YMMV / Warcraft

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The following have their own pages:

• Complete Monster
• Magnificent Bastard
• That One Level

Other examples:

A-E

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Plenty of them among the Lore Fans. For example:
  • The Lich King telling Arthas that his time for vengeance has come on Mal'Ganis. Is he just allowing Arthas to finally have his revenge, or is this perhaps the start of the Lich King's entire grand scheme to bring about the downfall of the Burning Legion by killing off one of the Dreadlords when no one's watching? Mal'Ganis being surprised in his last moments that the Lich King ordered Arthas to kill him could make a case for the latter. Maybe it's both. Later lore confirms both to be the case; the Lich King wanted Mal'Ganis dead for his own reasons, and also wanted to encourage Arthas to give in to his vengeful urges to make him easier to corrupt.
  • Tyrande is often seen as a villain rather than a hero due to her being unwilling to ally with the other Azeroth races to fight against the Burning Legion, and slaughtering a group of innocent prison wardens that were only doing their job keeping a condemned criminal (Illidan) behind bars. However, this overlooks how Tyrande helped a group of Furbolgs (try to) escape the corruption, mobilized her people against the Burning Legion and eventually turned from her racist ways.
  • Uther's death by Arthas. Did Uther hold himself back due to his fatherly feeling for Arthas? Keep in mind that Uther is full-powered Paladin and much more experienced than Arthas even if the latter wielded powerful runeblade. Arthas also only had (very weak) ghouls and meat wagons in his forces that even with Zerg Rush, Uther can easily kill the ghouls.^note This fanmade Animated Adaptation also uses this interpretation, where Uther stops himself from dealing a killing blow when he saw Arthas as both young boy and Paladin while also remembering their conversations during Human Campaign, only for Arthas to fatally stab Uther in the chest. And after muttering his Dying Curse, Uther uses the last of his strength to caress Arthas's face in fatherly manner before he fell. Arthas also had Ignored Epiphany during this point. Arthas and later World of Warcraft: Chronicle clarifies that this was actually almost inverted; Arthas starts off somewhat matching Uther, but starts losing the duel thanks to the power of the Light, but as he is pushed to the edge of defeat, the Lich King invigorates him and he uses superior speed to defeat Uther.
  • Maiev lying to Malfurion about Tyrande's fate wasn't just because she had to convince Malfurion to continue hunting his brother, Illidan, rather than have him run off to save Tyrande. Maiev's lie was because she thought Tyrande deserved to suffer to the undead as justice for murdering her Watchers.
• Anticlimax Boss:
  • Gul'Dan in Tides of Darkness. Considering that he's a major leader in the Horde, and the goal of "The Tomb of Sargeras" is to kill him you'd think he'd be a challenge. But unlike the hero units Beyond the Dark Portal, the hero units in Tide of Darkness have unimpressive stats, and Gul'Dan is no exception, being a Death Knight who actually has less health and damage.
  • Examples from Reign of Chaos:
    • Kel'Thuzad in the 4th human level makes for a Boss Battle that can only be described as being quite pathetic. He's basically just a normal necromancer that can be one-shotted by a maxed out level-3 Holy Light from Arthas. Theoretically, the challenge in the encounter comes from the Abominations and other units protecting him, but the fact that Arthas has Divine Shield means he can nuke down Kel'thuzad without ever engaging his guards.
    • Mal'Ganis is the Arc Villain of the Human Campaign and is the commander of the Scourge forces in Lordaeron. Like Gul'Dan above, he's actually significantly less dangerous than the average Dreadlord Hero, as he only has two standard Dreadlord abilities ^note Carrion Swarm and Sleep, and his other spells don't have any application in combat^note They are only used in the Culling mission for him to reach the Game Over objective by sending away enough zombies to join his army. He can't provide Vampiric Aura or summon an Infernal like a standard high level Dreadlord. He is also one of the only Dreadlords in the campaign that does not carry an Orb. As such the two missions where he is the enemy hero are never that hard. This is fixed in Reforged where he gains back the two abilities he lost.
    • The Guardian in “Frostmourne” is the last opponent of the first half of the mission and the final obstacle before Arthas and Muradin attain Frostmourne. He is only a little stronger and more durable than a normal Level 10 creep and when he dies all of his minions do as well. With your two high leveled heroes you can take him down even if you lost all your units on your way to him.
    • Due to being squishy heroes when it comes to health, the three Archmages in "The Siege of Dalaran" are this. Thanks to the high damaging combination of Death Coil and Frost Nova, it's very easy to just rush Arthas and Kel'Thuzad into the undead damaging barrier to quickly nuke down the Archmages before the barrier comes anywhere close to killing your undead heroes. The final fight against Antonidas, a Level 10 Archmage, is especially anti-climatic as along with not having many fellow defenders to protect him, Antonidas doesn't have any skills or items to truly damage Arthas and Kel'Thuzad. If that wasn't easy enough, the 2nd and 3rd sections of the level both have Healing Fountains to counter the damage of the barrier. One of which just so happens to be right in front of Antonidas. At the very least, one of the few things Reforged did right was make these Archmage fights a lot more interesting. Particularly, Antonidas having an actual Boss Battle that comes in multiple stages.
    • Cenarius in the Orc Campaign mission The Hunter of Shadows. He is just a beefy Keeper of the Grove with Cyclone. The difficulty of the mission is almost entirely at the beginning, and when you approach Cenarius with a small orc army, he goes down very quickly to your overpowered Chaos Orc army.
    • Grom in the last orc level ends up as this. A fight against a demon influenced level-10 Blademaster? Instantly gets put in a Soul Gem. That being said, the hard part is actually getting to Grom as you have to fight your way though at least one base full of Fel orcs and several Burning Legion units such as Doom Guards and Fel Stalkers while also fending off raids against both your base and Jaina's base by those same Fel orcs and Infernals.
    • The Keeper of the Grove, Califax, serves as a rather lackluster Boss Battle at the end of the 5th night elf level when it turns out that he's only a level-3 hero unit backed by a couple Wildkin that can be killed quite easily. Even on Hard mode, Califax's level remained unchanged. For comparison, the player's hero unit, Tyrande, is at level-6 by this point.
    • Trying to kill Archimonde in the final night elf mission usually turns him into That One Boss, but if the player knocks his base out, which can be done if the orc or human base is destroyed and he starts to set up in a new in their place, it's possible to kill him with ballistas. As long as they stay outside of Archimonde's line of sight, he won't attack them even as they chip away at his health.
  • In the Frozen Throne expansion
    • Bloodfeast at the 2nd undead level. He is a huge abomination with 3,000 health, but in reality his huge health bar represents most of his threat, being that he has the same attack as a regular Abomination, and his two extra abilities (Cripple and Shockwave) are not enough to make him much of a threat.
    • There's the Forgotten One at the end of the second Azjol-Nerub level. If the player manages to keep a majority of the 12 Crypt Fiends gathered throughout the level alive, the Forgotten One will end up going down very easily before ever coming close to posing an actual threat. Additionally, due to the power of the Arthas-Anub'Arak duo they can defeat it 2 versus 1 pretty easily. Even worse, a bug in its AI in Reforged means it won't even use its abilities in that version.
• Arc Fatigue: The length to finish the first two story Acts of Frozen Throne's "The Founding of Durotar" bonus campaign can get quite tedious for some people as Act One: To Tame a Land, and Act Two: Old Hatreds, can take between one to two hours each to complete. Especially if the player really gets Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer wanting to find every piece of loot or stat tome available.
• Ass Pull: The Warcraft III: Reforged version of the "Path of the Damned" campaign's 5th mission adds a new scene where Arthas creates an ice bridge in order to reach the Sunwell's island. This was probably done to portray Arthas closer to how he was shown as the icy Lich King in World of Warcraft. In Warcraft III however, at no point is Arthas ever portrayed as An Ice Person to believe that he would be capable of making an ice bridge. Not to mention that it's only a mission ago that Arthas was required to island hop due to Sylvanas destroying a bridge, yet Arthas isn't shown to make any bridges here. It's just suddenly a thing Arthas can do a mission later.
• Awesome Music:
  • Warcraft II had one of the finest and most memorable soundtracks in RTS history, even if newer players may not remember it due to the first two games being overshadowed by Warcraft III and subsequently World of Warcraft. It's still used to this day in Hearthstone (during the matchmaker spinner) and, in awesomely remixed form, in Heroes of the Storm.
  • The four factions' themes in the third game.
  • And speaking of the third game again, the sung part at the end of The Frozen Throne ending cinematic. No wonder it was reused (with a different voice and lyrics) in WoW: Wrath of the Lich King.
• Badass Decay: In Warcraft II, the ogres were the Horde's answer to the knights, being as strong as them, but in Warcraft III, the average ogre is so weak that a basic Footman can kill one without any upgrade, and the only Ogres that are as strong as a Tier 3 unit are King Mooks version and Stonemaul Ogres in the Founding of Durotar campaign, whose rank-and-file units are only somewhat weaker than Taurens.
• Best Level Ever:
  • The Battle At Crestfall in the Human Tides of Darkness campaign of Warcraft II, gets props for being ahead of its time in level objectives. After the traitorous Kingdom of Alterac was razed by the Alliance, the Orcish Horde has fled the Northlands and makes a desperate last stand in the seas of Crestfall. Your only objective is to send your own navy to the Horde naval structures and take them out, a refreshing departure from the usual "destroy all enemy forces" missions.
  • The Dark Portal, the final mission in the Orc Beyond the Dark Portal campaign. You're given a massive starting army and all five of your heroes and the objective of clearing the map of Human Alliance forces. It feels like the Alliance is making their final stand and can only delay the inevitable. Build your base, smash everything in sight, capture the Portal and enjoy the ending cinematic.
  • Twilight of the Gods, the last level in Warcraft III is an absolutely massive forty-five minute Hold the Line mission where after eight years the Alliance and Horde finally work together to stop Archimonde as he juggernauts his way through everyone's bases with almost no effort. His forces are unlimited and it is very difficult just holding them off long enough, but it is extremely satisfying to win.
  • In A Symphony of Frost and Flame, the last level in The Frozen Throne expansion for Warcraft III, Arthas faces off against Illidan and his supporters, fighting for control of four obelisks to gain access to the Frozen Throne. Unlike most final levels, Arthas starts the mission at level 2 and can level all the way up to 10. He also has to build a base from scratch while Illidan has covered about a quarter of the map with his forces. Despite it's great difficulty, it is a very rewarding and intense level. More information under That One Level.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Coming across some secret areas and things throughout Warcraft III can be considered this, such as the Panda Relaxation area in "Digging up the Dead," the Largest Panda Ever in "Brothers in Blood," or the Penguin King in "The Return to Northrend."
• Breather Level:
  • Warcraft I
    • The final human level in the original game is much easier than the one before it, if you researched the water elemental before getting to it. You start this level with a decent number of troops, including a mage who can pop an elemental as often as he needs to to fend off the worst the orcs have to offer. All it boils down to is keeping them off your back until you get an army of summoners and send a horrifying number of elementals at them. This is especially noticeable compared to the orcs' final level, who can't heal, can be outranged by archers, and have to deal with invisibility spam, basically guaranteeing the death of your starting summoner and any peons unlucky enough to be targeted, making elementals much harder to defend against.
    • Human and Orc level 10. While you have no base and no reinforcements, you do have a huge army at your disposal. The computer player simply will slowly build up his forces, but you hold such a huge advantage that it's impossible to lose barring exceptionally bad play (such as repeatedly clumping your troops up when facing catapults or Cloud of Poison, not watching out for friendly fire from your own catapults, etc.).
  • Warcraft II
    • Orc level 6, "The Badlands," is a somewhat easy micro mission where the player escorts Cho'gall to a Circle-of-Power on the other side of the map. The enemy Human units the player has to fight through are quite spread out around the map, and most can be avoided while taking few casualties if the player beelines down one route towards the Circle-of-Power. Using Cho'gall makes this mission even more of a breeze due to Bloodlust.
    • Human level 9, "The Battle at Darrowmere," is a fairly easy naval micro mission where the player has to transport a hero unit, Uther, across the water to reach a Circle-of-Power. Your starting army is large enough to easily clear away the few enemy ships and coastal towers that guard the waterways between Uther's starting location and the Circle-of-Power that he needs to get to. Being a Breather Level is especially true when you consider that this mission is sandwiched between level 8, which is a mission that pits the player against 3 opposing Orc factions, and level 10 which is a long naval heavy slog to get some Alterac prisoners back to base.
    • In Beyond the Dark Portal, Human level 4, "Beyond the Dark Portal" you're tasked with building a Castle, and wiping all enemy units & structures. However, you're give a large enough starting army to eliminate the southern base, start your own base there and immediately siege the base on the west end of the map. Once you've neutralized this second base, it's a breeze to mop up the rest of the map while the air-attack-only base in the northeast doesn't bother you for a long while and has a sparse ground force and a bunch of towers defending. Even if the western base is left to build up, they do not even upgrade to tier 3, and attack with a mediocre army.
    • Also in the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion, Human level 6, "The Fall of Auchindoun", is a level that can be beaten fairly easily in the first couple of minutes. Despite going up against four orc factions here, you're only tasked to destroy the Orange base, and yet, you're provided a large enough army to just attack it right off the bat, and return to the Circle-of-Power with Turalyon and Danath after the destruction of the Orange base.
    • In Beyond the Dark Portal, Orc level 8 "Assault on Kul'Tiras" is surprisingly relaxed compared with what preceded it. The Human Paladins don't even have Exorcism so you're free to have a blast with Death Knights. The Human ground attacks waves are also very weak; Just remember to watch for patrolling Gryphon Riders.
  • Warcraft III
    • In the Human Campaign in Reign of Chaos, The Culling, despite being a Wham Episode in story, has much more straightforward gameplay than the Hold the Line mission before it, March of the Scourge (More information under That One Level). You are racing Mal'Ganis to kill 100 villagers before he can convert 100 of them to zombies, and he launches some attacks at your base as well, but only from one direction and without an enemy hero leading these attacks ^note In the previous mission, you had to deal with attacks from three directions and two factions with a Lich in each side, and a third faction if you failed the sidequest. You naturally kill zombies faster than Mal'Ganis converts them, and Arthas does not have to be there to increase his counter while Mal'Ganis does. Killing him also knocks him out of the map for 3 minutes (90 seconds on Hard). This is also the first mission you have the heavy infantry unit, Knights. A few squads of knights can take down zombies at several different parts of the map at once without any issues. Also unlike the previous mission, there is no sidequest to worry about, Mal'Ganis is weaker than a normal Dreadlord that inexplicably has the Siege damage type this mission, which makes him much worse in direct combat. Reforged adds in some mini-bosses that appeared in World of Warcraft in some of the houses and buffs up Mal'Ganis to the level of a normal Dreadlord, so the mission is no longer as easy as it was originally.
    • If you feel particularly terrible for killing and slaughtering the (mostly good and heroic) Humans of Lordaeron and High Elves of Quel'Thalas (as you control Arthas as the Villain Protagonist at this point) in the first five stages of the Undead Campaign in Reign of Chaos, then you might feel better in the sixth stage, "Blackrock and Roll, too!", since it is an Evil Versus Evil stage where your enemy is the Blackrock Clan, a villainous faction of the Orcs who continue to worship demons and don't join Thrall's Horde. You also get to control a new type of Hero, Kel'Thuzad, the Lich, after being stuck with Arthas alone for several missions. You also get access to the Frost Wyrm (the Undead's ultimate Unit) this mission, much earlier than usual and even before Abominations. The next two stages after this have you fight against heroic Humans again, however, and the final mission removes Kel'Thuzad from your control, turning him into an objective to defend instead.
    • In the Orc Campaign, after the Wham Episode of Grom killing Cenarius (more information under That One Level), you get "Where Wyverns Dare" ("Where Wind Riders Dare" in Reforged) which has Thrall and Cairne meeting up again and fighting two normal human bases that send small attacks from one direction but the mission is mostly exploring, fighting creeps and rescuing Wyverns with the two heroes. In contrast to the previous mission where you fight three large Night Elf armies from two directions and with one hero.
    • The expansion has "The search for Illidan" which is the fourth chapter of the Alliance campaign. There is an Unexpected Gameplay Change where you only control your heroes, while your army engages the Night Elf enemies on its own. Your goal is to secure Illidan's cage and return it to your base, while Maiev, your enemy does the same. During this level, both your heroes will receive their Ultimates, which makes this mission rather easy. If you managed to beat Bonus Level, you'll also get help from a Pandaren Brewmaster hero, making it almost impossible to lose.
    • The expansion also has the seventh chapter of the Undead campaign, a relatively easy 3-part dungeon crawl through Azjol Nerub nestled between two brutally tough base missions that make up the finales of the campaign's two major storylines. The only real annoyance players have to deal with is the 3rd part of Azjol Nerub being a Timed Mission with a random platform puzzle.
    • The Frozen Throne Orc Campaign "The founding of Durotar" is more or less a Breather Campaign. Instead of being a challenging RTS, this campaign is more like a simple RPG in which you control a party of up to four heroes who move throughout the maps doing all kinds of quests (essentially a test-run for WoW). For most of the campaign, there is literally no way you can lose, as losing your heroes only results into them resurrecting at a nearby checkpoint. Near the end of the campaign, your heroes will be so strong that they become One Man Armies. Storywise, this campaign feels more lighthearted compared to the other three campaigns. Instead of playing morally black or grey characters in the rather bleak settings of Outland, the ruined Lordaeron and Northrend, this campaign takes place in the tropical Durotar and focuses on the noble Horde forging their new kingdom, while trying to maintain peace with the humans from Theramore led by Jaina.
• Catharsis Factor: When the racist Garithos dies and got his corpse eaten with ghouls, chances are that you're forgetting that Sylvanas has become a wild card and completed her Villain Protagonist goals at least for the scope of the game. You're just cheering that an obnoxious, asshole racist in every second of the screentime available for him just died and is getting his just desserts.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • Warcraft II:
    • In any campaign, anytime you have access to Magi or Death Knights, and Blizzard + Invisibility or Death-and-Decay + Unholy Armor respectively, you have the ability to shut down a team's economy completely by mage-bombing their gold line with stealth Magi or invulnerable Death Knights repeatedly until they run out of gold. There may be faster ways to complete some missions, but this easily neutralizes a team so you can eliminate pressure and win the mission.
    • This trope is lampshaded in Human Expansion Level 7 with Polymorph being disabled for the mission. Otherwise, you can just cast Polymorph on Deathwing, resulting in a humiliating instant death by being turned into a warthog.
    • However, Polymorph isn't disabled on Human Expansion Level 9, so you can completely skip the fight against Teron Gorefiend by turning him into a warthog.
• Cliché Storm: Every line that doesn't contain a proper noun, you've heard in some other fantasy work. This is particularly noticeable in Reign of Chaos.
• Common Knowledge: It's often believed that Chaos damage in Warcraft III ignores armor and deals full damage to everything. This is only half correct; the game has a Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors system where a unit has both an armor and weapon type, and weapon types do increased or decreased damage against specific armor types even before factoring in the amount of armor a unit has. In this system, Chaos damage is not strong against or resisted by any armor type, however it is still reduced by a unit's actual armor, so a Chaos attack would do more damage against a Peasant with no armor than against a Knight with a lot of armor.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Considering the very, very long hiatus before patch 1.29, the metagame of Warcraft III had ample opportunity to become stale. You could pretty much expect everyone ever to open with a Blademaster, Demon Hunter, Archmage, or Death Knight depending on their race, and each matchup was mostly railroaded into a single game plan. Night Elves versus Orcs, for instance, would turn into mass Druids of the Talon + Beastmaster and Tinker against Tauren Chieftain and mass Raiders nine times out of ten, and Undead used Destroyers as an answer to basically everything.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Critical Dissonance: Metacritic's professional review score of Reforged sits at slightly over 60% (as of February 2020). While far from great, it was positively glowing compared to the user reception which was universally abysmal with the game becoming one of the lowest rated games in the sites history.
• Demonic Spiders: A lot in Warcraft III
  • The earliest one in the came actually comes from the prologue campaign's final mission, "Countdown to Extinction" (only available in the original Reign of Chaos demo, in The Frozen Throne custom campaign, and Reforged). It is the Siege Golem (not to be confused with the standard creep). It has a lot of health, moves quickly, is immune to spells, has the fortified armor type (same as a building, so it takes reduced damage from all attack types except Siege), and the Slam ability. It exclusively attacks buildings and will spam the Slam spell when near enemies, damaging and slowing them all. If not dealt with it can destroy multiple buildings and do a ton of magical damage before it dies. It has to be countered by multiple Raiders ensnaring it and hacking it apart, and near the end of the mission the Murlocs send it in twos or threes.
  • Starting near the end of the Orc campaign, the player will start to encounter Infernals that function as normal units rather than summoned units. They are fast, strong, durable, immune to spells, and have a passive ability that damages any unit touching them. They are stronger than any land unit that the player can build.
  • Around the same point the player encounters Doomguards. While weaker than Infernals and lacking their speed, they are still as strong as late game melee units and on top of that can use spells that would normally be for a Squishy Wizard ^note Rain of Fire, War Stomp, Dispel Magic, Cripple type of unit and resist spells in a similar vein to heroes. They also have a built-in ability to attack air units, which Infernals do not have.
  • The same level which you encounter Infernals regularly (the last level of the Orc campaign) you have to face the Chaos Orcs, which you got to use a few missions before. The Chaos Orcs have higher damage and health than your own units and have the unique chaos damage type which deals full damage to everything. This gives them the advantage against your troops and allows them to tear apart your buildings in seconds. They return as Fel Orcs in The Frozen Throne in Outland but this is offset by the fact that you are fighting them mostly with the Purposely Overpowered Naga faction, and an extremely powerful Illidan.
  • Siege Engines become this in Under the Burning Sky, the last mission of the Reign of Chaos Undead Campaign. In the normal game, they are simple Mighty Glacier siege weapons and can be easily outmaneuvered, but in a Hold the Line tower-based defense mission they are an insanely dangerous battering ram, especially if combined with the Priest's Inner Fire (which increases their damage and armor). Because they are mechanical, unlike the other human siege unit, Mortar Teams, they cannot be nuked by Arthas' Death Coil, and because their armor type is Fortified (same as a building), only Meat Wagons and the Burning Legion units you get in the mission do any sort of significant damage to them.
  • In The Frozen Throne Naga Royal Guards show up regularly in the Night Elf and Undead campaigns as opponents. They are similar to Doom Guards as a spellcasting late game melee unit that is stronger than any normal unit you can field and are effectively as strong as mid or high level heroes. In some ways they are even worse than Doom Guards since they are affected by race upgrades and instead of being based on AOE damage and buff control, they are focused on much more straightforward nuking and stunning between their spells Frostbolt ^note damages and stuns one target, Crushing Wave ^note AOE damage in a line, and Summon Sea Elemental ^note Summons a ranged unit that can stun when it attacks. They are extra annoying in the Night Elf campaign because they can stun your heroes that have channeling spells from long range. In the final level of the Undead campaign A Symphony of Frost and Flame the enemies will produce Royal Guards in great numbers and this is a major reason why the level is so difficult.
  • Infernal Juggernauts only show up in a few missions, but they are extremely dangerous. They deal massive damage with their splashing attack, they are immune to most spells due to being mechanical, and worst of all, they can summon Infernals. This is a Demonic Spider that summons other Demonic Spiders.
• Designated Hero: Tyrande Whisperwind could be seen as one since she slaughtered a group of innocent prison Wardens who were just doing their job trying to keep a condemned criminal, Illidan, behind bars. Maiev even calls her out for this in Frozen Throne. In addition, she mercilessly slaughters Humans and Orcs (who have allied together at this point) even though they all have a common enemy in the Burning Legion.
  • However, the character she freed is a fan-favorite, and possible Designated Villain, Illidan Stormrage. Not to mention that before then Tyrande helped a group of Furbolgs (try to) escape the corruption and eventually turned from her racist ways.
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • In the Reign of Chaos Orc Campaign, the final mission By Demons be Driven can fall into this. Much of the level is fighting Chaos Orcs and Infernals. This means the enemy variety is about 5 to 8 non-neutral units. The Chaos Orcs, despite being Demonic Spiders, do not have a full techtree. They have only one spellcaster and no flying units. The Infernals spawning all over the map basically take the place of enemy heroes. Despite the previous missions building up to a showdown with Grom Hellscream and Mannoroth, neither are actually fought. Grom does not attack your base, he is an Orcus on His Throne for the whole level and when you meet him he will be instantly captured in the Soul Gem ^note he will actually try to attack you after you get to him, but he barely takes any damage, and even if you kill him he instantly respawns, so the game directs you just to one-shot him with the Soul Gem. By the time you reach him there will no real obstacles left to stop you, which means the last minute or two of the map is just silently walking to the circle instead of doing something dramatic or engaging. Mannoroth does not show up on the map at all and dies in the next cutscene. Compared to the final missions of the previous campaigns ^note Frostmourne for Human and Under the Burning Sky for Undead, By Demons Be Driven gives a lot less satisfaction.
  • The Frozen Throne Alliance Campaign's final mission, Lord of Outland can qualify. It is mainly due to the Unexpected Gameplay Change, where the level is an unusual mix of the normal base mission and a Baseless Mission. Instead of harvesting resources, Gold is collected from gold coin items in the Black Citadel, lumber is not a resource in the level at all, there are no workers, upgrades, or towers. Instead there is a set number of buildings that are just there by default to train land units from. The level has no air units available to train, and Kael can't use his Phoenix spell. Heroes are allowed to die, but reviving them is so costly and time consuming you are better off restarting the mission (due to how little gold you will be able to get for most of the mission). The level effectively has 3 groups to move. Illidan and Kael with the Blood Elves on the left, Lady Vashj and the Naga on the right, and Akama with his invisible Draenei also on the left. The Draenei are out to complete the sidequest that is effectively required ^note they have a Stealth-Based Mission to destroy the power generators that power Magtheridon's defenses, and not doing this sidequest makes it next to impossible to break into these bases. These 3 groups each take turns exploring their parts of the maps, attacking enemy squads and bases, and group up to fight bosses and their minions near the end of the map. These encounters can turn into complete bloodbaths, since this mission is the only with 4 playable heros and no workers, so there is at least 20% more units than usual to micromanage. The only sense of urgency is that the orcs send some squads to attack Illidan sometimes. Some players actually enjoy the change in gameplay, since it can be considered a reasonable representation of a raid on a fortress, but it is not what anyone expects for a final level, which tends to be a fast-paced and intense base mission with full techtree access.
  • In The Frozen Throne Orc Campaign's final act, Act III A Blaze of Glory is much shorter, easier, and a lot more linear than the rest of the campaign. Acts I and II have an open main map and free reign to explore and travel to various small maps in Durotar while also leaving room for the main story. It can take many hours to explore Acts I and II and there is a lot to find. The final section of Act II Tidefury Cove, has Rexxar and his companions leading the charge against Admiral Proudmoore's base, engaging in combat with him personally, and destroying his castle. Instead of this ending the story, Proudmoore gets away and Act III is two linear missions dedicated to chasing him down to Theramore and killing him. The first has your heroes taking over a base to take control of the shipyard, then hiring endless battleships to destroy other battleships and your heroes become secondary in the mission to these battleships. It is more of a showcase of naval combat than the Open World RPG type gameplay of the rest of the campaign. The second mission is a tug-of-war, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena style map where the Horde army automatically engages with the Theramore army to kill Admiral Proudmoore and you use your heroes to help push into the city and all the way to Proudmoore himself to make his last stand. There is a big difficulty drop because random enemy mobs (especially Humans) in Act II could easily kill you if you weren't careful, the enemies of Act III are weaker, closer to melee game level, and your heroes are even stronger than from Act II. In both of these maps there is nothing to explore beyond the main objective and no sidequests. At most you get an Easter Egg or two per level. The Act III missions could either been added to the end of Act II (so as not to mislead players who were expecting a full length Act III), or Proudmoore could have been killed at Act II at Tidefury Cove and ended the story there.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Several from the franchise. Some examples that appear in World of Warcraft include;
  • The Captain, an unnamed character who only serves as someone Arthas can talk to in the human campaign of Warcraft III has attained many fans among the community. In the retelling of the Warcraft III events in the book Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, he finally gained a name — or actually two, split into two separate characters, Falric and Luc Valonforth.
  • Tichondrius from Warcraft III. Well, he was quite charismatic.
  • Detheroc in Reforged, because even before the release people noticed he was randomly given a fat model (the same model was also used for Anetheron but that went largely unnoticed due to his smaller plot presence). People have been unable to live that down and try giving him nicknames like "Dethiccroc" or claiming that he used his Vampiric Aura to feast on enemies.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • Warcraft II was such a drastic improvement over the original in every way that the original was almost completely forgotten. Just for starters it codified the Alliance and the Horde (while the first game had literally been "Orcs and Humans"), the graphics were leagues better, the voice acting and soundtrack were absolutely superb (the voice acting in particular, as each unit had its own voice set, rather than only a single set used by almost all units on each side), and the gameplay was far faster, smoother, easier to control, better balanced and much more varied.
  • Whether Warcraft III counts as this or not is debatable, as it was such a radical departure from the formula of the series (and the RTS genre in general) that it and Warcraft II are barely even comparable. It's still considered a superb game, though, and ultimately even more influential in making Warcraft completely independent from its Warhammer roots and making it the industry-dominating juggernaut that it is today.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Arthas after his Face–Heel Turn is a stylish Death Knight wielding the awesome-looking Frostmourne and acting like a total psychopath who revels in taunting and killing his enemies. He also demonstrates cunning and determination and ends the RTS games by becoming the most iconic villain in the series, and one of the most recognizable in video games as The Lich King.
  • All Dreadlords would count as this but a special mention to Tichondrius. He manages to be charming and intelligent through the all the campaigns until his death, subtly mocking and demeaning his allies while manipulating them to do what he wants anyway. Each campaign until his death also has him climbing the ranks, taking direct command of the Scourge at the end of the Undead campaign, orchestrating Cenarius's death with Mannoroth but also surviving by staying out of the focus of the Orcs to consolidate more favor for himself, by the time of the Night Elf campaign he has become Archimonde's sole right hand and is leading the Legion's invasion as much as him.

F-L

• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Fans of the RTS Warcraft games, especially those who grew up playing them in their childhood, will not take kindly to calling Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos sequels to World of Warcraft. They are sequels to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and all three predate the juggernaut MMORPG with the first dating back to 1994. In this context, it doesn't help that the general consensus that Warcraft II and Warcraft III are Even Better Sequels has led to Warcraft I becoming obscure nowadays (except to those who grew up in The '90s).
• Fandom Rivalry: With fans of Warhammer Fantasy, mostly caused by the Pop-Culture Urban Legends about the first Warcraft game, Orcs & Humans, being originally intended to be a Warhammer game before Games Workshop stopped Blizzard to protect their IP.
• Fan Nickname: After the less than positive reaction to Warcraft III: Reforged, many disappointed fans have derogatorily named it Warcraft III: Deforged, Warcraft III: Refunded, or Warcraft III: Reconnecting.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In Warcraft:
    • The basic range units (Spearmen for Orcs and Archers for Humans). They're cheap, easy to tech up to, and they fire really fast - and to top it off their missiles completely ignore enemy armor. Their weakness is their lack of armor and low health, but in high enough numbers, even the end game summons will die too quickly to harm more than one or two. Unless your enemy gets a lot of melee units to counter them (something the AI never does), the only real threats to them are Catapults and mage spells. And for good measure, Archers out break Spearmen due to having one more space of range (at the mere cost of 1 less damage point). It's hardly surprising ranged troops got nerfed hard in the sequel.
    • Catapults are pretty damn strong in this game to the point that a single shot in the right place can absolutely annihilate a large chunk of the opposing army. Only major summons stand a chance of surviving a direct hit. One shot deals the game's maximum of 255 damage while no trainable unit has even half that amount of Hit Points (major summons aside).
    • The Cleric's Invisibility spell is really broken due to there being no methods in the game to see invisible units, which allows you to easily sneak units around. When used by the enemy AI, unless you keep many army units bunched together to snipe the enemy units the moment they come out of Invisibility to start attacking, there's no way to stop invisible units from sneaking into your base, and potentially ruining your economy.^note There actually is a method to keep invisible units out by making structure walls, but it's quite convoluted due to the road mechanic.
    • The final-tech mage summons (Daemons for Orcs and Water Elementals for Humans) are insanely overpowered, much stronger than any unit that can be built normally. A mass army of these guys can clear entire maps by themselves without ever having to pay attention to them. To top it all off they're free, only costing what it takes to train a late game caster, and as long as you keep them alive you can keep summoning more and more Daemons/Water Elementals at no cost to your economy. It's little wonder these incarnations were Put on a Bus in Warcraft II until they returned in Warcraft III, better balanced around the game's overhauled ruleset, and only summonable by particular heroes.
  • In Warcraft II:
    • An Ogre-Mage's Bloodlust is an absolute nightmare to go up against; tripling the damage of any unit that is given the buff. While orc vs orc matches pits the Game-Breaker against each other, the Paladin equivalent for humans only receive an inefficient healing spell, and an exorcism spell that only affects Death Knights and its Skeleton minions...which are two, rarely used, undead units for the orc side (this spell isn't even usable in human vs human match-ups!). Needless to say, orcs are considered to have a huge advantage in land battles, and that doesn't even include the fact that the Ogre-Mage has a deadly landmine spell to coincide with Bloodlust. It's telling that the spell was so overpowered that it was completely reworked into a more modest attack-haste booster in Warcraft III and there's no spell in the game nearly as powerful as the old Bloodlust.
    • A group of human Mages are considered broken in the hands of a skilled player for one, simple, reason; the ability to Polymorph an army. And this isn't like the Polymorph we know today which usually turns people into sheep for 30 seconds before changing back — these people are gone for good. On top of that is Invisibility and Blizzard. Imagine the frustration of having an invisible mage(s) enter your base and massacre your entire economy by unloading deadly icicles upon your workers. If the Human player is able to wall-out Ogre-Magi from entering their base, this sneak attack is typically executed. Not even walling off your base against Mage infiltrators is fool proof, due to the long range of the Blizzard spell.
    • The Blizzard and Death & Decay spells are remarkably powerful, in many ways the most powerful incarnations of the spells in the Warcraft series. They're almost identical, randomly selecting a number of tiles to deal damage to and costing a generous 25 mana per cast. Even a half-full mana bar can unlease some havoc in a move that pro players call the Mage Bomb. A single (or two) Mage/Death Knight can lure an idle army to their deaths by casting their respective AOE once then spamming it in front of themselves as the aggroed army rushs to their doom. These AOE spells are also fearsome against a player's economy, where a single caster can completely wipe out gold mining workers, but Human Magi out-break Death Knights thanks to invisibility being almost uncounterable. This is extermely effective against computer opponents' economies as they are almost helpless against an Invisible Mage or invulnerable Death Knight, the main hope they have being the fact that computer spell casters are allowed to ignore stealth effects.Warcraft III nerfed the two spells by making them channeled (thus interruptable) effects and require a larger up-front payment of mana to cast.
    • In the Single-player campaign, Gryphons or Dragons are amazing for surgical strikes to trigger an Instant-Win Condition. They're restricted on many levels for this reason as Artificial Stupidity prevents the enemy from using everything at their disposal to counter your flyers, and in order to encourage creativity beyond "send flyers to key targets & win". On the final level of the Human campaign in Tides of Darkness, it's very feasible to fortify your starting base and use the goldmines in this sector to amass a swarm of Gryphons and bum-rush the portal (your only objective). Meanwhile, the Orcs can buff their Dragons with Bloodlust and Haste and send a flock with triple damage & doubled attack rates to eliminate key targets.
    • An issue mainly in the DOS release of II was that save files could break AI attack scripts to the point that your opponent(s) would simply stop training more troops and just sit around accumulating gold and wood. This could make even a normally difficult level a breeze to beat at your leisure.
  • In III:
    • High-level heroes can often handle maps by themselves, especially if you've been giving all the stat upgrades to one guy. The Undead campaign in Frozen Throne gives a game breaking duet in Arthas and Anub'arak, provided you give Arthas intelligence and mana regeneration items and you give Anub'arak strength and armor boosting items. Combined with the Crypt Lord's ultimate spell, this makes the final mission, otherwise That One Level, not too hard. Anub'arak alone can tank Illidan's army's attacks, while Arthas heals him or damages Illidan with Death Coil (while you can leave the rest of your army to assault Kael and Vashj's bases without much trouble). This was even more significant in early versions of The Frozen Throne, due to a bug where Anub'Arak got an absurd amount of armor.
    • The Frozen Throne's Orc campaign gives you a new Game-Breaker every time you kill a new monster. Here, have a shield that boosts stats while setting enemies on fire, or a diamond that shoots lightning, or a stick that summons reinforcements while making your allies go faster, or a free Chain Lightning spell, or a healing item that amounts to a fountain of health following you around... The biggest one, however, comes in chapter 2, where the shop at your main base sells relatively cheap Necklaces of Spell Immunity. Slap these on your entire party, then laugh at enemy spellcasters as you slaughter them with total impunity for the rest of the campaign. Even bosses and high-level enemies become a cakewalk when their offensive abilities and Magic attacks are rendered entirely worthless.
    • Another from Frozen Throne's Orc campaign is that you can buy stat tomes at certain shops in the first two Acts. It can be quite time consuming as you would have to grind money off the respawning creeps around the map along with having to wait for the shop cooldowns to constantly refresh the purchasable stat tomes. However, that doesn't change the fact that the potential is there to infinitely buff up one or more of your heroes to insane levels. Buffing up Chen Stormstout in particular will have him dealing out loads of damage as it synergizes well with his passive Drunken Brawler skill by making his critical hits even more powerful.
    • Goblin Land Mines can be this if used correctly; especially when used against buildings. As seen in this video, the player successfully destroyed Archimonde's base in the final level of the game by using Goblin Land Mines combined with the Invulnerability Potion to destroy all of Archimonde's production buildings. They are also a huge help in the mission "King Arthas" on Hard mode; by giving Arthas a supply of mines, rushing the Altar of Kings in the center of the map, and blowing it sky high, you prevent the opponent's Paladins from ever reviving again and eliminate much of the mission's difficulty.
    • While the Naga faction overall is not balanced due to their campaign-only nature, a very special mention is needed for Couatls. In terms of power, they are in-between Wind Riders and Gryphon Riders as support air units, but they are cheaper than both and, much more importantly, a Couatl only uses 2 food compared to the aforementioned two's 4 food. The equivalent of a late-game air unit (with Abolish Magic to boot) that costs the same food as a basic infantry unit makes spamming Couatls a perfectly viable strategy - understandably, you can only train Couatls in one mission ("Gates of the Abyss") and the AI never considers the possibility of spamming them in other missions.
    • There's a reason the unique Orc Warlock unit was seldom allowed to be used by the player throughout the campaigns. This is primarily because they were given a Firebolt spell that can be summed up as a single-target damage nuke with a secondary effect of stunning the target for a couple seconds as well. Have enough Orc Warlocks amongst your army, and what you got is basically the equivalent of a bunch of spellcaster units running around with a Mountain King's level-1 Storm Bolt spell. This is made extremely apparent in the "Hunter of Shadows" mission where you're actually allowed to build Warlocks for Grom's army. You can effectively keep Cenarius stun-locked forever by spamming Firebolt upon the Keeper while the rest of Grom's army whittles away at his health with their chaos damaging attacks until Cenarius dies.
    • The "Undead nuke" and the Human Alliance "Banish nuke" counterpart is one of the most infamous in the game's history. You take two Undead heroes, usually a Death Knight and Lich, cast Death Coil and Frost Nova respectively on what you want to nuke. Add in a third hero like a Crypt Lord or Dread Lord for Impale or Carrion Swarm respectively and you have a triple nuke. Impale is notable as it'll stun your target, opening them up for the Death Coil and Frost Nova combo. As for the Human version, you take a Blood Mage and have him Banish a target to make them Weak to Magic, then throw a Storm Bolt at them with a Mountain King to deal crippling magic damage and a stun; this is even more devastating against Undead when you throw in the Paladin's Holy Light on top. This can result in a quick death of even heroes below Level 6, and this nuke combo is hated by many players as the main recourse is to be quicker on the draw with a health potion, Invulnerability Potion or Scroll or Town Portal. This is even worse in team games with a Human ally and an Undead ally unleashing nukes to boosted effect.
    • In melee matches, maps containing the Marketplace^note a shop that draws its purchasable items from the pool of items dropped by the map's neutral creeps, which are usually balanced by limited availability are usually banned from tournaments because of a wide variety of game-breaking items that turn heroes into demi-gods and the victor being decided by who crafts a game breaker hero(es) first. Crown of Kings increases a hero's stats by 5 each and you can have as many as you wish on your hero up the limit of 6 items. The Sobi Mask increases a hero's mana regeneration by 50% and you can carry up to 6 as well allowing absurd mana regeneration rates. With some imagination, one can craft a broken hero with ease due to how diverse the selection of items are.
    • The Dragon Roost is a a structure that allows players to hire Dragons (as well as smaller Drakes and Dragon Whelps) for their army. This structure is only found by default on maps that support 6 or more players, and for good reason, as Dragons are among the most powerful units in the game, boasting more health than most structures, spell immunity, Chaos damage, huge DPS, splash damage, and the ability to devour units that stand near them for too long. The only things that even come close to slowing these beasts down are the Crypt Fiend's Web, the Dryad's Slow Poison, and the Raider's Ensnare, except being a high-level neutral unit means the Dragon won't be affected for much more than a second. It usually takes a concerted effort from multiple players to bring a dragon down when it has army support. Custom map makers that opt to put Dragon Roosts on their map will often remove the ability to recruit Dragons, leaving them with just the far less overpowered Whelps and Drakes.
    • In The Frozen Throne's Blood Elf campaign, Illidan becomes this, if you give all the best items to him, to the point that you can use him as a tank that takes the most hits (he heals himself using a mask he gets in the final night elves quest), or even defeat Magtheridon on his own, if you manage to separate him from his bodyguards.
• Gameplay Derailment:
  • Orcs and Humans's strongest summoned units (Water Elementals/Daemons) were so powerful that the match pretty much revolved around them when they became available. It's not for nothing that II decided to remove them.
  • It's very easy to abuse the AI of enemy peasants/peons throughout Warcraft II. The reason being that if you damage a structure, but leave it burning in the red, it will cause the AI to immediately send their workers to try to fix the structure. Then, if you constantly kill the workers that the AI attempts to send, it will cause them to keep sending their remaining workers, as well as the newly created ones, directly to the structure that is in the red for needed repair. Eventually, the enemy faction will use up all their gold on making workers, and leaves the AI as sitting ducks to get steamrolled with no means of being able to reinforce themselves.
  • Enemy attack AI in Warcraft III is quite easy to abuse as the only object that they will ever truly attack towards is your main town hall structure. Once your town hall is destroyed, the AI views the attack objective done, and will head back to the enemy base as long as there's nothing around to pull their aggro. As a result, you could keep the enemy trapped in a reset loop, and never truly attack your main base, if you constantly place a town hall structure out in the middle of nowhere for the AI to destroy. The town hall doesn't even have to be fully built as just destroying its construction foundation is enough to cause the enemy to reset.
• Goddamned Bats: Due to its playstyle, Frozen Throne's bonus campaign has a few of these:
  • Centaurs, mainly because you end up fighting so damn many of them. Particular standouts include Firecallers, who can deal a fair bit of damage with Flame Strike, and Deathcallers, who can revive other centaurs. Fortunately, these are limited to the expansion's orc campaign and are not present in the main game.
  • Harpy Storm-hags cast Sleep to put your heroes out of action and Curse to make them miss half their attacks. They're also flying units, meaning Misha can't reach them. They're not dangerous by any stretch of the imagination, but fighting them gets tedious very quickly.
  • Several high level enemies in the campaign have War Stomp, notably Centaur Khans, Berserk Wildkins, Sea Giant Behemoths, Ancient Wendigos, and Ancient Hydras. The spell is very useful because 3 of the 4 heroes (as well as Rexxar's main summon, Misha) are all melee, so the spell is likely to hit them all. These enemies are rarely threats on their own however, so it just grinds combat to a halt.
• Goddamned Boss: A few in The Founding of Durotar.
  • Kor'gall is a Duel Boss and he has several defensive abilities with Divine Shield, Rejuvenation, and can summon healing wards (which heal him a huge amount, since he has a huge health pool and it heals by percentages). He can also summon wolves, stasis traps, and serpent wards, which all immediately need to be addressed as well, taking attention away from him. He is not a huge threat and can easily be fled from and kited (especially since the arena has runes spawning, which can heal Rexxar or restore his mana) since he does not run extremely fast, and can't slow you or easily stun you (unless you allow the stasis trap to go off or if he gets a Bash on you), but he has a lot of tricks to make the fight longer.
  • Sinstralis of the Pain, one of the Outland Arena Super Boss encounters has minions that have Phase Shift, which turns them invulnerable for a short time. This needlessly drags out the length of the battle. Among the three bosses, she has the weakest minions, but it takes a while to kill them all.
  • Eldritch Deathlord, the Ultimate Boss of the campaign. He is a Damage-Sponge Boss of an absurd degree. He has 10,000 (14,000 on Hard) health, which is around double the Final Boss of the campaign, Admiral Proudmoore. He also has 120 armor, which is many times more than the even the toughest opponents in the campaign, and effectively reduces all damage to Scratch Damage. His abilities are Chain Lightning, Evasion, and Rejuvenation. Chain Lightning does very little damage at this point in the game, Evasion passively has him dodge 15% of all attacks, and Rejuvenation heals him over time. These latter two abilities inflate the length of the fight even more. He never poses a huge threat, especially if you use your party's disables well, but fighting him is a very long endeavor that can take between 3-7 minutes.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Warcraft II
    • If you reload a saved campaign mission, the AI often stops researching upgrades and building its bases.
    • In the final human mission of the expansion, Dentarg and Kargath Bladefist are supposed to be among the enemy ranks. However, they do not appear on the map due to a coding quirk, meaning that the player has two less enemy hero units to worry about.
  • Warcraft III
    • For the seventh mission of the Orc campaign, "The Oracle," Thrall comes across a trap set by Jaina's sorceresses where a group of sheep suddenly become footmen, and attack Thrall's group. However, due to a few broken triggers, some of the sheep will spawn as Neutral footmen that will just stand there, and not do anything; making an already easy trap to defeat an absolute joke. This was finally fixed in Reforged.
    • The second mission of the Blood Elf campaign, "A Dark Covenant," has a broken script regarding three Doom Guards that are supposed to destroy the left most Observatory on the map so that the player could no longer have vision of the undead bases. Instead, the Doom Guards walk up to it, but then immediately walk back to the undead base without destroying it; allowing for the player to continue having vision of almost the entire map. This was finally fixed in Reforged.
    • The final Frozen Throne mission for the Scourge campaign, "A Symphony of Frost and Flame," has a bug where it is possible to break the AI for Illidan's faction to the point of only continuously sending the Illidan hero unit out to try to capture the Obelisks he doesn't control. Not an entire Naga army with Illidan mixed in; JUST Illidan.
    • Also during "A Symphony of Frost and Flame," Arthas or Illidan capturing an Obelisk is supposed to deal massive damage to the opposing side's structures. However, this doesn't happen in the original game due to the trigger being broken, granting something of a reprieve given that the effect hurts the player far more than Illidan (you have limited resources to spend repairing while the AI doesn't, and his main base is inaccessible by ground while Arthas's isn't) in an already difficult mission. This was fixed in Reforged.
    • During "Old Hatreds" for the Frozen Throne bonus campaign, your hero group can enter a Bonus Dungeon, the Magistrates Temple, in search for extra loot. Some of the enemies you fight here are powerful Infernals. However, if you leave the Temple, then come back in, the Infernals will, for some reason, all be gone from the level; making for an almost empty path to reach the Final Boss of the dungeon. And if you think that you'll miss out on the stat tome pick-ups that some of said Infernals drop when killed, don't worry. They will be on the ground for free at the spots where the Infernals were placed on the map.
    • Early versions of Frozen Throne had a bug in the Undead campaign in which, whenever Anub'arak leveled up, his base armor would be increased by the bonus armor he had. Coupled with Spiked Carapace and the huge amount of good armor and strength items that can be found in the campaign, this makes Anub'arak ungodly tough by the final mission, with an armor stat of 47 if done right. At that point, Anub'arak is pretty much a walking Castle and the only thing that does anything resembling noticeable damage is Illidan's Mana Burn.
    • In the Scourge mission where Arthas kills Sylvanas Windrunner and Banshees are first unlocked, along with their Possession spell, it is possible to possess an Elvish worker and build their buildings. Given that the rest of the campaign typically disables workers' abilities to build when possessed, this in and of itself may or may not be an oversight. The actual bug, however, is that Elvish workers can build multiple defensive towers at the same spot. The result is what looks like a normal tower but fires either stupidly overpowered lightning bolts (actually several bolts fired at once), or regular bolts at a machine gun-worthy rate. Not too game-breaking, since all it really does is save space and is only available in a single mission... but certainly a bit hilarious.
    • In the Dungeons of Dalaran level from Frozen Throne, there is a small area where some Blood Elf troops are stuck in jail cells that once freed go to the nearest weapon rack and arm themselves. However, if the player frees the spiders in the cell right before them, the spiders will get caught up in the trigger that has the Blood Elf units turn into stronger units, and go to the same rack and arm themselves, turning into useable Spell Breaker units. Considering that's basically more free units, nobody really minded.
    • One patch caused a bunch of unit names in the expansion's orc campaign to be changed into "You are not paying me at all, little goblin", including Bloodfeather and Rexxar's stash in the first mission, and switching "Centaur Marauder" with "Place Unstable Concoction" in the second (also renaming many enemies as "P").
    • Units sometimes turn their heads towards each other in cutscenes. Sometimes this doesn't get reset, and the units' heads take on Abnormal Limb Rotation Range.
    • In the final mission of the Sentinel campaign, "The Brothers Stormrage," Illidan's player base has an infinite tree that never runs out of lumber. There's one specific Mur'gul Slave worker that automatically starts to chop away at one of the trees north of the base when the mission begins, but if you leave said worker alone, it ends up never chopping down said tree. Thus, while it's a slow process as it's just this one worker bringing back 20 lumber each time, Illidan's faction technically has an infinite lumber resource.
    • Also from "The Brothers Stormrage," the map is designed to have Malfurion's Night Elves and Illidan's Naga completely cut off from supporting one another due to cliffs. However, there's certain spots along said cliffs where Malfurion and Illidan can be so close to one another that it's possible to pass off Malfurion's items over to Illidan, which carry over on the latter into the following Blood Elf campaign. The biggest carry over being the Shadow Orb that Maiev pieced together.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "The Fall of Lordaeron" in Warcraft II ends with a noncanon cinematic of the Dark Horde sacking the city and King Terenas being slain. However, once Warcraft III arrived, this scenario plays out for real at the end of Human campaign with Arthas Menethil himself slaying Terenas Menethil, his own father in one of most potentially shocking moments in the series. Not long after, the Undead Scourge sack the city.
  • "The Siege of Dalaran" in Warcraft II depicts the Dark Horde razing the city to the ground, though not all elements of the Orc campaign are considered canon so there can be some comfort in this. In Warcraft III this scenario plays out in the Undead campaign with the Scourge laying siege to the city instead, to claim the Book of Medivh and slaying multiple Arch Magi including Antonidas. At the end of the Undead campaign, a cinematic shows Archimonde leveling the remainder of Dalaran using his powerful magic talent.
  • Even the Dark Horde remnants are not spared as repayment for their failure to accomplish what the Scourge were assigned to do instead. Adding extra irony, the Dark Horde faces annihilation by Frost Wyrms, undead equivalents of the remaining Dragons they control.
  • Tyrande's Fantastic Racism. She'd rather slaughter the humans and orcs than getting their help against the Burning Legion, whom she thinks the druids can handle. World of Warcraft and the Expanded Universe show that the Night Elves needed the help from several races to defeat the Burning Legion during the first invasion (the Tauren, now part of the Horde, among them) and makes Tyrande's motives more difficult to justify.
  • When Jaina opposes her father taking control of Theramore to wage war against the orcs of Durotar, telling him that he doesn't understand, he has a few choice words for her: "I understand more than you suspect, my dear. Perhaps in time, you will too." Fast forward to Mists of Pandaria and the Horde's destruction of Theramore, she does.
  • Anub'Arak's joke line "And they say Blizzard games don't have bugs" became somewhat darkly amusing after the release of Warcraft III Reforged which was notorious for its numerous game breaking bugs.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • The Human faction in Frozen Throne multiplayer is generally considered unfun to play against for several reasons. Their building upgrades and cheap defensive structures mean that they can easily either turtle behind a wall of towers or lay siege to your base with those same towers. They also have access to Siege Engines, heavily-armored base-killers that no one enjoys dealing with, as a pack of these attack-moving into a base is very hard to stop. Furthermore, the Archmage's Brilliance Aura (grants bonus mana regeneration to all nearby allies) is often seen as one of the strongest abilities in the game.
  • Destroyers get hate due to them packing just about everything a unit could want: spell immunity, flying movement, decent damage, a good chunk of health, and the ability to dispel buffs. Depending on who you ask, they're either obscenely overpowered or the only thing keeping Undead relevant at all. When Blizzard finally ended the decade-long drought of balance changes, Destroyers were severely nerfed, to no one's surprise.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Remember when Arthas said "What trickery is this!? Mal'Ganis! I don't know how you survived..." and later, after encountering Muradin's dwarves, "Doesn't anyone stay dead anymore?" It's funnier to think about it after some characters are Back from the Dead in World of Warcraft :Muradin and Mal'Ganis themselves, Kael'Thas...
  • The Leeroy Jenkins meme that was born in World of Warcraft makes the third Orc mission even funnier. Grom Hellscream was Leeroying it out for years before Leeroy Jenkins.
  • The closing line of the original game's intro, "Welcome to the World of Warcraft", was nothing short of prophetic. Fast forward to November 2004...
  • In Night Elf campaign in The Frozen Throne, Maiev described Scourge-conquered Lordaeron as "this forsaken place". Later in Undead campaign, Sylvanas took over Lordaeron from the Scourge and christened herself and her people "The Forsaken".
  • At the end of the Blood Elf campaign, when Kil'jaeden accuses Illidan of hiding from him in Outland, Illidan says he "was merely setback". And Kael was right behind him when he said that.
  • The Troll Witch Doctor's Stop Poking Me! quote include him saying "Eekum Bokum". It took years later when Korone Inugami made the phrase undergo a Memetic Mutation, thus making the Troll Witch Doctor the progenitor in 'referencing "Eekum Bokum"'.
• Informed Wrongness: While Illidan did do a lot of amoral things, it's still hard to understand why exactly Malfurion decided he had to be banished for turning himself into a demon, even though all he did after becoming one was, you know, saving the whole Forest. The most probable reason is that Malfurion (and the Night Elf society) possibly held the firm belief about never using evil as a weapon as a law, even if it's decreasing the chance to reach the goal, and Illidan broke it.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Veterans returning from playing StarCraft II and/or Warcraft III will likely find Orcs and Humans, Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal to be on the easy side. The main challenge is are lower unit selection limits and clunkier interfaces but the computer opponents don't attack in a way that will be too difficult for a player with some skill at macro managing multiple production structures and building up a large army that will steamroll most opposition. Some levels have an Easy Level Trick that takes away much of the difficulty, while the lack of infinite money scripts in Warcraft II means you can run a team out of money by attacking their gold workers until bankruptcy.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Not to a severe extent, but The Frozen Throne expansion pack is remarkably shorter than Reign of Chaos lacking a full Orc campaign and having a much shorter "Human" Campaign. The "Human" campaign is somewhat In Name Only, as save for one level, you don't have access to the Human Alliance tech tree and tend to use a mixed of Blood Elven and Naga troops instead and the Night Elf hero Illidan Stormrage. Not that a fresh new experience isn't welcome, but if one is expecting a full-fledged Human campaign, they may be disappointed at the lack of said content in the full campaign.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The 2018 trailer and live demo play for Reforged showed great improvements in the cinematics and the overall graphics, with the various reveals afterwards revealing the games campaign would be reworked a bit to match the new lore established in the MMO counterpart. None of which is in the release version, with the team having rushed the game out with none of the promised features such as changed story content. The fandom wasn't pleased at all. Blizzard's mediocre response to the complaints (look at They Changed It, Now It Sucks! below for a full list) combined with the inability to even refund the game (later made possible) amplified the fandom's rage.
• It Was His Sled: The RTS games in the franchise are considered to be quite old nowadays, so some of what may have been interesting plot developments back in the day have become well-known within, and outside, the Warcraft fanbase. Especially since many of these story moments were used as the foundation to set up World of Warcraft, and its later expansions.
  • For Warcraft I
    • Blackhand gets ousted as Warchief.
  • For Warcraft II
    • Gul'dan betrays the Horde, and dies at the Tomb of Sargeras.
    • The city of Alterac betrays the Alliance, and gets destroyed soon after.
    • Lothar dies.
  • For Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
    • Arthas turns evil, and kills his father, King Terenas.
    • Uther dies.
    • Arthas kills Sylvanas, which he then proceeds to resurrect as an undead.
    • The Human Kingdom of Lordaeron, and the High Elf Kingdom of Quel'thalas, get destroyed by the Scourge.
    • Thrall moves the orcs to Kalimdor, and establishes the current day Horde alongside the Darkspear Trolls and Mulgore Tauren.
    • Grom dies.
    • Illidan is released from prison, and becomes a demon after claiming the Skull of Gul'dan.
    • Archimonde dies after failing to consume the World Tree.
  • For Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
    • Prince Kael moves his Blood Elf faction to Outland.
    • Sylvanas and Varimathras take control of Lordaeron to establish their undead Forsaken faction.
    • Arthas becomes the Lich King.
    • Thrall's Horde claims a home for themselves in Kalimdor, naming the territory Durotar.
• Lady Mondegreen: Kinda. Sylvanas' name is spelled out in the game, but her model file is named Sylvanus. Also, some unit quotes:
  • Naga Sea Witch: "I grow anxious twat." ^note "I grow anxious to act"
  • Varimathras: "Don't waste my tie, mama." ^note "Don't waste my time" in Voice of the Legion
  • Pandarian Brewmaster: "Save your husband." ^note "Name your poison"
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: In terms of actual villainy, it is hard to place Lord Garithos anywhere near the most vile or dangerous of the villainous characters in the setting. He only truly became villainous towards Kael for a short time before he tried to return to his noble goal of saving Lordaeron from the Scourge. Despite this, he is one of the most hated characters in the series because of his unpleasant personality and exaggerated racism.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Before the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena became its own niche on the video game market, many gamers acquired Warcraft III solely to play Defense of the Ancients, ignoring the base multiplayer maps and the singleplayer campaign altogether.
• Love to Hate:
  • The Dreadlords in general tend to have charming personalities despite being enforcers for the Burning Legion, and their Stop Poking Me! quotes further boost their sense of having humor. Varimathras gets some interesting character development after he surrenders to Sylvanas and also has some fun quotes if you keep clicking on him.
  • Both the Death Knight and Lich heroes will admit up front that they're evil and don't seem to care about who judges them, giving them an Affably Evil demeanor.
  • Ner'zhul, The Lich King himself goes from the supreme leader of the Dark Horde in Warcraft II, to leading his own Undead army faction, using subterfuge to recruit corruptible Paladins and Magi into his scourge and wearing down Lordaeron with the Plague of Undeath instead of using brute force as he did before. As a result, he succeeds in conquering the Northlands and even successfully breaks free of his Burning Legion handlers. He has Arthas Menethil break him free from the Frozen Throne and don the armor that holds his soul so that he has a body once again. At the end of The Frozen Throne, he is ultimately victorious, having only lost his mental domination of The Forsaken but he retains Kel'thuzad and his Undying Loyalty.

M-R

• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Arthas and Uther's dialogue before the Culling of Stratholme is fairly popular as both quote and snowclone material, at least partly due to how heavily the marketing for Reforged focused on it.
  • A close-up image of low-poly orc peon from Warcraft III with a text "Oh shit that's deep" has gained popularity.
  • Cairne saying "Hold your formations! The kodos must be protected!" gained a minor popularity, especially among the Polish fanbase, as well as among the Russian fanbase.
  • The Acolyte's "more gold is required" line from the pre-Reforged Russian dub became a well-known meme, used as a go-to quote when mocking any greedy corporation trying to milk its fanbase through excessive monetization.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Arthas massacring Stratholme so the city does not fall to the Undead is one In-Universe, but highly contentious amongst the players, with lots of arguments resulting over the finer details (the fact that the Plague can not be cured vs. the morality of the Mercy Kill, how quickly he leaps to this idea, etc).
    • Hiring mercenaries to help him burn his ships so his rebellious soldiers can't flee Northrend (after their expedition was recalled by a royal edict, not out of any sense of mutiny), then throwing the mercenaries under the bus by blaming them for what he had hired them to do in front of his men, is a lot less contentious of one.
    • Wandering off into the wilderness after claiming Frostmourne and leaving his former soldiers to die would probably be one if he wasn't already having his mind stolen by Ner'Zhul.
  • Ner'Zhul himself crossed it after Warcraft 2, when he abandons the Horde for himself, opening countless portals across Draenor in an attempt to escape to new worlds, which ends up tearing the orc homeworld apart (and unintentionally sending him straight into Kil'Jaeden and a Fate Worse than Death).
• More Popular Replacement: Tichondrius to Mal'Ganis, as the main Dreadlord in the story of Reign of Chaos. Mal'Ganis was a soft spoken villain who is killed off in the first major story arc and is too much of a vile Hate Sink to like. In comparison, Tichondrius is an affable mastermind who despite being known to be untrustworthy, still manages to get people to do what he wants and bolsters his own position in the Legion over the course of the game. Ironically, the various sequels and spinoffs after the RTS games put much more emphasis on Mal'Ganis (where he has significant roles in Wrath of the Lich King, Legion, and Shadowlands), but fans of the RTS games often like Tichondrius much more.
• More Popular Spin-Off:
  • World of Warcraft, to the point where Blizzard once released "WoW: Heroes of Azeroth" as a prequel to World of Warcraft, on April Fool's Day. The game in question was better known as Warcraft III.
  • A lesser example, Defense of the Ancients, a mod for Warcraft III, was so popular it spawned a new genre popular enough that Blizzard went on to make one themselves.
  • They also changed the novels accordingly by giving them the World of Warcraft icon even if the stories take place during the RTS games.
• Narm:
  • It's impossible to take seriously Grom Hellscream's high-pitched voice acting from ''Warcraft II''.
  • At the end of TFT, Arthas is about to fight his way through Illidan who is trying to destroy the Frozen Throne. Illidan replies with "I have sworn to destroy it, Arthas, it must be done!", which sounds more like Arthas is Illidan's friend and has tried to stop him from destroying the Throne out of concern for him.
  • A part of the opening cutscene of the last Frozen Throne Alliance Campaign mission, Lord of Outland is very bizarre. Kael and Illidan talk about sieging Magtheridon's Black Citadel, and several dozen Spell Breakers attempt to breach the citadel and charge into towers and Infernal Machines that kills several of them at a time each time it fires. The dialogue below comes across as strangely casual given the massive losses and total roadblock in their plans (until Akama offers his services shortly after). Throughout these two lines, there is the constant death sounds of the Spell Breakers in the background.
    Prince Kael'thas: This will be a glorious battle, master. Though Magtheridon's forces vastly outnumber ours, your warriors are prepared to fight to the end.''
    Illidan Stormrage: I am pleased by your people's zeal, young Kael. Their spirit and powers have been honed in this harsh wilderness. Their courage alone may be enough to... [Lady Vashj interrupts]
  • The Reforged take on the scene where Arthas kills Mal'Ganis comes less dramatic and serious than the original with the animation that makes it look like Arthas impales the dreadlord through his groin, quickly followed by Mal'Ganis' limp body just casually floating away upright and doing a spin.
  • Reforged's take on Arthas's cinematic duel with Illidan also invited mockery. The fight itself has no music, and the first strike has them struggle for a long moment in a clumsy-looking Blade Lock punctuated with uncomfortable closeups. At one point Arthas Matrix dodges Illidan's blade, which was widely considered to be too over-the-top, especially compared to the original fight which was relatively grounded in tone. The two also react to each other by snorting.
  • Some cutscenes in 'Reforged change the position of the characters so some who suddenly appear into view are until then hidden behind camera. It's especially bad with Maiev who watches from a nearby cliff as Illidan bid his farewells to Malfurion and Tyrande, takes his sweet time to open a portal and step through, instead of teleporting out of nowhere like she did in the original.
  • Some of Malfurion's scenes can go this direction, especially in The Frozen Throne. This is partially due to some Dull Surprise voice acting on Ed Trotta's part, as sometimes he doesn't bring all the emotion needed for certain scenes. This can be heard in lines like "The pain is excruciating" when he felt Northrend being torn apart and "You lied to me!" when he is confronting Maiev about her lies about Tyrande's supposed death.
  • When Tyrande is swept downriver late in Sentinel Campaign in The Frozen Throne, she is supposedly left alone to be fending off the Scourge. However, when she's seen again she has Wisps, Moon Wells, a tower, and an Ancient of War with troops there in the river with her.
• Narm Charm: The writing in Warcraft games and books comes across to many fans as cheesy, but many of them enjoy the series specifically because of that.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Medivh is usually known as that guy who can't send a proper message. His warnings to the people of Azeroth are so pointlessly vague in what he's describing that there's really no explanation for why he doesn't just tell everyone that the Burning Legion is coming.
  • Tyrande slaughtering the innocent prison wardens to free Illidan is often pointed out as the primary reason that she's not a good person.
  • Malfurion gets a lot of criticism thrown his way for banishing Illidan for rather vague reasons despite the fact that he just killed a major Burning Legion member in Tichondrius, and could have stuck around to face off against Archimonde.
• Obvious Beta: Warcraft III Reforged was extremely Christmas Rushed (despite being delayed to January) and reactions to its incomplete and bugged state from the playerbase were scathing. In addition to missing most of the features that were advertised, the game is often horrendously laggy and prone to randomly crashing. Furthermore, the game was written over the original Warcraft III available on Battle.net and is somehow missing features compared to the original, such as the ability to play custom games offline. It's quite telling that, when Blizzard tried hosting a LAN tournament of the game, a concerning number of matches had to be restarted due to one player being disconnected for no apparent reason, with one player in particular being straight-up robbed due to his game crashing twice while he was winning.
• Older Than They Think: Reforged's EULA stating that Blizzard owns any custom maps made for the game is a similar policy to what they had already done with custom StarCraft II maps. Valve was already in the process of buying the rights to the Dota name when the latter game released, something Blizzard was against.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The disastrous launch of Updated Re-release Warcraft III: Reforged and Blizzard Entertainment's very poor PR concerning it have made what should have been a celebration something akin to a funeral.
  • When it was first revealed in 2018 with cinematic cutscenes and promises to align its lore with World of Warcraft, it drew excited anticipation from fans. Development since, however, fell victim to Executive Meddling to rush it out in time for 2020's fiscal year, as Blizzard were confirmed to not be releasing any major releases throughout the entirety of 2019. Development likely wasn't at all helped by the managers of parent company Activision Blizzard firing over 800 employees across both Activision and Blizzard at the end of 2018 while simultaneously announcing record revenue for that year because the company "didn't realize its full potential", which drew wide condemnation.
  • When Reforged was released, fans excitedly began playing it... and quickly discovered it was nothing like what was promised in 2018. No cinematic cutscenes, missing features that were promised, missing features that were present in the original, and Game-Breaking Bugs and disconnections galore. Add the merging of the original with the remaster so that the same problems also retroactively affect the original^note Activision have been increasingly pressuring Blizzard to cut costs as they've tightened their influence in recent years; why spend more money hosting two separate clients when you can just host one?, an EULA update that grants Blizzard exclusive ownership of any and all user-created content^note A response to Defense of the Ancients, a WCIII mod, being the Trope Codifier for the MOBA genre which Blizzard was unable to capitalize on under the old EULA, and the community manager's non-apologetic "We're sorry to those of you who didn't have the experience you wanted" response to the intense backlash, which was widely interpreted as "We've done nothing wrong, your expectations were just too high, so it's your fault", and you have a remaster that remained controversial throughout all of 2020 and ongoing. And they still refused to modernize certain elements such as the unit selection cap in the process.
  • In July 2021, it was confirmed what Warcraft fans had suspected all along: Reforged's development had been fraught with difficulties, from the development team being provided with a cripplingly low budget by Activision Blizzard executives out of a belief that the project wouldn't sell nearly as many copies as the likes of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft or Overwatch (effectively dooming Reforged before development even started), to numerous conflicts within the development team itself, to pre-orders being opened long before the game was actually finished. Then much bigger issues monopolized attention regarding Activision-Blizzard.
• Popular with Furries:
  • Warcraft III introduced a myriad of creeps that include anthropomorphic animals. Dragon spawn (draconic centaurs), Furbolgs, and Kobolds are just some of the cast. On some maps, you can even recruit dragons into your army.
  • Between the four factions, there are potentially certain units that can appeal to furries as well. The Undead Scourge has centaur-like Crypt Fiends and the hero Crypt Lord if sentient spiders and beetles with a grasp on related humor are your thing, as well as Gargoyles and Frost Wyrms (draco liches). The Horde have the minotaur-like and peace-loving Tauren race, and the Night Elf Sentinels have Druids with animal transformations, Faerie Dragons, Dryads (deer centaurs) as well as dragon-hydra Chimaera. The list doesn't have to stop here.
  • The Naga faction in Warcraft III is just the thing for scalies. A faction of sea monsters focused around serpentine warriors and magi as mascots and with two similar hero units who were sadly not completed for online melee mode. However, you get a taste of what was in development by playing the Sentinel and Blood Elf campaign, and the Naga Sea Witch was made available as a Tavern hero for melee mode.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • The Sylvanas missions in The Frozen Throne's Undead campaign. Three forces try to take over Lordaeron after Arthas left for Northrend: Sylvanas's forces (which initially consist of little more than undead elves), the three Dreadlords (who work for the Burning Legion) and the New Alliance led by Grand Marshal Garithos. Despite Sylvanas's questionable methods, it's of little wonder of why players would rather have her control Lordaeron over the other factions.
  • Arthas in the same campaign is definitely the villain of it's story. Though he is just a proxy in a Evil vs. Evil conflict between Kil'jaden and Ner'zhul, he is personally much eviler than Illidan, who despite doing plenty of evil things himself, was still capable of empathy and kindness. Despite this, it's easy to cheer for Arthas to save the Lich King when Illidan and his followers smugly taught Arthas about how defenseless the Lich King is and how they will destroy the Frozen Throne. Arthas (and Anub'Arak) overcoming the odds and claiming victory ends up being triumphant as a result.

S-T

• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • For many, Warcraft I was a pretty flawed game.
    • One of the game's biggest problems was how the primary Town Hall structure worked. The player couldn't build additional Town Halls at other locations, which resulted in peasants having to travel long distances to return gold and lumber from far away locations of the map. Even when the player lost their starting Town Hall, which will have it finally show up on the structure menu to rebuild, the player still has no control over it. The game will just automatically start building a new Town Hall at the original location.
    • Hardly anyone liked the road mechanic, which restricted where players could build their structures. As a result, roads were done away with in the later games.
    • A unit's sight range was only at maximum when they stopped moving, which made scouting a tedious affair.
    • Also there is no right click movement that became standard in RTS. To move a unit, you have to click on an unit, select move, and then click on where you want to go.
  • Warcraft II had its share of annoyances as well, but was a major improvement over Warcraft I regardless:
    • The sight range of many units was so small that you'd be practically blind without a far-sighted unit or tower handy. This was problematic for scouting and necessitated having Flying Machines/Zeppelins handy to cover blind spots or scout out enemy operations. Starcraft corrected this, by making all unit sight ranges much longer overall so that early-game land scouting could be done efficiently with mere worker units.
    • The naval combat was initially a novelty when the game was released, but the need to manage three different theaters of war (land, sea & air), drill for oil, and inability of naval units to attack tucked-away land settlements made naval warfare lose its novelty in the long run. Notably, Warcraft III didn't include naval combat in its multiplayer melee modes.
  • For Warcraft III:
    • The upkeep mechanic where your gold Income is taxed at 30% when your supply usage exceeds 50/100 and 60% at >80/100 (in The Frozen Throne). It's supposed to discourage you from turtling and encourage you to push out with your army, and stay at no upkeep unless absolutely necessary which promotes a micromanagement-focused gameplay. Given that gold is in limited supply on a map, it's wise to spend it on an actual army and research as much as possible. However, the upkeep mechanic does have praise for adding complexity to army size decisions and softening the Unstable Equilibrium effect from losing a battle since reaching upkeep draws income away from your bank. In short, this is an unusual case of a scrappy mechanic being mainly a concern in single player mode, but adding extra depth to online melee since it makes reaching your supply limit have logical drawbacks (unlike StarCraft).
    • The AI tends to prioritize weaker units first before stronger ones, which can be particularly annoying for the factions that have weaker ranged units compared to the melee units on the front line (Horde and Night Elves). This is particularly noticeable with the Horde, which their ranged headhunters have less than double the health of the melee attacking orcs. The result is the player spending loads of time micro-ing to keep the headhunters alive while the fighting goes on. This also leads to the Easy multiplayer AI being more annoying to micro against than Normal, since Easy AI prioritizes weak units (often taking weapon/armor matchups into account, though this logic results in heroes being very low-priority targets) while Normal AI prioritizes heroes above everything else, leading to them ignoring the rest of the army that's shooting/stabbing their units to bits.
    • The way the AI works on offense for allied factions can be really wonky. The problem with the AI sending out attacks is that the AI army could go through a reset, which results in them returning to base. The reason this is the case is because the allied AI will ping a location on the map as to where it's attacking when in actuality, it's pinging the one enemy target that it's focused on attacking. What happens is that if the pinged target is killed before the AI army reaches it, said army will go through a reset and head back to base. This is particularly annoying if the player is already attacking the enemy, the allied AI pings a target amongst said enemy that it's going to attack, but when the AI army is only half way to the location, the player kills the allied AI's target, which the allied army instantly turns around since they're no longer targeting anything.
  • For the entire franchise, the unit selection cap is a serious point of contention. Similar to the first Starcraft game, Warcraft III permits a maximum selection of only twelve units at a time, which makes commanding large armies a huge pain in the ass. It only gets worse with each earlier entry.
• Sequel Displacement: III was pretty much responsible for bringing the series global recognition, making it easy to forget it was the third instalment in the franchise.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: When the Starcraft I alpha was released, it was accused to having done this to Warcraft II and being Warcraft IN SPACE!. The game got rebuilt from scratch, but then Warcraft III was accused of being Starcraft Fantasy IN 3D!:
  • The campaigns. The vanilla pack starts with the humans, has a hero Brainwashed and Crazy by the Big Bad, then continues the Protagonist Journey to Villain until they invade in full and make landfall into the home of an ancient civilization that was their true enemy all along. In the end, the ancients lead a final battle alongside those of the other races who were sane enough to band together, and defeat the Big Bad. The expansion starts with the ancients recovering from the invasion. Another faction of human(oid)s is thrown into the fray, incapacitating The Remnant of the evil faction, and in the end the corrupted hero from the first pack returns to take advantage of the Evil Power Vacuum, crush all their enemies and reign supreme.
  • Kerrigan's arc was also ripped by Sylvanas, as a powerful superhuman female markswoman who was given mind control powers and corrupted, only to then become independent from her enslaver and climb to the top. The similarities are so blatant they get lampshaded in Heroes of the Storm:
    Sylvanas: I thought I was the only one who'd been murdered by a cruel man, raised as a powerful but horrible abomination, subsequently crowned myself queen, and dedicated my subjects to orchestrating my vengeance. But then I met Kerrigan!
  • Some of the more unusual traits of the melee, to a lesser degree: the Undead summon their structures like the Protoss do and can only build and regenerate on corrupted ground like the Zerg. Most night elf buildings grow from a Worker Unit, like those of the Zerg, and can lift off and relocate, like the Terran ones.
• Shipping:
  • Thrall x Jaina is of course the major duo that gets shipped since they're basically the poster children of the Horde and Alliance being at peace. Jaina even stands against her father just to keep the peace with Thrall's Horde in tact.
  • Illidan x Maiev is pretty popular due to how far the latter will go to make the former her prisoner.
  Maiev: I grow tired of these games. Illidan will be mine!
  • Kael x Vashj is also a pairing that sometimes gets noticed. They're both descendants of the Night Elven Highbourne, Vashj was the one who several times came to Kael's aid during the Blood Elf campaign, and would then fight alongside one another throughout the rest of The Frozen Throne.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: In the Warcraft III campaigns, going off the main path to complete the Side Quest, or buffing up your heroes by finding items and stat-tomes, can be described as this for players.
  • The dungeon crawl missions that have loot and secrets hidden throughout is perhaps the most prominent example of the player getting distracted from the main objective since they can go searching for treasure and hidden areas that could be blocked by puzzles, rocks, trees, and whatever else that could act as a roadblock. One major example is the dungeon mission of the Night Elf campaign, "Brothers in Blood," which holds many secret areas if the player goes about knocking down mushroom trees using Malfurion's summon treants ability.
  • The expansion's Founding of Durotar bonus campaign, which plays out similar to an RPG rather than an RTS, will have the player scouring all around each map for hidden treasures and stat tomes to buff up your small group of heroes. The campaign's second Act, "Old Hatreds", even added optional dungeons that the player can go about exploring. One particular optional dungeon the player may end up spending a lot of time in is the Outland Arena, which the player can fight up to 30 arena battles against 3 bosses for additional stat tome rewards. Once each of the arena bosses has been defeated 10 times, further rewards are just more gold coins.
  • One of the most common methods Blizzard pulled to hide secrets and loot in Warcraft III was to place them behind trees. This usually resulted in ignoring the mission objectives to go off and chop through trees with workers, or using unit abilities and siege attacks that could knock down the trees, in order to reach the treasure.
  • In the Frozen Throne expansion, you're very likely to get hooked on the secret Tower Defense level you find during the Blood Elf campaign.
  • The Sentinel campaign for Frozen Throne really plays this trope straight due to the fact that one of Maiev's abilities is Blink. This allowed for the developers to be a bit more creative at hiding loot and secrets that can only be accessed by having Maiev teleport around the map, such as across rivers and deep chasms, or up-and-down cliffs.
• Signature Scene:
  • For Warcraft II, most fans tend to find the cinematic that plays after the 7th Human mission to be quite memorable. This being the one where a Footman sneaks up on a Grunt to assassinate the latter, then fires the nearby Catapult to destroy a Goblin Zeppelin. It's no surprise that it was referenced as a funny blooper reel during the credits of Warcraft III.
• Signature Series Arc: Almost any Warcraft fan will tell you that Arthas' storyline from Warcraft III is probably the best thing to come out of the franchise's RTS games, and it has many of the series' most memorable scenes.
  • If there's ever any pre-WoW lore that will get people talking, it's the Arthas/Uther cut-scene before the start of the Culling mission for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Even today, it continues to be a huge debate if Arthas slaughtering an entire city of plagued villagers was the correct choice or not. It's such an iconic moment for the franchise that it was used as the first bit of marketing for the upcoming release of Reforged.
  • Cinematically, we have the finale of Reign of Chaos Alliance campaign. Arthas murdering his father, King Terenas, is perhaps the defining and most memorable moment of Arthas' Fallen Hero storyline.
  • For the Warcraft III: Frozen Throne expansion, the final cinematic of the Scourge campaign could give the previous example a run for its money. After defeating Illidan, Arthas ascends the icy spiral staircase up to the Frozen Throne while voiceovers from his breakdown are faintly heard, breaks the Lich King's icy prison, and dons the Lich King's helmet and armor for the two of them to fuse into one powerful being that rules over the undead Scourge; the last we see of them (in the RTS series, anyways) is Arthas sitting on the Throne, with a melancholy One-Woman Wail playing. Overall, the sight of Lich King Arthas makes for quite a defining image of the series as a whole. Especially when you take World of Warcraft into account where the general consensus is that the game peaked with Wrath of the Lich King.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • In the last mission of the original Orc campaign in Reforged, the cinematic that introduces Infernals has the skies suddenly turning pitch black instead of becoming red and blazing while Jaina comments on it.
  • The Night Elf mission "Brothers in Blood" has a moment where the player is introduced to the Druid of the Talon units, which have Cyclone which creates a small cyclone that traps the enemy unit. The animation in Reforged however looks incredibly low effort and looks like a tornado model from a desert map.
  • The Night Elf mission "Shards of the Alliance" from The Frozen Throne ends with Tyrande performing a You Shall Not Pass! and holding off the undead on a bridge, at which point it breaks and she is swept down river. In Reforged however, the game glitches and skips this scene, causing it to just act like nothing happened. It was later patched out, but players reference it as a sign of the poor quality of the remaster.
  • The end cutscene of the Undead campaign in Reforged, which was one of the few that was changed from using in-game models to being fully CGI that was actually kept in the finished product, suffers from this as well - the final battle takes place in the middle of a blizzard, and Arthas's head is constantly moving around, yet despite this, Arthas's hair remains motionless throughout the whole scene.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The first few measures of Warcraft II's "Human 4" are pretty similar to those of the Bourree from Johann Sebastian Bach's Lute Suite in E minor.
• That One Attack:
  • In Warcraft II:
    • Paladins make it almost impossible to properly use Death Knights in Warcraft II thanks to their Exorcism spell, especially when said spell is used by the AI. The reason being that the Paladins have the potential to One-Hit Kill a Death Knight from a far distance using Exorcism depending on how much mana they got banked up (240 mana to kill a full-health Death Knight), which the AI will always be smart enough to move towards a Death Knight that appears in the area to cast Exorcism upon it. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the AI ignores the fog of war.
    • The Polymorph spell from Warcraft 2. Unlike the Warcraft 3 version, this one permanently turns a biological target into a neutral critter and has no restrictions on what biological target it can be cast on. Again, due to the numerous perks the AI has, this becomes far more dangerous (and annoying) in their hands. In Beyond the Dark Portal, the AI may even cast it on Teron Gorfiend if you're not careful (instant defeat), plus Gorefiend is also vulnerable to the aforementioned Exorcism (3-hit-kill at worst, mercifully).
    • Blizzard or Death-&-Decay for Humans and Orcs respectively are ridiculously powerful in their Warcraft II iteration. Being on the receiving end of either one can feel very cheap as the mana cost for each wave is a paltry 25 and each wave stacks cumulatively. This enables attacks on gold mining operations where workers get slaughtered so fast, its not possible to pull them away to safety in a lot of cases.
  • In Warcraft III:
    • Earthquake, the Far Seer's ultimate is this in the campaigns. It slows all land units and deals 50 damage per second to buildings, making it well suited for a mass of small buildings. Since a lot of base missions in the campaign is having a bunch of towers in your base while you're out exploring the map with your hero and/or army (unless its a Hold the Line mission), enemy heroes with Earthquake cause a big problem by tearing apart your wall of towers easily. The ability is balanced in melee games by being on a Squishy Wizard Crutch Character, but in campaigns, it is also given to Strength heroes like Azgalor and Balnazzar.
    • Rain of Chaos is a spell used by a few demonic aligned campaign enemies (Archimonde and a few Dreadlords). The normal Inferno spell is the Dreadlord's ultimate and will damage and stun an area as it drops a powerful Infernal, but Rain of Chaos casts that spell 2-4 times (depending on its level) and creates a force the strength of a small army almost instantly. The spell does not cost any mana and has about half the cooldown of Inferno as well. The only saving grace is that you can interrupt it if you stun the caster before it drops too many Infernals... except you almost never have a stun available when fighting someone with this ability, if they're not flat-out immune to magic in the first place (read: Archimonde).
• That One Boss:
  • Tichondrious is the second to-last hero with Divine Armor you're tasked to kill in the campaigns. Aside from Divine Armor, he's full decked in powerful items that give him massive stat boosts, can summon multiple Infernals with Rain of Chaos, can use Finger of Death (a powerful spell that does 500 damage to any non-hero unit for zero mana and a measly cooldown, and bypasses magic immunity). He's escorted by several Doomguards, and has two Demonic Gates that will churn out more demons as reinforcements the moment you engage him in combat. And while you had an entire army of Chaos Orcs to kill Cenarius, you only have one unit that deals Chaos Damage to kill Tichondrius.
  • Archimonde at the end of Reign of Chaos turns into this if you try actually kill him instead of just delay him. He has Divine armor, spell immunity, and the lack of any Chaos damage in the level means all attacks on him will only do Scratch Damage. He has an Ankh of Reincarnation so he has to be killed twice, and he packs some broken spells that let him summon Infernals and Doomguards.
  • In the same mission as Archimonde, there are three undead Heroes that attack your bases. They are abnormally strong and all of them have a full inventory of items. They all attack with Banshees to give them Anti-Magic shell which if the player isn't prepared for makes them into The Juggernaut. Special mentions go to the Dreadlord and Pit Lord.
    • Anetheron has Dreadlord abilities except he has Rain of Chaos instead of Inferno, which summons 2 (3 on hard mode) Infernals, and this can overwhelm your base very easily.
    • Azgalor is the most powerful Undead opponent that will attack the player regularly. He has more health and damage than any standard level 10 hero. His skillset includes Shockwave, Thunder Clap, Earthquake, and Reincarnation (he has two ultimates). Combined with his Chaos damage, this makes him a monster of an Anti-Structure machine in a Hold the Line mission. His spells deal a huge amount of area of effect damage and Reincarnation doubles his survivability and refills his mana. In a normal case he will be doing a huge amount of damage to a lot of units and buildings before he finally goes down. He tends to arrive about 12-15 minutes after the attacks start on a base which means he is by design a battering ram to finish off whatever base you are currently defending, since you're supposed to hold out for 45 minutes.
  • Frozen Throne
    • Magtheridon in "Lord of Outland" is the final boss of Curse of the Blood Elves. You fight him with a full army and you may end up losing all of them. He has several high level demonic bodyguards, a high level Fel Blademaster, and Infernal Juggernauts (which summon infernals) with him which makes the battle already very difficult, but he himself has three times the health of a normal Pit Lord, twice the damage and armor and 11! abilities. The abilities are mostly some variation of Herd-Hitting Attack spells or passives ^note The abilities are Frost Nova, Rain of Chaos, Howl of Terror, Cleaving Attack, Shockwave, Frenzy, War Stomp, Bash, Hardened Skin, True Sight, and Finger of Death. Since the mission is the only that gives you access to 4 heroes, doing the fight properly requires good micromanagement of them (and your spellcasters), and if your Illidan is equipped well it may not be too hard, since he can effectively tank many of his forces and attacks. You also get access to not one, but two Naga Royal Guards, and you will need them for this fight.
    • The 3 Paladins in "King Arthas" are a pain to deal with when the player is out trying to destroy the human villages. This is primarily because the Paladin's Divine Shield makes them invulnerable to kill for up to 45 seconds, and will constantly heal nearby friendly units with Holy Light, which greatly prolongs the fights against them. Amongst the players' 3 factions, Sylvanas' side has a means to counter the Paladins using her Silence spell to stop enemy spell-casting, but Arthas and Kel'thuzad have no such way to counter them. As a result, the player's only option with the Arthas and Kel'thuzard factions is to just hold out prolonging the fights against the Paladins until their Divine Shield finally wears off, and then move in to finish the Paladin off before they're able to pop up Divine Shield again. It doesn't help that Holy Light doubles as a massive nuke against Undead, letting them burst down your units with impunity while you're helpless to stop them. It's especially painful for Kel'Thuzad: Arthas's Abominations can tank a few Holy Lights to the face and get healed by Death Coil, and Sylvanas can use Banshees to steal human units which can't be blasted, but Kel'Thuzad and his Necromancers are out of luck. In fact, the Paladins are so annoying to deal with that one of the most common tactics that players use nowadays is to just dispose of them right away with a cheese tactic. Said tactic being to bum-rush the Paladin encampment with Arthas right at the start of the mission to drop Goblin Land Mines upon the 3 Altar of Kings just to make sure that after the first time the Paladins are killed, they don't come back.
    • Balnazzar in “A New Power in Lordaeron” is the main enemy hero of the purple base. He has the normal Dreadlord abilities of Sleep and Vampiric Aura, but he has a few different abilities. Instead of Carrion Swarm he has Finger of Pain (a weaker version of Finger of Death) and instead of Inferno he has Rain of Chaos which lets him summon multiple Infernals (up to 4 as the mission progresses) and he also has Earthquake (which gives him two ultimates). This more or less makes him a combination of Azgalor and Anetheron above. He tends to attack either faction's bases alone, and with his abilities he can do it if there isn’t enough defenses in the base to stop him. This makes it very hard to build expansions in the mission and attacking his base when he’s there can be very difficult.
    • Baelgun Flamebeard could end up as this at the end of "Into the Shadow Web Caverns". Baelgun is a powerful Level 10 Mountain King facing off against a Level 5 Death Knight (Arthas), and a Level 6 Crypt Lord (Anub'arak). His Storm Bolt and Thunder Clap abilities are highly effective against Arthas and Anub'arak, and if the AI chooses to do so, Baelgun will use its ultimate to go into Avatar mode for additional health and spell immunity. He can be beaten by a Cheese Strategy though, where you can stand by the nearby healing fountain while he isn't.
    • In The Founding of Durotar Act II, the final encounter of the Theramore Island submap is a brutal Wolfpack Boss against a Mountain King (level 14) and an Archmage and Paladin (both level 12), while Rexxar's party is around level 9-10 at this point. This hero combination is already notorious for being extremely tough to deal with in multiplayer with an actual army, because of how absurdly well they synergize with one another. The encounter also includes elite knights and spellcasters that will dispel Rexxar's summons or Rokhan's Hex, and even if you kill them the Paladin will just bring them back. It is a huge spike in difficulty compared to the rest of the map, and not properly micromanaging the encounter will get your party shredded to bits. Repeatedly.
• That One Level: See here.
• That One Puzzle: As an RTS series, puzzles tend to be easily solved in these games. However in The Frozen Throne mission "Ascent to the Upper Kingdom" there is a complex elevator puzzle halfway through where the platforms seem to move randomly to many different elevations and it is not very clear when you can cross usually. This puzzle is placed in a timed mission where you have 10 minutes to get to the end so it can be very irritating. It then gets extra annoying when you realize that the developers decided to add in some loot that can be picked up all around this puzzle. Some of which include a +2 strength tome on one of the Fallen One creeps that were placed on the platforms, and a Health Stone on one of the nearby raised ledges. There's also the Ring of Protection +5, which at the very least requires the player to pull a lever that flattens out a path amongst the platforms to easily grab said ring. However, activating said path requires the player to get to the other side of the puzzle first, reveal said lever within a destructible rock doodad, and then take some of your precious time remaining to backtrack and grab the +5 ring.
• That One Sidequest:
  • As mentioned above in That One Level, the Sidequest for March of The Scourge on Hard mode is almost impossible to complete as you would need to take a small army out with your Paladin hero to take out a Meat Wagon escort, even though those units you sent out would be much more useful had they just stayed at the base for the primary Hold the Line mission. Even once you get there, the convoy consists of Meat Wagons guarded by a pack of Ghouls and Abominations, so the fight will more often than not be an absolute bloodbath. The easiest work-around people will usually resort to using is sending Arthas out on his own to cheese the Meat Wagons while under the protection of his Divine Shield spell, especially so if Divine Shield is leveled up more than once, but even then it'll probably take more than one run because the Meat Wagons, being mechanical, can't be nuked down by Holy Light.
  • For the bonus Frozen Throne campaign, recruiting Chen Stormstout to the group can be somewhat troublesome if you try to complete his Sidequest as early as possible when your heroes are hardly leveled and decked out on items. To explain, the Sidequest that Chen offers Rexxar requires him to collect three items that need to be returned to Chen. Two of such items are incredibly easy to complete as one is just to pick up a Thunderbloom plant at a nearby camp of incredibly weak Murlocs, while the second is to purchase a barrel of Thunderwater from a Horde vendor (although there's no indication of where to find it). However, the third item of the Sidequest is the difficult part; having to fight through an area of thunder phoenixes in order to loot the Thunder Egg from the biggest one. The reason of the difficulty is that you only have Rexxar and Rokhan to fight these phoenixes, and these phoenixes hit incredibly hard with powerful magic-type attacks that not only have area-of-effect damage, but can also burn over time, which will easily leave your heroes' health down in the red after every engagement. Also, they're flying units, so Rexxar's bear, Misha, ends up being useless for this fight if your group has no means to force the phoenixes to the ground. Also, for a bit of added difficulty, there's a large group of Wildkin at the only chokepoint that leads into the home of the thunder phoenixes.
  • Assembling the Shadow Orb in The Tomb of Sargeras, from the Frozen Throne Night Elf campaign. The Orb is divided into 10 fragments littered throughout the level in all sorts of out-of-the-way nooks and crannies, often only accessible by having Maiev Blink into difficult-to-notice spots. In order to find all of them, you'll need to either be extremely thorough looking around for any Blinkable location that's usually marked by a mana rune, or just consult a walkthrough. In addition, two of the fragment locations in the level's Hydra section requires the player to know about placing a Huntress' Sentinel owl on the lone trees for vision to Blink.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Reforged received flak from fans after Blizzard announced a change to its policy regarding custom maps. Unlike in III where anybody could make whatever custom maps they wanted and technically owned it, Blizzard announced that they own all rights to any custom map created in Reforged. That means if you were to, say, create a custom map like Defense of the Ancients, Blizzard can legally take your map and sell it as a separate game without giving you a single cent. Another side effect of this policy is that Blizzard can ban or restrict any custom map that violates their rules, essentially having the same policy on custom content as StarCraft II. Naturally, many fans didn't take kindly to this, pointing out this new policy completely robs the point of making custom maps in the first place, and is widely seen as Blizzard still not getting over having not done the exact same thing for the original DOTA, causing the creator to take his game to Valve instead. Nobody really has any sympathy for Blizzard about that, since not capitalizing on DOTA's success and allowing Valve to pull the rug out from under them over a decade after the custom map became successful was entirely Blizzard's own fault, and not remotely because of the old custom maps policy.^note In fact, IceFrog even came to Blizzard first with the idea of making DOTA a full standalone game, with only two conditions - 1) he had final word on any balance changes, and 2) all heroes would be free. They turned him down, and he went to Valve instead, who was much more proactively interested in creating a sequel to DOTA. Needless to say, Blizzard are likely regretting this decision to this day.
  • The Reforged launch was filled with misfeatures that weren't present in the original, such as an always-online requirement for single-player games.
  • Not even fans who preferred to stick to the original III are safe, since the original Warcraft III has been removed from the Battlenet client and merged with Reforged, meaning everybody who owned the original is forced to deal with all the new changes.^note If one owns a CD copy of the base game (and optionally the expansion) it's possible to install it and simply not patch it (or find a patcher that updates it to 1.27, the last standalone version), but this only works for the single-player campaigns, custom maps against AI and LAN matches.
  • While a mild one, there is some dislike for some of the new models used for the units. One of them being the Footmen, who went from being fitting for their title, tier and purpose to looking a bit too big and fancy. A good amount of fans tend to poke fun of how huge the pauldrons are.
  • While the original Russian dub for III was well-liked (and sparked numerous memes), it conflicted with the official localization for World of Warcraft, so it had to be redone from scratch for the Reforged release; opinions on results were... mixed. While some voices were accepted as good or at least okay, some were deemed vastly inferior, and many fans also took offense to redubbing the characters voiced by now-late voice actors, like Arthas and Malfurion (voiced by Vladimir Vikhrov and Rogvold Sukhoverko, respectively).
    • Arthas took it worst. While old voice acting (by Vladimir Vikhrov in III, and Artyom Kretov in World of Warcraft) was well-liked (Vikhrov's voice acting, in particular, was occasionally compared positively to the original English version), the new voice wasn't received as kindly: besides Arthas' new voice actor being highly criticised for wooden delivery of his lines, it was taken as an insult to Vikhrov's memory. A video was made, comparing two dubs... and automatic robotic voice, to further nail what's wrong with the new dub.
    • When Archmage's new voice acting for Reforged was previewed, it was widely mocked for sounding narmy, and spawned several memes built around making fun at it. Ironically, when it was redone to address the issue, it was criticized as well: while the second version isn't as ridiculous as the first one, the old version was at least funny, and the new one no longer has even that to make it memorable.
    • The change of elven sorceress' and succubus' lines to make them less flirty (compared to the old dub) were not taken positively, partly because their tone was never perceived as a problem in the first place.
  • Besides voice acting, the new Russian localization made for Reforged received some flack for certain decisions made by translators. Not only did they abandon catchy and cool names for some units used by the old dub, some were replaced not even by literal translations, but by truly bizarre and clearly made-up terms (like calling Crypt Fiends "necroarachnids", or calling Druids of the Claw "Druids-Predators").
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The only time the player gets to use an Archmage, Jaina Proudmoore, in the Reign of Chaos campaigns is two early missions in the Human Campaign. You are never able to level her up to use Mass Teleport and her absence means that the very helpful Brilliance Aura is never available to help your heroes and casters to help recover mana. Archmage characters, even if they weren't Jaina, could have added variety to the Alliance campaigns. The Frozen Throne tries to give a chance to use Jaina at a higher level by having her playable briefly in Act II of the Bonus Campaign, but the different RPG-like gameplay of The Founding of Durotar doesn't lend itself as well to her skillset (i.e no teleporting back to her base when it's under attack, no spellcaster units to benefit from Brilliance Aura, enemies are too tanky to really be damaged by Blizzard) versus the primary RTS genre of the other campaigns.
  • It's a somewhat minor example, but it can come off looking rather odd that Cairne Bloodhoof was absent from the Battle of Mount Hyjal. This is despite the fact that Cairne joined up with Thrall's Horde, and traveled with them as far as Ashenvale forest, during the Orc campaign.
  • While Reign of Chaos did a good job in making sure that you got to play with each of the four faction's Hero units at some point throughout the story, there was one exception; the normal incarnation of the Undead's Dreadlord. This is especially odd when you consider that the Undead campaign introduced up to 3 Dreadlords (Tichondrius, Anetheron, and Mephistroth) that could have been provided to the player, yet they all basically just sat in the background while their new Death Knight, Arthas, did all the work. And sure, the player does eventually get to mess around with Varimathras in Frozen Throne, but Varimathras' spells weren't that of a pure Dreadlord. He was basically a half Pit Lord due to Carrion Swarm and Inferno being replaced with Rain of Fire and Doom.
  • Mephistroth himself is one of the only named characters in Reign of Chaos who never appears on any of the maps, only appearing in one cutscene and speaking one line. As noted above, he could have been assigned to help Arthas as a reason to have a playable Dreadlord, or he could have appeared as an enemy during the Legion's invasion of Ashenvale like Tichondrius and Anetheron.
  • The Night Elf campaign of Frozen Throne spends a great deal of time building up the Night Elf Warden, Maiev Shadowsong, as a key character of the story. However, she's pretty much forgotten about in the following campaigns as she gets one mission in the Blood Elf campaign to show that she's still hunting Illidan in Outland only to then never appear again. One would think that at the very least, she would have continued the hunt to Northrend once Illidan's army begins their march towards the Lich King, which could have added a Night Elf faction into the mix for the Undead campaign. Her vendetta against Tyrande is a major influence on the story and another interesting plot point that could have influenced Maiev's character arc if it had continued plus she has a major bone to pick with Illidan.
  • It can be a bit surprising how cast aside Kel'thuzad was in the Frozen Throne's Undead campaign. Arthas leaves the Lich behind in Lordaeron to make sure that the Scourge keeps control over the land in the King's name. Despite that objective, Kel'thuzad doesn't pop up in any of the Sylvanas missions and isn't even mentioned, being kept out of focus in favor of the Dreadlords.
  • Frozen Throne's Bonus Campaign revolves around Rexxar's posse of heroes journeying around the lands of Kalimdor to do work for the Horde, and later fight against the Kul Tiras navy. However, the only one that gets any notable screentime of the group is Rexxar. Rokhan, Chen, and Cairne are basically just there to support Rexxar being given hardly any dialogue, and aren't given any notable moments to shine. Or in Chen's chase, he just doesn't talk anymore after his recruitment quest as him journeying around with Rexxar's group is completely optional.
  • One neat idea that Reforged brought to Warcraft III was implementing Anasterian Sunstrider to the Undead mission where Arthas attacks Silvermoon City as it was an opportunity to expand a bit of the lore by getting to see the Elf King's last stand against Arthas' onslaught. Unfortunately, Anasterian in the final product was left as just a voiceless Final Boss roadblock before Arthas reaches the Sunwell. His appearance ended up being so minimal that it's very easy to go unnoticed to the player. Thus, making it quite obvious that the original plan to implement Anasterian to the campaign was cut back immensely.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Maiev has a legitimate beef with Tyrande regarding the latter murdering the Watchers that were guarding Illidan's prison, which is something that's briefly brought up in the "Balancing the Scales" mission. However, this feud ended up not being delved into any further to the point of basically being left unresolved, besides being hinted as a reason that Maiev lies to Malfurion about Tyrande being murdered later.
  • Not much was done with Illidan becoming the ruler of Outland. He obtains a new batch of Demon and Fel Orc allies after taking Magtheridon's place as the ruler of Outland, yet they don't follow along on Illidan's Northrend journey to defeat the Lich King. In the end, it will just leave you wondering how neat the Scourge campaign could have been if along with fighting Naga and Blood Elves, Arthas would also have to deal with Demon or Fel Orc factions under Illidan's command. An argument could be made that Akama's Broken Draenei could have followed along as well, but given that they were simply trying to survive against Magtheridon's forces in Outland, them staying behind to celebrate their victory is the one faction Illidan obtained that actually would have made sense.
  • Similar to what's mentioned above, the Night Elves' hunt for Illidan ran a decent chunk of the plot for the start of Frozen Throne, yet the chase just comes to a complete halt after Maiev failed to capture him during their one mission appearance in the Blood Elf campaign. The rest of the game just forgets about Maiev's chase from that point on without any true wrap up to her storyline.
  • The whole idea of Sylvanas needing to possess certain neutral creeps in order to have a big enough force to take on the 3 Dreadlords stationed in Lordaeron was a neat set-up to possibly assemble a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that eventually take over the Kingdom as the newly established Forsaken faction. However, the possessed creeps end up disappearing after the first Sylvanas mission, likely because they were an optional quest.
  • Despite the existence of Rexxar's bonus campaign, some feel that the lack of an actual Horde campaign for the Frozen Throne expansion sticks out like a sore thumb (the developers claimed that they had no idea how to include the Horde in the expansion's main story, given that the Horde had completed its story arc at the end of Reign of Chaos and had no ties to Illidan or Arthas, the two driving forces behind the conflict in The Frozen Throne). It really hit hard as the bonus campaign didn't come with the game, but was part of a patch that wasn't published until almost six months after Frozen Throne itself was released. A bit of missed potential was possibly having said campaign centered around the Fel Orcs, which could have been placed after the Blood Elf/Naga campaign where they're left with nothing to do after Illidan takes control of Outland.
  • On a similar vein, the lack of a "proper" Human campaign, given that not only does the Alliance campaign focus on the Blood Elves while shafting Humans and Dwarves to the role of enemies after the first mission, but the Blood Elves themselves are also shafted by the story later on, playing second fiddle to Illidan and his Naga. Given how "Legacy of the Damned" split the campaign between Arthas and Sylvanas, the Alliance campaign could have been split between Kael'thas story, and either Jaina establishing the city of Theramore, Garithos dealing with the Dreadlords, or whatever Arthas' human army that was left on Northrend after he claimed Frostmourne did to survive there.
  • Thrall's plotline in the Orc Campaign in Reign of Chaos is mostly about him looking for "The Oracle" of Central Kalimdor after Cairne mentions the legendary figure, and Jaina herself also goes to seek out this Oracle. When they both reach the depths of Stonetalon, they find out that there is no Oracle, and that Medivh used the legend to summon them into a meeting and push them into an alliance. The Oracle is never mentioned again, but it's not possible for Medivh to have come up with and spread the legend himself since he has only been dead for a few decades and Cairne mentions the Oracle like it's a legend that's been around for his entire life (which is about a century long). World of Warcraft never meaningfully follows up on the plotline either.
• Tough Act to Follow: Among the Warcraft III Campaigns, The Scourge of Lordaeron, the first (non-Prologue) campaign is considered the best of them all in storytelling through its detailing of Prince Arthas' Protagonist Journey to Villain and his transformation from heroic paladin to the first Death Knight. Many of the memorable moments from the RTS games in the franchise are from this campaign. The other campaigns are still considered good for the most part, but none left the impression that the Scourge of Lordaeron did. This can be seen in the custom campaign scene in Warcraft III, where there are literally dozens of different takes on The Scourge of Lordaeron (with either gameplay or story changes) and almost none of any other campaigns.

U-Z

• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Warcraft II
    • In Tides of Darkness, Hero units were so incredibly underutilized, and unchanged compared to the normal units that it really felt like there was no point in having them (especially with the hero's death being an instant loss condition). That was changed by the time the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion was released where hero units now came with powerful stats compared to the normal units they were based on, and appeared much more often throughout the campaign levels. Hero usage eventually became a main selling-point of Warcraft III.
    • Speaking of hero units, the ones for the Horde who aren't Teron Gorefiend (Death Knight) are quite underutilized in their Beyond the Dark Portal campaign. Especially when compared to how much each of the Alliance heroes appear throughout their expansion campaign. Grom Hellscream (Grunt) pops up in Mission 1 while Dentarg (Ogre Mage) and Kargath Bladefist (Grunt) are in Mission 2, but after that, they remain complete no-shows all the way until the final Mission 12. The last mission also being the only time you ever get to play around with Deathwing (Dragon). Though that one's quite understandable due to Deathwing being a really overpowered unit. Overall, the theory is that because Teron Gorefiend's the only Horde hero unit who has a means to heal himself, he got to appear more often than the other Horde heroes.
    • You can actually build on destroyed rocks that were blown up by Demolition Squads or Goblin Sappers. However, other than one notable location where you can build a Town Hall on destroyed rocks much closer to the expansion Gold Mine that's surrounded by unbuildable mud in the final Human mission, there's hardly any mission that effectively puts this mechanic to use.
    • Turns out that you can repair Transports in Warcraft II. You'd think that this is a sign that you can repair mechanical units, but oddly enough, you can't repair Catapults or Ballista. As a result, if you already knew that Catapults or Ballista can't be repaired, you might not ever get the idea that repairable Transports is a thing.
    • Compared to Warcraft I, the player is no longer able to build walls. This is despite the fact that Warcraft II clearly has two unique wall-types seen in the game for the Horde and Alliance respectively. The most logical guess as to why walls weren't buildable is due to the AI never choosing to attack the walls since they're technically just map doodads, which begs the question why they didn't just make the walls targetable like the player's units and structures.
  • Warcraft III
    • The "Spirits of Ashenvale" mission had a unique mechanic where it was possible to obtain lumber from destroying Night Elf tree structures, yet it's seen nowhere else throughout the game. Even though 3,000 lumber coming from Trees of Life sounds way overpowered, it makes sense in context when you realize that Night Elf structures that absorb the Wisp worker are technically trees. It's also quite ironic that Warcraft III in general is known for hiding loot and secrets behind trees, yet for a mission where needing to harvest a bunch of lumber serves as the main objective, the map surprisingly hides nothing.
    • Sea warfare, which was a major component of Warcraft II, took a huge backseat by the time Warcraft III came around. It didn't exist in the original Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos game, and while the Warcraft III: Frozen Throne expansion brought back naval combat ships, they were still limited to only being in the single-player campaign, and only for certain missions since it wasn't possible to build shipyards (the player could only purchase ships from pre-placed shipyards). The expansion added water transports to some melee maps, but the AI is incapable of using them. Blizzard actually planned to properly return it in the expansion. But alas, tests showed that people either used almost exclusively ships on a map that had a lot of water, or didn't use them at all. It was decided that removing sea units would be easier than finding a solution to this problem.
    • The player is never able to make Chimaeras in the Night Elf campaign for Reign of Chaos; making it the only ladder unit that can't be played around with during the original campaigns. An educated guess can be made that Blizzard was worried that players would find a way to cheese the structures of Archimonde's base with mass Chimaeras on the final level. Also, as anyone surely noticed, said campaign is the shortest in the game. Originally, it had one more mission after the current ending where the Night Elves were supposed to defeat the army of the Scourge (which didn't just disappear after death of Archimonde). They had 3 HUGE bases that the player was supposed to destroy with help from the Chimeras. However, tests showed that after the already lengthy mission 7, another long mission was just overkill, and Archimonde's death actually was a pretty good place for ending the game. Thus, mission 8 was removed.
    • Destructible wall doodads can go very unnoticed in Warcraft III. The possibilities of hiding treasure areas or opening new pathways behind destroyable walls are there, but this is only ever used one time throughout the campaigns. The second Undead mission of Frozen Throne, "The Flight from Lordaeron," has a secret area that can be opened up after destroying two wall doodads with Meat Wagons, but even for what seems to be the player discovering a neat little hidden area, the treasures it offered turned out to be lackluster anyway. In addition, despite there being four main factions, the only one to actually get a destructible wall associated with them is the Alliance.
    • The Naga race that was introduced in the Warcraft III: Frozen Throne expansion had the potential to be an official 5th player faction. However, the Naga in the finished product is left as a Game-Breaker pseudo-faction that's limited to the single-player campaigns, and came with a tech-tree and unit arsenal much smaller than the 4 primary factions. The only Naga unit that made it to custom maps and multiplayer is the Naga Sea Witch (same model as Lady Vashj), a neutral hero. The race's amphibious capacity was removed from her on said maps. It was confirmed by a former dev that they indeed were created as the new race for the expansion. A lot of their mechanics were tied to water, which is logical by itself, but created the same problem as the planned naval units of other races had - they were OP on maps with a lot of water and rather useless on maps without it. By the point when it was decided to drop the whole idea with sea warfare, a lot of Naga models were already complete, and Blizzard instead used them for a campaign-only mini-race.
    • The Broken Draenei are introduced as another pseudo-faction in Frozen Throne. Even having their own unique tech-tree buildings. However, this faction is even more miniscule than the Naga, and they only serve a purpose in the final two missions of the Blood Elf campaign.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • While Arthas was meant to be a Tragic Villain, the Culling was meant to be Arthas' first step towards darkness, showing how him being consumed by anger led to him making rash decisions threatening the lives of thousands and culminating in both his even less justifiable decisions in Northrend and his ultimate descent into villainy. However, many players, even many of those that see his later decisions pre-Frostmourne as far less justifiable, see Arthas as unambiguously in the right here due to the perception that Uther and Jaina never really offered any alternative solutions to the Plague, Arthas most likely being horrified at seeing his subjects become zombies in front of him, and the Plague remaining incurable even into the time of World of Warcraft.
  • Maiev Shadowsong is treated as a treacherous character by Malfurion Stormrage for lying to him about Tyrande being killed (instead of swept downriver) so they could focus on defeating Illidan. However, Maiev has ample reason to dislike Tyrande, since she had killed the Watchers that worked under her and released Illidan (a traitor to their people) to begin with. Maiev is also basically shown to be correct that Malfurion would have allowed Illidan to get away to save Tyrande, even when he was enacting world-ending plans. Shortly after, Malfurion lets Illidan go after he helps save Tyrande, and Malfurion was more fixated on Tyrande's "death" as the cost of Illidan's plan, instead of global devastation. Additionally at this point, Illidan had already gotten away once, fled across the ocean, and murdered Maiev's lieutenant and best friend, Naisha.
  • Even though the Warcraft III Orc campaigns present the native Kalimdor races in the Barrens (besides the Tauren) as Always Chaotic Evil animalistic monsters, they have multiple lines that indicate that from their perspective they are protecting their lands from foreign invaders. The harpy queen Bloodfeather tells Rexxar "we won't let you chase us out of our lands", which he dismisses. One of the orc lieutenants, Gar'thok, asks Rexxar to exterminate all quillboars living in a cave, akin to doing pest control. When Rexxar confronts a centaur, Khan Gragtor, about razing a base, he tells Rexxar that the land belongs to them and will forever, instead of doing it just For the Evulz.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Arthas the way he's presented in the "Reign of Chaos'' Human Campaign sometimes comes off as less sympathetic than he is meant to be, particularly among players that disagreed with the Unintentionally Sympathetic interpretations of his actions at Stratholme. He is brash, rude, and quick to use violence. Even though he is supposed to be close to Uther, Jaina, and Muradin, he treats them all pretty coldly through the campaign. His hatred for the Undead Scourge came off more that he did not like that they were stealing his future kingdom from him, rather than a strong desire to protect the innocent. To some this makes his Face–Heel Turn less of a tragic turn of fate and more of revealing The Caligula he was destined to be. Later depictions and novels make him more of an All-Loving Hero and present him in a more tragic light to try to avoid this trope.
  • Medivh, as The Atoner for his role in bringing the orcs to Azeroth and being the puppet to Sargeras, should garner a lot of sympathy. However, he is so ineffectual at uniting the races against the Scourge and the Legion that it is just frustrating. He never tells the leaders of Lordaeron and Dalaran why they need to move their entire populations to a continent that they had not discovered yet, other than a vague warning. He quickly gives up and just tries to move to other leaders that will listen to him. Only Jaina and Thrall trust him, and the former only does it on a hunch and the latter because his people's situation was pretty bad so he had nothing to lose.^note He once made a remark that he wishes he is right about trusting the prophet's word Medivh also does not immediately intercede to stop the fighting between Jaina and Thrall's forces when they land on Kalimdor and only explains why they need to work together after a long winded plan to lead them both to Stonetalon Peak. He also does not tell Thrall and Jaina to try to ally with the Night Elves until shortly before the final battle, when they really should have been told to ally with them earlier. He also does not try to fight or partake in the final battle at all, or give a reason why he doesn't. Additionally, his spellbook (which is kept in Dalaran) was also essential to the Legion's plan to summon Archimonde, but he made no effort to reclaim it or to tell Antonidas to destroy it. All this gives the impression that he doesn't think it's that urgent or important to stop the Burning Legion and would rather chastise people for not listening to him when he never gave them a reason to.
• The Un Twist: Those players who had played Tides of Darkness and paid attention to the story in the first act of The Founding of Durotar have likely guessed that Daelin Proudmoore was going to be that campaign's main antagonist, as it was Kul Tiras that had an emblem that looked like an anchor on a green background, and "Admiral Proudmoore" was referenced in the game's editor even before the other two acts of the campaign were released.
• Vanilla Protagonist: The co-leads of the Reign of Chaos Night Elf campaign, Malfurion Stormrage and Tyrande Whisperwind, have the least characterization of the campaign protagonists. They do not have dynamic personalities like Thrall or Arthas, and instead both are already experienced. The campaign is entirely focused on their efforts to fight the Burning Legion and leave little room for important character moments. Their vanilla status is gradually lost in future works, including The Frozen Throne, various side materials, and in World of Warcraft.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Blizzard pulled a surprising move in 2018 by releasing balance changes for Warcraft III, despite the game being 15 years old at this point and not receiving a proper balance patch for the last decade or so. Needless to say, dedicated fans were very pleased that Blizzard hasn't forgotten about the game's existence. Of course, this all made sense when they followed it up by revealing Warcraft III: Reforged at BlizzCon.
  • As controversial as Warcraft III: Reforged has been, the remaster does provide a couple additions that were noted to be worth being changed. Particularly when it comes to playing the campaigns. Some of said changes include the following:
    • Consumable items are now stackable, which makes for better hero inventory management (only in the campaigns, though; they still do not stack in multiplayer for the sake of Competitive Balance).
    • The remaining three missions of the "Exodus of the Horde" prologue campaign are fully restored, which players can now truly experience the necessary lore as to how the Darkspear Trolls joined Thrall's Horde. In addition, the missions were provided with full voice acting in cinematics, which was present in the demo but was weirdly absent in the Frozen Throne custom campaign featuring those missions.
    • Overlapping The Frozen Throne's updates to Reign of Chaos such as the changes made to attack-type, armor-type, and upkeep, which reduces having to remember the differences between the two games.
    • Certain trees are removed from blocking some level secrets, which reduces the annoyance of having to knock down trees before being able to reach them.
    • The few times the Blackrock Clan shows up now properly have Warcraft II-style Forest Trolls instead of Darkspear Headhunters, which is a neat little addition to story immersion.
    • Some campaign heroes now have unique skins instead of just being the common multiplayer hero skins, which again, is a neat little addition to story immersion.
• The Woobie:
  • Jaina Proudmoore. Forced to watch the love of her life become a Death Knight for the Scourge, who then goes about destroying their home kingdom of Lordaeron. In addition, after creating Theramore Isle for the Lordaeron refugees that sailed to Kalimdor, she's forced to fight against her father, Daelin Proudmoore, in order to keep the peace with Thrall's Horde in tact.
  • Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider. Was not around to defend the High Elven kingdom of Quel'Thalas from being devoured by Prince Arthas' Scourge, and now leads what's left of his people to try to reestablish their once glorious civilization. All while having to deal with their racist Lordaeron Alliance remnants commander, Grand Marshal Garithos. For added insult, Arthas taunts him about stealing Jaina from him.
• Woobie Family: The Windrunners. Parents and brother were killed by the orcs, oldest sister disappeared while exploring a dying world, middle sister was killed and turned undead by the Scourge, grandfather had to fight nephew-turned-undead, and two brothers ended up essentially killing each other. Oh, and youngest sister's sons got kidnapped by cousin once.
• Woobie Species:
  • The Human Kingdom of Lordaeron gets hit the worst in the Third War. One moment, it's Kel'Thuzad's plague, the next time, it's an undead slaughter led by their kingdom's traitorous Prince Arthas, another time, the Burning Legion's invasion begins here as it journeys to Kalimdor, and then once the Burning Legion is beaten, Arthas returns to Lordaeron to slaughter some more.
  • The High Elves of Qual'Thalas for almost the exact same reason as their Prince. A race that was devastated by Prince Arthas' Scourge when his undead army marched through the elven kingdom, and slaughtered much of the population. Upon renaming themselves Blood Elves in honor of their fallen comrades, many are forced to relocate to Outland after being threatened with execution by Grand Marshal Garithos.
  • Thrall's Orc Horde. One moment, they're locked up in Lordaeron internment camps. The next moment, they're dealing with Mannoroth's blood corruption. And then, as the cherry on top, they are under constant threat by a Kul Tiran admiral who absolutely refuses to let go of his grudge and start a personal war with them, all because he is incapable of viewing orcs (and trolls) as nothing but monsters that needed to be exterminated.
  • The Kalimdor Tauren started off as this, being hunted to extinction by the roaming Centaur. However, they finally begin to build a civilization for themselves after the arrival of Thrall's Horde helps them reach the lands of Mulgore. But even then, they still have to deal with the occasional Centaur raid such as their attempt to take the Tauren Chieftain's son, Baine, captive.
  • The Kalimdor Furbolgs. The bear-men race was hit hard by the arrival of the Burning Legion with many of its people becoming corrupted.
  • The Nerubians of Azjol-Nerub. Lost the War of the Spider against the Lich King, which led to many of its people, and the Crypt Lord King, Anub'arak, to be reanimated as soldiers for the Scourge. Those that survived continue to fight the Scourge in the hopes of one day liberating Azjol-Nerub from the Lich King's undead.

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