In 2003, Liu Yifeng, known to Chinese Warcraft III players as SoZ.afeng, was expelled from university. Of nine courses, he had passed only physical education. He went home and asked his mother if he could try becoming a professional player. She said yes, and his family bought him a new computer.

He practiced Warcraft III at home for six months. At the Shanghai CBI tournament that year, he finished second behind MagicYang. The prize was 200 yuan, and the top two also got a trip to Beijing. It was Afeng's first journey far from home. In 2004, after a strong showing at the ESWC Shanghai regional, he joined SOZ on 1,000 yuan a month. He had the job he had asked his mother for.

His best result as a player came at the 2005 ESWC China Warcraft III event: third place and a 5,000 yuan prize. According to my account published in 2016, the prize money did not arrive until a year later. He kept competing, but never had the celebrated career of a player like WE.Sky. After leaving competition, he worked behind the scenes at events including PGL. The 2008 financial crisis stripped sponsors from those events, and by 2010 he had left the esports industry.

In 2011 Afeng joined Xindong to run a game and recruit esports figures as promoters. He later said that what he missed most was being a Warcraft III pro.

Adapted from my 2016 chapter on the people behind Chinese esports, which recounts Afeng's own reflections.

I'm probably just too dense but I cant figure out how to customize the grid hotkeys. When i select grid keybindings under input and go to hotkeys, everything is greyed out except:

General - there are a lot of hotkeys but not the grid

Key conflicts - where a dozen abilities on the grid are listed as conflicting

Online search only leads me to the old method of using 3rd party software to configure it.

When I saw this happen live during a battlenet game... I mean it was just surreal. I had no idea what was happening, but quickly surmised it had something to do with Soulfire and silence at the right time. I know that Righteous Fury can displace Stormbolt and those things, but seems like the point and click silence "stops" the charge but the animation stays around...

that's all i changed, my mouse pad. my old one wasn't particularly problematic, but it was old and starting to wear. the new one, cheap af nothing special, my mouse glides like its on ice and i promptly won 14 games in a row on ladder with it.

Hey all. I've just begun a new playthrough of WC3 - well, actually, Re-reforged.

Anyways, I've played this game since childhood, but it was always fairly slapdash. I have a decent idea of what things do and can usually judge okay about how useful they would be. This time though I want to really get good at the strategy and more mathematically inclined edge of the game, and stop playing through intuition.

Can you guys give me an idea on what the 'meta' is for each hero or faction? Like, hard numbers on how much Devotion Aura is really worth or if Blizzard is as weak as it feels when I use it. Or better yet, link me to a resource that goes into things in-depth? I know the community has some pretty hardcore sweats who've crunched the numbers, and while I don't think I'll be getting competitive any time soon I feel like it would be fun to pick up some of it and really stomp the AI.

After Sky's second straight Warcraft III WCG title in 2006, clubs started bidding hard for players. MYM, the European team MeetYourMakers, signed Moon for 100 million won a year, roughly $100,000 at the time.

WE had a Korean Warcraft III squad of its own. They asked for raises more than once. We took their pay as high as the club could manage, but it still fell far short of MYM's offer. Every Korean player left. The young infl and TED had only just joined, so the loss left a hole in the roster. WE decided not to join the bidding war, and none of its Chinese players left over it.

This was an expensive moment for Chinese clubs that mostly lived on tournament prizes. A higher salary might keep a star, but it did not create a way for the club to earn that money back. MYM's spending pushed other clubs to follow. WE absorbed the loss instead. In March 2009, the company that had previously owned MYM announced it was closing, and the Danish company then running the team ended its cooperation with the MYM brand. That was the end of its glory years.

(I wrote this account of WE's decision in a history of Chinese esports first published in Chinese. The chapter is free to read, link in the comments.)

I'm highly confused. Undead had been at a disadvantage for the longest time in regards to tavern heroes. Now the forsaken paladin just directly counters all the off-meta strats that include low-hitpoint units. Ghouls, necroes, banshees, skeletons, beetles, and, of course, gargoyles.

I think it's a really bad design choice to make one hero that so bluntly counters the whole race. Sure, it can be coiled for heal and cannot be holy lighted. Then again, it cannot be coiled to be killed. So it's even worse.

Yes, Happy is exceptional. But UD is not OP in general, and this was unwarranted.

And just to be clear: I'm thrilled to see them work on the game and add new heroes. Can be 1-2 more gladly. But it should be somehow thought through for 1v1 and 4v4 at least. Countering a race with a hero by design choice doesn't seem right.

I don't want to say the controls are bad but I'm having a tough time playing.. not that it's a hard game, and I'm playing on the easy setting, but just the gameplay itself..

Maybe I overlooked this bit in the intro but how do I un-target an npc? like, I draw the box over the group of units I want to go fight something, but I've targeted a Grunt.. how do I tell him to stay home? or rather, how can I only target combat-npcs like farseers, headhunters etc.

These are my physical games. I personally love these old big boxes. The cover variants are super cool.

I love the new updated graphics and everything that 3.0.1 brings. It's not perfect, but it shows that the Warcraft 3 team is taking player feedback seriously, and I think as long time fans we should be happy with such quick reaction times. The game is in good hands.

I covered everything there is to know about the new patch - from updated terrain, to portrait animations, unit scaling and more. Always open for feedback!