  The most disappointing aspect of $\W$-strings is probably the fact that at
least for the known models one does not recover a physical spectrum that
differs much from that of ordinary string theory. It is hoped that this is not
an intrinsic shortcoming of $\W$-string theory, but rather that it is a
consequence of the $\W$-algebra realizations that have been chosen. In this
note we point out a whole new class of possible $\W$-strings built from
representations of affine Lie algebras via (quantum) Drinfel'd-Sokolov
reduction. Explicitly, we construct a BRST operator in terms of
$\widehat{sl}_3$ currents which computes the physical spectrum of a
$\W_3$-string. As a special case of this construction, if we take a free-field
realization of $\widehat{sl}_3$, we recover the 2-scalar $\W_3$-string. These
results generalize to any $\W$-algebra which can be obtained via quantum
Drinfel'd-Sokolov reduction from an affine algebra.
