Why 17 times exactly? Well man I heard some criticism about its balance.
Still if we compare wc3 to older warcraft titles its better in everyway
Can't say much about comparing with SC as I didn't play SC1 or 2
1. War3 was NEVER an "RTS". It was a Moba that hadnt realized it was a Moba yet. This is where DOTA came from (DOTA was originally a set of custom W3 maps) and then eventually League of Legends.
2. It's resource cap was completely absurd
3. It had no grid system (a requirement for anything with the word "strategy" in it, see chess for proof of this concept)
4. The graphics were horrendous compared to other games of it's time
5. None of the units gelled well with each other
6. There was no "strategy" to any of it. It was mostly a level farming game at the very beginning.
7. The game crashed way to much
8. Starcraft 1 existed already and was much better
9. Warcraft 2 existed already and was better than BOTH of them
10. See #9 for the remaining 7 other items.
In otherwords, war3 is a joke. It's not even comparable to War2/SC because it's not even an RTS.
No strategy XD so you call spamming ogre mages "strategy" but god forbid having a hero with some RPG mechanics that allows for endless creative strategies yup yup definitely no bias here.
The upkeep system prevents certain strategies that could be abused and it punishes spam , warcraft in its core was designed as commanding few soldiers not to be spam like CNC games , in warcraft 3 throwing units at the enemy never works you have to use more than right clicking attack move.
It was never a MOBA its map editor and hero system allowed for the MOBA to be a thing wc3 itself isn't a MOBA its a RTS with RPG elements.
Warcraft 2 better than SC1 and wc3? On what? How? The game is sorely outdated it has poor and bland gameplay with no depth whatsoever the balance is crap it plays poorly compared to other RTS of the time such as age of empires 1 , now I dont know much about SC1 all I know is that it was where blizzard masterfully crafted a well balanced RTS with varying differences between factions thus creating the Esport scene (correct me if I'm wrong here but wasn't SC1 the first Esport?)
Wc3 crashing you played reforged buddy? Its rare to have warcraft 3 crashing especially legacy versions such as 1.26.
The graphics are bad? Man did you look at age of mythology? It also dropped same year as wc3 , CNC generals would drop in 2003 and both look much more outdated compared to wc3 whom graphics manage to have a charm despite their age im a bit biased here towards wc3 graphics still it holds up pretty well when compared to other 3d RTS at the time of its release.
You seem to be just hating on wc3 for no reason without wc3 warcraft wouldn't have an interesting story or iconic characters , wc2 was impressive for its time but it was outdone in every regard by other RTS games that came after it that's not bad as these games built upon the foundation laid by wc2 its an important piece of RTS history and that shouldn't be dismissed or ignored but does the game hold up in 2024? Nope not in story not in gameplay its only saving grace is its graphics and music.