Warlords Battlecry III - no Windows 7?

Hm....According to GoG -> http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/warlords_battlecry_3

compatible with - Windows XP & Windows Vista (32 & 64 bit)

...if it isn't working, it should work using Virtual Box I guess.

Eh... Unless virtual machines have come a long way in the last year or two, WBC3 wont run that well in one. I was running the first in VMWare because it gave so much grief compatibility wise with XP, units warping several frames at a time was the normal result.

If i can run Commandos 1 from GOG.com, A game made in 95, under windows 7 fine. Have some faith that this game will run for most Win 7 users.

can't guarantee my memory is correct, but I think I got Warlords Battlecry 3 running in Windows Vista x64 without too much trouble.

It plays on my Win7 64bit. Just had to put the .exe in compatibility mode for XP SP3 or it would crash while loading into a level. Seems to be working ok after that thus far.

is this game any good. Looks like a basic RTS to me. Why the love?

Nostalgia, I suppose. However, it does have a lot of customization for the Hero, and you get to keep units from game to game. The different races play differently (not all are balanced). It just is fun!

Nothing special just a good rts before rts became so abundant.

First. WBC3 sucks monkey nuts in comparison to it's predecessor. WBC2 is awesome in a box. This isn't to say WBC3 is a bad game, it's fucking fantastic too, it just really bit the dust on some mechanics that were superior in the previous iteration. There were some improvements though, like in game hero leveling.

Why WBC3 is awesome is because it's not a basic RTS, not even slightly.

When you think of RTS games with command units, you think TA or WC3, the heroes in WBC3 are on an entirely different level. They're RPG quality, persistent badassery, that you can level up from one game to the next. There are 28 classes, each with their own set of skills to level up, in combination with the heroes racial skills. They have a dungeon crawler quality item system on par with games like Diablo 2, spell casts on strike, special abilities, stat modifications, the works.

In a Blizzard game, you have two or three races. In WBC3 there are 16. Not just 16 races, but 16 different races, with only a few sides having similar attributes, and none of them playing alike on the whole. Of course, I'm in the "should have stopped at WBC2" camp, but the new sides don't detract from the scope of the game on the whole.

Near infinite versatility. You can do everything from no heroes at all to massive, army smashing titans or resource whoring merchants of death carrying an entire empire around in their pockets. You can play temp hero games where you build a set level hero on the fly to avoid level differences, items, and retinue units that can give an advantage to one player.

The drawback, that awesome comes at a serious hit to balance. If you're looking for the perfectly balanced competitive gamer crapfest, go play Starcraft. Even if you use low level temp heroes, you'll still get some nearly impossible matches when you go random. The balance is bad, this isn't Zerg rush cheese, we're talking literally impossible matches. Matches so bad that the top players dreaded losing to newbies that couldn't more than halfway play the game. I'm even a little famous for winning the worst possible match ups in WBC2 against what was the best player at the time. Of course, he got caught with hacked stats later, but his penguin post and week long rants every time I showed up were absolutely hilarious. I really miss the flame wars... I miss getting my ass kicked too, but I was dangerous back then so it was a rare treat to consistently lose 1vs1 games against someone.

If there was a healthy online crowd still, the WBC series would be one of the best purchases you could possibly make. Some of the old bunch does still play them, but nothing like it was eight years ago. I sank a few thousand hours into the series by the time WBC3 came around, and I was late to the party.

It works on Win 7 x64. You have to use compatibility mode though. If you don't the units will be invisible since the game uses a primitive DirectX or graphicsdriver or something like that.

I tried WBC II and it was fun in campaign mode for its time but with WarCraft III coming out 4 months later its fate was sealed.

It had a really deep hero skillchart (correct word?) where every race and class were unique.

Undead had a set of skills they could "buy" with lvlup points. Minotaur heroes had another one and Humans had yet another one.

Every herotype also had their own skillchart. Warriors had one, Priests had another one and Necromancers yet another one.

But with such a great amount of races and heroes there are bound to be overpowered combinations. F.i, a Minotaur Pyromancer is said to be the best hero in the game. I believe Wood Elf Merchants are also quite powerful.

The really bad things with the game though are:

The heroes

There's a sweet spot of lvl 15 or so where you can have a fun multiplayer game but if heroes are more powerful then that then it becomes too herocentric like WarCraft III (though the heroes are more in line there.)

I would recommend playing without heroes and instead using a general (it is in WBC III) so it's faction vs faction instead of hero vs hero.

Starting towers

This is a horrible design decision. You know the immortality potion from Heroes IV? It was a desperate solution they made in the last second and this is on par with that.

You start with four towers around your starting area. All races have kinda unique towers (different dmgtype, hp and cost) but they still got around 250hp and 10dps. It makes rushing impossible in balanced games.

Outdated, ugly graphics and especially ugly UI

I played it like a year ago and the graphics are just too bad. The UI looks crappy as well.

The high amount of possible race and hero combinations opens the door for broken matchups

This one is confirmed. Minotaur Pyromancer is the best though highlvl hero games is something I consider lame.

Good things about the game:

The music & sounds!

The first time I started the game, the mainmenu theme blowed me away! It is so POWERFUL and good!

The unitsounds are also cool. The Barbarians sound like a tribe of Vikings or Barbarians going to war. The Undead have varied quotes that range from "There's no peace, for us" by the Skeletonrider to "SO, MUCH, DEATH! by the Liche. Gotta mention the Slayer Knight which sounds quite normal (by aggressive standards) with his: "I'm the slayer!".

Then we go to a WHOLE new lvl with the Doomknight: "MUUURRDEEERRR", "SLAAAYYY!" and "KIIIILL"

The WoodElves sound like wussies & wimps though. Wood Elf Druid: "Is there danger..? <--- OMG....! Their hero sounds good though. Their Titan as well.

The campaign

Playing through it with a lvl 10 hero can be quite fun but the imbalanced heroes makes an appearence about halfway in. I faced a Human Warrior which I couldn't defeat (and I also had a Human Warrior )

thanks for the extensive explanation. I think im going to give this a shot now.

http://forums.infinite-interactive.com/index.php

If you want to do any multiplayer, the last holdouts can be found there. A few crazy people are modding it too, not a mod friendly game in the slightest though, so even with source code access they've been slow to produce much.

Hmm...I decided to go ahead an purchase WBC3, but it crashes constantly for me. I can't play even for 2-3 mins without a CTD. I've sent an e-mail to SD to see if they can help, but my recommendation is that Win 7 64bit is not a compatible OS with WBC3

Eh, you're running in compatibility mode like suggested above right? There are multiple posts above stating it worked.

Yes, I am. I find that I have CTD anytime I play the campaign and open the spell book. (just one example of many).

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Warlords Battlecry III - no Windows 7?