Warcraft III Gets Public Test Realm!

What changes are coming to Warcraft III? What does the PTR do?

Blizzard has a very interesting way of testing out fixes for their games. They what they call the PTR, or “Public Test Realm”. In here, new changes are implemented, tested, and refined. Then, when the changes are deemed to be ready, they’re distributed to the world at large.

For the first time ever, Warcraft III, the popular RTS that helped inspire World of Warcraft, has gotten a PTR. This was revealed on Battle.net, and Blizzard even noted some of the changes people can expect to arrive on it:

• Balanced creep camp difficulty progression from early to late game
• Balanced creep drop tables for better item progression from early game to late game
• Item diversity: Varied Level 1 though 6 charged items and Level 1 through 6 permanent items
• Balanced all start locations: total amount and starting distance from lumber, equal amount of spacing, equal size choke points, et cetera
• Balanced expansion distance from start locations
• Decluttered points of interest to reduce visual competition during gameplay
• Retextured map surfaces for better visual clarity – both on screen and mini-map
• Minimized the size of trees and doodads that obstructed player view of points of interest
• Added cliff lines or deep water to edges of the map – removing hard edges (aesthetic choice for immersion)
• Properly placed trees and doodads on the pathing grid: full-cell Medium Grid to half-cell Medium Grid alternate
• Removed the rolling shoreline waves from rolling hills to remove the noise the waves created – remains for cliff shores