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30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

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Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#61

Post by thinkingtoilet »

jquery wrote: post #49
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 othe…

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.

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.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#62

Post by rickcarlino »

recursive wrote: post #54
rickcarlino wrote: post #22

Was this the one AOL charged me to play by the minute when I was a kid?

It is not and has never been an AOL game. Unless you were paying by the minute for internet access for multiplayer via Kali.

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.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#63

Post by capitainenemo »

guerby wrote: post #58
capitainenemo wrote: post #38

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.

And now Beyond All Reason keeps it alive and free software

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?

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#64

Post by seattle_spring »

arscan wrote: post #41

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…

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!

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#65

Post by LarsDu88 »

arscan wrote: post #41

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 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.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#66

Post by LarsDu88 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #52
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#67

Post by amatecha »

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.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#68

Post by CobrastanJorji »

arscan wrote: post #41

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…

If TabithaS from Case's Ladder is out there somewhere, thank you for playing teaching games of Warcraft 2 with me!

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#69

Post by officeplant »

haunter wrote: post #46
boringg wrote: post #4

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.

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.

>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.

Re: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

#70

Post by cortesoft »

arscan wrote: post #41

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…

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.

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