Look, Warcraft III is clearly a strategy game. It's clearly not an RPG, even though it took some RPG elements. It's also clearly not an adventure. (I do think it's the same form as Sim City, though.) But the question remains, why am I so certain that it's a strategy game, as opposed to those other types of games? And to that I still have no satisfactory answer. That's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to validate my gut feeling with reason, and I can only do that with clear definitions.
Now, I like that you've brought up Warcraft III, because it raises an interesting question. Let me frame it in the clearest way I can:
Warcraft III has a completely non-interactive and elaborate narrative, it has leveling-up and inventories and other such RPG elements, and almost the entirety of the game takes place in the fairly typical RTS battles. When I played it, I was certain it was a strategy game, and not an RPG.
Fire Emblem has a completely non-interactive and elaborate narrative, it has leveling-up and inventories and other such RPG elements, and almost the entirety of the game takes place in the fairly typical turn-based battles. When I played it, I was certain it was an RPG.
So now I've got to demonstrate the boundary between the strategy game and the RPG clearly enough to explain the distinction between these two games. If I can't, I've got to rethink at least one of my gut feelings.
So I'm thinking back to when I played Warcraft III, and I remember what my impression was. My (personal) impression was that the RPG elements felt tacked-on to the RTS gameplay. There were still ordinary soldiers fighting the war, who did not grow or even stick around from battle to battle. And on the other side of the rules, the base-building didn't have any long-term elements either.
My definition of role-playing right now is: "A work of fiction with a long-term strategy system and either a system to deal with immediate confrontations OR a short-term strategy system.".
Both Warcraft III and Fire Emblem can be seen to be primarily works of fiction. Both have short-term strategy systems (following tried-and-true conventions of strategy games) dealing with immediate confrontations. The difference is in the long-term strategy system.
In Fire Emblem, you decide who is going to get EXP points. You decide what weapons those characters will get and which types of weapons they should get good at. You even decide which relationships should be built up. All these decisions are long-term strategies because they're going to shape the rest of the game. These are the guys who will be fighting later, after all, so these decisions matter.
In Warcraft III, you decide when your one Hero character should fight and get EXP points. And you decide which spells he should learn. I don't remember any other decisions. Anyway, both rules have a small impact on the progression of the game. But very small.
If, on the other hand, Warcraft III gave EXP points to all the soldiers, and you kept the soldiers from mission to mission, then there would be more long-term repercussions from your decisions. The leveling-up could then be classified as a long-term strategy system, meaning that the overall game would be classified as a tactical RPG.
Now, what this intellectual exercise shows me is that the definition of a strategy game has to stipulate that the decisions of the player have repercussions. A strategy game is a game where the player's actions shape the progression of the game. This can't be the entire definition, since that doesn't exclude puzzle games, but it might be a start.
What do you think?
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