Way back around nineteen ought six I bought Westwood's game Dune 2 as an act of sheer desperation. I had money in my pocket and, dammit, I was determined to get a new computer game. The trouble was . . . when I got to the store there was nothing new I wanted. After about an hour of some weird combination of browsing and moping I decided to take a chance on Dune 2. I hadn't heard anything about it, but the back of the box looked good. Dune 2 went on to become one of my favorite games of all time, and for a long time I wondered why nobody was putting out similar games. (After all, it happens to every other game in the world, so why not copy Dune 2?) Finally, a game in the same vein appeared: Warcraft by Blizzard. I fell for Warcraft just as hard as I did Dune 2. Now that Warcraft 2 is in the works I feel a great need to learn all about it. Fortunately for me, the people at Blizzard feel a great need to talk about it.
The first thing I should mention about Warcraft 2 is that it will be in SVGA. The first Warcraft looked good, but its sequel already looks much better. Your characters are more detailed, and you can see a little more of the terrain at once. That's a good thing, because there's more terrain this time, too. Each map in Warcraft 2 will be four times larger than those of its predecessor. A map editor will be included with the game, along with a unit editor that will allow you to alter the stats of each of the game's playing pieces.
The most commonly asked about feature for Warcraft's sequel was the races. Put simply, people wanted more of them. Due to memory constraints it isn't possible to add two more completely new races and all their spells and buildings, but Blizzard is doing the next best thing; the game will still be primarily the orcs versus the humans, but this time each side has brought along some allies. Humans will have elven and dwarvish units to augment their forces, while the orcs will add trolls and ogres to their ranks.
The economic model of Warcraft will also get expanded a bit. In addition to gold and lumber, ore will be collected from the land and oil will be refined from the oceans.
Oceans? Did I say oceans? Yes, I guess I did. Warcraft 2 will indeed include water as a prominent part of the terrain, and where there's water there's bound to be naval vessels. So far four ships have been included in Warcraft 2, with more likely. Right now there are two ships designed for combat, an oil refinery for collecting oil and returning it to land, and one unarmed transport ship which can carry land-based units to new destinations.
The towns will also function a little differently the second time around. The necessary but vulnerable town hall can now be upgraded to a keep, and then again to a castle, making it much more difficult to raze. Also, buildings will no longer need to be constructed adjacent to roads; you'll be able to build anywhere you can send a peon to. This allows for the possibility of building more than one town per side. You can have towns scattered all over the countryside, but remember that you'll have to manage and defend them in real time. You won't be able to rely as much on your overhead map anymore either. Warcraft 2 will include a "fog of war" feature, meaning that if you don't have troops monitoring a section of terrain you don't see enemy troops moving through it. The "overhead map as radar" strategy just won't cut it this time.
Naturally, Warcraft 2 will feature new spells as well. Lots of new spells. The design team decided that the water elementals and demons of the first game were disproportionately powerful, so expect the Major Summoning spell to be toned down a little. To make up for that, though, you'll see a horde of area affect spells. You'll be able to place invisible explosive runes on the ground to sabotage your enemy's advances, summon locusts to destroy your opponent's tree supply, charm areas of the map so they drain the magic of any character who enters, curse each other's temples and churches, create illusory units, and make your opponents cower in magically-induced fear. Also, some of your spellcasters start off as mundane units that gain magical ability through upgrading certain buildings, so they won't be as defenseless as before.
The network aspect of Warcraft will also be expanded. In the original game, only two people could compete with each other, but the sequel will feature at least four, and as many as seven. The question of how many players a net game will support isn't a technical question; rather, it's a gameplay concern. If the playtesting team decided that the maps are too crowded with seven players on them they will bump the maximum number of players down to four, or possibly six. At any rate, it's an improvement.
It sounds like Warcraft 2 will make present Warcraft players extremely happy, and the inclusion of naval units and multiple towns may attract some serious war gamers who wrote the original game off as too simple. Warcraft 2 is scheduled to ship at the end of the year, before Christmas if at all possible. That may be a long time to wait (although MechWarrior 2 fans sure don't think so!), but as some sort of consolation you can be fairly sure that IE will be doing a follow-up preview in the months to come.
