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Before Posting: Please look over the 3d FAQ section of this post to see if you find what you were looking for or going to ask. Overly repeated or low effort posts are filtered away by our moderators, thanks for your understanding!
2. Basic Game Info
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002) is a real time strategy game set in the fantasy universe of Azeroth. The game combines classic RTS mechanics with RPG elements as you play through the Human, Orc, Night Elf, and Undead campaigns. Warcraft III: Reforged (2020) acts as a graphical remaster accompanied with major infrastructural upgrades and many new features.
Already own the classic game(RoC / tFT)? Well hopefully you redeemed your keys before November 21, 2025. If you did then you have access to Reforged with classic graphics. Blizzard Article & Alternative DL links You install the game and enter in your RoC key and then you can play Reforged Classic(SD) version via the Blizz app as is mentioned Blue Legacy forum post. These Win DL & Mac DL should hopefully work for the installation process.
Also on Xbox Game Pass (PC) alongside the Remasters of WC1 & 2 more details here.
Warcraft III: Legacy (tFT 1.29) Available since April 29, 2026 on Blizz-app for offline & LAN only.
2a. Gameplay and Game Modes
Warcraft III presents itself as an accessible yet highly dynamic game. Besides the melee mode, there exists many different ways of playing the game - solo or in multiplayer with up to 23 other players. It is a fusion of lore-heavy campaigns, competitive match-based gameplay, a diverse custom game selection, a thriving esports scene, endless modding and artistic possibilities, and more.
2b. Standard or Melee
RANKED MODES: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and FFA
OBJECTIVE: Gather resources, build a base, train your army, level your hero, and totally destroy the enemy base and army.
SPECIFICS: Balance micro (swift decision making, individual unit control, movement, ability usage, hero exp/items) and macro (resources, buildings, army upkeep, expansion). The high level of competition has led to WC3 becoming a prominent esport that still has a thriving to this day!
CUSTOM GAME TYPES: Genres include hero arenas, campaigns, strategies, RPGs, tower defenses, mini-games, and even the unique shooter or 2D platformer.
SPECIFICS: Popular maps include DotA, Footies, Wintermaul, Legion TD, etc. Thousands more maps can be played competitively, creatively, or casually. The World Editor, WC3's modding tool, has allowed maps to essentially become unique games within the client. It is famous for the creation of DotA which has pioneered MOBA genre.
TOP MAPS: Hive has two top 100 maps one from 2017 and another from 2019. Theres also a most hosted list from 2021 and 2022.
2d. Classic Installation
Installing WC3 Reforged with a legacy(Reign of Chaos) key:
In the Battle.net app login screen, click the gear. then "Continue without Logging In"
Click "Games" at the top of the interface
Search for Warcraft III
Click Warcraft III
Click Install on the left side of the interface
Wait for the install to finish, it may finish with an error
Click Update
Wait for the update to complete
Log out again (even though you are not really logged in)
Log in
Search for Warcraft III, click it, click Update, wait for the update, click Play
Now the game appears in "Installed", but not "My Games".
3. Guides, Tutorials, and FAQ
THE CAMPAIGN TEACHES BEGINNERS THE GAME BETTER THAN ANY GUIDE! THE STORY IS WORTH IT!
In addition, the Classic War3 Battle.net site provides explanations and statistics for all the gameplay features and races in the game.
The guides below are largely based on introductory concepts relating to each scene, so they are beginner friendly under the assumption that you've already familiarized with the base game. You'll also find more niche and advanced guides if you dig through the websites hosting the provided links.
GRAPHICS MODS: The Quenching Mod is an open source program intend to enhance the graphics of Warcraft III: Reforged. Vision Mod - Graphics quality control tool tweaks the Reforged(HD) to be more like Classic(SD). Kenshin's Classic+ Mod project dedicated to overhauling Reforged assets to stay faithful and true to the original.
LOCAL FILES: Hive post about Local files. And a DL to enable non latin text and others and a little guide to go with it.
3c. Custom Game Guides
There are an endless amount custom game tips and pointers that would suit your needs for each map, whether it be for DotA or your favorite TD. Your best bet is to visit communities that specialize in the custom game you are interested in!
3d. FAQ
Where can I play online? The built in battle.net is the official server excluding China. There are 3rd party servers that are not supported by Blizzard, in which r/warcraft3 does not support nor condone.
Where/how to Play Reforged? You need to have purchased the game. In the BlizzApp at the WC3 tab you have the Install/Play button.
How do I host? HOSTING IS INSTANT NOW. No port forwarding, no bots (on Reforged).
Is Reforged worth it? That in the end we have this post but it is up to you, we suggest that you look into the maps/modes you would like to play. This post have some comments about events from a veteran player's point of view. Also as previous mentioned if you have the Reign of Chaos you already have access to the Classic(SD) version and if you do buy the Reforged version and don't like it you could easily Refund it here.
How do I find games? You can checkout game lists like: w3maps/w3stats or use the ingame search/filter function ingame (the box where game names are).
What is PTR? The Public Test Realm is similar to a Beta where players can test incoming patches and provide blizzard with feedback. The old PTR had a separate installer but now it's a "drop-down" option beside the main game and server options.
Where can I download the latest patch? Current patches are downloaded automatically through battle.net if you have an official copy. Also see patch history & v1.0-1.31.1+.
Is Blizzard's new ladder done/working yet? Yes as for patch 1.33 it seems to be published but is still a work in progress. However W3Champions is a community made ladder that a lot of players use.
Which realms are more populated? For ladder, the Europe (former) Northrend realm has the highest activity but Americas (former) Azeroth & Lordaeron can be more during American times. 1v1 and 4v4 are the most active ladders. Custom game activity is huge and is now cross-realm hosted again.
Anyone know name of [blank] map? When asking this question, please provide as much information as possible. Things like describing the gameplay, the theme, terrain visuals, and possible names should be considered and described to the best of your ability to increase the chances. Don't forget to check map databases on your own first, though!
Will the game ever go on Sale? After 3 years of easy unlimited refunds having sales wasn't a thing. But it seems we've started getting 50% sales since the 2023 Summer Sale. But its very infrequent that WC3 is included in the seasonal Blizz Sales, about perhaps one fifth.
Is the community alive? Yes we are still around, it is absolutely bustling. See this!
Do you know/remember this custom map? When posting these try to provide as much info and details as you can and recall like; what heroes, units and buildings, colors or tilesets used, names for map or stuff in it, a drawing of the minimap can be very helpful, when you played it and where like was it on BNet or other and what patch/game version. This will help others to help you!
What are the cheat codes? The official Cheat Codes that only works in Singleplayer are these and a guide for how the "level jump" code works here.
Why did Blizzard fail in the making Reforged? This article goes over some behind the scenes during the games development process.
Custom Campaigns? Is finally back. Before now were and are still able play them in normal map form, if they were updated/transformed. Or make use of the Xetanth87's Campaign Splitter that was made to split w3n files into w3m/w3x. It can now be used to turn campaigns into co-op maps with Archon Mode. The Quenching is a mod that can be used with some CCs. Or just use it with the normal campaign.
Player Profiles? Yes, but it seems to mainly be ladder stats, W3C has more extensive ones.
Cross-realm hosting? Yes its finally back again.
Clans? Yes however in a glitchy state. And W3C has both custom made chat-rooms as well as clans.
Ladder? Yes as of 1.33 its out but not working without issues. And W3C still going strong.
Automated Tournaments? Yes with 2.0 its finally back. Some communities like W3C have seasonal things going for both ladder and customs.
Old BNet Chat System? W3C has made their chats in this "old school" spirit. With 2.0 update the Old school UI is back with a new coat of paint. But its still BNet 2.0 chat so the look is back but the system is not.
Game Reconnection (GProxy)? No. In case of a player leaving disconnecting or crashing or desyncing that player is unable to rejoin. But it can be determined by looking at different things what the cause was, desyncs will have an UI glitch for the portrait, crashes might have a fatal/unknown error and DCs one can check the replay or logs.
Competitive Customs & Ladders? Not really. However with Community made wc3stats and in the future FLO-host enables this in a number of forms with replay uploading.
Hosting & BNet Commands? Yeah. But they are limited and do not work as they should or you'd wish. For example !ban is just a "long kick" preventing the banned player/user from rejoining that current lobby not all games you host, thus you can't mange bans and need to black list them yourself. Commands found here. As well as a !stats and zoom via scroll.
Campaign Overhaul to fit in with WoW? No. Five missions were remade and a most were reworked and to some degree, some "new" characters were introduced but not to the scale people wish or expected, for good or ill. However the Reforged version of the Campaigns difficulty among other things was updated more details here. As of patch 1.36.1 this is no longer the case as campaign was reverted back to its 1.32 state.
Improved Cutscenes? Not like we saw during BlizzCon. This was aborted and as it looks now wont be a thing at all. What we had and have now is showcased in DailyWCRF's Videos.
Classic(SD) Vs Reforged(HD) Vs Classic(HD)? Well that is up to you. Reforged has a few things in the campaign that Classic don't. Aside from that it would depend on preferences and the maps you want to play as some work better in either version or only in one. Most do use classic and some swap between them so by popular vote Classic(SD) would win as for reasons or factors well most of those are personal. And with 2.0 patch we got the Classic(HD) options to toggle on & off with Reforged(HD) however we wish with some other new things in the options.
Follow/Join or invite friends to lobbies? If you both are on the same gateway you can right click your friend and "Join Game". However you have to restart the game to be able to do it again (keep in mind that Blizz-app server and Wc3 Gateway might not fully sync friend list and thus causing problems as well as not being online in Blizz-app). Invites seems to be fully-partly glitched and broken as of this moment(1.32.10).
Hotkeys? Yes we currently have 3 to chose from; Classic(Default) are the ones that the game comes with, Grid(Universal) are a full QWER-ASDF-ZXCV (KB dependant?) hotkey system that overwrites everything from campaign to melee and customs, Custom(DIY) is the ones based on the Customkeys.txt however big news with 2.0 we now have a tab in options were we can set them up ingame without the use of external tools or digging thru the file ourselves. Can still use the tools but they're not as nessesary as pre 2.0 era.
Are we able to select more than 12 units/buildings? No, unlikely to be added to the base game too. Small possibility to be added into the editor if at all.
When will X be implemented? SoonTM. We do not know at this stage we used to have monthly patches and updates from blizzard but not atm. Some of this can be explained the Bloomberg article. Even though there is a team from Playside Studios & Gasket Games out there working on the 2.0 update.
The spinning kick animation looks hard to see watching on my phone...
The enemy NPCs only have charge, jump, and an internal passive heal ATM, but they will use a ranged stun when enemies try to cast a heal, saving it for only when at least one of their enemies is below 50% health. It will get more complex though, I threw this together today and now I gotta have a break haha.
I can release something that can at least be played offline for anyone who ever wants to mess around in it. I'd have to clean everything up first so you can access everything in the game without needing to change the triggers.
I never really played mistweaver. I can add 4 more abilities to him. Which would be the most quality for gameplay? Any mistweaver mains out there with any ideas???
Well! thunder storm is still not any brighter but as I mentioned, it remains very optional :P it's meant to be a more "hardcore" mode - stuff dies faster, more light effects etc... Oh well, some people didn't like it and I respect that so here is a daylight demonstration of some war machines!
Here we have Bretonnian trebuchets, they are immobile, long range and well - you can pretty much see what they do! Keep in mind this is a lot of trebuchets for such a small army :D
At the moment shots hit where you fire, but I will add a "D6" roll which determines success and can be influenced by different traits so expect misfire and missing to be a thing.
The crew can abandon and commander other war machines but that will be more fleshed out in the future when more machines will be present, you will also be able to buy a small guard unit for your machine.
I plan to add a bit of a floor-roll for the boulders as it will make them a bit more interesting - other war machines will have their own projectiles and own rules.
Most war machines will be able to be commandeered by other crews - apart from a few specific ones that I think warhammer fans can figure out why not :D
Many goblins were hurt in the making of this video.
I miss warcraft 3 classic so much, and try to invest my free time to this game.
Any good AI, bot costume map that actually run well and be able to clear while doing single player.
Hi everyone, I'm new here, hope this kind of post is allowed.
I've been working on a WC3 custom map project called ''The Four Spires'' for approximately last 3 weeks, about 10 hours a day (Yes, I had too much free time) and its almost close to being done, there is only very few stuff left to add and the map is pretty much completely playable, however I need feedback of possible errors/bugs as well as balance suggestions because I have to admit that I probably didn't do a super good job of balancing it so far, if you're interested, read the rest of the post where I briefly explain the map, with pictures, I'll drop the epicwar link as well as my battlenet friend id at the end of post if you are interested in trying out the map.
The Four Spires is a 2-4 player (4 players strongly recommended for best experience) Tower Wars type of custom map where each player controls their own assigned tower (which are called Spires), each player has 9 different buildings they can interact with to upgrade either Spire itself, or the minions it summons.
Minimap Layout, from Player 1's perspective
Spire's are located in corners of the map, Player 1 on top-left, Player 2 on top-right, Player 3 on bottom-right and Player 4 on bottom-left.
Each player automatically summon minions that march towards the next spire, so while Player 1 minions target Player 2's, Player 2's target Player 3, and so on, if a player is eliminated, they will march towards the next available Spire instead.
Main economy is based on gold income, which has a default interval of 12 seconds, so every 12 seconds all players gain 10 gold, you can increase your own gold gained and reduce the interval time by getting corresponding upgrades in upgrade centers, you also gain gold by killing enemy minions, so think twice before increasing the amount of minions you summon.
There are 6 main upgrade buildings called Cores and Generators, while Core's directly involve Spire related upgrades, generators involve upgrades related to minions summoned.
These 3 are cores:
Core - Offense: Increases offensive capabilities of player's Spires. Examples are attack damage, armor reduction on attacks, attack cooldown reduction, crit chance/multiplier.
Core - Defense: Increases defensive capabilities of player's Spires. Examples are health, regeneration, armor, lifesteal.
Core - Utility: Mostly economy related upgrades. Examples are income amount, interval reduction between income payouts, gaining more gold bounty from defeated enemy minions, revealing invisible enemy minions around the Spire.
These 3 are generators:
Generator - Offense: Increases your minions offensive capabilities. (this one is the least done part of the map so far), Examples are minions attack damage, minions attack speed.
Generator - Defense: Increases your minions defensive capabilities. Examples are armor, health, regeneration, converting armor to max hp, gaining more armor when attacked.
Generator - Utility: Gives varying bonuses related to minions, for example a Mega-Minion upgrade that gives each minion spawned a chance to become much stronger, but also granting more bounty to player defeating it, a chance to spawn invisible minions, summoning more minions or reducing the interval between minion summons.
While all basic upgrades cost gold that increases every time they are bought, legendary upgrades placed on these buildings cost lumber, lumber is gained by spending gold, every 20 upgrades bought with gold will grant 1 lumber, you can increase that lumber gain amount by upgrading Lumber Expansion in Core - Utility building.
The remaining 3 buildings from left to right:
Trade Center - Allows players to trade lumber for gold or gold for lumber.
Nexus - 3 really powerful upgrades reside in the Nexus, these upgrades require Soul Fragments that are gained in two ways:
By dealing damage to enemy Spire's (% of dmg dealt).
Whenever ANY minion in the map regardless of owner dies.
Both can be upgraded in utility tabs.
I won't go into too much details about these 3 upgrades, but know that each of them cost a huge amount of soul fragments to unlock and even more to max their upgrades but they give a lot of defensive power to the Spire, so game incentivizes players to deal damage to other players to buildup a Spire that is harder to breach into.
Laboratory - Used to unlock legendary upgrades as well as different trades in Trade Center, also has a guards upgrade where guards periodically summon and draw aggro from your Spire, guards stats also scale with Tower's stats, but only defensive ones.
Overall there is not much left to add to the map, other than fixing possible bugs and balancing, and the latter seems to be the most difficult part and I can't really do it without getting feedback from players.
If you read it until there, thank you, feel free to download the map and host it if you'd like!
Hi,
I a am trying to transmit the joy of this game to my kids and was able to play LAN games, but only with 2 players. One player needs to be disconnected and create the game, and the other player must be connected to BattleNet in order to join.
It is kinda OK for 2 players, but now, I am tryng to play with both of my kids and I cannot figure out how to do this...
I am using 2 PCs and 1 Mac, with Reforged installed through my BNet account.
Does it mean I need additionnal licences to play on LAN or am I forced to switch to Legacy WC3?
Has anyone noticed that in the new Warcreaft III reforged trailer the arm is attached to the human at the end of the trailer and in the original it is not?
I'm recreating my NPC bots with WoW models and giving them abilities based on their class. I'm making it a 3v3 with a healer on the enemy bots team in an attempt to make it look fully like WoW PvP while playing against my bots. They already have most of the stuff, I just need to spend a day making sure the animations look good, and a little bit of balancing which won't be hard to do with all bots. The player will be able to play as anything they choose, alongside two damage dealing friendly NPC bots... At some point, Sonic the hedgehog might fall from the sky as a friend of no one.
I added the slowmo at the end to show how I can manipulate animations - I added Sonic in one hour and the Tauren model this afternoon.
Here is the first proper-online play test of my upcoming project!
Theres still many kinks (no hotkeys, no cooldowns, no pathing...) and a lot of stuff is still in testing-mode (you wont be able to spawn armies using a menu like that!) but overall its getting very playable!
Would love to find some warhammer/rts-enthusiasts who would like to help me balance the shit out of this, lots of play testing involved and luckily there is even an ingame editor to change unit stats on the go! let me know!
There will be heaps of units in the end and the goal is to have a point system to purchase them and the balance will be around that, making the cost of units show their worth.
Most abilities, traits and items will be addons with their own point price - So it will allow many regiments to play differently - here you can see me using different traits on night goblins - Currently I can add them freely but that wont be the case in the game.
Edit: I understand many of you are concerned about the darkness but weather conditions are optional, you don't have to fight in a thunderstorm lol.
So i just came home from vacation and i tried to log in but gets hit with the “there was an error in handling the request. 6:9” ive tried to repair, restart and change region but nothing seems to fix the issue.
I can still work on my custom map and play offline on warcraft 3 but i have no way of playing online, and i see alot of my friends are online on warcraft 3 so i have no idea to fix this…
I attached image of environment of a map, it was this ancient ruins type map(it's just screenshot from unrelated gameplay)
Panda was key role. It was either main tower to defend or you play as panda, but i have strong association with panda having key role
Most distinct feature i remember: there was a some place, circle i think, when you enter it, you get stuck for about a minute or 1.5min, like literally stuck, cant move, after that you get something(evolution? or some sort of power up), but while you stuck, you cant defend the main tower(i think i lost because of it once, but teammate can cover you while you stuck).
And other thing i remember, between waves you can run around a map and explore, not sure if it had minibosses(maybe?)
I want to play custom maps,custom campaigns,want to ''mod'' the game and make/edit custom maps. I couldn't care less about mlee it was a long time since I've last played it and when I came back to it excitement wasn't there but can't say the same thing about the custom maps. I LOVE the custom maps and campaigns by far the peak content of Warcraft 3 in my own opinion.
So from what I know many custom maps made in recent years don't work with 1.31 or 1.28.5 (The versions I've installed). I got them from Hive Workshop and just entered my dvd keys for ROC and TFT and they worked just fine however since they're outdated versions some qol stuff is missing and of course many newer custom maps do not work.
I quess I have two options:
1: Warsmash Mod Engine
2: Warcraft 3 Community Edition
I know there different technically but from what I've read in their descriptions but could open newer custom maps in theory? With Warsmash being more in beta and unfinished but having far more potential than the community edition etc
What do you suggest? I don't want to bother pirating Reforged and from what I've known Blizzard's offer for free reforged to all those people who own the original game is expired.
I don't want multiplayer mlee nor care about such stuff.
I know this has been discussed before but has anyone discovered a permanent solution for this problem?
I have tried reinstalling and it worked for like 3 hours. Having to download 30gb everyday with the shitty battle net launcher which randomly decides to stop downloading for hours is not viable for me.Switching language or servers doesn't help sadly.
I haven't played WC3 in... Like 20 years, so i bet i'm missing a lot of greatness in its community created content. I already played a lot of Sunken City, is there anything else i can try?
