For Warcraft?
Imagine a grunt. It's around 300-400 polys... dunno the exact count.
The average unit is about 600-800. Above 1500 is kinda bad, I wouldn't use more than one on a single screen.
And for Warcraft, nothing prolly above 3000...
Those are just my judgements.
Also keep in mind: Each particle is 2 POLIES!
If you have something spewing 1000 particles/second, and have them last for 3 seconds, you whacked on 3000 polies. Just keep that in mind...
--donut3.5--