Now, as a disclaimer, I have absolutely nothing against Warcraft as an MMORPG like with World of Warcraft. After all, it has everything that makes an MMO cool, such as the 25-to-40-man cooperative raids on high level, end-game dungeons.

It's just that I almost wish Blizzard would go back to making Warcraft an RTS game with a possible Warcraft IV. Nowadays, I seem to be obsessed with the idea of building and managing a base and army, because it's almost no different from party or team management. Technically, base and army management involves division of labor, like building a party or raid; the buildings mass-produce and research new units and unit upgrades, while the units themselves defend their buildings while attacking the enemy's. Likewise for a 25/40-man raid; half of the team are tanks/defenders and healers/supports who sustain the main attackers, like buildings, and the other half are the main-attackers themselves, whether physical, ranged, or magical, similar to units.

I like Warcraft 3 but I hate that it spawned DoTA which killed the best community of mapmakers in history from Starcraft: Brood War and I'm basically guaranteed to never have a comparable multiplayer experience perpetually (I guess the closest is Helldivers, which is only one map ultimately). Assist to Indie Games putting the nail in the coffin.

Only if it continues the story of WoW with 9 million heroes vs respawning bosses.

Dude way ahead of you, I've been longing for a Warcraft IV for yeeaaarrrs now. While I definitely ended up playing Warcraft 1 and 2, and Starcraft, far more than Warcraft 3, I really liked that game a lot. And when suddenly Warcraft went from that RTS series only my gamer friends knew, to "the MMORPG that everyone in the world knows," I was greatly saddened. Of course I have ended up enjoying a number of MMO's but WoW never did it for me.

...all that said I would be very, very surprised if we never see a Warcraft IV. I would've expected it to be next but now we've got that shooter thing coming so we'll see.

@belegorm: I second this dude. As far as i'm concerned, W4 is next.

Footman Wars was amazing.

I have been thinking for a long time that Blizzard should make Warcraft IV retell the story of World of Warcraft. Because getting the story from that is so convoluted and hard to keep track of.

I just don't know if Warcraft IV will happen anytime soon though. The RTS genre is almost a wasteland at this point and the Starcraft 2 scene seems to have almost dried up in favor of MMO's. Blizzard just feels in the position of keep making F2P games now. HOTS, Hearthstone and Overwatch will get most efforts. With the new Starcraft 2 expansion being the only singleplayer stuff being built upon and even then seemingly reluctantly.

It just seems like the essence of Warcraft has been split and divided into games which specialize in the aspects of the series that people love. If you enjoy macroing, army management, and base building, StarCraft II replaces W3 as the game of choice. If you're all for crazy hero battles and developing your character, you go for one of the MOBAs. And if you just played for the lore then WoW capitalizes on that.

I was never really into Warcraft mods so I can't really talk about that aspect of the game.

I specifically miss WarCraft 1 and 2. I think they kinda ruined the franchise with the addition of hero characters and leveling and that nonsense in WarCraft 3 and after WOW, I don't think it's even salvageable anymore.

Let's be honest though, the Blizzard from back then isn't the Blizzard of today. The only section of their team that's doing anything remotely good is the Starcraft one, then we have WoW, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, and Diablo 3. They've entrenched themselves into the casual market, the one that looks deep on the surface, but really isn't. Unless the Starcraft people are up to making a proper Warcraft game after they're done with the latest Starcrafts, we won't see that series come back for a long time.

Warcraft 4 is the real half-Life 3

Warcraft 2 was great but WC3 introduced the heroes and I didn't like that.

I'm still secretly hoping for a Warcraft IV. I loved Warcraft III and Frozen Throne's campaigns.

@rothbart: I'm not saying that World of Warcraft sucks. I never played the game or its expansion packs in my life, but I keep hearing good things about that series.

In fact, I never even played Warcraft III in my life. The only RTS I'm playing right now is a mobile smart-phone game called Clash of Clans. And, even though I'm always creamed in that game, regardless if I'm on offense or defense, all that matters is that I have fun with it.

It's just that I like the idea of building and maintaining an army and base, and going into war against another person's army and base, because it's cool. It all reminds me of managing a party in an RPG, because of this whole division of labor thing.

Warcraft 3 would be cool, but at this rate I think they will never do it. Maybe if Starcraft 2 died off completely instead of just staggering on the border between life and death. Then they would at least have the incentive to revitalise that part of the RTS market again. But I don't really see those two games living side by side.

Yeah, after Heart of the Swarm got fewer sales then SC2 vanilla (it had to, as it wasen't standalone), Bliz probably said "nope". Plus their other projects are doing much better, so are they even still working on the SC2 Protoss expansion?

edit: just checked the wiki and Legacy of the Void is actually gonna be a standalone expansion. Guess Bliz is going full out on making this last one profitable.

I adored Warcraft III, would love to see IV come out but I don't expect it ever will. I haven't played WoW so I don't even know what's the state of the world/lore now.

I liked Warcraft 3 a whole lot, but I'm not sure how Blizzard could follow up from that, both in a lore and a gameplay sense. Of course, the Blizzard of today isn't quite the Blizzard of 13 years ago so I'm not sure if I'd even want them to make another one.

There are a lot of times when I disagree with your opinions, but this is one of those times when you hit the nail on the god damn head. FUCK dota. Back when Warcraft 3 first came out, there were so many different maps to choose from, but then once dota became huge, it was 90% dota, 10% other games. I used to stay up all night long playing Kodo Tag and Dark Deeds, and it sucked to see games like those drowned out by the constant DOTA ALLSTARS spam.

I'd also put some of the blame on Blizzard however - their user interface for Battle.net 2.0 was horrible on release, and it took them nearly a YEAR to make clan support and chat channels, which by then it was too late. Battle.net wasn't the greatest in WC3, but it was great to log in and just join a random chat channel and talk to people and then go play Pyramid Escape or Prison Break or Real Life or one of the other awesome games they had available.

Yeah, I probably have nostalgia goggles on and it probably wasn't that amazing, but I still love it anyway.

Oh... Right. More Warcraft RTS games would be rad too I guess. Chris Metzen would be the lead writer, so that means any story it had would be complete trash, and I can guarantee it'll be "everyone teams up to fight big bad", because that's the ONLY story he's capable of writing.

To be honest, I miss the whole of the RTS genre of games, They have all gone extinct in the last few years with some exceptions.

I would be happy for any of the old series to come back as long as they bring something new and are not just making remakes of the previous games.

Warcraft 3 is the only non-WoW game in the saga i've played and while I enjoyed it I thought Starcraft 2 was better. (which should be getting another expansion sometime in the next 10 years) But I dont think you'll get a Warcraft 4 for the same reason we'll never get a Half-Life 3. MOBAs and e-sports are too damn popular/profitable.

@random45: Thank you sir. I don't think it's nostalgia, the nostalgia is what fuels the hate for modern MOBAs or *cough* DoTA clones *cough* but the maps themselves, especially in Brood War were top notch; basically you had 5000 games in one and almost all of them were excellent multiplayer experiences (also you didn't have to listen to people's shitty microphones constantly, just saying). Hell people actually talked in chat, we had long ridiculously elaborate discussions over strategy; it wasn't just copy pasta of whatever random strategy guide on website X, people actually figured out that shit on the fly. Warcraft 3 probably didn't have the time to develop the same way as Brood War just due to the nature of DoTA, but I'm sure with time we would have had our Napoleon's Ambitions, our well balanced Risk maps, our high level LoTR play, Starship Troopers SE by Panzer-Kavalier (which is Helldivers essentially), our WW2 Death In Europes, Campaign Virginia, Hearts of Iron, and so on to reside in the hall of legends.

That said I've started to get over it just enough to play some MOBAs recently, I know I'm a scumbag traitor but hey Dynasty Warriors a New Age v5 was really fun, as was AoTR, and Aeon of Strife. I knew the guy that made DoTA way back when and he seemed like a good dude, but in reality he was the antichrist.

I'd play another Warcraft RTS, as long as Blizzard fired like, its entire writing staff.

Because Jesus Christ, Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. It took you two fucking campaigns, and all that really happened was Mengsk is dead, Samir Duran/Narud is dead, and you retconned like the entire Zerg origin story? And you introduced zero new characters or locations that are in any way important to the plot?

Tychus and Tosh were actually fun supporting characters, but they seemingly have no relevance to the greater plot and were just there for the sake of "let's make Raynor vaguely mistrust his allies at all times." And then Heart of the Swarm is even worse; Abathur was well written, but he's little more than a glorified upgrade menu and I expect to never see him mentioned again.

I dunno. Blizzard's recent writing has been ALL over the place. It's so predictable and kind of boring.

I think a W4 is long overdue and will never be up to snuff.

But what exactly do you want from Warcraft 4? Another Blizzard style RTS set in fantasy universe? Mechanically speaking Starcraft 2 was a bit like Warcraft 4 (the same way starcraft was warcraft 3 in a way, and warcraft 3 was starcraft 2), story wise they simply couldn't do that because of WoW... It's a lost cause. Also, I don't think we will ever have map making community as good as warcraft 3 had.

I don't really miss it. I still have them; can still play them. If they plan on making another RTS that isn't a Starcraft game, I'd prefer a different IP than WC. What would they even do in that universe at this point?

I think if LotV does well enough Warcraft 4 might happen. There's enough nostalgia around that game and WoW that I reckon it would do well now, even if RTS games in general are doing poorly.

Eeeh, not really. I think I maybe played WC3 for about all of 5 minutes so I can't say I have any memories, fond or otherwise, of the rts years of Warcraft. That said, I think it would be cool if they made a Warcraft 4 or something.

I don't see a market for Warcraft 4 and SC2, and with StarCraft dying a slow death.... Yes, sorry about that Warcraft.

I would love a NEW franchise from blizzard. Its been over a decade. I don't mean a copy cat game like HoS or Hearthstone. Something 100% new or at least a rebirth of a genre like they did with Warcraft, StarCraft, and WOW. All were pretty revolutionary for its time.

Blizzard has lost all its ingenuity and creativity. Its rather sad

I have fond memories of the first two games and liked the prologue and Human campaign of Warcraft. Once in a while I'll look back on those and think that a new Warcraft would be nice. Then I remember that I couldn't bring myself to finishing WC3 because the Undead campaign reminded me too much of the Zerg part of StarCraft, and how Wings of Liberty bored me to tears. That game made me realize that I'm done with the RTS genre. So no, I don't really miss it.

no- i don't miss it. i didn't like what they did with warcraft 3 (base management + hero leveling), and i don't think blizzard's capable of writing a satisfying story (WoW is impenetrable, diablo 3 is cliched as fuuuuu-, and starcraft 2 waffles all over the place).

the oldschool gameplay of warcraft 2 is largely intact in sc2, so i'll go there if i want to scratch that itch.

I think that if they just put out Warcraft 4 as an average normal RTS with hero mechanics and what-not, and mod support, it could probably do alright. If they try and shove esports down everyone's throats (a la SC2), this'll never happen because Blizzard can probably only support 1 esportsy RTS, but if they just make another RTS that'd be nice.

Though then again fuck Blizzard, they basically killed off SC:BW's competitive scene, both here and in Korea.

I agree with several others here, blizzard simply isn't what it used to be, especially in the storytelling department. I loved the story of diablo 2 and starcraft, but both diablo 3 and starcraft 2 have been very disappointing. I pretty much called what was going to happen in diablo 3 every step of the way as I was playing it, and even beyond predictable it was incredibly boring and uninspired.

WarCraft IV might be interesting, but not with who they currently have. Furthermore they would have to set it so far in the future or past to avoid angering fans of the mmo that 'important' plot developments are taking place outside their game that it may as well be a new IP anyway. Which hey, as much as I hate virtually every major character in wow now anyway, why not. Seriously, am I the only one who could not stand Thralls terribly cliche story and ascension from WarCraft 3 and into wow? Why hasn't he died already? ...Also not a fan of the orcs becoming quasi-good guys in the series as well.

You know what, the more I type this, no, no they should never make another warcraft game again, and should probably stop starcraft and diablo before they screw up those worlds anymore than they have.