War3 is NOT like War2.
War3 has 'hero' units, which through the patches of the Beta are becoming more like just normla super units. They have items they can use, (items that are, suprise suprise, very much like diablo iteams , ie scroll of town portal). You can collect items for them, and trade them between heroes.
Most maps contain mercenaries that you can hire units off instead of building them.
War3 has serios balance and graphics problems and it prob. won't be out until september this year.
I hope you got a nice PC cuz running it on a celeron 800 w/ 256mb ram, 32Mb graphics card, its runs like a dog.
The Psuedo 3D graphics allow you to move the perspective up and down, but not side to side, which is disappointing.
The world editor is meant to be great, allowing you to string together multiple scenarios and include split path campaigns, although it is not included in the Beta version.
The best thing is that the game has almost NO lag playing on the net, a 56K connection is almost identical to and ADSL guys pings.