Warcraft PvP

As I mentioned in the last post Warcraft III is fun when played against the computer but the real fun comes in having another human surprise you in ways an artificial intelligence never can. So, with four copies of Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne in hand we decided to go one step further than just letting players access Battle.net. We wanted players to not just be able to test themselves against other people but be able to do it with the folks sitting one chair down from them.

Thus, we searched around and settled on setting up PvPGN, an open source Battle.net emulator. Hosted on our own subnet that means functionally zero latency for top notch speed so that its your skill that wins the day not your opponent's lag. It also means you can do games of 1 on 1 PvP (player versus player), 2 on 2 wi co-operative sides or any combination allowing the computer to run some opponents as well such as 3 vs 1 with 2 computer opponents or even all 4 humans versus 4 computer opponents.

Warcraft III is running on fast PIIIs with plenty of power for the application on nice looking CRT monitors and headphones are at each station for players to hear the audio cues.

On the screen shot of the desktops we've prepared we've even gone a bit further beyond providing a custom on network PvP option. We've also loaded the machines with high end maps that take advantage of the Frozen Throne extensions, descriptions and previews of each on an easy to browse document and even cheat codes if you want to play in the single player modes. And no, the cheat codes don't work in PvP.