Warcraft 3 was released over 15 years ago, but yesterday it got an enormous patch, with a lengthy list of small changes.
Warcraft 3 is the third Warcraft game, a fantasy-flavoured real-time strategy game that predates the incredibly popular MMO set in the same world. You’d think that Blizzard was long done tweaking the game, but yesterday, the publisher made a huge number of changes to it.
Some of the changes were pretty big, such as adding widescreen support. Many others were very specific minor tweaks. The Crypt Lord, for example, had their base movement speed increased from 270 to 290, and the Demon Hunter’s Mana Hunter ability had its mana cost increased from 50 to 60 for all levels. Priestess of the Moon had her attack speed cooldown reduced from 2.46 to 2.33 seconds, and the Goblin Alchemist’s Healing Spray ability no longer heals enemies.
Even if this game were new, these changes would seem incredibly minute. For a 15-year-old game, it boggles the mind that someone, somewhere, is still obsessing over this fine-tuning. Here are a few more changes:
Tauren Chieftain
Reincarnation
- Reduced spellcast from seven seconds to five seconds
Dread Lord
Sleep
- Cooldown reduced from six seconds to four seconds for all levels
Vampiric Aura
- Level One: Increased life steal from 15 per cent to 20 per cent
- Level Two: Increased life steal from 30 per cent to 35 per cent
- Level Three: Increased life steal from 45 per cent to 50 per cent
Warden
Blink
- Level 2: Reduced cooldown from 10 seconds to seven seconds
- Level 3: Increased cooldown from one second to four seconds
It’s incredibly cool to see Blizzard support a game that came out in 2002, especially given that you can now play the game on a widescreen monitor.
Comments
5 responses to “WarCraft 3 Is Still Getting Patches”
Damn. THIS brings back memories.
I was 22. I hadn’t met my wife yet, but we were talking on mIRC. I was working as a bouncer in Brisbane and was finishing a psychology degree which I would never use. Most of my friends were weed addicted idiots who were going nowhere in life. I used to get home from work at 4am and play WarCraft 3 until the sun would rise whilst listening to trance music.
I used to love watching my little towns start to grow and take shape.
Those were great days. I had almost no responsibilities and was doing almost nothing with my life. I didn’t know anyone who was going anywhere either. Now I’m married with 3 kids, I’m a writer and we have real jobs, investments and goals. We’re working towards things. It’s exciting. And busy.
So I could never go back to WarCraft 3. It’s a relic of a time when I could spend hours on games every day and never feel that I should be doing something else.
Super cool that they’re patching it still. It’s a lot of fun.
I actually think that’s a part of the draw back to WoW that I feel every time a new expansion is released.
It was the easy days, that’s for sure.
I was 19, playing on WoW Private Servers, raiding and playing until 5am. Doing nothing but WoW all day, but just enjoying the freedom to do nothing.
Now, 28, on the cusp of completing my Master’s, own a home and have two dogs. It’s actually amazing the lack of responsibility you can have in life, even in your young adulthood. Blissfully unaware of the big kick up the bum that life will soon bring.
I still remember that time they reduced the rate of fire of a gun in COD by a fraction of a second and people made a very overblown deal about it.
someone at Blizzard is still living the childhood dream of PC gamers in the late 90s and early 2000s of getting to work on warcraft 3… now thats great.
Gonna have to dig out the box (OMG a CD install!) and fire this up again.