Mac gamers have a lot to look forward to this year. Plenty of games in the stores and plenty in store. Warcraft III has been widely anticipated as not only the follow-up to the other successful Warcraft games, but a shot in the arm for gamers who are still getting off on Starcraft, which is 5 years old. What has kept fans coming back to the older games like Starcraft and Diablo isn't fancy graphics, but deep stories and enduring strategy gameplay. That said, the graphics for Warcraft III easily represent the best Blizzard has ever done.

Warcraft III installed and started up with a reasonably good guess at my hardware, but some tweaking was in order. 7 custom options allow you to dial settings up or down depending on your graphics hardware, processor and memory. Every small detail, including lighting and particle effects can be toggled or adjusted, making it easy to play Warcraft III on any system within the minimum requirements. The characters have a high level of detail, and spell effects are awesome. Landscape, buildings and of course the beautiful cut-scenes are all of excellent quality and the Collector's Edition packaging includes several goodies. A DVD with the computer animation scenes, a book showing the art for the game, and a series of stills showing the visage of each race in the game comes packaged in the Collector's Edition, and fans will find the extras well worth the extra money. Voice-overs and sound effects during battle are average in style, but still nice in execution. Characters break into the action for scripted sequences often, helping to move the story along and give added depth.

Firing up the World Editor included with the game shows another face of Warcraft III. Not only can you prepare the landscape and craft (heh) the characters as you wish, but you can import sound for your custom world as well. Blizzard states that this editor is 'virtually unchanged from the editor the level designers used to create their maps.'

I came into the Warcraft/Starcraft world through Starcraft, and had always found Warcraft a bit less interesting because there weren't as many 'angles' for gameplay as Starcraft. Sure, real-time strategy gaming is built on about the same principles no matter where you go, but Warcraft III combines everything I ever liked in Starcraft as well as refining anything I ever didn't like in previous Blizzard games. To start with something you might have expected, the story is amazing. A full and in-depth backstory went into creating this game. At a time when the dimension the Orcs originally came from has been long forgotten and destroyed, the Human races have grown complacent and in some cases contentious, hungry for power. The Orcs, led by a young dreamer named Thrall, rise up against their masters when it becomes clear something is not right in the world. The 'not right' part is the fact that the Undead, a dark and evil race (originally Orcish) driven by revenge and able to fight by possessing and reanimating fallen fighters during battles, is descending again on Azeroth after failing to conquer the world. Besides these three, a fourth Race called Night Elves will be brought into battle after having first waged war 10,000 years before the Humans and Orcs fought over Azeroth.

Characteristic of real-time strategy, each battle is won by a determining factor such as resources built, character goals or movement within an area of the battlefield. Resources here can include the basics such as wood and gold; the Night Elf race doesn't harvest wood as much as bond with it, and each race has an individual way of using resources. The manner in which races expand and the units they build are all different, but the guiding principle is to develop resources along a line of your choosing and face off against the enemy. When playing the single-player campaign, you're introduced to each race gradually, and given a chance to learn the strong points of developing resources and going into battle. Eventually, you'll have the chance to experiment with all 4 races, take part in Multiplayer action as any individual race or design your own level to be fought as you might envision.

The single player missions support a range of special objectives, and a main objective that leads to success in battle. Once you have tried the single-player game, there is both LAN and Battle.net play to be had. Some improvements to the Battle.net system for Warcraft III are anonymous 'matchmaking,' a way to find opponents matched to your difficulty level. Team Games can also be played with a group you select (maybe friends or people you've played with before) using the anonymous matchmaking feature. Prearranged or Custom games can serve as the backdrop for play, but either way you'll want to take advantage of this free service once you finish the single-player game or as an additional way to enjoy Warcraft III and hone your skills for the single-player campaign.

Judging difficulty is always tricky for a game like this, because there are always 'better' ways to do things, but no right way to do anything. Players familiar with strategies in the old Blizzard RTS games will possibly have a leg up on newbies, but there are some very strong tutorial elements here in both print and electronic form. And, during the game you're given chances to engage Creeps for extra experience or treasure and take on side quests to do the same, but with more risk involved. Dead heroes can be resurrected, just in case you bite off more than you can chew... :)

For those of you who might be coming at this series for the first time, it can be a bit overwhelming. But, after playing earlier RTS games from Blizzard, it is neat to see the little improvements. Controlling groups of enemies in battle is made even easier than before, with Subgroup Control. In this feature, we see the Command Group idea extended. It used to be that you'd pull in a big group and assign a number key to it for later, quick reference. Problem is, when you grabbed a group and had units of completely different ability you wanted to quickly access, you really had to just pick them out and manually select them or assign them to another number. Now, when you select a group containing 2 or 3 types of character, each 'subgroup' is accessible by using the Tab or Shift|Tab keys! So, you can put more time into strategy and less into fumbling with keys. Using Heroes is an important part of success in the game, and a well developed hero can really move battle in your favor. Some characters or items lend special abilities to the characters around them, but heroes provide a boost to anything they are involved with. The range of characters available is beyond the scope of our review, but the additional races and the amazing level of detail put into each and every combatant is just phenomenal. Magic users, distance and close-range fighters, transports and vehicles, heroes, creeps or NPC`s and all the building trees you might expect for this huge cast of characters are under your control. I especially like the fact that this feels like a natural extension of Starcraft as well as being the next step in the story behind the Warcraft saga.

On a purely technical note, Mac users will want to invest in a multi-button mouse if they haven't already. The range of options available for control here can be somewhat daunting, and there is lots of keyboard work to do. Bad enough you should have to learn all the keyboard shortcuts AND keep track of keys to emulate the second button on a PC mouse! Trust me, you want a multi-button mouse if you're going to spend any serious time playing Warcraft III.

And, although I can't predict the ultimate success of the game, I feel sure that fans of past Blizzard RTS games will have a blast and that any gamer prepared to make a small time commitment to learn the mechanics of resource development, controlling units and waging war will spend many long hours with Warcraft III. It is simply the best possible RTS experience on Mac right now, and judging by the shelf life its predecessors from Blizzard had, Warcraft III could be the best RTS on Mac for many, many years to come.