Who we are
W3Arena is a platform for Warcraft III custom games.
DotA, Legends of DotA, Arcade and RPG maps on patch 1.26. A launcher, hosted lobbies on servers in five regions, ranked ladders, profiles, a forum and team voice built into the client. It is free, and players use it from Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East.
The first two are every player and every scored game since W3Arena opened, across all seasons. The rest are read live from the public ladders for the season running now. Nothing here is typed in by hand. Check any of it yourself on the ladder or in games.
Why it exists
For years nothing moved. The platforms with the players kept running old maps, the newest DotA and LoD versions never got adopted, and the people who could have updated them did not. Latency outside Europe was whatever it happened to be. Reporting a cheater meant leaving the game and writing a forum post nobody answered.
None of that is hard to fix. It just needed doing.
Platforms that had been frozen for years began updating and pulling current DotA maps onto their clients shortly after we opened.
What we built
New map versions the day they land. When the authors release a new DotA or LoD, it is hosted here immediately rather than months later or never.
Servers where the players are. Hosting in five regions, so a game in Peru or the Philippines is not routed through Europe. Ping is not a feature. It decides whether a game is worth playing.
Voice inside the client. No platform in the scene had it and their feature lists still do not mention it, so we wrote it. Sentinel and Scourge are split automatically, you see who is speaking, and nobody leaves the lobby to talk.
Reporting that finishes itself. When a game ends you get the result screen. Pick the player, pick the reason, send it. The platform files the report on the forum for you, staff review it, and you get a notification telling you whether it was accepted or refused and why. You never leave the client and you never write a post.
A crash stops being a loss. A fatal Warcraft III error used to end your game. Now you reconnect and keep playing.
How it is run
Staff are trained before they get access, and they are removed when they stop doing the work. Rank does not come with immunity. Every action a staff member takes is held to the same standard whoever it was taken against, including against people we know.
Sponsors keep the servers paid for. They know the platform and their feedback carries weight, which is why we ask for it. What it does not carry is authority: no sponsor decides how W3Arena is run, and no sponsor changes an outcome for a player.
The people behind W3Arena
Requirements
W3Arena runs on Windows 7 through 11 and requires an installed copy of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne on patch 1.26. The client is free and there is nothing to configure beyond pointing it at the game once.