Single-Player: I'm a LAN guy, and a strictly multiplayer nerd. When it comes to single player games, they have to be dang good for me to stick through them. The single player allows you to play through the 'stories' of all the races. Here's the best part of the game though, it aint just Orc 'n Human no mo'! The problem with many RTS games is that learning an obscure race can be frustrating at best. With Warcraft 3 you can expect there to be handy little hints throughout the entire game. Thanks Blizzard! I can't decide for you how good the single player is because of my tainted view. But if I can get through nearly half the game and enjoy every last minute of it, you'll love it too :P

Multi-Player: My my my, what a pristinely designed interface with rock solid performance. Except for Quake 3, Warcraft 3 has given me hours of gaming pleasure. I LAN with my roommates nearly every second night, and rarely do we run into problems. The maps are awesome. The computer players scale from moderately challenging to fricken uber, and lag is a non-issue. There is only one thing better than an 8 person War2 game of Garden of War. That's a 12 person game in Warcraft 3! At first, the only frustrating part of multiplayer games is the upkeep and unit cap. Not a unit cap like War2 where you've got 254 units, but 100 food units. Bigger units of course consume more food, so they take up more food units. If you're playing as Night elf, the unit cap seems to be the harshest as both Chimeras and Rock Giants consume 5 each. But after a few games you come to realize that the unit cap is what makes this game different. No longer is this a mindless battle to see who can pump out more Hydralisks, but focused more on strategy. Micro management makes or breaks the battle. Use it, or lose ;)

Unit Overview:

Human: You know, the always present, mostly boring unit that appears in every game? I mean, who even likes humans .... oh right! The humans in War3 are just that much different from other RTS games that it makes them a strong 'cool' rating. With more of an emphasis on magic, the humans really can kick some booty. Learning to play as humans is dead easy as it's all intuitive. After all, what about “more work? I don't wanna!” don't you understand?

Orcs: Big. Strong. Badass. That about sums these brutes up. This race is the yang to the human race. Everything follows suite fairly closely to their human counterpart, so learning curve is fairly easy. The Orc heroes on the other hand are a-mazing.

Nightelf: Take a tree. Take out the “soul”. Put it in a hot purple chick who rides panthers and build trees that can dance. The Nighelves are a very powerful race with units that pwn hard. Learning to play as night elf is somewhat harder to do as the traditional build order is slightly off. Read the captions, get yer butt handed to you in an online game, and you'll learn quickly why starting off with them is an unwise choice. Strategy and micro management are the keys to playing as Nightelf.

Undead: They're dead. Pushing up the daisies. Wrung down the curtain. Singing with the choir invisible. D-E-D dead :) There are 3 things you need to know to play as Undead. Healing things that are dead doesn't work, units are expendable, and Acolytes can't chop wood. The Undead are like the Zerg of Starcraft. Learn to play as these guys, and soon you'll be the one holding the biggest board with a nail through it.

And finally, a side note on heroes. Each race has a unique set of heroes. Think of these guys as your generals. You certainly can put up a decent fight without them, but their addition to the fight is unprecedented. Level these dudes up to 6 and see how pwn their abilities become!

Live, Breathe, Play Warcraft.