Updated 2 years ago
In a dark period of my life, I spent countless hours – literally like a couple hours every day for almost 20 years, sometimes entering periods where I played it morning to night, went to bed, woke up, started again – playing Warcraft III. Even in periods of homelessness, I would still play, in the closets of friends in seedy parts of Brooklyn, or, later, on free wifi at McDonald’s and Starbucks. I was interviewed for a study by the NIH to treat drug addiction with MMO games. I tried playing WOW (“Warcrack”) to get over my addiction, and that just replaced one addiction with another.
The great Warcraft Reforged fiasco was the best thing to happen to my life. The complete destruction of the game by the developer finally, FINALLY cut the cord. See, I was addicted to the ONLINE 1v1 portion of the game, and the original version, Reign of Chaos, at that. When even that functionality was removed, I walked away.
This game offers great hope. It is far more popular in Europe than it is in the U..S. It is the ultimate realization of Warcraft III’s potential, combining it with much of the depth of Divinity. It expertly combines deep RTS (Real Time Strategy) and CPG (Computer Role Playing Game) elements. It gives me great joy in a healthful way.
These days, my gaming addiction is firmly behind me, and although I am too old to ever give myself completely to a game for decades, I am happy this game exists. Now, if I ever need that itch scratched, rather than playing some pirated, non-online version of Warcraft III, I can dabble in this now and then.
I started with the modern Spellforce 3, Soul Harvest, which I hear is by far the best and most modern of the series, and will slowly work backwards.
Here are some insightful retrospective videos from a Youtuber that definitely deserves more viewers:
