oh wow that was so long ago... i was always an avid fan of warcraft 1 and 2, then starcraft came out and i was an immediate addict. (icewall, minyun, minkorok, ignitl)ragoon, and a few others wre my handles)
when warcraft III came out i expected it to more or less be an upgraded scarcraft with orcs and humans instead of protoss zerg and human, so i got it asap (mid summer of 2002 i think). i hated it. period. it SUCKED back then lol.
I had been making various turret defences, what are now known as hero sieges, and capture the flags for at least a year. the WC3 setup really annoyed me on how it was totally (more or less) based on the heroes to defend.
understand that starcraft you can use mass numbers and a few upgrades to beat just about anything. in warcraft theres no true massing, better to just buy a few of the best, upgrade alot, and match your atk type against their weak armors.
when i heard that frozen throne would soon be released i had to see if people were already making ok maps, and they were! so i preordered it.
summer of 2003(i remember this info from getting and playing it in a new home i was renting for only that summer, so theres no doubt it was summer of '03) i recieved the frozen throne approx a week or so before they hit most shelves in TX.
as far as preference in the editors? dunno, I've never looking into the RoC only WE. i didnt look into it til i got the frozen throne.
(since then the game has been stolen from me 2 times and lost once. so I've spent about 4x what most people do to play the game)