Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos remains the most influential strategy game ever made, redefining real-time strategy with hero units and RPG progression over 20 years ago. Its campaign still delivers one of gaming's greatest narratives, blending high fantasy with deep moral ambiguity. More importantly, its custom map engine spawned Defense of the Ancients, which evolved into DOTA and created the MOBA genre—a feat no other RTS on this list has matched, and one that eventually eclipsed traditional RTS in popularity. Over 2 million copies were sold in its first year, and the map editor generated over a million user-created maps, an achievement outpacing the community contributions of #9 Warcraft III itself.