fairly simple.
 * Lord Of The Rings-based games, such as those based on famous battles of the fictional War of the Ring or the Helms Deep.
 * Minigames
 * In the "minigame" map genre, mapmakers use clever triggering to create a variety of minigames for players to enjoy (a la Mario Party).
 * Pyramid Escape, where players must work together to overcome a series of challenges, including a "Pac Man" game, a quiz show based on "The Weakest Link," and even a miniature AOS/DOTA.
 * NOTD Aftermath, SWAT: Aftermath, Night of the Dead II, Dawn of the Dead, SWAT vs. Resident Evil
 * Real Life / LOAP
 * A map genre akin to the Sims, where players take control of a character responsible for working a job, attending school, and other "real life" activities. The original Real Life maps spawned dozens of spinoffs that added and built upon the original concept.
 * Life of a Peasant and spinoffs (over 300 versions exist)
 * One of the most popular RL maps is LOAP, which came to replace the original "Real Life" as the benchmark of the genre.
 * Rival Nations — website
 * Snipers, which has developed a clan following
 * Tower Defense, or TD
 * This genre includes maps such as Line Tower Wars, XTD, Cube Defense, Green TD, Blue TD, and Massacre TD. The basic concept consists of players constructing towers to defend against waves of enemies. Blizzard made two of their own TD maps, one of which was a bonus level in the Human Frozen Throne campaign and the other was Azure Tower Defense.
 * Skibi's Castle Defense, a very popular Tower Defense map
 * The creator missing_tooltip was actually hired by Blizzard Entertainment. Skibi 6.0 was then released as a Blizzard Official Map.
 * Wintermaul and spinoffs.
 * The "Maul" genre of maps is actually a subset of the TD design, Wintermaul being recognized as the progenitor.
 * Troll Tribes, three varieties (Ice, Jungle, Island) based on item gathering and survival.

Other adaptations
The strategy board game Warcraft: The Board Game was released in 2003 by Fantasy Flight Games, and is based on Warcraft III. It uses a modular game board, which allows many different scenarios to be played with the same set of components.

Quotations
One of the features of Warcraft III, like Warcraft II, are the unit quotes. If a single unit was clicked several times in a row, the unit's voice samples would change. The unit would start getting angry at the player, or start saying silly things in reference to movies, games, or other things. For example, a peasant might say, "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" — a quote from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail or a Crypt Fiend might say "Spider sense... tingling" - an oft-quoted line of Spider-Man.

Manual

 * Humans: the Alliance of Lordaeron
 * Human History (since the end of the second war)
 * Orcs: the Horde
 * Orcish History (After the Second War)
 * Undead Scourge
 * Undead History
 * Night Elves: the Sentinels
 * Night Elf History
 * Origin of the Burning Legion
 * Bestiary
 * Heroes and Villains

Cheat codes
See Warcraft III cheat codes.