I’ve been playing Warcraft 3 since 2005 and have to say that it is my favorite game and the best game ever made of all time. There will be nothing that tops it. Reforged did kill it and made it basically unplayable (40% of games having disconnects/desyncs) but it was the best while it lasted.
Over the years there have been many services and communities created by third parties that supported the game. Here is a tribute to some of the biggest ones, if you know anymore please write a post to include them.
MakeMeHost: aka MMH, a bot hosting service that allowed users to pick from a list of tens of thousands of custom games to host. It was very easy to use, you just log into the MMH website, pick a game you wanted hosted, and it would be made. You didn’t have to download any map for this as the map would download when you joined the game, this made the hosting process easy and convenient. It was unusable as of patch 1.30.2 which banned all bots from hosting games.
Clan ENT and other game hosting clans: Clan ENT (and some other clans) had many bots host a number of different games at all times. You just load up the Custom Games screen and there would always be 20+ different Clan ENT games being hosted. This was also killed off by patch 1.30.2. Some of the popular ones were Legion TD, DoTA, Enfos, Burbenog TD, Horde vs Alliance X3, Rabbits vs Sheep, etc.
Ghost++: This is what drove the power of MMH and Clant ENT, it was originally a chat bot for clans. It was very cool. I remember they had a dictionary function and it freaking knew everything. I remember in 2006 asking it to define “LonelyGirl15”, “Smosh”, and “Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle” and it actually knew all of those! Everything I queried it answered. This was eventually upgraded to be able to host games.
EpicWar: This site still exists and is still active, it existed and has been active since 2004. It’s where ALL the custom maps are uploaded for this game. Every single map ever that someone has made, can be found on this site.
WCReplays: This is the site where all the Warcraft 3 replays are hosted. People upload them, make commentaries, etc, all right here. Commentaries were cool, you download the replay, download an audio file, and then you start the audio file, the guy does his introduction and then he counts down from “3…2…1” then you unpause the replay and watch it while the guy does commentary, it was very cool.
HiveWorkshop: Warcraft 3 map making and modding community. This is where a lot of Custom Games are shown off, where people can ask for help on map making. People post screenshots, videos, etc, of their games that they made. Game models, spells, etc, are shared here too so users can use them in their maps.
ShadowFrench: One of the original Warcraft 3 hackers, was it one person or multiple? Provided many different tools for WC3 hacking such as maphacks, game kicking tools, name spoofers, etc. Was the original source to get these thing.
The many tens of thousands of custom game creators: The Warcraft 3 custom game making scene was crazy. There used to be hundreds of maps created and uploaded per day at its peak, since the WC3 world editor and open policies made this so easy to do. Yeah people made maps using copyrighted IPs but no one cared, it’s what made the game so open and fun.
There were many thousands of maps that I played, I still remember the many RPGs with load/save features. I would log into EpicWar to search for some RPGs with save/load and host them. Some games I’d play for 6 hours straight with others online because the content was so vast and epic. 30+ heroes, thousands of items. I still have some timeless screenshots of some crazy saves where I’d have level 100+ characters with the best gear and such in the maps. There was so much story and hidden content too. So much time and effort were spent creating these maps. It was so cool.
Warcraft 3 Pro Gamers: There are some big pro gamers that kept this game alive and competitive. There were a lot of big names such as: Grubby, Moon, Infi, Sky, Lyn, TH00, Happy, Fly, etc. I don’t remember them all but they each had their own fanbase.
Most of the things I listed are gone, dead, and/or dying. What were some of your favorites? Do you remember any of these? RIP Warcraft 3 community. It’s never going to be the same.