Product Description

From the initial, unexpected invasion of the Orcish Horde to the quest of the Great Alliance to forever seal the Dark Portal that links their two worlds, you will experience the epic saga of the mighty battle to gain dominance over the kingdom of Azeroth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7302 in Video Games
• Brand: Blizzard Entertainment
• Model: 2602
• Released on: 1999-10-08
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Mac, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 95
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English

Features

• WARCRAFT 2 - BATTLE.NET EDITION

Amazon.com Review
Orcs and humans have waged fierce battles across the scarred earth of Azeroth for many moons, with never an end in sight. In a move sure to make peons whimper and paladins pray, Blizzard is extending the carnage with WarCraft II: Battle.Net Edition.

Given WarCraftII's status and dedicated fan base, it's no surprise that the single-player game is untouched. The excellent Beyond the Dark Portal expansion set is included with the original Tides of Darkness, creating four campaigns and 70 missions that remain fun despite their age. The Orc and Human armies obviously have nearly identical strengths and weaknesses, but as in the past, the art and sound cues make them feel worlds apart.

The real selling point is the vastly improved multiplayer experience. Aligning WarCraft II with Blizzard's other titles, more than one hundred multiplayer maps now let you take the struggle for Azeroth to the free "battle.net" service. Setting up games is simple enough for an Orc to figure out, and you can play against (or with) up to eight human or computer opponents. No AI can match the challenge of a human player's unpredictability, and thanks to the worldwide ladder, you can fight tooth and claw for rank against players spanning the globe. --Jack Gardiner

Amazon.com Product Description
This definitive version of the classic real-time strategy game combines the original WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness and the WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal expansion set with free Internet play over Battle.net, allowing competition with up to eight opponents from around the world.

WarCraft II Battle.net Edition is the continuation of the ruthless clash between the armies of the noble humans and the brutish orcs. From the initial, unexpected invasion of the Orcish Horde to the Great Alliance's quest to forever seal the Dark Portal that links their two worlds, you will experience the epic saga of the mighty battle to gain dominance over the kingdom of Azeroth. Along the way, you'll need to carefully manage your limited resources to successfully construct and rule your medieval empire while engaging in real-time tactical warfare over land, sea, and air.

GameSpot Review
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the wasteland, along comes Beyond the Dark Portal. Set in the Orcish homeland, this expansion pack for Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness adds 24 new single-player scenarios and nearly 50 multi-player scenarios, all for a bargain-basement price.

Be prepared: The new solo scenarios are hard with a capital H-A-R-D. Even the most jaded orc or human will be challenged by the new levels, which thankfully dispense with the tutorial nature which made the early portion of Tides of Darkness somewhat tedious. In Beyond the Dark Portal, you start off with almost all of the technologies at your disposal, and you'd best be prepared to use them (strangely--and this is my only complaint about the expansion pack--you don't get everything right away, and some vital units are inexplicably unavailable in the early scenarios).

Apart from a new environment to represent the Orcish world, nothing has been added to the game. But there are some minor changes which affect gameplay, and require some new strategies to ensure success. The most notable change is the newfound emphasis on heroesspecial units whose survival is necessary. Many of these heroes appear in the circle of power missions found in Tides of Darkness, but others just fight alongside your troops with superior strength and endurance. They can be an excellent aid, but their death means failure.

The new custom maps are a diverse lot. For the most part, there is less emphasis on resource gathering than in the multi-player maps included with Tides of Darkness. This change has the benefit of making games less of a race-for-the-resources duel, allowing players more breathing room and time to plan strategies, as well as lessening the effectiveness of a brute-force attack at the onset of a game. Also included are a couple of strange maps for quick games: one with a football theme and one with a chess theme.

Fans of Warcraft II are split along two fronts: there are the single-players and then there are the multi-players. But whichever side of the fence you lean toward, this is a must-have. More challenging and more diverse than its namesake, Beyond the Dark Portal proves once and for all that you can never have too much of a good thing. --Ron Dulin/SpotMedia Communications

--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition is GREAT!
Gamers, including myself, have marveled at the old game Warcraft II for a long time. When I heard that Blizzard Entertainment was developing a new version for that classic, I was overjoyed. The old Real-Time Strategy (RTS) has left its mark as the best Game of the Year 1995, Best Online Game, and Best Multiplayer Game. Although the gameplay graphics and cutscenes art are somewhat lacking, it has pretty good graphics, funny sounds, and appropriate background music. The game's online gameplay of this game is fantastic since it takes Blizzard's free online gaming server, Battle.net, and uses it in this classic's upgrade. Warcraft II Battle.net Edition's AI is much in need of improvement compared to the other new games, though. But this game was not supposed to be completely new, so Blizzard decided not to improve some of the features, but to fix old bugs, add small improvements, and add a super multiplayer option.

The story of Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition takes place after their first big hit, Warcraft I: Orcs and Humans. After the death of the Orcish Warchief Blackhand, Ogrim Doomhammer quickly took his place as the new Warchief. Meanwhile, the tattered humans from the destroyed land of Azeroth seek refuge in Lordaeron, the other power in the Alliance, a group of humans, elves, and dwarves allying up against the fearsome Orcs. The humans have won the second war against the Orcs and have destroyed their only way into human lands, the Dark Portal. As they find out, though, the rift allowing passage to their lands still exists. They Alliance must travel the rift to Orcish Lands to stop the Orcish threat.

When you first start out on a single-player campaign, if you choose one from the Tides of Darkness, then you'll start with a small amount of units and a basic building to start out on. This just teaches you how to build things and gives you a basic feel for how you play the game. Eventually, you'll move into much harder levels which involve keeping someone alive as you travel enemy territory, building up a strong enough force to overcome a powerful enemy, and developing strategy in order to outsmart your computer enemy.

The multiplayer features in this game are comparable to some of the top games out now. Popular online games, such as Starcraft and Diablo, use Blizzard's personal gaming server, Battle.net (the top online gaming service in the world), to make a very easy and powerful multiplayer option. There are also the basic multiplayer options such as connection over an AppleTalk or IPX networks. There are traditional modem games, which are only two player, and there is direct-connect (null modem). This game's multiplayer is also compatible with the old version of Warcraft II. You can select either the enhanced (which fixes bugs and adds Battle.net option) or you can choose normal (which is the only way you can play against other people with Warcraft II, but without Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition). This enhanced game has new features such as Shared Vision (the ability to see what your ally sees), there is the new food bar (which allows you to see how much food you have without selecting a farm), and there is fixed bugs and smaller new features that would take a while to list.

This game is a pretty basic RTS. Proportionally, the graphics are way off, but otherwise they are pretty good. For example, you walk a unit next to some trees or a building. From the sizes they use, you would only be able to fit about 16 units into the biggest building (the Town/Great Hall). Those must be very big units because the smallest unit is a peon and supposedly it takes up as much space as a catapult. The cutscenes in this game could be better, too. While they are much clearer and sharper then the original Warcraft, they still could be better.

The sound in this game is good, but not as good as I hoped. They have added a few new sounds that they had forgotten in the original, but those sounds go usually go unnoticed. While it's really funny to hear an Two-Headed Ogre burp really loud and then the two heads argue over who did it and to hear a Footman complain about what he's supposed to do, that's basically it in the sound department.

I highly recommend this game if you are/were a frequent Warcraft or Starcraft player.

Same game new arena
This is a good game, engaging, nice mix of thinking and moving. There is a shallow learning curve, yet it retains enough variety to make it worth it to strategize, even plan. Two years ago it was a five. It works pretty well over the web too, about as well as it used to on my two year old power pc. We used to be able to play over a network then. A decent game for preteens as far as violence goes. There's some blood, but it's not gratuitous, and adds to the realtime sense of battle.

Graphics are primitive. With all of the digital algorithm stuff out there, like soul caliber etc, you'd think they could risk a bit of processing efficiency to make the game look cleaner. Units aren't proportional, and the movement logic system doesn't take terrain into account.

Sounds entertaining but mostly distracting, same for music.

Player authoring limited. You can change some basic values, but not really customize the games the way wonky gamers do at higher levels.

Overall, a good game for anybody old enough to handle dialup, but I wished they had spent some more time on upgrading instead of just expanding access.

One of the all time greats!
Pros-
Priced right at just $15 for jewel case.
Still very popular with hundreds of potential opponents online.
Balanced weaponry, no one unit or structure rules.
Huge variety of maps and missions.
Easy to use map editor.
Additional games online such as capture the flag.
Game rarely lags or runs choppy even with 2v2 and 3v3 games.
Doesn't require much computer or a top video card.
Everything is on just one disc.

Cons-
Cartoonish graphics are a bit dated.
Gameplay, while easy to learn can be tiring and out dated.

Over all warcraft 2 is still a great game and loads of fun. I had known about this game for a long time and finally decided to pick up the $20 version which also provides you with a strategy guide. An exellent value! I heartily recommend this game because you know what you're getting. The concept is ok with the humans v the orcs but almost all my time with this game is one on one multiplayer. You don't have to go to battlenet.com you can also play a buddy modem to modem. How you begin the game depends on the map but usually you start with one peon or builder and a certain amount of resources. You will always need a certain number of farms to feed your people as well as a steady supply of gold and wood. Wood is everywhere but there are a limited number of gold mines and it is around these that you will build your camps. Most of your military will come from a barricks and you make more peons from a town hall. You'll need a blacksmith and lumber mill to upgrade your troops(swordsman,archers,catapults ect.) and from that point you can add specialty forces such as gnomes, mages and flying birds that crap explosive eggs. Note that i'm referring to the human race because i play that all the time. The orcs are very different and frankly quite weird. One of their units for example is a huge beast with two heads that only uses it's fists as a weapon. Both races can make a cool spy plane and a fairly complete navy as well as towers that can be upgraded to shoot cannons or arrows. Oil is another resource that's needed to make some more advanced units. A lot of strategy is required because maps are very crowded with many narrow passage ways. Some maps even start you off completely surrounded by trees so you can't go anywhere untill you cut down a path. I like those maps because it prevents quick attacks.

Game play is fairly easy to learn. You just click on a building and the unit you want to build. It's easy to order your units to fight or where to go but you can only control 15 units at a time. The biggest negative about this game is that you can't queue up your barricks to produce more than one unit at a time. This can make the game a bit too busy and tiring and requires you to have several barricks. For example to maintain a steady source of resources you may need two main camps and one smaller one surrounding gold mines. That means probably at least 5 barricks, three town halls as well as at least one gnomish inventor and aviary and a navy or two. Considering you will have at least a couple dozen peons gathering resources and building farms it becomes a contest of who can point and click the fastest as you constantly move from building to building while trying to control your military units. A lot of work. Too bad blizzard hasn't added the multi queing feature which exists in age of empires gold and just about any newer game. Maybe there is a mod that can be downloaded to ad this feature but it is not available here. For that reason i only give the game 4* but it still makes for plenty of good clean fun for very little money.

.............socks