EPTWarcraft III: The Frozen Throne - Page 244
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M4TAPhyS1cs
13 Posts
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WGT-Baal
France3498 Posts
This makes me want to play a bit again, i actually recently found my old CDs in my parents basement  | ||
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Musicus
Germany23579 Posts
I also started playing some wc3 again due to these invitationals, it's incredible how well it holds up. Defnitely a top 3 RTS off all time and my personal favourite. | ||
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AssyrianKing
Australia2117 Posts
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Excalibur_Z
United States12248 Posts
On August 31 2025 20:46 AssyrianKing wrote: Does Back2Warcraft use any graphics mods in his stream? I think they're using the Kenshin Classic+ graphics mod from https://kenshin.pl/classicplus/ | ||
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lestye
United States4209 Posts
Not sure if that was ever done before but it was the first time ive seen it. B2W says hes been practicing it on b.net | ||
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AssyrianKing
Australia2117 Posts
On September 01 2025 05:52 Excalibur_Z wrote: I think they're using the Kenshin Classic+ graphics mod from https://kenshin.pl/classicplus/ There was a new one called Vision Mod as well. What do you think of it? Are there any others? | ||
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followZeRoX
Serbia1451 Posts
On September 01 2025 06:08 lestye wrote: Highly recommend Happy vs. Fortitude. Happy does this insane build where he actually unsummons his altar and shop to get a faster expansion. Not sure if that was ever done before but it was the first time ive seen it. B2W says hes been practicing it on b.net Insane bo7! In all honesty, bnet opponents are so bad you can unsummon all buildings and still win | ||
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Antithesis
Germany1250 Posts
In particular I have been enjoying following Hera's journey – the best AoE2 player – from a complete beginner to I believe now around 1300 MMR on W3Champions as UD. Also I have returned to playing and laddering WC3 a bit, and I must say so far it is really fun. Challenging of course but much less swingy compared to what little I played on the SC2 ladder recently, especially compared to the horrible ladder experience for zergs on the current patch, haha. Anyone else following? | ||
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Excalibur_Z
United States12248 Posts
On May 10 2026 23:49 Antithesis wrote: I should like to resurrect this thread because of the recent bit of hype around WC3 coming from Grubby's next invitational streamer tournament: Altar of Champions. In particular I have been enjoying following Hera's journey – the best AoE2 player – from a complete beginner to I believe now around 1300 MMR on W3Champions as UD. Also I have returned to playing and laddering WC3 a bit, and I must say so far it is really fun. Challenging of course but much less swingy compared to what little I played on the SC2 ladder recently, especially compared to the horrible ladder experience for zergs on the current patch, haha. Anyone else following? Yeah. I'm running a daily chart documenting their progress. Here it is today: ![[image loading]](https://imgur.com/rGJgPIi.png) My notes on the players: - Tyler1 has had an extra 12 days to reacquaint himself with the game, having known about the event and essentially leaking its existence via a chat bot command referencing his upcoming schedule, yet he has also had considerable difficulty. He sank from 1500 to 1250 over 4 weeks. - Hera is obviously an AoE2 master, and was assigned Undead as a suitable challenge. He has been grinding a ton of games, often choosing to mass game rather than study. As a result, he's plateaued multiple times, but easily broken past them after small coaching sessions (you can see the dramatic slope shifts corresponding to coaching days). - Pohx has extensive experience in custom games, giving him engine familiarity, but has not played a competitive game in many years. He has decided to leverage his solo hero experience and play mostly Warden, and it seems that his ladder anxiety is fading a bit and timings and concepts are clicking for him more, as he is currently on a 13-game win streak. - YamatoCannon decided to play 100 games on Bnet before jumping into W3Champions, just to orient himself. He played War3 when it released, and apparently matched against Grubby on the ladder back then. He has shown incredible tenacity and growth, often having 12-16 hour streams full of analysis and practice and reaping the benefits. He hit 1400 at his peak and dropped back down to 1350 later that day, but with his versatility he could easily recapture it. - Maxim doesn't have as much time to commit as some streamers, but he has jumped up to near 1100 without much difficulty. He's chosen to specialize in Pala/Rifle, as he feels it is still strong at his level. - Simply is a Mario64 speedrunner, and predictably his strengths are in minor timing optimizations, which any RTS player knows pays rippling dividends. His improvement has been steady as he meticulously applies each new discovery. - MaryMaybe is a significant underdog because at the time the practice period began, she was committed to a week-long sponsorship for a new gacha MMO, and shortly after that was doing event streams with her enclave in Austin. Nevertheless, she learns quickly, and executes strategies and tactics well, albeit a little slowly. Given a little more time, she can easily surprise the competition. - Dantes' situation is similar to MaryMaybe's, as he was suddenly asked to coach Jynxzi (a 50k-viewer streamer) as he learned League of Legends, and so this was an easy business decision for him. Dantes is attempting to catch up by getting structured coaching from some W3C community figures, which can challenge his impulsive nature. People seem to be excited about the clanwar format on Friday, in particular how the results impact the bracket assignments for Saturday. I think the event will be really fun. I've done admin work on both of the previous Grubby invitational tournaments, and will of course be doing more of that this weekend. I hope people check it out and enjoy! | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27031 Posts
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Fleetfeet
Canada2759 Posts
That said, the barrier of getting WC3 then getting a third party launcher for wc3champions is probably more than casual players will engage, so for the fraction of the audience that would actually play, you'd likely lose half of them there. | ||
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Berstis
40 Posts
On May 11 2026 10:52 Fleetfeet wrote: I'd be surprised if it moved the numbers a lot, but it's a pretty decent onboarding to have both people like Hera who are supremely accomplished gamers, and people like Dantes who are more on the streamer end than the tournament level gamer end. Most people are going to be able to find themselves represented somewhere in there, and if both Dantes and Hera are struggling, then maybe struggling is okay. That said, the barrier of getting WC3 then getting a third party launcher for wc3champions is probably more than casual players will engage, so for the fraction of the audience that would actually play, you'd likely lose half of them there. Ehm, you dont have to install wc3champions. You just have to click Multiplayer > Matchmaker. Ingame leaderboard shows thousands of player, lots of them played +500 games. Am i missing something? Which also begs the question if the game actually needs "An influx of player" | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7262 Posts
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Berstis
40 Posts
On May 11 2026 20:28 Harris1st wrote: It probably just needs a steam release with all the possible modes/ ladders and whatnot and player numbers would go up to AoE numbers. People HATE the bnet launcher and everything connected to it Do you mind adding some details? What possible modes/ladders are missing? What are the player numbers? Why are the player numbers bad for Warcraft 3? Why do people HATE "bnet launcher and everything connected to it" (Especially compared to Steam, which has so much garbage on it its not even funny anymore) | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27031 Posts
On May 11 2026 10:52 Fleetfeet wrote: I'd be surprised if it moved the numbers a lot, but it's a pretty decent onboarding to have both people like Hera who are supremely accomplished gamers, and people like Dantes who are more on the streamer end than the tournament level gamer end. Most people are going to be able to find themselves represented somewhere in there, and if both Dantes and Hera are struggling, then maybe struggling is okay. That said, the barrier of getting WC3 then getting a third party launcher for wc3champions is probably more than casual players will engage, so for the fraction of the audience that would actually play, you'd likely lose half of them there. Aye, plus I guess it’s still quite hard to learn as even relatively bad players have possibly been playing for years and years and have a ton more knowledge. Not insurmountable but if you’ve a regular 9-5, or family commitments etc there’s probably better options for a casual player to unwind for a few hours with Posted as much to wish you a happy cake day! | ||
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SHODAN
United Kingdom1159 Posts
On May 11 2026 17:26 Berstis wrote: Ehm, you dont have to install wc3champions. You just have to click Multiplayer > Matchmaker. Ingame leaderboard shows thousands of player, lots of them played +500 games. Am i missing something? Which also begs the question if the game actually needs "An influx of player" w3c uses 37 server nodes. official wc3 servers use as few as 3 primary proxy servers, shared with other blizzard games. I instantly leave about 20% of my bnet matched games because the lag is so bad on top of that, w3c performs extra optimizations under the hood to select the best server. I can play from the UK vs an opponent in Korea or Bolivia and I don't notice any lag at all. on wc3 official, the input delay is simply intolerable you need to play on w3c or KK! if you want a competitive ladder experience | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7262 Posts
On May 11 2026 20:48 Berstis wrote: Do you mind adding some details? What possible modes/ladders are missing? What are the player numbers? Why are the player numbers bad for Warcraft 3? Why do people HATE "bnet launcher and everything connected to it" (Especially compared to Steam, which has so much garbage on it its not even funny anymore) I haven't touched WC3 since Reforged myself. I know there are (or were)some unofficial ladders since reforged didn't have a ladder. Reforged did overwrite the "legacy" version of WC3 in the bnet launcher. I recall there were found out options to stop it from doing that later on/ reversing it. Dunno what the state of official ladder / pro ladder is these days. I have no idea what the numbers are since it isn't on steam. You tell me what the numbers are since you clearly know? I never said anything remotely close to "numbers are bad for Warcraft 3" no idea what you are fishing for but it seems very bad faith argument. I hate the bnet launcher, everyone I know hates the bnet launcher, reddit is full of opinions why bnet launcher is bad. Random updates, voice chat is mostly broken, ads everywhere, game updates are slow as fuck. Like how is that even possible in modern times slow Is Steam the holy grail? Of course not. But it's the launcher that everyone has and everyone uses. Bit like Windows in that regard. GOG was supposed to be the one that rules them all but at least in my personal echo chamber that hasn't happened. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27031 Posts
On May 11 2026 20:28 Harris1st wrote: It probably just needs a steam release with all the possible modes/ ladders and whatnot and player numbers would go up to AoE numbers. People HATE the bnet launcher and everything connected to it I dunno, it feels to me there are bigger barriers than a launcher. It’s pretty trivial to get up and running on Bnet, versus the hours a newbie will need to get up to speed in WC3 if they’re laddering I may be totally wrong though! | ||
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Excalibur_Z
United States12248 Posts
On May 11 2026 09:09 WombaT wrote: One thing I’m curious about is are initiatives like these bringing an influx of newcomers to the game itself? In short, yes. You can take a look at the Statistics page on W3Champions, and down at the Players Per Day chart, you can see a bump that begins with the soft announcement of the event (Apr 20), which increases even more with the release of the teaser video and website containing the full participant list (Apr 25-26), and increases still more with the format announcement video (May 4). Historically, you can also take a look at the player counts on the MMR distribution page by season. That breaks down as follows: Season 19: Around 18,000 players Season 20 (Last few days overlapped with Grubby Invitational 1): Around 17,000 players Season 21 (Overlapped with Grubby Invitational 1 & 2): Around 29,000 players Season 22: Around 12,000 players Season 23: Around 12,000 players Season 24 (current, Altar of Champions): Around 14,000 players Many lapsed players who haven't played in decades return to play in these events, but they also bring many new players from the participants' communities who aren't familiar with Warcraft 3 at all, but who feel they can learn alongside their favorite streamer, since Warcraft 3 community coaches come out of the woodwork to offer education which is equally beneficial to viewers. As Fleetfeet mentioned, the barrier of entry is a bit higher on W3Champions, so it wouldn't surprise me if Bnet player numbers had a proportionally higher bump. | ||
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