▷ W3Champions: The Competitive WC3 Reforged Ladder (Guide)

Welcome Warcraft 3 lovers and fans! 😀
This page is only for players who love to play standart Warcraft 3 competitively: There is a league beside the WC3 Battle.net ladder which is called W3Champions. I will point out the pros and cons so that you can make a fast decision if you want to play on W3Champions or not. Below that I will explain what W3Champion is and how to use it.

Should you play the Warcraft 3 Ladder W3Champions?

Pros:

W3Champions has a great MMR matchmaking system. The rankings which are listed below allow to play highly competitive. You can climb up the ladder and get better opponents.
A lot of pro players like XlorD, DeMusliM, Grubby or even Happy are playing in this ladder.
It’s the best ladder for all high-level players and a perfect place to train 1on1.

Cons:

W3Champions as a super high skill-level and is not recommended for new players and beginners. If you are just starting tryout the WC3 Battle.net 1on1 ladder.
It’s only for standart WC3, but not for Dota 1 or any other custom game.

Visit W3Champions
Join the Discord server of W3Champions here

What is W3Champions?

W3Champions is a side ladder for the Warcraft 3 Reforged Battle.net ladder. You can play directly in WC3 and queue against opponents with the same skill level.
While winning and losing you rank up and down on the rankings ladder and gain or lose mmr. The ladder is split into 7 ranks: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platin, Diamond, Master and Grandmaster.

The W3Champions ladder is located ingame on the versus tab and you can see your statistics, the online player count and the news:

W3Champions Features:

A working matchmaking, based on W3Arena.
Ladder system with ranks (find the rank list below).
Improved pings by non-global ladder.
Easy installation and integration into the Warcraft 3 Reforged client.
Player Profiles on the website with race statistics.
A match history with live games on the website.
A different more pro orientated mappool.

Which Game Modes can you play on W3Champions?

On W3Champions you can play standard Warcraft 3 with focus on 1on1 matches.
While writing this the team has only published 1on1, but if there is time and enough feedback they consider working on 2on2. If the league has success over a long time then even 3on3, 4on4 and FFA are possible. 😉

Quick Guide: How to play on W3Champions?

First of all visit the W3Champions website.
Download the windows installer.
Simply install the software on to your computer.
Now restart/start Warcraft 3 Reforged.
Click on versus and you will have to setup the W3Champions options for the first time. You can decide how often you are willing to play against the same enemy, because the user base is quite small.
Now you can start your W3Champions ladder career. Right now everyone starts with 1500 MMR. Give your best and you will meet high level opponents. 🙂

Who created W3Champions and Why?

Because of the slow progress of the Blizzard team with all of the Warcraft 3 patches the developer Pad started a shoutout on twitter.
He wanted to find out if there is interest and feedback for a self-created custom ladder for the pro scene and he got tremendous support and assistance. He started to accept donations via Patreon, but also other developers and game designers joined Pad to realize the project.

As the owner of wc3tools.com and gaming-tools.com I am an active supporter and donator of W3Champions, because I love to see the project running.

The top pro players of the world are playing on W3Champions and this is showing the success.

It took him only 1 week to set up the basement and the league was born. In a short time of about 3 weeks , the league evolved to a big and active ladder with over 1000 players worldwide. The knowledge of the old W3Arena is helping the team to create great balancing and a fluent working MMR matchmaking. Of course, a lot of improvements have to be done in the next months.

What is Blizzard doing about W3Champions and the Side Ladder?

The interesting thing will be, how Blizzard will react now…
The classic team of Warcraft 3 Reforged is seeing this and they are aware of this. Question is, how will they react? There are not many signs of life yet.

In Warcraft 3 patch 1.32.3 which has been released in March 2020, Blizzard made a statement, a week after W3Champions started:

“Zug Zug! Just a quick note to let everyone know that we have a dedicated team here focused on Warcraft III. Alongside our continued efforts to bring monthly patches with bug fixes and quality of life changes, the team is prioritizing delivering features like Ranked Ladders, Profiles, Clans, and Custom Campaigns. We’ll continue to share more details as those features are nearing release, but know we’re here and hard at work on the game”.

It might mean, that they know that the Warcraft 3 world is burning, and the low Metacritic score of WC3 is forcing them to act. With this statement they are showing that they are willing to do something, but their patches are always small and come in monthly packages.

How is it possible that a single developer is faster than the full official Blizzard team?

I do not lose hope, and I am convinced that the classic team will do a great job, they just want to do everything stable and bug-free, they are a bit slow but there is progress.

The Warcraft 3 Reforged profiles, ladder, and clan features are needed and fact is, both leagues, the official WC3 ladder and the W3Champions ladder can exist next to each other.

I see no problems, let’s just hope Blizzard is not banning the W3Champions features out of the client. 🙂

The W3Champions League Rank Table:

This the MMR ranks table of W3Champions (it can change over time):

Grandmaster	Top 0.25%	MMR above 2335
Master	Top 4%	MMR above 2008
Diamond	Top 27%	MMR above 1655
Platin	Top 50%	MMR above 1476
Gold	Top 73%	MMR above 1298
Silver	Top 96%	MMR above 970
Bronze	Bottom 4%	MMR below 970

To get better in Warcraft 3 checkout the Wiki with all the essential information.