Blizzard Entertainment has opened up a Public Test Realm server for Warcraft 3, it’s critically and commercially acclaimed real-time strategy title that also happens to be 15 years old. No, we don’t know why so don’t bother asking.
The PTR will look at testing things for map pools in 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s and free for all on Windows and Mac. Though Blizzard has been releasing patches for Warcraft 3 recently – and teasing a remaster for the game like the upcoming StarCraft: Remastered – it’s still interesting to see this level of support.
Blizzard is also tracking issues for the game like latency needing work to meet more modern standards, the matchmaker logic needing improvement and Automated Tournaments and Ladder Boards not being functional for the PTR. It’s made some progress with the latency as of patch 1.28 but further work needs to be done.
To see what balance changes have been made, check out the list below. You can also view the complete roster of maps in their different sizes here.
General improvements and gameplay objectives
- Balanced creep camp difficulty progression from early to late game
- Balanced creep drop tables for better item progression from early game to late game
- Item diversity: Varied Level 1 though 6 charged items and Level 1 through 6 permanent items
- Balanced all start locations: total amount and starting distance from lumber, equal amount of spacing, equal size choke points, et cetera
- Balanced expansion distance from start locations
- Decluttered points of interest to reduce visual competition during gameplay
- Retextured map surfaces for better visual clarity – both on screen and mini-map
- Minimized the size of trees and doodads that obstructed player view of points of interest
- Added cliff lines or deep water to edges of the map – removing hard edges (aesthetic choice for immersion)
- Properly placed trees and doodads on the pathing grid: full-cell Medium Grid to half-cell Medium Grid alternate
- Removed the rolling shoreline waves from rolling hills to remove the noise the waves created – remains for cliff shores
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