Im playing the old warcraft II game. I know its not on GOG, but im having an issue.

The command to make a group of units for example is not working.

you're suppose to, i guess, press the ctrl key and press a number from 1-9 , but nothing happens when i do that.

its gunna be a sressful campaign if i cant figure it out. Thats if I dont quit because of this loss of a function.

unless im totally not doing sumthing right.

It worked on my old laptop with the same game i got off of PBay

The numbered command group thing was added in the Battle.net edition (after having first appeared in StarCraft), and did not exist in the original (with or without expansion). Is that what you're playing?

ahh thats is prolly the issue I may have downloaded the wrong one, thanks! now i have to start over :( good thing i didnt get far

War2 is an old game and it is an Abandonware more on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware.

It means Blizzard will not maintain compatibility and wont help you set up and play your game optimally.
This is where others take the relay and you have many options/alternatives.

You can try playing Wargus but you will notice pretty quick that it is not warcraft2 it is a copy in an other engine it wont really work/feel the same but it might be enough for you though this is an entirely different executable.
Or you can get the Combat edition or nostalgic edition from the en.war2.ru site which is the original game files patched to work on modern machines.

Now I already have noticed people talking on that subject but none are actually playing on the said server so I thought Id give you guys a regular player's perspective:

Yes this is a russian server for obvious financial reasons and yes the people that are working their asses to save warcraft 2 were mostly russians to begin with, now if you stop getting involved as soon as the R word is mentioned I cant help you and you might already have stopped reading this anyway so for the rest lets continue:

Just bare in mind that If you are affraid of malwares/adware/whatever and you do have windows 10 and/or any microsoft newest softwares you are pretty much already installing adwares/spywares/telemetry on a regular basis on your computer but that is another subject.

As far as my experience as a player is concerned I have been playing now for a year and a half on war2.ru, the community is very helping and some members do spend a lot of their own time to help your get everything running smoothly on your lastest machine. If you come to our discord server ask for Mousey or Tupac these two members are the ones you are looking for in that regard.

Warcraft 2 Combat edition is just that, an edition of the game that will be maintained and updated so that it keeps working on your machines and with an anti-hack, not only that but they also created additional utilities for the game that allow you to record replays of your games and bring modern features from new games to the game without changing the gameplay of the original game, like a way to spectate games, a color patch for colorblind people and more.

Now if you want to play the game online this is the last remaining place where you will find players regularly playing the game.
Here you can play with us and host/find games easily. We also have a discord for voice chat.

If you want to learn more about the community and the game you can look at War2combat 's channel on youtube and twitch we make a lot of videos on the game regularly.
You can also find me on twitch I stream games and tournaments. and if you want to join us and play the game with voice chat you can also find our discord channel on en.war2.ru/discord and ask your questions there or just hang out with us.

I will warn you though a lot of players on the server are old-school players some of them will be toxic or rude. But like any other place there are very nice people too, and on discord we made it easy for you guys to know which are the most friendly ones :-)

I hope this helps.

So please fix my pirated game, is that the question? Just to link this from the other post to ensure people know that Warcraft/Starcraft ip is not abandonware:
None of those games are "abandonware". They have been made available free by blizzard on their store, however they still hold full rights to those titles. The site you link provides a re-implementation of the engine via a client nothing more, and blizzard would have them hanging outside their head office if it was any difference.

Well if you check by definition what abandonware means I am sorry, but it fits, Blizzard officially stopped supporting warcraft 1 and 2 and they stopped selling it as well.

Abandonware does not mean and never meant giving up copyrights, so yes you cannot make a game and sell it just the same for obvious reasons.

*now you can check that up for yourself on wikipedia or whatever trustworthy encyclopedia you fancy*

Yes Wargus is a totally different engine for that option yes it is a re-implementation of the game end of story the via a client part, no that means nothing for that matter at least not from what I know of the project.

About War2Combat however:
These are the original game files and executable with a no-cd, an antihack and ddraw patch for it to run on modern os and lastly an edited gateway so that it searches for war2.ru instead of battle.net
This is what it is, no re-implementation here this is pretty much the original game files and engine and executable with modifications.

There is no "re-implementation of the engine via a client" (what would that even mean "via a client"?)

And no I am sorry to ruin your dreams but it is very unlikely that Blizzard will sue war2.ru because they have absolutely nothing to gain from it simple as that.
War2.ru is a free and non-lucrative fan made site it makes no money and they do not deform or tarnish blizzard's warcraft legacy in any way or form.
They do not give or sell anything that has value for Blizzard, they are not costing blizzard any potential profit.
All things considered it is pretty much the opposite.
It keeps the game alive and maintain it for them which means fans can still play the game in an optimal way without blizzard having to do the hard work and assume any responsibility/compatibility for it.
Which is very healthy for them as a marketing brand they only have the benefits not the costs.

As a matter of fact KingHillBilly is one of our member and was a blizzard employee.

That is the simple truth, now if one day war2.ru starts changing the game and make it look very bad and/or start charging and making money on blizzard's back that will be a different story. And this is a pretty good insurance.
As you can trust Blizzard, they wont let anyone tarnish their legacy or make money off their back.

In regards to what I just said this is another good reason for me to play and get the game from there.

I am merely telling what is, Warcraft and Starcraft are not abandonware, or in 99% of cases is there such a thing. Someone somewhere owns the rights to the games in questions. In this example blizzard provide the original games free of charge on their site, so you can obtain them there. I am not blizzard or have any Vested i terest in helping them.
You can believe that or not, I don't care. The op is obviously. Or even in that grey area however with certain sites mentioned.

I am a player I started playing on war2.ru 1 year and a half ago I said it in my first answer, I am not hiding anything.

Abandonware has nothing to do with copyrights just search for the definition if you dont trust wikipedia.
So in that regard no, you are not saying what is noor are you stating the truth.
Accordint to the definition both warcraft and warcraft 2 are Abandonware by the simple fact that Blizzard officially stopped supporting them and selling them.

As I explained, it is also much better that way because copyrights not being revoked means that sites like war2.ru cannot steal money from you or tarnish the game's legacy or company image freely so guess what they dont.

Blizzard knows about war2.ru and it is been there for a long time already if you wonder why that is just read my previous answer for more details on why it actually is healthy for Blizzard to keep fan sites like that around.

Considering how much you are pushing that one site and its modified(?) "abandonware" games in several threads, sorry, at least to me that triggers the red alert regarding malware. And no I am not talking about the Westwood's RTS game either.

In cases like this, i usually ask "Ok, but what's in it for you? Why are you so eagerly asking me to install your freeware or free service or whatever?". Goes both for big Facebooks as well as "abandonware" sites. "Don't worry about malware because you are already using Windows which is pretty much malware." LOL yeah, that almost makes sense.

Anyway, I already have Warcraft 1-2, original retail versions even.

regarding OP's username: some years ago i saw a funny video on youtube - there was a moose running straight on the train tracks while the train was sounding its horn as hard as it could, trying to make the moose turn left or right just to get off the track. but moose stupid and train faster than moose.. so guess what happened in the end! hahaha... (^_^)

Yes indeed I push I want more people to play that awesome game with me and my friends in optimal conditions.
And yes I push push push all day and would do it more if I had more spare time for that just because I want more people to know warcraft 2 is not dead and people still have fun playing it online.

https://www.twitch.tv/trogallart

Here is my twitch channel if you want to see how bad we are pushing to get more people to come back and play with us.

You are affraid of malwares you dont trust me, fine then you can scan the shit out of that file maybe there is a malware maybe I am not aware of my horrible miss-fortune for having downloaded and been playing that game on this horrible and evil russian site for more than a year now with all these unfortunate companions of miss-fortune.

What I can say is I do not think that it is the case I checked for myself I ran some scans on the files but this is only my word right you do not have to take if for granted.

All I say with my point is I am puzzled how fast people trust/forgive real aknowledged and evil buisness practices and wont trust a site as soon as there is .ru in the domain name.

I mean of course you have to be careful, even I do not trust sites blindly.
And of course you dont have to take my word for it if you don't trust me here is what you should do:
You can run a VM, download the file in a secure and quarantined environment and run all the scans you want you can even break the binary apart and compare it to the original game's binary it is not that hard and the binary is very very well known by now lots of site can help you break it apart.

Hell you dont even have to download the game from war2.ru if you already have the game yourself, you can just change your gateway to play on the server.war2.ru instead of battle.net.
The only problem with that is that most experienced players wont want to play with you because you will not have the anti-hack which you can download and install separately anyway.
^And yes you can check that file too, I personally did not because I did not download that file yet :P