Warcraft III

OK, so our fantasies run more toward desert islands and tuxedoed midgets with inscrutable accents, but if yours are populated with orcs, night elves, and undead hordes engaged in brutal all-out medieval warfare, hold on to your battle-axes. This dragon-tastic entry in the real-time combat field is a severed head and shoulders above the competition. Completely reinvented in glorious 3-D, WCIII spruces up the age-old premise—organize armies and send them into battle against opposing forces—with much-improved graphics and a new pyrotechnic spell-casting system. Megalomaniacs can waste countless hours of productivity designing battlefields on the “world editor,” and naturally there’s a networking feature that lets you square off against other live opponents via the Web. Don’t forget to pack a clean loincloth!