Posted by When I was a kid, I played a lot of Warcraft II, and I loved it. The lore, the unit design, the gameplay. So, predictably, when I attempted to play the original Warcraft back then, I bounced straight off it. 4 units selected max? No unit group hotkeys?! No context sensitive right click?!! What is this backwards, clunky thing??!!!
Well, Warcraft I and II are being delisted from GoG, so I bought them and decided to give Orcs and Humans another try. I bounced again. But, I am older and wiser now, so I didn’t let that stop me. I kept playing and tried to unlearn what other RTSs had taught me.
I was shocked to find that peasants can’t return lumber to the lumber mill. I struggled with the difference between shift clicking and control clicking and how units don’t really seem bothered if their brothers in arms are attacked 10 feet from them.
There is a sense that this stuff is simply unacceptable to a lot of players, or at least it’s considered a relic of the past that they might forgive while still calling it poor or “outdated” design. I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if the developers, at least some of them, would say the same thing.
I’ll readily admit that some of the elements of Warcraft I are more frustrating than Warcraft II or later RTSs. But this, by itself, isn’t a valid criticism of game design as design. Games are, in part, the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles1. If a game never frustrates the player, it contains no obstacles. So the question is whether a game mechanic or interface is frustrating without contributing to the game’s design.
If the player is attempting to move a large army, of course he would want to be able to select as many units as necessary. But if we assume frustrating that desire is an integral part of the game, what does that mean about the design of Orcs and Humans?
It means that it’s about small scale skirmishes involving careful, methodical preparation and micromanagement. I changed the game speed frequently once I accepted this. I would slow everything down to a crawl (as close to paused as possible, I don’t think the version I played allows pausing) and carefully select where I wanted different groups of units. Then I would increase the speed and watch them move into position.
When I engaged the enemy, I’d slow the game down again and begin deploying my skirmishers to the parts of the fight where I thought they’d be most useful. I’d fumble key combinations and select the wrong things but, assuming the design is intentional, that’s a skill issue. I got better with practice.
Let me give you an example from my time with the game that indicates this is by design.
I had a sizable invasion force staged. I started moving it, piece by piece, toward where I estimated the enemy base to be. My vanguard of melee units started moving through a narrow passage in some trees and came out into an open clearing. Suddenly they came upon a large enemy force. Before I could move my other units up to help, they were slaughtered. The rest of my units were doomed.
I loaded a save and, with the same units, moved more carefully. I made sure to group everyone closer together. Then I sent a single unit forward to draw the enemy toward the bottleneck. I don’t think I lost a single unit the second time.
It isn’t that this scenario wouldn’t happen in Warcraft II, but it would be much different. I bet I would only have lost a few units, rather than the whole battle. I could have pulled the forward units back more quickly, and moved the rear units forward to assist. This would have been less frustrating, but not nearly as dramatic. Watching helplessly as my knights were ambushed and destroyed makes a better story. It makes a story at all, really. It would just be a momentary mistake in Warcraft II.
It’s not that the frustration doesn’t exist. The point is it exists as a coherent element of design. Is it as “fun” as Warcraft II? Not for me. Not for a lot of people I recon. But I suspect that could be overcome with practice.
Is it worth practicing, when other things that are more fun without practice are right there waiting? Before Warcraft II existed, you’d have to practice enjoying Warcraft I if you wanted to play a game like it, because it was pretty unique. Now there are thousands and thousands of games, and many of them have learned how to avoid frustrating the player as much.
Whether it’s worth it in the particular case of Warcraft or not, developing the habit of overcoming initial resistance and giving a frustrating game a real try is definitely worth it for a gamer. If we call all difficult mechanics “outdated” and everything that requires less and less discipline “better” design we will blunt out minds and incentivize developers to dumb things down to bland mush.
I’d rather encourage developers to try new things and push limits. After all, that’s what Orcs and Humans did when it came out.
- Bernard Suits in The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia ↩︎
(Screenshots provided by MobyGames. https://www.mobygames.com)