Party like it’s 2002.
Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos was released roughly 15 years ago. And now, it has its own PTR, seemingly very far after the fact. Blizzard just announced that the game would have its own public test realm. Blizzards Classic Games Senior Producer Pete Stilwell specified that it would be used to test “new Map Pools for 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, 4’s and Free-for-All.”
The rundown of the PTR patch contents is as follows:
General Improvements & Gameplay Objectives
- Balanced creep camp difficulty progression from early to late game
- Balanced creep drop tables for better item progression from early game to late game
- Item diversity: Varied Level 1 though 6 charged items and Level 1 through 6 permanent items
- Balanced all start locations: total amount and starting distance from lumber, equal amount of spacing, equal size choke points, et cetera
- Balanced expansion distance from start locations
- Decluttered points of interest to reduce visual competition during gameplay
- Retextured map surfaces for better visual clarity – both on screen and mini-map
- Minimized the size of trees and doodads that obstructed player view of points of interest
- Added cliff lines or deep water to edges of the map – removing hard edges (aesthetic choice for immersion)
- Properly placed trees and doodads on the pathing grid: full-cell Medium Grid to half-cell Medium Grid alternate
- Removed the rolling shoreline waves from rolling hills to remove the noise the waves created – remains for cliff shores
List of maps
- 1 v 1 Map Pool (New)
- 2 v 2 Map Pool (New)
- 3 v 3 Map Pool (New)
- 4 v 4 Map Pool (New)
- Free For All Map Pool (New)
Known Issues:
- We are aware Warcraft III matchmaking is a bit long in the tusk; we will be improving matchmaker logic for a future patch
- Automated Tournaments and Ladder Board are not functional for PTR
- Latency was improved with 1.28, but still needs work to meet modern standards
Sure, it’s a bit odd to see a decade-and-a-half old game suddenly get such support, but it isn’t totally unusual for Blizzard. They patched Diablo 2 last year, and they released the original version of Starcraft as a free download to ramp up to StarCraft: Remastered. So, at the very least, Warcraft 3 is in good company. As to what’s on the horizon for the game, that’s anyone’s guess.
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