Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12207 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Blizzard Entertainment
• Released on: 2003-10-31
• Platforms: Mac, Windows XP, Mac OS X, Windows

Manufacturer's Description
The Warcraft III Battle Chest is the ultimate collection of the best-selling Blizzard strategy games. This set includes 2002 Game of the Year Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos, as well as the recently released and critically acclaimed follow-up - Warcraft III Expansion: The Frozen Throne. In addition to all these hours of epic adventure in the world of Azeroth, and limitless online fun on the Battle.net gaming site, the Battle Chest also contains strategy guides from Brady Games for both titles to help players dominate the battlefield. This collection is valued at over $75.00 sold separately, and is perfect for entering the epic war between the races of Azeroth and the demonic Burning Legion.

Customer Reviews

Great Game ! Poor Outfit !
I already played both games included in the battle chest before buying it so I knew I would enjoy it very much.
But the package is not the same as you would find in stores, or as pictured on the Amazon website. It's much smaller, and the strategy guides are adapted to the size of the pack, and they are in black & white ! I would have liked to know it before buying ! Surely it is for easying shipment. I say, maybe they don't send the pack I got to the UK residents (I'm French, I wanted to buy the original version).
Anyway I should have konwn it ! Bad point for Amazon for wrong advertizing me !

All hail the Hero
This is the best real time strategy game to have come out since Starcraft(sc), it might even be perhaps better. Still after around 4 years since the original came out people play the game on battle.net and battle it out with their friends.

Let us start off with Reign of Chaos (roc), the campaign starts you off as the humans, continues with the undead (ud) orcs and ends with the night eleves. This is basically for the player to get used to the basics of the game. Afterall This game does play unlike any other rts before it. Focussing more on the battles rather than on the actual units made. And this campaign is perfect to start off with. It will help you know when to make units, how to control units and heroes and it will also give you a good idea as to which race you will want to play. All that and it will also give you ta fantastic story to play through.

The Warcraft 3 game is differrent because instead of having around 12 different armies it only has 4... BUT these armies each have completely differrent units and completely different heroes. the hero systme is new to the rts world, this allowas for this game to instead of being focussed more on the strategies you make to be focussed more on what you make to counter your opponent's strategy and what you actually do in a battle to win the battle. Yes this might sound strange but you will find out that simply attacking with your army will not win you the battle. it is possible to win a person with a bigger army simply by being better at microing your units around. By microing I mean using each unit to his full potential, trying not to lose a single unit, focus firing on different units, retreating and such.

The heroes of this game play a fundamental part on this game. Not only will you need a hero if you want to win a game against a decent player but if you lose your hero you will have to attempt to to get your hero back asap before he has too much of an advantage. You see heroes gain experience for every kill, and they can gain experience up to level 10, at level 6 they are powerful enough top cast their "ultimate" spell, which in many games, the ultimate can be a game winner

Battle.net experience
Well for ROC, the battle.net experience is surprisingly still very alive, especially considerring how famous TFT is now. One of the downsides could be that maybe instead of fighting the enemy's army you are instead fighting the creeps to level your heroes up as quick as you can and get your ultimate to try to win the game.

However the real great thing about the battle.net experience comes from TFT. Personally I find it far more fun than roc for several reasons. Firstly the battles are now more between you and your enemy rather than between you and the creeps to quickly level your hero up. Secondly there are FAR more strategies to use and counter your opponent. Also the games are more fun to play because of how fast paced they are. It is easy to get extremely quickly into the game because it is easy to learn and battle.net will match you against comparatively similar opponents, because of this it is also easy to improve and if you try hard enough you might even become a pro.

Battle.net also has several other features which rock and keep the replay value alive. these features include custom games. Some of these custom games are extremely famous such as Defence of the Ancients(DOTA) and Footmen frenzy. These games are totally different from ladder games and although they don't have as much skill involved or as much replay value involved these games are ultimately extremely fun to play however after a certain point they become boring and they don't really need much skill.
The great thing about Battle.net is the ladder function. which will set you up against another player of similar skill but as I already said this, there are many other things that ladder play have. Although 1 vs 1 is generally the most skilled type of ladder play, by no means is it the only type of ladder play. Other modes include, random team games of up to 4v4 in which you are set up with random teams in which your skill should be around the same where your skill doesn't matter as much but your tactics do. Also free for all which is probably the most fun, yet is based a bit more than other match types on luck, it does still require quite a bit of skill though. Another extremely fun match type is arranged team in which you set up a team with a partner or two and fight two other partners who have arranged a team.
Battle.net also includes clans so anyone can create or join a clan. there are clans which are lmade for social groups, clans made for fun and clans made to be the best on the ladder.
Another great feature of battle.net are daily tournaments. these tournaments do not set you up against players of around the same skill, and you have to be extremely good to actually win the tournament.

Ultimately if you want a game which requires skill, a game which is an rts but maybe you like controlling units in a similar way to that of an rpg, a game which is fast paced, a game which you can play either casually or in long marathons in an attempt to become a professional

Then Warcraft III is the game for you

Average but still fun
I know that Warcraft is very popular and is played by many people but I must say that I found it to be lacking all in all. The options are rather limited and I'd go so far as to say that I enjoyed The Age of Empires series of games much more than this game.

All said and done, this is a good game with lush graphics and engrosing game play. You might not have the patience to finish it but what you do play, you'll enjoy.