unofficial WC3 overall history thread

[Wrecktify]

post insomnia replay plzzzz 8D

[l3f]

Nice thread. Slythe you are one wall of texter ! My brief recall of the early days:

Started playing RTS when the first one, Dune 2, came out in 1992. A pc (adv./strategy) gamer since the 80s, I was psyched when the 'right game' came out. A small company called Blizzard then copied and polished that game to create warcraft I. I played a lot of those, leading up to C&C 1v1 wars through analogue dial-up, then organizing big lan tourneys in university in duke nukem 3d and warcraft II - circa 1997.

Didn't play much as a uni student, save for GTA I and some quake 3 online. No starcraft or anything else. When ROC came out I was finishing the MSc thesis, which was followed by a few months of good life. Then one day at my brother's house, I saw him playing ROC online, controlling things very fast. Surprised at the level of play, I took up playing bnet.

Having not lost much at any RTS until then, bnet was a proper slap. x-broodwar players would run over me. My brother's friends at the net cafe next to my house were the best players in the country (mouz players panic and vankor), and I wondered what it would take to reach panic's (a 350+ apm ud) gameplay.

After an RT learning stint I ventured into solo, confident that I'd be one the best with minimal practice (!). I was improving constantly but consistently lost to the good players. Elf mirror loses hurt the most and those I remember - vs a kid called eso]nl.grubby or sth ^^, a guy called apm70 who had apm268 (remember deadman?), but I did manage to beat a player I respected a lot, didi8, once. I learned a lot from didi's reps and I think he would make a good ffa player.

FFA attracted me since the first days of trying bnet, since the wc2 lan games I did while at uni were always FFA games. Back then there was a team FFA option which was quite funny. in ROC you could level to 6 through creeps and use starfall with inv. pot so elf was very strong.

What followed is a decade of maybe three or four stints lasting a few months to a year, mostly FFA only. I played northrend which was competitive but full of hackers, pre-teamers and tower/hoarding/manipping players. This made me dislike chatting and the long stalled games, which discouraged me from applying for FML because most reps I saw were like that.

I keep coming back to this game and FFA in particular as there is nothing else like it. FFA is complex and fun and you need multiple skills to do well, while there is no other game that offers the gametype in that fashion (heroes make the difference here). I remember a lot of good players and games but this is already too long xD 

[Slythe]

The best part about Slythe's write up is that Persuade's AKA has a bigger section then he does. LOL

i donīt get it .

[FML|Renaud]

Don't tell worpex secrets, he leaks them!

[Pinballmap]

@l3f  may i ask how old you are ?

I think ill also write a little article about my history in wc3 + link to FFA/FML , but not as huge as Slythe's bookfiller.

[Cheerio]

Don't tell worpex secrets, he leaks them!

now you kinda have to.

[FML|WorpeX]

Don't tell worpex secrets, he leaks them!

now you kinda have to.

Naaahhh Ill keep everyone guessing.

$10 to find out persuades secret aka

[Persuade]

Don't tell worpex secrets, he leaks them!

now you kinda have to.

Naaahhh Ill keep everyone guessing.

$10 to find out persuades secret aka

$9.50 to get it from me!

[Slythe]

t 4 :

Miscellaneous :

The following wc3 sites i visited the most :

Replayers.com : very popular and maybe the longest running site. It has this funny "did u know" section , had many different dedicated admins, good event-coverage and of course plenty of good replays. For sure it was a motivation for some guys, to create top games and having them upped in the top or rotw section. Of course there were also not the countless trolls missing, who would discuss and fight in the replay-threads.

Wcreplays.com : american site with featuring mostly the us-scene, but of course also many other relevant replays/ topics. They had a nice layout and i remember some guy putting in some cool fantasy/wc3 artwork there, forgot his name. Also i remember a female admin there, KidArtica, who was casting and doing interviews on many events. I read early the legendary rice-ffa-guide/interview there, although i was not playing ffa or knowing anything about it.

replays.net : chinese figures ! had those cool crowns on replays and provided a lot of good replays.

Wc3addicts.com : a smaller site with a good selection of replays and decent members + threads. I think it was a dutch or scandinavian.

SK.Gaming : SCHROETKOMMANDO : first real big e-sports site, i guess.

Meetyourmakers : proceeded the one above as most important e-sports ( for wc3) site i guess.

skilled.ch : a small, swiss wc3 scene site.

readmore.de : german e-sports site.

inwarcraft.de : biggest german community site for a long time, holding the popular weekly inwc.de - cup .

ffareplays.com : simple replaysite with decent easy design, but a good platform to watch/provide/discuss ffa-games.

ffamasters.com/net : every league needs it site, become over the years pretty userfriendly with forums, nice banners, timezone-service, chatbox etc.


Tournaments/Leagues :

the best league besides FML was :

Warcraft3 Championsleague ( WC3L ) : Clanleague. I guess some football/soccer fan was the founder of it ;). They run 13 + seasons, including a king of the hill tournament, where often the most popular players had the chance to climb the throne. The league provided so many high-quality games, both solo and 2n2 with pretty much the best players of the world. Go watch some Youtube-Videos for Highlights.

Wc3cl : a mostly german farm- and funleague, with many many teams and divisons ( if you win your group u get 1 division up and compete vs better teams etc ). Although i never really liked this competetive part of wc3 in terms of clan/leagues , some others got me to play with them for some time.

EPS : singleplayer league. i think there were leagues, divided into the bigger wc3 countries ( german section, french, russian etc) . I remember (SK)Miou[pg] winning like 5-6 seasons using agressive humanStyle, often towerrushing, using same strats all over, but being damn good in executing strats/microing in offline-events. Every playday there would be a featured "fridaynight game of the playday" ( or similar ), which was held offline, with audience, good coverage.

ESWC / WCG : The two  biggest e-sports events,  held every year with the best players from all over world, decided via country-elimination-events. Plenty of good games took place there. I remember only a few like: Somewhat of an upset loss of grubby vs a rather unknown chinese elfplayer named Suho. Aswell as a final series between Madfrog and Fov, who surprassed Frog in that final as the maybe world strongest Undead ( madfrog won a map with selling his tp, going double crypt, mass ghoul rush ) .

Blizzard Invitational : A  worldwide tournament held by Blizzard with decent prizemoney, being a good marketingthing and promoting for the company. Final was often held at the blizzcon.

Several Korean or Chines (offline)Leagues like Ongament ( or so ) and i actually cannot recall others atm. They had strange names and often commercials on their sometimes selfmade maps. Many good players participated. Mostly Koreans/Chinese, but often some progamers from europe, who lived in korea for some time. Once there was a scandal, when a mapmaker manipulated maps, so that a certain race ( which one of his friends was playing) would gain slight hp/speed/dmg -advantages,

Zotac : A still running solotournament. There were other tournaments like that ( often sundays ) with different names ( which i forgot, like the inwc-cup or having itīs sponsor in the name) often providing a 100 buck- check to the winner ( i always thought, that the semifinalists and runner up should get a small amount aswell ).

Fit4Gaming : was also a site, but i never visited , untill they held a ffa tournament. But there was some bigger season, where the ffa-tournament was part of, where u could play solo/teamgames/ffa to get points to determinate the best overall player. they old mostly 1n1 and 2n2 tours, but also some special ones as far as i know.

(German) Bundesliga : i think was the highest ranked (clan)section of the previously mentioned wc3cl.

there was another decently international big clanleague , which name i forgot.

Giga-TV : was a german TV/internet show, which had topics around the PC ( Tech, News, Gaming, Gossip ), where they also sometimes showed Wc3 Matches, interviewing Players or Casters. I recall team Ocr  vs team Oger ( guys on both teams: Thagor, taker, lash, hell etc), also casters/players like Take and Khaldor.

Zontik-Replaypacks : this Zontik guy put replaypacks together from players, who were more or less average, decent soloplayers. The qualitly of the game itself would matter more than the player`s skill. many nonstandard, funny games, which would never had reached a bigger amount of viewers, since there were no big, famous player-names involved.

Players, who would battle each other many times over and over again in ROC days at the top of the sololadder: Arguz( Survivor) , Madfrog, Acidpsycho, Insomnia, Heman, Anc.nitemare ( prolly a bit later), Intox.

Best Player-Rivarly on bnet : Grubby vs APM70 ( deadman, deathscythe  or so , the first hacker i can remember ) .

Best offline Rivalry : Grubby vs Moon vs Sky

PW-Deluxe : a player, that often was on top of the ladder in RoC- and TfT-Beta, but never was top afterwards.

Best Solo Players overall ( for me) or at their respective prime that time ( or in their country, continent respective race) in random order:

Madfrog, Tillerman, Grubby, Sky, Infi, Moon, Fly, Ghostridah, Shortround, plague[pg], Miou, Mouse[pg], Creolophus, Io., Showtime.WeRRa, Kenshin, Assasin, mtw-the-pig, TH000, Remind, Tod, Ted, Fov, Lucifer, Insomnia, mouz.happy,

my favourite bnet/pro-players : Chobo_bei, CadX2-Craft, ANGRY_KOREA_MAN, Grubby, MYM.Bijarke, Check[Pooh], Mad]Q[Frog, LoA-Lituch, RoF-Khator

Favourite Clans : WeRRA, MYM, 4K, mTw,

Most influential player for FFA overall: Invincible_Rice, because he was very dominant, pulling of spectacular things, woulda talk about it and giving interviews/ffa-guides/replaypacks as (one of the) first.

Slack : founder of ffareplays. com, without this site ffa would have not be the same as it is.

my personal list of the best ffa-players of all time in random order : Plush, DarknessCalled, F-l-y, Lost.Ancient, Nooblex, DasElend, Nline, XoZ_Magadansky, Wrecktify, Yane, Seksi, htrt, Renaud, Target, Q-veta

Random facts:

Anyone remember how Blizzard created the Tinker as joke-halloween hero and then woulda eventually made him a real selectable hero ? ^^

Too bad blizzard never implemented a fifth race juste like the demons or naga.

My favourite Dota-Hero : Puck, Mirana, Anti-Mage, witch-doctor, those kaboom-goblins and every agi/bash hero, u woulda have, with the highest lvl on map, being on a killing spree,
Favourite dota moves: stealing roshanitems ( divine rapier and aegis of immortal) with a  flying carrrier, pudge hook + different combinations ( like goblin-mines, rhasta shackle / ulti , bane-ulti ) .

Blizzard ( as many americans are crazy statistic freaks ) let us check our game results/statistics very closeley, just as giving you information about % on certain maps/ gametime/ heroes used. And i found out about my "worst hero", once i was browsing all those info: not the pitlord, neither the tinker , but the warden ! Itīs a hard hero to use, especially if you take it in teamgames as i did ;) , no HP, not much MANA, even though many spells. Also i probably i liked it`s deathanimation too much ( like it would slip in a awkwardly way )

Without the roleplaying elements wc3 owns, iīd never woulda like it that much.

Blizzard did such a good job at animating heroīs deaths.

At first i did not like the more comical look of the game.

Satinii was the most famous warden-user.

Crazy_Jim was the first guy ever reaching 1500 wins ( i think) .

The only player ( as far as i know ), iīve never won a ffa  with, playing 5 or more games together is DarknessCalled.

In the beginning of ffa, there were 3-6 (8) player in game, which was happening randomly.

My favourite 3 Spells are: Starfall ( the amount of targets, the epicness ), frostnova ( the sound, the dmg/unlimited targets and slowing effect) and bloodlust ( makes them faster, looking more badass )

Favourite Heroes : Dreadlord ( sounds, versatality ), Panda ( so pretty useful ), Alchemist ( can deal so much dmg in short time, which surprises you , also watching pudgy guys run fast is often fun to watch :P ).

Favourite Units : fiends ( i like spiders, althogh fiends arenīt but were often called spiders and have some similarities ) , Frostwyrm ( The Frostwyrm got impressiveley introduced by KelīThuzad during the campaign , on itīs profile u see it flying through the universe  aswell and itīs a badass undead giantdragon with a slowing breathe and the highest damage in game ! ) , Druid of the Talons ( Morphing into birds rules and cyclone is funny and fairy fire useful and imba )

I thought, the firelord were an undead hero , when got added to the hero-pool, trying to coiled him several times, when i had a deathknight.

I never liked to watch streams, such as waaaghtv/ggtv/etc, since the few times i tried it, they woulda crash every time. I mostly watched replays, but also a few Vodīs or reliveshoutcasts/similar. Hearing those korean commentators going batshit crazy a over a player using a deathcoild on another oneīs hero in a way like " Omg , omg DDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEATHCOooooooooIiiiiiLl, WAAAAAAAAAHHH " was pretty funny.

only 3 guys i played with wc3 i know well in real life.

playing wc3, when we still had a 56 k modem with minute/hours-costs , i once burned my pocketmoney for 4 months  .

Playing wc3, while telephoning requires serious multitaskingskills.

One of my favourite ud vs ud playstyle was in late RoC,  when they would build just mass ghouls, often with dl, who, once getting lvl6 ,owning those ghoulies hard with infernal. Sometimes they would mix in a Beastmaster with itīs Hawk lvl2 owning the ghouls early. Also endless ghoul vs Tree of Life harras vs elfs i remember.

Most imbalanced strats, things, biggest nerfs/bumps/changes i remember :
Mass hunts, Human rifle caster, Beastmaster, Naga 2nd + push, Human towers/ orc towers, when they were fortified from start, Windwalkchange allowing to move through units ( for some time even buildings) . Shockwave/swarm/bof hitting unlimited amount of targets. Bolt killing buildings. Elf towers dealing siegedamage. Hex/Raider-ensnare hero-focus with blademaster. Hippogryph-Riders in Late RoC. Instant Town Portaling in RoC.

Patches were often an exciting thing to people, once u could not enter bnet or relogging, knowing this loadscreen would update.

On rt/at, towerrushes ( i think no one really liked it to play against it, although it made up for a couple of fast-paced constant action games) happened a lot during some patches, since towers were stronger and scouting were even less popular than nowadays.

Most memorable bugs/glitches/exploiting the map/gameplay, i remember : Stoneform gargs would not been able to be reawakened, DH went invisible for your vision, DH woulda stop being controllable, "way-point-bug", which woulda cause no-control over anything , Townportal causes ur units end up being locked up in or behind trees, pressing TP would not work or TP woulda get cancelled." Phoenix-Hack", a Phoenix that would rise unendingly since the egg was indestructible.
Using the goldmine through the rocks on plunderisle as elf. deathcoil lvl 3 woulda kill a full hp archer. Critter/Amblizzard creeping the red camp pn turtlerock.

Even though playing Wc3 for several years and in many games u still find out something new from time to time or questions arise about certain things : Do u know, what will happen, once u put a doomed ( pl ulti) unit into an airship. Which hero has the highest dps at lvl 10 w/o any items or improvements using spells ( and not using spells ) in a timespan of 10 seconds ( at 1 or multiple targets ) ?

Some things i found annoying : getting harrased, when i wanted to creep ( or vs very good microers). getting towerrushed, when i did not scout ( or against experienced towerrushers ). hackers, cheaters, blatant lamers. Getting hitīnīrunned without the urge to, getting teamed to death.

I cannot remember playing a wc3 game, that went over 3 h.

Things i like a lot about ffa: Having intense games without having many moments with no development. scoring rebuilding/comebackwins . owning whole armies with just high lvl heroes, making a gameplan work in such very unpredictable, comeplex gametype, successfully adapting to tricky situations. winning by baserace, mass-tp-(tank)  - swapping around the map, hiding critters, stacking heroes.

rebbats "popularized" mass-tp-goldmining .

I rareley played for stats/lvl/icons . I usually see a game as single, isolated event and everything else is just byproduct of the outcome. Bareley got motivated by the before mentioned things. Although i did not feel bad to improve stats or having a 80 % + account ( with maybe 80-120 games and many people had). Only thing, that was a bit thrilling sometimes, was trying to avoid ur first loss with a new account, keeping the 0  .

Teamplayer guys with best stats i remember: Amun + Soh- Day ( like 93 % with maybe 2000 games) . Soloplayers: Grubby often had about 90%, aswell as several elfplayers just like io, were rank 1 at us-west or east with 130-1 or so.

There were those channels: Tetub and 123 ( or rus123) and maybe some otherīs  , where people would show their good% accounts, asking for at/tour with something like : "need at partner 75% 100+  games" or "want at ? 70 + orc or human" . I also joined those channels a few times, and it feeled like those people would prostitute themselves ;) to get better stats, it was amusing.

My favourite maps to play at or to watch games are : echoisles, gnollwood, losttemple, turtlerock, silverpineforest, marketsquare, twilightruins, sanctuary, harvest of sorrows, plunderisle, upperkingdom, deathrose, two rivers + some more ^^.

[FML|WorpeX]

Wcreplays.com : american site with featuring mostly the us-scene, but of course also many other relevant replays/ topics. They had a nice layout and i remember some guy putting in some cool fantasy/wc3 artwork there, forgot his name. Also i remember a female admin there, KidArtica, who was casting and doing interviews on many events. I read early the legendary rice-ffa-guide/interview there, although i was not playing ffa or knowing anything about it.

I think you're thinking of Bunny, not KidArtica. WCR was a great site!! Now its kind of just a troll forum. lol I still visit it though...

Anyone remember how Blizzard created the Tinker as joke-halloween hero and then woulda eventually made him a real selectable hero ? ^^

I remember this!! haha

[Cheerio]

so fml endorses the idea of having secret akas?! just pm me, i don't know anybody so i can't tell !

[Ugrilainen]

Slythe's memory is impressive.

great posts I enjoyed reading

[FML|Renaud]

so fml endorses the idea of having secret akas?! just pm me, i don't know anybody so i can't tell !

We actually search for them and call out anyone we find.
And ban players who have multiple account in the league

[FML|Mog]

Incredible memory Slythe!

My wc3 history is really long so I will keep it short too.

1. I started in RoC when I was like 12 years old, campaign was fun, and I had played a little bit of broodwar so I had a tiny bit of RTS experience. My family was really strict, so I wasn't actually allowed to play online (because my parents thought some crazy guy was going to find out where we lived via the online gaming interwebs and kiss us or something crazy like that). But once I hit middle school they decided it was ok for me to play online and that is when I started this crazy long journey. My best friend and I both started playing wc3 online, but I was really competitive so I would look to improve whereas he would just waste time playing custom games. I started out playing random because I would get sick of one race, but I always hated playing UD, and they were always my worst. I pretty much only played solo, but I eventually messed around in 3v3 RT and started playing some FFA on ladder too. I only played on USWest server for many years, and didn't realize the esports world was so big until I joined Team Skynet (SkyZ) on west server back in 2004 (I had been playing about 2 years by this point). I don't know why they let me join, I wasn't nearly as good as the rest of the players, but I started helping out with managing/organizing team stuff. SkyZ was in multiple team leagues, and even made WC3L qualifiers in 2006, so there was a bunch of stuff to organize and I was excited to be a part of it. After losing in round 2 or 3 of the WC3L qualifiers to 4K, SkyZ pretty much disbanded because the head manager (Wind[skynet]) went pro in wrestling or some WWE shit or something, and didn't have time. I ended up taking over the team, but being a high school kid I didn't have financial backing so all the top players left to join more established teams. I started playing more as well as managing, and we competed in many amateur team leagues for another year or 2. I don't remember why it finally disbanded, I think I went inactive for like 6-7 months when I went to college in 2008, and at that point the bnet ladder was pretty much overrun with hackers so it was annoying to play. When I came back in early 2009 I joined nG (with Worpex!) and started soloing again seriously. This was probably my peak as a player. I never was really good, but was good enough to take wins in league every now and then. I eventually couldn't compete at a high enough level with random (everytime I randomed ud it was like an instaloss, so people encouraged me to pick a race to improve). I endedu p picking NE, because I double AoW mass hunt AP pushed vs every race. This is when I started playing Tinker (only against hu though). It kind of became my signature style so to speak. It was around this time I beat players in 1v1 such as Yane, HolyHuman, Rebuke, I believe I even took a game off of the top 3 NA soloer RSM. They all beat me about 9 out of 10 times, but I felt proud of myself for finally being able to compete at a relatively high level. I made both seasons of the bnet PRO1 ladder, and enjoyed playing with nG (as well as tSky, a SkyZ remake) for a few years.

Once SC2 came out, I switched with some friends, and we remade SkyZ on SC2, but could never compete at a high enough level so it eventually died. After SkyZ died on SC2, and I developed CPS from playing too much and having poor posture, I quit SC2 and went back to wc3 because it didn't take as much APM and was just more fun overall. I think I found FML through warcraftreplays, which I was a frequent visitor of since 2006.

I had a hard time playing FFA at first, because I had literally ONLY massed hunts for about 2-3 years lol. And I definitely had the solo mindset my first season. I specifically remember getting flamed my very first FML match in season... 13 or 14... it was on Deathrose and I rushed Steppinrazor and he flamed me for being an idiot and having no ffa sense. I was unsure of myself and didn't kill him because I wanted to fit into the FFA scene and didn't want to make enemies, then I ended up dying and Steppin went on to win the game lol. My 1st season was so bad, and I didn't win any games. But it was awesome to have a competitive environment again with fun people, which has kept me around.

I think I ended up answering almost all the questions in that wall of text....and I typed WAY more than I intended.... but I just started thinking back to how long I've played this game and my fingers kept typing stuff lol 

Memorable people:

Ownage[skynet]: My 2s partner and played with me in multiple teams for a lot of years. We ended up becoming decent friends and would talk on the phone/facebook/vent servers etc. We moved to SC2 together, but he went semi-pro and I developed CPS and stopped playing so we pretty much lost touch except for the occasional facebook post every now and then

Flame[skynet]: Really funny guy. Also could never understand him. He stuck by me through multiple tema failures with skynet, and always supported me, though most of the time he came off as though he hated me lol. I think we played together off and on in the same team for about 5-6years. Wish he still played, because he was a fun guy.

NorthsReturn: My other 2s partner (and 3s'd with me and Ownage). I actually met him in real life after being friends online for about 3-4 years. I had a free plane ticket that was going to expire so I called him and he used it to come and visit me at college for 3 days. Was a lot of fun!

Lots more but will have to continue in another post sometime because my wrist is hurting from typing so much.

[FML|WorpeX]

I think I found FML through warcraftreplays, which I was a frequent visitor of since 2006.

No,no,no,no. You found FML through me and I asked you pestered you to join. I promised to train you how to play FFA and I never did. LOL

Flame[skynet]: Really funny guy. Also could never understand him. He stuck by me through multiple tema failures with skynet, and always supported me, though most of the time he came off as though he hated me lol. I think we played together off and on in the same team for about 5-6years. Wish he still played, because he was a fun guy.

I never understood Flame either. He was in FML a few times but in the one season he joined, played the qualifier and then in week 1 he scheduled his game, showed up and started playing... then about 15m into the game he just up and left without being provoked - never to be seen again on FML for like a year. lol