Warcraft III 1.0.3 gains PowerPC, Jaguar improvements

Blizzard Entertainment today updated its popular game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos to version 1.0.3. Among the scores of enhancements in this version, 1.0.3 sees optimizations to the game’s PowerPC code and performance improvements for users of Mac OS X 10.2, “Jaguar.”

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is the latest major release from Blizzard, and it was offered up simultaneously for Mac and PC on a single hybrid CD. The game revisits the war-torn fantasy realm of Azeroth, a world populated by humans, orcs, night elves and undead warriors all seeking a claim to the land. In this installment of the hugely successful real time strategy game series, players take a more focused approach to resource management and troop movement as they lead heroes and smaller numbers of troops on missions and into battles.

Blizzard reported that the 1.0.3 update sports several new features: AI players can be limited to three different difficulty settings (Easy, Normal and Insane); Allied AI will now teleport to human allies’ towns when those town are under attack, and they’ll ping the minimap to indicate where they’re going to attack next. Also, messages can now be sent when the “Waiting for Players” dialog is still active. But most importantly for Mac players, Blizzard said version 1.0.3 adds PowerPC optimizations and Mac OS X 10.2-specific acceleration to the graphics engine. Additionally, the Macintosh World Editor — included with the game — should be a bit more stable in this version.

Dozens of bug fixes and changes have been made, including a slew of balance changes that will affect how the game is played especially in multiplayer mode. For more details, visit the Web site.

As MacCentral posted this article, Blizzard’s Web site had not been updated with a downloadable Mac patch for version 1.0.3. The game will be automatically updated to version 1.0.3 if you connect your copy of Warcraft III to Blizzard’s Battle.net online gaming service, however. A standalone 1.0.3 updater should be available for download at some point in the future.