[HN Gopher] 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness
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30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness
Author : sjoblomj
Score : 229 points
Date : 2025-12-09 09:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jorsys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jorsys.org)
| newshackr wrote:
| Zug zug
| semitones wrote:
| swobu
| 7bit wrote:
| Train train
| mproud wrote:
| I'm convinced "zug zug" is a reference to a scene from the 1981
| movie /Caveman/[1].
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/5h2gVbLlwl8
| pfdietz wrote:
| Q: What kind of cigarettes do orcs smoke.
|
| A: Low tar, my friend.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Job's Done
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Ready to work!
| boringg wrote:
| The apex of RTS games -- what a great gaming era RIP. Since then
| graphics are way better but business models have just
| deteriorated and mass appeal has driven games.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| I think Brood War is the true apex - more than two races with
| significant differences and aggressive balancing. Warcraft II
| was what I LAN played the most so it has a special place in my
| heart though.
| iammjm wrote:
| Brood War IS the absolute apex. This is the game that started
| e-sports. It is what defined the modern RTS games. It is also
| the most difficult game. Flash, the best Brood War player, is
| arguably the best e-sports player of all time.
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| Oh goodness, Brood War most certainly is _not_ the game
| that started e-sports, tho I of course appreciate your
| enthusiasm for the game.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Technically I guess Spacewar! was the one who started
| e-sports, was the first game people competed in.
| Personally, growing up in Sweden, I think FPS (namely
| CS1.5/1.6) was the first game that enabled people to play
| games professionally on a international level, so I'll
| always associate CS with starting that, but again,
| technically I guess Quake was the first FPS people
| competed in professionally, at least in the US.
| 7bit wrote:
| But it certainly was the game that made it popular across
| the world.
| Lorin wrote:
| StarCraft 2 tournaments broadcasts being watched in
| public venues pushed esports into the zeitgeist.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| It started modern esports. There were gaming competitions
| in the 80s, but there weren't team houses, coaches,
| analysts, big money sponsors, regular huge events,
| dedicated TV channels, players in prime time commercials
| and dating actresses and pop stars, etc... Brood War hit
| in Korea like nothing before _or after it_. There were
| literally three full time, 24 /7 TV channels showing
| Starcraft content at it's peak. No other game has ever
| done that.
| baq wrote:
| the parallel world of FPS esports started with quake and
| was going strong for a good decade or so, before being
| ripped apart by mumorpegers, dotas, counterstrikes and,
| primarily, consoles (which I believe also ultimately
| killed starcraft and RTS in general, too).
| wredcoll wrote:
| There is, I think, a reasonable distinction between the
| semi-annual "tournament with prize money" situation that
| existed in america with quake and friends, and the
| constant, episodic nature of the broodwar scene in korea.
| Players being salaried is a pretty major shift in how the
| culture works.
| jquery wrote:
| Flash was an absolute legend.
|
| I do wonder if Brood War's long period without balance
| patches helped or hurt it as an esport. In modern games,
| it feels like developers "shake up the meta" on purpose,
| whereas in brood war, it was up to map designers to
| ensure balance. This made it easier for long time fans to
| appreciate tactics... in SC2, I have to be caught up on
| the latest balance patches to appreciate anything.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| It's a huge part of it's longevity. I still watch Brood
| War tournaments today and it's so cool to go back one,
| five, ten years and watch a classic game. Compare that to
| the other game I love, DOTA, it's hard to watch old games
| because everything is so different. BW really is
| lightning in a bottle.
|
| PS: Flash is coming back very soon apparently.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Brood War has aged like fine-wine. As I mentioned in a
| parallel comment, the key to Brood War's longevity comes
| from the map maker. Every detail is carefully considered
| so that none of the races can get away with a crazy
| advantage. It's really a special game, and every new
| season of ASL still feels magical.
|
| I wish medical science would get so much better that
| Flash could fully heal his wrist injuries. He's spoken at
| length about how he loves to dedicate himself
| wholeheartedly to playing, and how he doesn't like to
| compete if he's not able to give it his all.
|
| You probably already know about it, but in case you or
| any other reader is unaware there's this great YouTube
| channel @jinjinBW that translates Korean BW clips into
| English. It's a huge boon for western fans.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Brood War's longevity is thanks to the map maker, which
| has allowed the game to be balanced around maps. The size
| of your spawn location, the ease with which you can
| expand, and the paths to different bases drastically
| impact what kinds of strategies are viable. If there's a
| high ground location, it becomes much harder to break
| that position as the attacker. The amount of resources
| per base (mineral patch count, mineral patch size, 1 gas
| spawn, 2 gas spawn, mineral only) all impact which
| strategies are viable.
|
| In fact, during the era of Flash's dominance in ASL, the
| organizers actually started including maps that were
| heavily Zerg favored in order to put a stop to his reign.
|
| The game is still alive and well, with a meta that
| continues to evolve, and every season of ASL[0] (the
| premier Brood War tournament), they include at least one
| new crazy experimental map. Last season the crazy map was
| Roaring Currents [1], one of the more ambitious designs
| in recent memory which has a large number of island
| bases. Basically if a strategy becomes a bit too
| oppressive, the map designers can always step in to make
| it a bit more balanced.
|
| [0] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/ASL
|
| [1] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Roaring_Currents
| philistine wrote:
| > There were gaming competitions in the 80s
|
| ... and uh, inveterate cheating and lying accompanied it.
| Brood War brought _professionalism_ to esport.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_(gamer)#Disp
| ute...
| antisthenes wrote:
| In the RTS niche, it is definitely the game that started
| e-sports that had any sort of weight and global audience.
|
| I'm honestly not even sure which other RTS game would be
| close? Age of Empires 1? I don't think it ever had the
| same traction or hype until AOE 2.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Of course it wasnt the first time someone watched people
| playing video games against eachother.
|
| The Korean Brood war scene was an entirely different
| level from anything that came before it though. The idea
| of announcers and gamers getting rich & famous from
| playing a video game live was unheard of before that.
| kqr wrote:
| I agree. I think people underestimate the size of the
| Korean Brood War scene, even relatively early on. In my
| country, I had seen some huge LAN parties with associated
| competitions, but then I got introduced to Korean Brood
| War competitions; they were filling stadiums with
| audiences and had pyrotechnics and professional TV
| productions and everything. It was insane.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I loved the campaigns so much that I spent many dollars to
| play with the campaign editor in a net bar back then. I never
| figured out how to recreate the Corsair scene at the
| beginning of Protoss level 2. It was only after many years
| that I found out that it requires a script not in the
| official editor -- some modders created a new editor that
| includes all those "unofficial" scripts.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Personally I think Dawn of War is the apex. That game really
| fired on all cylinders. And then for whatever reason Relic
| completely abandoned the formula and made the next game
| something different entirely. Dawn of War 2 remains one of my
| greatest gaming disappointments to this day because of poorly
| it stood up to its predecessor.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Dawn of War 3 made DoW 2 look like Game of the Decade by
| comparison. I hear they're making a DoW 4, and they're not
| even mentioning 3 when talking about the history.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| And it's still popular and actually playable today. Warcraft
| 2 is not really fun to play. Very clunky control, very
| outdated graphics, bad story telling. With Starcraft, my only
| real complain is terrible cinematics which just doesn't cut
| it today. Otherwise this game is as fun to play today, as it
| was 15 years ago.
| kergonath wrote:
| I quite like the StarCraft remaster. It plays just like the
| old one (to me, at least; I am not a competitive player),
| and it looks much better.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| The cinematics were the best part of Starcraft!
|
| I still get a kick out of the fact that the units look
| completely different in the cinematics as they do in the
| game and even the instruction manual
| hulitu wrote:
| > Warcraft 2 is not really fun to play.
|
| Compared with a lot of ptesent games is luxury: no updates,
| no bullshit introduction, just play.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Interesting, I think most RTS players would point to StarCraft
| 2 as the apex, and they'd probably be correct given how its
| still played so much today.
|
| What makes Warcraft 2 the apex for you over StarCraft 2?
| adinisom wrote:
| Buildings as walls and using spawn points to jump through
| terrain are fun mechanics in WC2.
| DarknessFalls wrote:
| I remember creating a moat of farms around my town hall.
| jandrese wrote:
| Funny how many people think Starcraft 2 isn't even better
| than Starcraft 1, especially when you add in Brood War.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| The game's campaign being what it was made it so people
| never warmed up to it, the big hero-focused storylines and
| then mishandling of said characters (Kerrigan's abortive
| humanization and then rushed redemption, the Protoss being
| framed in entirely the wrong tone, the half baked epilogue)
| just made it so that the campaign didn't stick as Brod
| War's did, even if the gameplay was superior.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I consider WCIII TFT the apex but that is because i really like
| the hero mechanic and it spawned so many amazing custom games,
| including the moba genre. I know AoS was first but dota really
| made it.
| mettamage wrote:
| Can't comment on this other than that I came in at WCIII RoC
| and played TFT. Before that, I played a lot of Command &
| Conquer. I loved those games, so for me WCIII is the apex. I
| didn't like StarCraft. But it's admittedly the apex for me
| without having ever played WCII. I've rarely seen it as well.
| ycombinete wrote:
| The smaller armies, heroes, economy management, and increased
| micro-control that came from these things really push w3 to
| the top of the pile for me as well.
| AngryData wrote:
| Footies was my favorite and I wish we got a new game out of
| that too.
| pa7ch wrote:
| I feel like wc3 is undersung. To me it achieved the perfect
| balance of allowing potentially mechanically worse players to
| win with brilliant tactics or strategy. It put the emphasis
| on strategy in rts more then anything else.
|
| As a kid I was shit at it and played customs maps and goofed
| with the editor. Now I've gone back to find grubby streaming
| and revealing the depths of the meta evolution, and counters.
|
| I like that even when a strong meta develops people can
| potentially counter with strategies that aren't as well
| rounded for long term use but upset the current meta.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > and mass appeal has driven games
|
| Oh no, large numbers of people were satisfied. The horror! Will
| no one think of the elitist minority???
| t_mahmood wrote:
| Large number of people were "satisfied" playing Clash of
| Titans too ...
| haunter wrote:
| Yet two of the most played games out there in 2025 are RTSes,
| Dota and League. The genre just progressed forward.
|
| WC3 was peak design with the mod support (maps) where Dota
| originates from and and it was also the bane of the company.
| They couldn't monetize it and IceFrog choose Valve instead of
| them. No wonder that later Blizz games has 0 community support.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Dota and League are not RTS games. They are Moba. These are
| completely different genres. Dota happened to utilise
| Warcraft engine and assets back in the days, but that doesn't
| make it RTS.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > IceFrog choose Valve instead of them
|
| Icefrog went to blizzard first if i remember correctly.
| Blizzard kinda told him to make a restricted game, maybe
| within the sc2 engine, almost for free. Valve saw the value
| and invested more.
| officeplant wrote:
| >WC3 was peak design with the mod support (maps) where DotA
| originates from
|
| Which first came from Starcraft custom game support and the
| popularity of Aeon of Strife (AoS) leading to Defense of the
| Ancients (DotA) in WC3.
| acheron wrote:
| Very distinct memory of getting this for Christmas, then
| installing and playing the first time that afternoon.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Lucky! my sister and I opened it Xmas morning, then had to wait
| all day agonizingly to be able to play jt because we hosted the
| family holiday, we were supposed to be socializing with
| relatives, not playing computer games upstairs.
|
| We had to wait until after mom and dad went to sleep that
| night, then snuck up the hall to install it and play it as
| quietly as possible.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Warcraft II was my introduction to the RTS genre and fell in love
| with it. Warcraft II really gave each unit a unique character and
| the strategies for almost endless. Spents tons of time playing
| and replaying it over the years and it's kinda crazy it still has
| a competitive scene.
| moribvndvs wrote:
| Warcraft II and C&C made me fall in love with the genre, all my
| friends and people on the internet that routinely roflstomped
| me made me go back to FPS.
| YesBox wrote:
| So happy I bought this game on GOG before they replaced it with
| the revamped version (modern looking art, etc).
|
| I played through the orc campaign last year and had fun. It's
| definitely aged, but it makes me wonder if something like that
| could exist today. Story games are popular, and I think always
| will be (people like stories).
|
| Instead of a solo protagonist, can we bring back the hero (a la
| WarCraft III) and their army? Or even the invisible god like WC2?
| thih9 wrote:
| Here is a comparison of the original vs the remaster:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=KZ9Ac4WVW6Q&t=100s in case anyone
| else is interested too.
| moribvndvs wrote:
| Visually at least it looks like a pretty tasteful remaster.
| Mostly just sharpening things up. Thanks for posting
| amatecha wrote:
| Ah wow , rip the awesome fonts used in the original game. The
| new ones are so "clean" and boring :(
|
| Glad to see the art itself was not too badly modified. It's
| weird though, like the vegetation in the Farm building looks
| weird. The original version you can tell it's some kind of
| yellow fruit or vegetable but in the remaster the yellow dots
| are unusually small and don't really "feel right". Strikes me
| as AI upscaling rather than hand-crafted editing.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| Was this the one AOL charged me to play by the minute when I was
| a kid?
| recursive wrote:
| It is not and has never been an AOL game. Unless you were
| paying by the minute for internet access for multiplayer via
| Kali.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| I don't think I was using Kali. Did AOL partner with them? As
| I remember, I found it via AOL in a sponsored or semi
| official capacity. There were a number of RTS games available
| via the AOL gaming channel, integrated or closely aligned
| with the AOL app.
| nerdix wrote:
| It was a partnership through a multiplayer service called
| Engage.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| I found this: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/aol-
| initiates-new-game-pri...
| nerdix wrote:
| Yes it was!
|
| I just posted a comment about how amazing the warcraft 2
| community was on AOL. Couldn't remember if they charged per
| minute or per hour so you just confirmed it for me. I just
| remember that some kids were racking up insane bills. I had to
| play on Zone (and then Battle.net when Battle.net edition came
| out) but I loved the AOL war2 message boards.
| barfoure wrote:
| Some additional stuff:
|
| 1) you can find the War 2 for PSX source on Archive. It has all
| the Windows stuff commented out. It might be possible to
| uncomment and compile with something like Borland C or Watcom C
| or whatever they used.
|
| 2) the modding scene was phenomenal. Not mentioned is StarDraft
| for obvious reasons but a counterpart to WarDraft. This is where
| our story takes a turn and the name Camelot Systems emerges,
| along with a King Arthur (Andy Bond) who shortly after finishing
| his comp sci degree went to work for Blizzard and has been with
| them since. This website is a homage to CamSys (JorSys).
|
| 3) War2Bne is a thing to behold. Diablo, Warcraft 2 et al being
| able to seamlessly chat and DM players across games was pure
| magic.
|
| Many stories to tell, but we will never step into that river
| again. Legends never die.
| sjoblomj wrote:
| 1. Wow, I did not know that. Thanks for sharing!
|
| 2. Indeed - I'm happy to hear someone know their Blizzard
| modding community history. To my knowledge, King Arthur never
| finished his studies as he got offered a job at Blizzard. He
| worked at Blizzard from around 2000 to 2020. He's now at
| Dreamhaven it seems, along with former Blizzard CEO Mike
| Morhaime. And indeed - Jorsys is very much inspired by Camsys
| =)
|
| 3. I think my abuse of overplaying Diablo I on our old 56k
| modem is what made my parents invest in broadband. I'm happy
| they didn't make me pay the bills back then.
|
| My long term goal with Jorsys is to put tutorials and mods and
| make the whole thing accessible for people today and tomorrow.
| It's all pretty arcane, with tools, mods and instructions
| barely accessible anymore. Time is limited though.
|
| I don't anticipate creating a community, but if you have
| anecdotes or stories to share, or want to help out in any way,
| don't hesitate to get in touch. My email is on Jorsys.
| barfoure wrote:
| Here's a few more:
|
| 1) in addition to Kali, people played War2 on MSN Gaming
| Zone. It was available under the TCP/IP section.
|
| 2) before war2bne, you could use a program to change the
| color of your in game name, and use non-ASCII characters. So
| people went wild in multiplayer games.
|
| 3) I think MPlayer also supported War2? I don't think anyone
| played it there.
|
| 4) StarCraft modding community was tight knit. Lots of great
| maps with tools available only to friends of the modders. We
| see the tail end of this when mappers finally get so good
| their maps are used by KeSPA and are not possible with stock
| editor.
|
| 5) Warcraft 3 alpha comes around. Warforge server is the
| first and only private server. The first map editor is
| leaked, janky but works for alpha. the first tower defense
| map ever for Warcraft 3 is made by a fellow called Mr123 on
| Warforge. The rest is history.
| mickeyp wrote:
| Battle.net's simple system of just downloading maps you
| didn't have helped a lot.
|
| I remember playing a "Use Map Settings" map where you
| started out as a lone marine and then had to 'upgrade' your
| character over time. It felt like a very early prototype of
| later hero-style games that came to exist in Warcraft 3 and
| beyond.
|
| Fun times.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Soundtrack and game book art still solid too.
|
| It really does pale by comparison to StarCraft, BroodWars, WC3,
| and of course the scion of the series, SC2.
|
| It's a shame how far Blizzard has fallen at this point - this era
| of RTS died a sad little death a decade ago with Nova Covert Ops.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I love Warcraft II. My first ever RTS, and one of the all time
| greats even now. The game just has soul oozing out of every pore;
| you can feel the excitement of the Blizzard guys for the game as
| you play it. The expansion was great too.
|
| I played the battle.net rerelease of the game, which came out
| after Starcraft did. The main feature was (obviously) online
| play, but I believe it had some other SC features backported as
| well. Had _great_ times as a kid playing in comp stomp lobbies on
| battle.net!
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I still remember the 3 level demo CD they made. Awesome demo
| levels that made me buy the game, which is still one of my
| favorite games of all time.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah! My intro to the series was the 3-level WC1 demo. I was
| absolutely blown away as I had never played any game like that
| before it. Instantly obsessed haha
| ericmcer wrote:
| My parents never bought me the full game so I probably played
| those demo levels 100s of times. Thanks for the memory trigger
| haha.
| mister_mort wrote:
| Was the demo version a separate story campaign like the
| Starcraft one was?
| phire wrote:
| MobyGames [1] claim they are unique missions. More or less
| the same story, but different maps, objectives and briefing
| text.
|
| Maybe I need to re-download it, and check out the
| differences. I remember playing those six missions so many
| times before eventually saving up enough pocket money to buy
| the game, but I don't exactly remember them being different.
|
| And it's actually six maps, three for each faction.
|
| [1] https://www.mobygames.com/game/57961/warcraft-ii-tides-
| of-da...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| WarCraft was a huge part of our LAN parties, but mechanics wise,
| Total Annihilation was a much bigger leap forward in terms of use
| of 3D terrain and ballistics and commands, so we played that a
| lot more.
|
| Warcraft had more differentiable units and a better story though.
| guerby wrote:
| And now Beyond All Reason keeps it alive and free software
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Huh. I'm familiar with the Spring RTS FOSS project
| (https://springrts.com) which started as a reimplementation
| of TA, and of course Planetary Annihilation, but not "Beyond
| All Reason" - do you have an authoritative link?
| tshaddox wrote:
| The official website is https://www.beyondallreason.info/
|
| It's an open-source project that started as a fork of
| SpringRTS. To my eye it looks nearly like a clone of
| Supreme Commander.
|
| I watched a few ranked 1v1 games on uThermal's YouTube
| channel (he's a former Starcraft 2 pro who mostly makes
| YouTube videos about Starcraft 2). Here's the playlist.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_USFDBbymGUwLPiopP2
| q...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Well, when I saw the first Supreme Commander video it
| looked a _lot_ like Sprint RTS running Balanced
| Annihilation to me. Right down to how the terrain
| deformation worked and the command queuing.
|
| Was there any particular reason for the fork? There's a
| lot of Spring RTS projects but they all use the same
| codebase. http://springrts.com/wiki/Games
| Lapsa wrote:
| BAR is a great RTS
| NortySpock wrote:
| The Spring RTS FOSS engine is an engine, but does not
| provide the game assets or game-specific code.
|
| Recoil is a fork of the Spring engine (background: Spring
| made backward incompatible changes; Recoil forked to retain
| backward compatibility). Beyond All Reason uses the Recoil
| engine and supplies its own game code, shaders, and assets.
|
| https://recoilengine.org/articles/choose-recoil/
|
| https://recoilengine.org/ (list of games powered by Recoil)
|
| https://github.com/beyond-all-reason
|
| Source: been in the BAR Discord for about a year, have
| contributed tiny bits of server code to the project, and
| read a few pull request comments.
| olavgg wrote:
| BAR is a really great RTS game. By far the best one today. It
| is very balanced and has a lot of depth. Highly recommended
| for any RTS enthusiast.
| arscan wrote:
| The Kali TCP/IP IPX bridge allowed you to play this multiplayer
| over the internet, and the style of game was tolerant to low
| bandwidth and high pings. Which made this one of the first games
| that really provided a glimpse of the future of gaming (for
| better or worse, much of gaming has moved away from single person
| campaigns to multiplayer). I have so many great memories of this
| era in gaming because of this game and the handful of others that
| Kali supported (descent, doom 2).
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Kali was awesome!
| jquery wrote:
| I had a lot of fun using Cases Ladder to find matches.
|
| I know the game was horribly unbalanced against humans once
| bloodlust showed up, but I still quit after they "patched"
| bloodlust years later in Battle.net. Felt sacrilege, like
| patching the queen in chess. Yeah, the queen is imba, but
| that's chess. Beating an orc player as a human was a fun
| flex.
| recursive wrote:
| There are more high-quality single player campaigns coming out
| now than there were then. Single-player gaming seems to have
| grown since then. Just not as much as multi-player.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Kali ruled. I played a modified version of Hellfire (unofficial
| Diablo expansion that technically didn't support multiplayer)
| on Kali for the longest time. GTX_Rage, if you're here, I want
| to talk to you!
| Cruncharoo wrote:
| Oh no way I didn't know Hellfire was unofficial. I don't even
| remember where I got it back in the day but I still remember
| the CD..
| toast0 wrote:
| Hellfire was a released commercial product.... But it was
| released by Sierra On-Line, not Blizzard.
|
| Both companies were owned by the same conglomorate (at the
| time?), and cooperation was limited.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| The poor floating point performance of many PCs at the time
| meant that a lot of code used ints rather than floats, making
| determinism much easier for multiplayer!
|
| I believe DOOM and Warcraft 2 simply did lockstep determinism
| across all clients. You could run the simulations forward
| completely deterministically due to use of its and fixed point
| math.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Quake did as well all the way up to Quake 3 I believe. The
| game was basically on a heartbeat based on the worst latency
| of the connected player. Everything got synchronized that
| way.
|
| Back in the day, your gaming could be super wrecked if
| someone with a 300ms latency joined :D.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| If TabithaS from Case's Ladder is out there somewhere, thank
| you for playing teaching games of Warcraft 2 with me!
| cortesoft wrote:
| Oh man. I remember having to send a check for $20 to some
| address to get my key.
|
| That was such a game changer for online play. Before that, to
| play Warcraft II my friend and I had to coordinate to set up a
| game, then call their model directly, and hope our parents
| didn't pick up the phone thinking it was a regular call.
|
| After Kali, we could just sign on and join games. We also got
| to play as a team, which was so much fun. Friends2v2 was the
| map and game type we played SO MUCH. We had various strategies
| that we got really good at (mostly grunt rushing and offensive
| towering). I miss those games.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| A free alternative was MSN Gaming Zone.
|
| Ran inside IE using ActiveX or something. Was pretty neat.
| gdcbe wrote:
| Do you or someone reading this know who would be the best
| person that would be willing to come on a guest on a podcast
| and has the correct knowledge (ideally the person who
| implemented in WC3, or something similar enough).
|
| Asking as I'm the host of netstack.fm, a podcast about
| networking and rust, but some episodes are just about
| networking alone.
|
| Would love to devote an episode to the Kali TCP/IP IPX bridge
| as there's a lot to unpack there and that can be learned from.
| Any tips for a guest for such an episode are more than welcome!
| arscan wrote:
| In grad school 15+ years ago I took a 'user-centered
| innovation' class and I wrote a paper on the topic of Kali
| and its predecessor: how gamers, not the game devs, made
| games built for IPX work across the internet. What is neat is
| early collab on the first ipx->tcp/ip bridge happened on
| Usenet, so you can find a record of the first doom deathmatch
| coordinated and played over the internet. I think I reached
| out to jay cotton (author of kali) via email and he answered
| my questions, so I'd try to track him down if I were you.
|
| Sadly I didn't make a backup of my paper (not sure how I
| managed to screw that up), so I no longer have it.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| There was also WarCraft II Battle.net edition, launched in '99
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I spent many hours playing this, C&C, Red Alert, over null modem
| cables and kali with my friends growing up. One of the most
| satisfying things is to hit the unit limit!
| crims0n wrote:
| And now that disco easter egg is stuck in my head... (although
| technically I think that was part of Beyond the Dark Portal).
| acheron wrote:
| wha-wha-wha-wha-what do you want
|
| (Yes, that was from Beyond the Dark Portal. Could play it in
| the game with a "cheat" code or it was at the end of the
| Redbook audio tracks if you put it in a music CD player.)
| bfors wrote:
| This game lead me down a path that resulted in me becoming a
| software engineer. Good game.
| amatecha wrote:
| No doubt. My friend learned how to hex edit because of WC1 --
| editing his savegame files haha
| ece wrote:
| I was happy when I could skip the intro movie.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Two memorable things
|
| - "Your sound card works perfectly!"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_A1GNx0M9M
|
| - "I am a medieval man"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwWh1xy6gvU
| (https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/I%27m_a_Medieval_Man)
|
| It was great to play this game when it came out. And it has aged
| well too. Good gameplay, OST, graphics... never experienced a
| glitch or performance issue. The only worry was keeping the CD
| unscratched.
| yoavm wrote:
| This was the first game I was really obsessed with. I remember
| having one floppy disc and I wanted to copy the game from a
| friend, so we split the game to ~10 parts, and for a whole
| weekend I was going back and forth between our houses,
| "downloading" those 10mb.
| amatecha wrote:
| I remember it felt like AGES for the Mac version to come out --
| my friends with DOS/Win machines were playing and of course I was
| out of luck, still clinging to my precious WarCraft 1 in the
| meantime (apparently the Mac vers came out 8mo later)... I
| remember visiting a couple friends and playing the game at their
| house and being so jealous they can just play this amazing game
| any time. WC2 was such a leap forward and such an improved game
| (though I did miss the gritty/darker feel from WC1). Great
| memories of playing modem games with my friends in the area, and
| AppleTalk LAN games as well of course.
| javman wrote:
| I get nostalgic thinking about WC2 on the Mac. I was a teen
| then, and loved Blizzard for putting the effort into a Mac
| release. I don't remember how I found IRC and #macwarcraft, but
| between dial-up internet, coordinating games on an IRC channel,
| trading IP's, and submitting game results to manual
| leaderboards, clan wars, trash talking, etc. What a great time
| it was :)
| kalleboo wrote:
| None of my PC friends had any kind of networking, but on our
| Macs we had an AppleTalk (PhoneNet) network between 3 Macs (WC2
| ran on a 25 MHz 68040 so my old bedroom Mac would still
| suffice) making my home the WarCraft II gaming nexus.
| MobileVet wrote:
| If you still want to experience the joys of RTS... but struggle
| to play after so many years away, I highly recommend catching a
| few streams from Grubby. He plays WC3 and a few other games and
| is quite entertaining to watch. He is also crazy good... His
| typical APM during a game hovers between 200 and 250. He is an
| absolute beast at leveraging his items and maximizing his heroes'
| hp.
|
| https://youtu.be/qaaWsRfbsls?si=EJ0WBvJ9hMmQCaNb
| theposey wrote:
| sub to the grub!
| chongli wrote:
| I would also recommend ArtosisCasts [1]. Dan 'Artosis'
| Stemkoski has been a professional StarCraft play-by-play
| commentator and colour analyst for decades. He's lived in South
| Korea (now in Canada) and cast countless professional matches
| and tournaments featuring the top Korean players.
|
| On his casting YouTube channel he uploads a new commentary and
| recording of a StarCraft game every day, as well as news about
| upcoming events and tournaments. He loves to do deep dives and
| detailed analysis of strategies and the shifting metagame of
| StarCraft: Brood War, a game that is still going stronger than
| ever despite closing in on its 3rd decade since release.
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/@artosiscasts
| u12 wrote:
| Grubby is good, but Back to Warcraft casts the highest level
| players these days. Grubby does not compete in the top league
| any more
| MobileVet wrote:
| Honestly, he doesn't need to be the best to make it
| enjoyable. He seems like a generally chill guy and he goes
| back and breaks down his games. Fascinating to hear what he
| was thinking and why he did what he did.
| shoo wrote:
| i'd also recommend uthermal -- former pro sc2 player, he's got
| a really good attitude & makes a lot of entertaining videos
| publicdebates wrote:
| I miss the low res aesthetic of WC2. It's so sad that
| everything has to be high res nowadays. I never really liked
| WC3, maybe for that reason.
|
| And although SC1/2 brought genuine improvements in the genre in
| many ways, there's something so much purer about the high
| fantasy tone of WC over the scifi tone of SC. Maybe it's just
| pure nostalgia, but it feels like something deeper, something
| more real.
| bombcar wrote:
| WC2, SC1, and things like Heroes III (and somewhat today with
| Factorio) perfected that 2D art-style. It might not have as
| many pixels as WC3, but every single one of them was thought
| about and considered by someone with artistic merit.
|
| It wasn't until nearly 20 years after WC2 that a 3D game got
| "graphics that look almost 2D in quality (SC3)".
|
| I think it's also very telling that World of Warcraft made
| infinity money, but World of Starcraft never happened. High
| fantasy always lends itself to the "I can make a difference
| as a mortal man" but sci-fi seems to always trend toward "too
| big for human consumption."
| wredcoll wrote:
| > I can make a difference as a mortal man"
|
| Thinking of popular fantasy sci-fi, this seems like the
| exact opposite of what actually happens! With the notable
| exception of lotr (and how many early readers really
| focused on frodo's struggle anyways?) most fantasy has some
| kind of superhuman main character that can singlehandedly
| change the world.
|
| Scifi tends to be a lot more about people like Picard,
| important and respected but ultimately limited to
| influencing others to achieve major changes.
| officeplant wrote:
| Warcraft II was the first game I ever played over modem direct
| connect with a friend across town. Later on there was another
| friend that lived way outside of town where you could only get
| dial-up internet who I played Starcraft with over modem. Those
| were probably some of the most enjoyable moments I ever got out
| of dial up internet.
| nerdix wrote:
| AOL had an amazing warcraft 2 community. There was an online
| games service in the 90s called Engage and AOL had a partnership
| with them that allowed AOL users to play multiplayer games
| through the AOL service. There was a additional charge and it was
| quite expensive (I believe there was a per minute but my memory
| is a little fuzzy on the details).
|
| There was a very active AOL message board dedicated to Warcraft
| 2. Most of the active community used other services (Kali, MSN
| Zone, and later Battlenet when BNE came out) to play the game
| since AOL's service was prohibitively expensive.
|
| The best part of the community were the clans. Some of them ended
| up outliving AOL. The biggest one that I remember was a clan
| named Splintered Orcs Clan (SoC). Actually just found an old
| forum post written by the founder of SoC. Looks like they tried
| to branch out into WoW (I was way out of the scene by then)
|
| https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/12955/splintered-orcs-c...
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I worked backwards from Starcraft, and to my mind WC2 still feels
| a bit archaic, insofar as the two races feel nearly identical.
| WC3 did a better job of differentiating the Human and Orc units,
| and then of course added Dark Elves and the Undead to the mix,
| too.
|
| But I _will_ say that WC2 is the last major RTS I can think of
| with naval combat. After Starcraft streamlined it to be land and
| air only, it seems the entire industry followed suit. Even WC3
| didn 't bother bringing ships back, to my memory.
| u12 wrote:
| Age of empires always had naval combat. Supreme commander too.
| There's a bunch.
| rout39574 wrote:
| Try 'Beyond All Reason', a passionate FOSS recreation of the
| core of Total Annihilation.
|
| It's got really decent naval combat, with a distinct feel
| compared to the land and air.
| kulahan wrote:
| I remember being bummed when I played WC3 and there was no oil
| resource. Lots of sky and ground units, but I guess a navy just
| wasn't useful enough? Which I suppose I could see. A big
| benefit in militaries is the ability to quickly project power
| (from a carrier) or provide tons of logistics - supplies,
| blockades, etc.
|
| These just aren't considerations in RTS games - they move too
| fast and the maps are too small. There really isn't a benefit
| to having a ship with all your planes just outside of the
| enemy's range - they could sneak attack you, and sending units
| from your own base really just isn't that much farther.
|
| It's a shame to me that this isn't a more popular genre these
| days. It's easily my favorite.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| C&C RA (1996) and RA2 (2000) both had significant naval units.
| RA3 (2008) went.. maybe a little overboard with naval units as
| well. That said, all other C&C games (Tiberium and Generals)
| both avoided naval units.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| This is a really good and I think sadly under played and
| discussed game. It was very popular in the mid 1990s on release
| but it seems like it was immediately forgotten about once
| Starcraft arrived. It's unfortunate because yes it's a simpler
| and more straight forward game, and not as balanced, but it is
| very fun and pure.
|
| Warcraft 1 is maybe too slow paced and basic to be enjoyable, but
| Warcraft 2 remains very playable, as many of the usability of
| features core to modern RTS games developed here. There are a few
| things missing, but that just means you have to be more on the
| ball with the micro.
|
| The map editor was revolutionary at the time, and it was
| trivially easy to be making usable maps within minutes.
|
| One thing that was delightful about this game was how the
| community discovered that Farms made for better walls than the
| actual walls, and so an enormous variety of strategies developed
| around this. As players developed knowledge of how units were
| pushed out of buildings, walling off buildings to push units past
| forest was another strategy that developed from this, creating
| the potential for sneaky tricks.
|
| One unfortunate thing about the game was that during the original
| battlenet edition they added a new extra fast speed, which
| everyone moved to, but that speed actually kinda broke the game
| in that it became entirely possible to accidentally put your
| townhall too close to the mine, and your peons would be
| impossible to remove from mining. So in actuality the second to
| fastest speed is the correct speed for this game.
|
| I hope this got fixed in the remaster but I heard it was a pretty
| basic art refresh...
| ericmcer wrote:
| All the RTS games are underplayed nowadays. Starcraft 2 is
| maybe the most active still and has been all but abandoned by
| Blizzard.
|
| A good RTS has an extremely harsh learning curve and is not
| super monetizable. Someone would have to rethink the genre:
| make it easier for casual players and figure out how to get the
| addicting money making patterns in. Otherwise big companies are
| gonna have no interest.
|
| Sucks, I love Starcraft 2, but it is legitimately the most
| mentally demanding game I have ever played. Sometimes I
| procrastinate getting into a match because 1v1 is so stressful.
| I totally get why it has limited appeal.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| StarCraft I still has a large community. And China has a
| giant WarCraft III community.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Every time someone tries to re-think the genre they make it
| worse. Supreme Commander (and Forged Alliance) were near-
| perfect games, but SupCom 2 tried to simpify the game to
| appeal to console players and ruined it completely. Dawn of
| War 2, although not to everyone's taste, was in my view the
| peak of the series. For the third install they tried to
| simplify the game and bring it closer to a MOBA and it was an
| incredible flop.
|
| In my view, if a develop MUST make the game more accessible,
| they should do so with alternate modes while still
| maintaining a strong competitive 1v1, 2v2 and 4v4 mode with
| the steep learning curve and competitive nature. Anything
| else is a betrayal of the genre.
| stackghost wrote:
| I think the problem is simply that for a large part of the
| playerbase, increasing your APM is directly correlated with
| increasing your win rate/ranking.
|
| And frankly, that's not fun for a lot of people.
|
| I don't want to win by clicking and mashing hotkeys like a
| schizophrenic on speed.
| kqr wrote:
| I don't think this is true. Granted, last time I tried to
| get good at an RTS was toward the end of the Brood War era
| but the established wisdom at that time was very clear that
| hour-for-hour, time spent practicing resource management
| was much more effective than time spent practicing clicking
| quickly.
|
| Yes, really good players click fast, but they also have
| impeccable resource management. The group I played with did
| run the obvious experiment: the best one of us was forced
| to play against the rest (one at a time) with an artificial
| click frequency limit. He felt like his abilities were
| greatly reduced, but he still beat everyone else quite
| easily.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| World in Conflict was an interesting take on making RTS
| easier for casuals. Basically took the resource gathering
| part out of it. You got a constant drip of points you could
| spend on units instead.
|
| Potentially that simplification hurts the genre too much
| though because then you don't have hardcore players sticking
| with it for years and years.
|
| Maybe a game could have that as a "simple mode" that players
| can opt in to.
|
| The potential addictive money making pattern is the same as
| other games imo. Skins. The units being smaller mean the
| developer is probably going to have to go to more effort to
| shove them in to peoples faces. Maybe a screen before/after
| the match where all the players units in their skins can be
| clear seen in a more zoomed in manner. Have them marching
| around the border of the end scoresheet or doing a little
| dance while waiting for players to load.
| Fnoord wrote:
| The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate. I cannot
| comment on it, I have no idea how good it is. AFAIK it is
| multiplayer only. I played Dune II, Warcraft II, C&C, Red
| Alert, Starcraft (didn't like, I never understood the hype),
| Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft III as kid, but...
| only single player (at various difficulties). That is just
| how games were generally played in the 90s. I do remember
| using a null modem cable at some point, but IIRC was only to
| play Doom and Duke3d.
|
| I believe the RTS genre at a whole got superseded by the MOBA
| genre (with DotA and LoL). A genre I tried once (HotS) and
| was terrible at. If you're shit and you're not improving (I
| didn't enjoy it either, I felt forced to do it for a reward
| in another game), stop trying. I never tried any other MOBA,
| except maybe a touchscreen one, Warcraft Rumble? Either way,
| I got burned by Hearthstone Mercs and fell once more in the
| trap with Rumble. After Blizzard announced removed of addons
| from combat, I've finally said goodbye to the Warcraft
| franchise and Blizzard in general.
|
| There's one game I really do like which has a kind of RTS
| with map feeling to it: Total War: War _hammer_ series
| (though I laud their BS with DLCs and multiple game
| versions). I suppose the whole Total War series is as good, I
| just like the Warhammer universe. The other day, Settlers II
| was discussed on here, including a FOSS clone. Settlers II is
| also a game I liked (III not so much though artwork was nice,
| never played the orig.). Supposedly it isn 't RTS, tho I am
| pretty sure back then it was called RTS.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| > The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate
|
| This was their claim, but it did not pan out in reality. It
| flopped on launch, _hard_. Peak player count since launch
| has been less than 100, and is currently hovering around
| 25.
| taurath wrote:
| It was really proof that gameplay often takes a back seat
| to visual identity, ESPECIALLY if the gameplay is
| extremely derivative, which this was. They had a massive
| amount of goodwill from fans of the genre, but when they
| started sharing screenshots it deflated fast - its not a
| 2025 game, its a 2010 clone of a popular 2005 game. Its
| nigh impossible to make a spiritual successor to genre
| defining games in WC3 and SC2 - too many things need to
| go perfect.
|
| It had a better chance if it could find its own voice,
| but it ended up feeling like a direct to home video
| sequel to a popular movie
| taurath wrote:
| I agree, I think MOBAs superceded the "real time" part of
| RTS's, while the more turn based Civ/4x, Total War series
| strategy type games ended up taking a lot of the base
| building part. Having them both together was just straight
| up difficult and incredibly intense, like the game itself
| demanded you be on adderall because your attention cannot
| wane for a single moment.
|
| The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting
| the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where
| there was only going to be one or two interesting
| interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just
| a game of who makes a mistake too early.
|
| Teamfight Tactics and Autochess are interesting newer
| entries though, allowing time to strategize and adding a
| lot of randomness to the games, where you can't just play
| one build. Even then though, as these games get more and
| more explored, "optimal" strategy gets eventually
| discovered and the game devs especially in TFT are in a
| race to try to keep things high variance but also seem fair
| - its definitely a difficult job!
| lurk2 wrote:
| > The better I got at competitive RTS's the less
| interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt
| like chess where there was only going to be one or two
| interesting interactions in the game if played well,
| otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too
| early.
|
| I feel the exact same way. The ELO system saves you from
| getting steamrolled if you're a casual player but
| improving just means the game becomes formulaic to the
| point of no longer being fun. Stronghold 2 was kind of
| interesting in that it was an unranked lobby with good
| variation in player ability and team-oriented maps. Most
| players knew the basic economic and combat metas, but
| you'd often end up in situations where one of your
| teammates dropped out on a 3 vs 3 and you'd still win.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Perhaps a more 'casual' in the RTS genre, but AoE2 is still
| going very strong.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| > This is a really good and I think sadly under played and
| discussed game
|
| WarCraft II sold 3M copies.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Yes it was one of the most successful PC games of the 1990s,
| but that doesn't say much today. Have a look at its subreddit
| and it's a ghost town. Wasn't remade and re-released often
| since and little to no effort has been put into growing the
| franchise.
|
| In contrast contemporary SNES games have had more remakes and
| had their audiences grow remarkably over time. The franchise
| hasn't been cared for and so it's relatively obscure despite
| being a top tier best in class game on its release.
|
| Tbh in general I think you could say the same of a lot of top
| tier successful PC games of that era.
| pests wrote:
| > The map editor was revolutionary at the time, and it was
| trivially easy to be making usable maps within minutes.
|
| Ah yes, my friend groups favorite map to make: start at the
| corners and the rest of the map was trees.
| Ntrails wrote:
| I still have a bunch of the sound bites in my music folder.
| Nothing says playlist filler like "Leave Me Alone"
| black3r wrote:
| > Development stared in the first months of 1995, and the game
| was released in North America and Australia on December 9, 1995.
|
| This feels absolutely insane for today's standards. And not just
| in the gaming world. Somehow with all the advancement of
| libraries, frameworks, coding tools, and even AI these days,
| development speeds seem so much slower and it seems like too much
| time is spent on eye candy, monetization and dark patterns and
| too few times on things people actually like to see - that's what
| made us buy games and software in the old days.
|
| (But also in the gaming world, especially the past few years when
| almost no game studio develops its own engine, assets don't look
| more detailed than what was used 3 years ago, stories seem
| hastily written and it feels like 80% of developer's time is
| spent on making cosmetic items for purchase which often cost more
| than the base game price)
|
| Also somehow we spend lots of times researching UX and developing
| tutorials (remember when software had the "?" button next to the
| close button and no software "tutorials" were needed?) and yet
| all the games and software are harder to learn than what we had
| in the 90s and 00s.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Additionally, the product was completed and released on CD, so
| no hundreds of bug fixes after the release.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| They did have downloadable patches for WC2 though.
| phire wrote:
| Yeah, 9 patches for the original game, then the Battle.net
| Edition in 1999 (which added support for TCP/IP networking
| and Battle.net matchmaking), and at least one downloadable
| patch for that.
|
| https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Warcraft_II_patch_information
| #...
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Even smaller games now have ludicrously long development cycles
| as developers have learned they can exploit mentally challenged
| gamers by selling them "early access" (unfinished games).
| japhib wrote:
| Crazy how much bigger modern games are ... I wonder how many
| total pixels were shipped in the art assets of Warcraft 2 vs.
| StarCraft 2? My guess is at least 4 orders of magnitude higher
| for SC2
| garg wrote:
| Not that it is any less impressive but they continued the
| development of their existing engine from WC1.
| joegibbs wrote:
| Not at all crazy. You could very easily get a game with the
| same art style, features, number of missions done now in a
| month but people want much more. QOL features, multiple
| platforms, high quality graphics - $50 (average game price back
| then) is $105 now - you can't sell any game for that price
| nowadays, and a game at WC2 level of features wouldn't be
| accepted by customers for more than $5. A full price $59.99
| game now needs a billion different side quests, character
| customisation, full VA, multiplayer servers, an orchestral
| score, etc etc or people just won't buy it.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > is $105 now - you can't sell any game for that price
| nowadays
|
| But you don't need to. Just sell it to Steam for a $39.99 or
| whatever and have much, much more sales than in '95. And as a
| bonus you would still recieve some sales years after.
|
| Sure, you won't get in Top 100 and wouldn't earn
| bazillions...
| gmllama wrote:
| One of the biggest features of this game for me as a youngin'
| wasn't that I could play dial-up co-op multiplayer with the
| neighbors down the way, but that the soundtrack audio was Redbook
| format on the cd-rom and I could pop the game disk itself into my
| CD player to listen to the what I still consider to be an amazing
| soundtrack. That Orc'ish harpsichord still lives rent free in my
| head.
| freetime2 wrote:
| WarCraft II was among the first games that I ever played "online"
| (direct connection via dial-up modem with my friends). I can't
| overstate how absolutely incredible that felt to me at the time -
| pure magic.
|
| The other games we were playing at that time were Doom II and
| various other first-person shooters (Rise of the Triad, Hexen,
| etc) - which were also pretty incredible. But the WarCraft II
| experience really took things to the next level with far richer
| gameplay.
| boneitis wrote:
| This is probably the best time as any I'll ever get to mention
| that Patrick Wyatt's[0] blog[1] is a gold mine of frontline,
| boots-on-the-ground accounts of making WarCraft II and other
| games.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Wyatt
|
| [1]: https://www.codeofhonor.com/
| josh2600 wrote:
| I was 7 when Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness dropped.
|
| You cannot imagine the lengths we had to go to play this game in
| our home. We were lucky enough to have two apple computers and so
| my brother and I would play each other using the battle net
| technology over appletalk. The thing was, the only appletalk
| cable in our house was barely long enough to make it between the
| two bedrooms, so when we wanted to play the cable would hang in
| the air stretched across the hallway where the slightest tug
| would rip it out of the port killing the match.
|
| The number of times that cable got unplugged mid-game and the
| inter-household rancor that would ensue is the stuff of legends.
| I honestly remember the fits we had about whose fault it was that
| the cord got unplugged more than I remember any specific aspect
| of those Warcraft games.
|
| It just goes to show, networking topography matters.
|
| WCII ToD is absolutely one of the most insane games to ever be
| birthed unto the world. It was so brain breaking compared to
| everything else we were playing at the. time. Just a real quantum
| leap in terms of dopeness.
|
| Blizzard really hit it out of the park with Warcraft and Diablo.
| tarsinge wrote:
| > WCII ToD is absolutely one of the most insane games to ever
| be birthed unto the world. It was so brain breaking compared to
| everything else we were playing at the. time. Just a real
| quantum leap in terms of dopeness.
|
| I was 10 a the time and yes I'm not sure people realize how
| magical it felt at the time. When I got it in Christmas 96 on a
| 68k Mac it felt like it really opened a parallel universe
| compared to other games.
|
| The graphics (looked like a high res SNES game, which at the
| time was quite unique on PC), the CD quality soundtrack, the
| booklet concept art, the unit voices and buildings sounds... as
| a kid discovering Fantasy it had everything.
|
| And the attention to details, like Christmas string lights on
| building or a snowman when the map was in winter may seem
| insignificant, but as a kid it was wonderful.
|
| Even my dad who was not into video games but had played
| tabletop war games in the past and got hooked and spent a few
| nights on it to complete a solo campaign.
|
| This is by far the retro game I have the most nostalgia for.
| mos87 wrote:
| "...and awaits the coming of the tides of darkness"
|
| l'chaim!
| par wrote:
| Reflecting on retro compute more and more lately and it really
| makes me miss where we came from. I've been programming since
| about 1994 when I was about 12 years old (shout out q-basic). And
| today work at FAANG as an eng manager. But i am not proud of
| where we've gone as an industry. Makes me sad really.
| GBeastMode wrote:
| The only RTS games I could truly enjoy were Warcraft II and III.
| Other games like StarCraft are too complex for me to fully engage
| with. I especially liked Warcraft III's system of taxing large
| armies - it made battles small-scale and much easier to wrap my
| head around.
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