Warcraft III E-Cubed Warbits

For those that remember, when the Super Nintendo came out, the game that everyone was talking about (besides Super Mario World) was F-Zero... mainly because of its "mode-7" scaling. How does this relate to Blizzard's gem-to-be, Warcraft III? The screenshots you're about to check out actually feature excellent scaling of polygons (most apparent in this shot)... such as when you're on a hill looking down at a village, you'll be able to see how much smaller the village and its guardians are than your troops on the hill. It's appealing to say the least.

So to begin with the latest from E3 (and thanks to WarcraftIII.net for most of these links), start with an appetizer of absolutely gorgeous in-game screenshots, but if you're running on a 56k, allow a little time for them to fully load (as they're very large yet very detailed).

Next move on to today's WCIII main course (a salad this time... for the real meat we'll have to wait until about a week after the show for the galaxy-sized previews), an interesting preview from PC.ign, the topic mainly focused on heroes. Some evidence:

All of the heroes are denoted through the glowing weapons that they possess and look very unique compared to the rest of the units. Right now there are four heroes for each of the races with four abilities that can be used. This still could be changed around a little bit, but so far this is the best balance for the gameplay. Heroes also have four inventory slots that can be filled by finding special items around the map, or purchasing things from stores that are scattered around the maps.

And for the after dinner mint, the Warcraft III E-cubed Cinematic, all 29 megs.... apparently pretty impressive though I've yet to see it.

No dinner is complete without the complimentary toothpick from the swivel tray at the pay counter, so here's GameSpot's hands-on preview courtesy of a Blizz employee's tour. Some selective snippage:

Campbell also showed how units can affect the features of the landscape. Groves of trees can be destroyed by siege engines and other attacks, and boulders can be reduced to rubble. This ability provides new strategic possibilities in combat, as units can sneak around behind seemingly impassable barriers and break through in order to stage a surprise attack. One of the night elf heroes also has the powerful ability to raise and lower groves of trees at will. This ability can be used in both offensive and defensive ways, and it can be particularly effective to block enemies while retreating.