Development Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

The game was announced with a press conference inside the Henley-Suite at the European Computer Trade Show 1999 around 1:00 PM. The development started in early 1998 and the development stages were presented at ECTS 1999, 2000 and 2001, E³ 2000, 2001 and 2002 and on a tour where Bill Roper visited computer game magazines.
The game was announced as role-playing-strategy game (RPS) with a flexible camera movement. The first version shown at ECTS 1999 had no interface, except portraits for the heroes. In articles from that time you can find that abilities and items were used via right-click on a unit and an appearing icon collar.
Around January 24, 2000 a video from Korea appeared on the Internet; it showed some gameplay and in the background Rob Pardo explained some things. This version already had an interface concept, but the most part of the interface were placeholders, it had map with some kind of 3D look, icons for abilities and orders and an eye-shaped display for gold.
Around April 19. 2000 Blizzard released some new screenshots of the game, these were completely without interface. These screenshots showed many heroes and some abilities and had a fixed but zoomable camera.
The next screenshots came around May 10. 2000. These screenshots showed the new interface of the game. It looks a little bit like the human interface of the release version, but has little cannons above the minimap and the command button space. The gold display is still eye-shaped, but the last screenshot before E³ 2000 shows a rectangle-shaped gold display. Most models, icons, textures and abilities that you can find on these screenshots never appeared in the retail version.
Then from E³ 2000 around May 12, 2000 to ECTS 2000 the game didn't change very much. The next big changes came between ECTS 2000 and E³ 2001, when a different interface and the Nightelf race were revealed.
The next interesting change came at ECTS 2001, when the interface became almost what it is today. The biggest changes of this version are, that lumber became a resource and heroes got an inventory, though in a video from April 2001, you could already see an item on the ground.
After ECTS 2001 Blizzard experimented with different resources and had version of the game with gold, lumber, mana stones and upkeep or a race depending resource that represented the population, like the needed food in newer versions.
In the middle of January 2002, Blizzard shipped out 5000 beta versions of Warcraft III to randomly selected testers in order to help improve it before being released in stores, the beta release had all the game’s units and races, however was only playable over Battle.net. Single player games and LAN play were not playable on the beta version of the game.^[29].

Other versions

In addition to the regular game, there also exists a limited Collector's Edition Warcraft III bundle. The collector's edition box contained a Warcraft III cinematic DVD, including behind-the-scenes features and the cinematics of all prior Warcraft games; a Collector's Edition Soundtrack; a Collector's Edition instruction manual; The Art of Warcraft book; and lithographic prints.
Blizzard Entertainment also released the Warcraft Battle Chest, which contains Reign of Chaos bundled with The Frozen Throne in one box, along with guides from BradyGames.
Another version, the Exclusive Gift Set, came bundled with the cinematic DVD, official BradyGames strategy guide, and Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition.
Warcraft III is also available in the Best Sellers Series along side StarCraft, StarCraft: Brood War, Diablo, Diablo 2, and World of Warcraft. Also, a selection of games from other companies other than Blizzard have been included in the Best Sellers Series.