Game

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

2002 · PC (Microsoft Windows) · Mac · Real Time Strategy (RTS) · Strategy

91IGDB player score
1,685 ratings

Previously Take

1,685 player ratings, 91 average. The people have spoken, clearly. A strategy game, from Blizzard for the planners — fantasy, warfare as the backdrop, outthinking as the game. The story is the main course; the multiplayer is the reason it's still installed years later. From 2002, back when games shipped finished.

About this game

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a real-time strategy game set in the high fantasy world of Azeroth. Players control one of four factions, the Human Alliance, Orcish Horde, Night Elves, or Undead Scourge, each with unique units, structures, and hero characters that gain experience and abilities through combat. The single-player campaign follows a sequential narrative across four faction-specific chapters. Multiplayer is supported through Battle.net with ranked matchmaking. The game includes a World Editor that allows players to create custom maps and scenarios, which gave rise to influential community creations including the mod Defense of the Ancients.

Several years after the wars between Humans and Orcs, an uneasy peace has settled over Azeroth. The defeated Orcs languish in internment camps, and the Human Alliance has begun to fracture without a common enemy. But a demonic army called the Burning Legion, having once corrupted the Orcs and sent them to invade Azeroth, is preparing a second assault on the world. The story follows three paths that intertwine. Prince Arthas Menethil, a young paladin of Lordaeron, investigates a spreading plague that transforms its victims into undead servants, and his obsessive pursuit of the plague's source drives him toward a cursed blade and a terrible transformation. Orc warchief Thrall, warned by a mysterious prophet of the coming destruction, leads his people across the sea to the forgotten continent of Kalimdor in search of a new home. And Tyrande Whisperwind, leader of the ancient Night Elves, must defend her sacred lands from both the newcomers and the demonic invasion that follows. As the Burning Legion marches toward a source of power that could corrupt the entire world, these three factions must decide whether old hatreds or survival will define them.