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Warcraft III Expansion Released, Reviewed
Vladimir Niksic writes "According to the official Blizzard site, Frozen Throne, the long-awaited expansion to Warcraft III is out. The review at GameSpy marks it 'another quality expansion that plays like a full game.'" There's also a review at ActionTrip which praises the new features which "enhance every facet of gameplay, great storytelling, [and] varied mission types", but notes the $35 price as "..a bit steep for an expansion pack."
Am I the only person that thought about my outhouse in the middle of February?
One thing that struck me about this expansion was that the missions were in general a lot more interesting and varied. There were fewer of the plain "destroy all the enemy bases" missions, but they didn't make them all the standard "hero and some men, no base, only found reinforcements" RPG missions that were always the alternative either. For example, there's a mission where you have to assault an enemy base. You have a base, but no gold mine. You find gold in the enemy base to build reinforcements. You also have a squad of stealth assassin/saboteur type guys that you have to sneak around to defeat some of the base's defenses. Pretty cool.
That said, I found it rather easy... I have to replay it on the Hard setting.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Who is setting up the bit torrent for this?!
first of all, as with all Blizzard products, the production value is very high. Not only does the gameplay feel tight and sturdy, but even the menus are in the exact right place and have the exact right options.
... but still not exactly feature film quality. the story's top-notch though. great characters.
... THAT looks tasty ...
graphics: for their first 3D engine, it certainly is pretty. i can even play it on my laptop, with it's pseudo-3d graphics card. the individual models are stylistic -- bright, and cartoonish -- although very polygonal. that's understandable, though, seeing as there are often several dozen units on the screen at one time. i have noticed virtually no slowdown even during enormous battles wit multiple spell effects flying around on top of all the twitching polygons. that amazes me.
the new units are fun, and the single player campaign is more interesting and engaging than the original WarCraft III campaign was. Voice acting is, as is typical for Blizzard, somewhat above average for a video game
multiplayer is really the only thing i can complain about. i played literally hundreds of games online during the beta, and was ranked in the top 500 (of 30,000 participants). my reaction is that online play is actually LESS varied and strategic than WarCraft III classic. yes, there are more units, but because of changes to how armor and damage works (and other tweaks), there are actually fewer viable strategies. in addition, although no one race is overpowered, some matchups are are a foregone conclusion -- night elves are at an undeniable disadvantage vs the undead, for example. even with all the new units available, the average game at the highest levels of competition in The Frozen Throne actually features less unit variety than classic WarCraft III.
i suppose that's a gripe that is not likely to effect the majority of players very heavily, however. it's still a great game, just not the home run that Brood War was.
now World of WarCraft
i could live a little longer in this prison
for DAYS. You're behind the times. Look on bytemonsoon.com or suprnova.org, probably still plenty of people seeding it.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I'm still waiting on the Linux version... hello blizzard!! Linux has almost equal desktop share to the Mac and we still get no official support :(
In linux libertas
remove the upkeep and the 90 unit limitation? Those two things really killed "classic" Warcraft III for me.
I can't remember - Isn't Blizzard an evil closed source empire ? Let me check my calendar...
I have never once played a game that is a "forgone" conclusion.
NE is no weaker against UD than they are against HU or Orc or NE. What, they go ghouls and you go archers? Duh, of course you die. Hunts > Ghouls. Oh, they went all fiends and you went Hunts? Duh, Fiends > hunts. They went all necros? Duh, you have fairy dragons, which IIRC DO stack. Couple that with some hunts, moutain giants, and a Druid of the Claw, boom, one dead undead. The other thing is that NE has the best Tier 1 unit in the Huntress PLUS they get Tier 1 Siege, which utterly owns the UD (most undead players fast tech, for some idiotic reason).
Yes, NE suffers from a severe lack of AoE spells, which UD has plenty of, but NE has a few other tricks up their sleeve.
One, they have the Druids. Get a Druid of the Claw, roar before battle, couple that with a Priestess of the Moon, you're looking at about another 6-10 points of damage for each of your units, if not more. Two, they have the Mountain Giant now. Even a competant player has issues when there are 2 MGs taunting one after the other. Three, T1 siege. Four, Moon Wells, its very hard to kill a NE hero in the right hands, especially the Warden. She gets hurt, blinks back to base, refreshes, boom, you're battle damaged, shes at full. Five, the dreaded Keeper of the Grove Entagle rush. UD has problems countering that, unless they try to counter it, in which case they spent minerals that doesnt really help them.
I was in the Beta too. The game isn't 100% balanced, but its not as unbalanced as you seem to think.
NecrologyX, Azeroth.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
oh come on, this gets posted 20 times every time something related to Blizzard comes up. fact is, slashdot readers aren't a single entity, and therefore don't require a consistent philosophy that we all adhere to. i like Blizzard. you don't have to.
i could live a little longer in this prison
...the main two things that prevented the game from degenerating into a "build up a horde of zerglings and rush" scene, much like every other RTS? The same two things that encourage an active strategy and decision-making?
Upkeep is an excellent realistic step. For those who don't get out much, no nation has ever raised an army by paying its soldiers an initial fee, and nothing else for the rest of their career. I don't imagine Orcs are much different.
The 90-unit limitation is partially there to put a maximum load on the graphics engine, and partially to "strongly encourage" more active play, i.e., you can't just camp in your base building up a 500-member horde before finally setting foot outside.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
but notes the $35 price as "..a bit steep for an expansion pack."
I don't know, considering the amount of content they have introduced into this expansion pack, I don't see the price as being too steep at all, IMHO.
I've seen mention of it for $25 online, but can't seem to find a good store. As nice as free shipping and a $10 coupon for future purchases is from www.ebgames.com, I'd rather just get it cheap from the start. Any ideas?
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
... it's a shame that only the likes of Carmack, UT developers and Bioware are willing to give us Linux gamers what we want ...
Such games are not developed for Linux because of gamers, the ports are justified due to the use of Linux servers. Once you have the server, the client game is a small incremental cost. If the client game had to "pay for" all of the Linux development it would never happen. Most Linux gamers dual boot or emulate so there is no new income generated by a client, see post above.
Exceptions are primarily "charity work". Id once stated in Game Developer magazine that Linux versions of their games made no business sense. That Linux is supported because they feel it is cool to do so.
... Linux has almost equal desktop share to the Mac and we still get no official support
Linux desktop numbers are highly debatable but I won't bother arguing that point.
The Linux and Mac situations are not comparable. Mac users can not effectively use the Win32 version of the game, Linux user can. Mac users have no dual boot option and "emulation" involves emulating a "foreign" CPU not merely an API, way too slow for games. From a developer's perspective Linux gamers are already customers since most buy Win32 versions and dual boot or emulate. Doing a Linux port would not generate a new sale, it would merely replace a Win32 sale with a Linux sale. There is no new money, hence no port. Basically the Linux game market is not all those who would buy a Linux version of a game. It is only those who would never buy the Win32 version but would buy a Linux version.
When starcraft came out, why would people still consider playing war2?
THE SHIPS!
Having sea battles was one of the biggest hopes I had for war3 when it first came out. The least they could have done was give the giant turtles a cameo appearance. Alas me lads, no boats be sailing with this shipment.
I lost interest in warcraft my brother had the beta but I just wasn't interested. I'd look at the screen load up, and reminise about the days of sea battle... when it loaded i'd just hit exit and go sit it my room.
1. Blizzard won't go Linux for a long time. If you want to run Blizzards games on an *nix-based/like system, get a Macintosh (shameless plug, I know. But I'm just speaking the truth).
2. Blizzard will never, ever, never remove creeps, the harsh food-limit and upkeep. Producer Robert Pardo has said many, many times that those things are to stay and will never be removed from the game. If Blizzard removed the, what would the game be? Starcraft in a fantasy world with heroes and a fourth race? Not pretty in my opinion.
3. Open Bnet sucks. They're saying it's open source blah blah blah for good use for those with no internet connection yadda yadda. But all it's being used for is to play pirated versions of the games. It was used during the original Warcraft 3 beta, and it was in fact, used during this actual beta of the expansion set too.
4. 35 dollars is quite a low price. It's not much different than the price that was put on Starcraft's Expansion set Brood War. Nobody complained back then about the price -- gamers today are spoiled because of warez and expect everything to be put out for free. Sorry, but market economy don't work that way. Trust me that when I say that you will get value for your money, you will get value for your money. Thing is that Blizzard is a very different company from the other companies out on the market. They actually make GOOD expansions to their games with much content and thought behind them. They don't slap some small extra things in a box to spice up what was already big in the original, but they improve the flaws and faults of the original instead. Almost like a sequel in my opinion.
5. Ships will make a triumphant return to Warcraft 3, but that will be in single player only. However, there will still be ships in multiplayer in form of mercenary ships purchasable at goblin shipyards. So yes, ships are back! They did it to please you Warcraft 2-fanatics!
Last of all is the cool thing that Blizzard has basically added a fifth race to this expansion set. Not playable, but in the single player campaign they have their own buildings and have workers who mine gold -- and everything. Damn cool! Now if only somebody could do a hack or something...
Finally (just to add some more text to lengthen this post out), the departure of the recent workers of Blizzard have nothing to do with this game at all. Three of those were who worked on the Diablo-series while the fourth one worked for public relations. They have basically nothing to do with this game except that they happen to work in the same company, and do occasional voices for the games (Bill Roper, the PR-guy, did the Grunt voice in Warcraft 3).
Any more questions?
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?