Blizzard and Death and Decay are army-destroyers if used right, Fireball can easily cripple a small cluster of units, Death Coil can do the same, Whirlwind is a huge pain in the ass for players unprepared to deal with it, Raise Dead is a solid force multiplier, Unholy Armor makes a unit invincible, Invisibility is one of the most hilariously useful spells in the game (cloak a transport, bring it to enemy base, unload, surprise buttsecks), and Polymorph is a gigantic "FUCK YOU" to one unit that's giving you problems. I don't get it. Maybe the population of Battle.Net felt that Mages were too powerful and the metagame was entirely too focused on what they can do. Since the only weapon that does Area-of-Effect damage other than the Ballista/Catapult, Battleship/Juggernaut and Sappers/Demo Squad are air units, the game quickly turns into a huge battle of attrition, which, again, hugely benefits the Orcs. Mages and Death Knights, of course, are turned into overglorified ranged units without magic, and without the ability to punish players that cluster units (with Death and Decay/Blizzard, flying units, or Fireball/Death Coil), battles become spamfests. It's woefully difficult for a Human player to beat an Orc player without mages due to the simple fact that Bloodlust will cause an Ogre-Mage to bludgeon a Knight to death in about 4 hits, whereas it'll take about 3 times that number for a Knight or Paladin to down the Mage. Where this flies into the catagory of flaming stupid is that "No Magic, No Air" may as well be called "Orcs win at everything forever," because the second Tier 3 rolls around, Orc players are cranking out Ogre Magi, which begin casting Bloodlust and raping everything that moves. Death Knights and Mages are the biggest difference, with both factions' units being considerably different both in tactics and in play style, and having phenomenal impact on the playstyle of both races.
Axethrowers and Archers diverge, with Rangers doing more damage per shot and Berserkers getting the ability to regenerate their HP, if slowly. The only real differences between the two factions only arise much higher in the tech-tree - Human Knights become Paladins, which have the abiity to heal units and damage undead units with magic, whereas Ogres become Ogre Magi, which can cast Bloodlust and the Runes Spell, which functionally is a land mine spell. This is true for the gross majority of units throughout the entire tech-tree of both factions - the Peon is the Peasant, the Footman is the Grunt, the Archer is the Axethrower, the Ogre is the Knight, the Destroyer is the Destroyer, the Dragon is the Gryphon. As an example, the Orc Grunt and the Human Footman are identical statistically and performance-wise in all ways, they are the exact same unit.
Warcraft II, like Dune 2 and its reasoned remake, Dune 2000, is an older generation of game, wherein what differentiates factions from one another is only a few minor differences between the units and their appearances. If you ever play the game online through Battle.Net, one thing will become apparent within a matter of seconds - many of the games have altered settings, and those altered settings are "No Magic, No Air." This is silly for ten shitloads of reasons, but before I can get into why, an explanation is needed. Brawl, of course, is a stunning example of this rote stupidity in action, and whilst there's a few special cases of this phenomenon I'll be bringing up soon enough ( Rainbow Six Vegas 2, I am so fucking looking at you) once I get done getting those voice-clips up for noble Hollow (I've been recruited to do the voice of the Vanguard Veteran unit in the newest release of the Dawn of War mod, and have been thus far unable to get much done due to work/mom in hospital/personal problems), but for now, I'm focusing on a bizarre metagame duality that has arisen in Warcraft II from about the time that Battle.Net Edition was released.
Veteran readers of my blog will remember my discussion of the Smogon Example, a bit of logic by which problematic things in a game are initially banned for legitimate reasons, but which quickly fall apart when analyzed logically. Battle.Net Edition brought a few minor tweaks to the engine and brought a LOT of rampant silly to the table.
#WARCRAFT 2 TECH TREE INSTALL#
The low requirements, ability to install spawn copies, and random bits of silly one could engage in made Warcraft II a favorite, until about 1999.Īnyway. I scored Battle.Net Edition from a random Garage Sale, and WC2 was one of those games I used to enjoy playing in the silly days of the 1990s, back before we discovered good RTS games like Age of Empires 2, C&C Generals: Shockwave, and though I was by no means a fan, Starcraft. Back in the day, I used to play Warcraft II a lot.