"Total Annihilation" rights are being sold!!!

It's generally held as one of the best ever done...?! Certainly good if you like a story driven campaign, and the balance between the 3 factions is fairly good.

I personally don't like it much as a multi player experience for the same reason I'm not keen on other 'craft' games- its more about fast button combos than any actual strategic decisions. Still as a single player story driven game it's decent imo, looks pretty good even now (despite it's age) and runs well on any hardware going really.

What specifically do you dislike so much about it?

You pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as why I don't like it. Strategy takes a back seat to painfully obvious optimal play. The story is more RPG than RTS, if I wanted an RPG I'd play an RPG.

Starcraft micro I can at least respect because of how positioning is handled. I don't prefer micro oriented RTS because micro isn't strategy, but I can respect it as a skillset.

Warcraft 3 has two mechanics that I just do not want anywhere near my RTS. Hero leveling and items.

Leveling units in most RTS's is all well and good. They can be focused down and all that unit XP will go away, allowing for some counterplay. Hero Units? Nope, they retain their levels and just respawn, removing one of the most significant elements that I like about RTS's. Typically every advantage can be removed by killing it. Hero units don't lose anything but time.

Leveling the hero units also doesn't take normal resources. In fact, the ONLY way to level them is by using a resource that isn't used anywhere else. That removes a number of real strategic decisions and paints a very clear picture of optimal play. While yes, there are scenarios where getting something is more important than the levels, doing both is always best and those situations are less common than they should be.

The items, while a non-issue on the good maps, made micro even more of a burden because it meant your micro buttons could change from game to game depending on where you slot it. They also put even more emphasis on the hero units, which goes counter to what I like about RTS's, and that's controlling an entire f****** army.

On top of that, WC3 micro as opposed to SC micro is more cooldown management than anything else. Things have mana and cast spells, so abilities aren't tied to resources the way they are in SC. It means there's even less thinking involved in its micro than normal micro oriented gameplay.

Low unit caps also bug the hell out of me. Other games have it, but few were as painful as WC3s because of all the units that took up multiple food. SC2 is up there, but not quite as bad.

And then the community took everything I hated about WC3 and condensed it into a worse game that nobody will shut up about.

I'm sure if I went back and played I'd find more things I hated, but I have no intention of ever going back to it.


I gave WC3 a chance. I played through the singleplayer. I played online against human opponents. The only reason I'm glad I did is because it made it easier to identify games I would hate. The only positives I can think of are the map editor and how chopping down trees to open new paths was in the game, but other games have both of those as well(most notably AoE2).

Yeah, WC3 should have been a movie not a strategy game. The story was quite entertaining and well done.

WC3 was my first online played RTS. My love for 1vs1 comes from there. Losing a hero was big big thing. Yes it respawns. But the time you lose easily loses you games. Not to mention the xp you give to your opponent by losing your hero.
SCREW YOU WC3 HATERS

never played the campaign obviously. If I want a RPG I too play an RPG.

It was the worse game, ever to be modded and the mod go on to create a multi-year most played game across the entire globe...

It is literally like Hitler's father. Yes, I said it. Or, I guess like Genghis Khan's father. Idk, that one actually sounds less controversial. Meh.

ITT:

People saying what they don't personally like about "their" RTS games and coming to the conclusion that the game is therefore objectively bad.

The question aimed at me was specifically about the things I don't like. Not whether it was bad or not. If you're going to mock somebody, at least make sure you do it in the proper context.

Even then you're ignoring the part where I specifically separated things I don't like from their quality.

The context is perfectly fine. It doesn't matter what raised the question in the first place.

Nor did you ever separate hero leveling and items from their respective quality of implementation. Additionally, your main issue was this issue, "micro". Which is an inherent feature in every single RTS game ever, and is more pronounced in all of those that have single-entity units. So, Warcraft, Starcraft, Command and Conquer, SupCom, presumably TA and of course PA.

There are only a few squad-based RTS games (does Ground Control count?), mostly by Relic Entertainment (Homeworld, Impossible Creatures, Dawn of War and Company of Heroes). I personally like the evolution but there are arguments to be made both ways.

Optimal play involves a strategic outlook. Optimal play also involves a tactical outlook. Your build order is strategic. Your Zergling micro is tactical. If you know all of this, then I'm sorry, but your post really makes it look like you don't. To claim that strategy isn't an important part of all of Blizzard's RTS offerings is simply plain ignorance - and this is coming from someone who doesn't like said offerings.

Either you can't read, I can't write, or you're just trolling.

Either you'll continue to misinterpret everything I write, I'll continue to not properly convey my thoughts, or you'll continue to pretend to not understand what I'm typing.

There's no way to tell which is it, but they all share one thing in common. There's no point in continuing the discussion.