As the peons say, Warcraft III will soon be “ready to work.”
Blizzard revealed over the weekend that its 2002 real-time strategy game Warcraft III will get a new patch tomorrow, March 15. While Blizzard hasn’t revealed what the patch entails, it’s likely to help make the game playable on modern PCs, similar to the Diablo II patch that came out last week. Warcraft III sold millions of copies and was the last RTS game in the series before 2004’s World of Warcraft took the franchise into the massively multiplayer online role-playing game space.
Blizzard has shown a commitment to making sure its old games continue to work, even as it supports its current lineup of Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, StarCraft II, World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and the upcoming Overwatch.
Warcraft III was notable for its introduction of role-playing game mechanics, specifically through Hero units that could earn experience points, level up, and learn new abilities. These Hero units would inspire mods, including Defense of the Ancients, which birthed the popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre that includes modern megahits like League of Legends, a free-to-play game that makes over $1 billion a year.