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I knew upon being given the wonderful gift of previewing Warcraft III, my skills as a writer would be tested. Sure, I can form sentences, evaluate games for their style and graphics, and write fairly decent reviews. For this preview, however, I am forced to give my unbiased opinion of a Blizzard game. This is extremely challenging for me because I am an unabashed diehard fan of Blizzard Entertainment. All of their games work right out of the box, provide hours upon hours of addictive entertainment, and quickly develop into arguably instant classics. In fact, some members of the media think that competing game developers should all go out and buy bracelets with the monogrammed letters “WWBD” (What Would Blizzard Do) to serve as a reminder of what kind of work, detail, and devotion it takes to build a good game. To ensure this top quality, Blizzard will not hesitate to push back a game’s release date until it meets their standards and is actually deemed ready to ship. They also study what their competition does in the same genre and integrate the best elements of their rivals’ games into their own. But most importantly, Blizzard carefully listens to the advice of their fans. Keeping these facts in mind, what follows is my completely “unbiased” preview of Warcraft III from May’s E3 in Los Angeles.

Impressions

Walking into Havas’s Interactive’s (Owner of Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Online, & Knowledge Adventure) E3 booth was like being a kid in a candy store. When I first looked up at the giant presentation screen displaying an epic battle between a human knight and an orc grunt, I simply dropped my bag and took a picture. Going past the PR desk, I noticed groups of 4 computers, each with Klipsch speakers, large monitors, and large display screens at the top of their housings so that the masses could see what a person was playing. Half of the computers were running what appeared to be a fully functional Diablo II, and when I inquired as to the estimated release date, one of the many engineers, programmers, and PR people there assured me that it was going due out in about a month. Now that it has gone gold, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy. While I am a big fan of Diablo, I pushed the temptation to get sidetracked aside, although it was very difficult as I could hear the serpent's sultry hiss of unspeakable delight whisper in my ear.