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While campaign games can have many different objectives, the sole objective in melee games is to destroy all the opposition's buildings. In default melee matches, players can pick their own heroes, and losing one will not end the game. To make the game proceed more quickly, by default the map is covered in fog of war instead of the Black Mask. Warcraft III, like Blizzard's previous title StarCraft, allows for single and multiplayer replays to be recorded and viewed, allowing a game to be played at slower and faster speeds and viewed from the perspective of all players. Like all previous Blizzard titles since Diablo, Warcraft III uses the Battle.net multiplayer network. Players can create free accounts in regional "gateways," which helps reduce lag; these are Azeroth (U.S. East), Lordaeron (U.S. West), Northrend (Europe), and Kalimdor (Asia). One should note that at this point in time the U.S. East Gateway / Azeroth has become the de facto standard for online play. Most competitive play is held on this gateway as well as most public play in general. As the game has aged the players have condensed for this reason. Unlike previous Battle.net-enabled games, Warcraft III introduced anonymous matchmaking, automatically pairing players for games based on their skill level and game type preferences, preventing players from cheating and inflating their records artificially. If players want to play with a friend in ranked matches, Warcraft III offers "Arranged Team Games", where a team joins a lobby and Battle.net will search for another team; as with anonymous matchmaking, the enemy team is not known beforehand. Players can also host custom games, using maps created in the Warcraft III World Editor. The game also offers Friends Lists and Channels for chatting, where players can create custom channels or join Blizzard-approved ones.[16] Warcraft III also allows players to band together to form "clans", which can participate in tournaments or offer a recreational aspect to Warcraft III. Global scores and standings in matchmaking games are kept on a "ladder". These rankings can be checked online without the need of the game.
