This is an excellent game. I have been addicted to it for over a week now. Alot of the Warcraft 3 beta testers report that this game is as good or better than Warcraft 3:
- graphics about even, WC a bit better
- in WC, contests always seem to come down to 1 big battle very early in the contest. Whomever wins always goes on to win the game. WBC2 offers longer buildup, and a very real chance to come from behind. I've personally found this to be true.
- WC has the traditional worker implementation of "You have tons of little workers who go back and forth from your resources to your base". This means you have to use some effort to control them (like making sure they don't cut down trees that you want, etc.) Also, it opens up the obvious "wipe out all his workers" strategy. WBC doesn't have this. Once you assign a worker to a mine, he disappears into it, never to return. This may be good or bad, but it does mean one less thing to focus on, and one less easy base assault tactic. I like it.
- WBC has more hero development, and also development for non-hero retinue troops. This one really suprised me. I expected Warcraft to be much more developed in this way, but it doesn't seem to be. Hero development (RPG elements) is very limited.
Cheers,
-Dave