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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."
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
remove the upkeep and the 90 unit limitation? Those two things really killed "classic" Warcraft III for me.
It's been on Emule for well over a week. In fact I THINK it was out over two weeks prior to shipping. I was a beta tester so played it extensively and didn't like it much anyway. (LOVE the WC3 BTW).
For a game that originally had 6 races, then 5, then was scaled down to 4, you'd think the expansion at that price would have one of the races added back! But no. Basically you get:
One new hero for each race. (Admittedly the new undead one kicks ten kinds of ass!)
One new spellcaster (I think)
One new flying unit
A bunch of new tilesets, and a crappy campaign you'll never play.
Some melee changes for levelling your hero (doesn't actually have to venture our to kill creeps anymore, but still gains experience when your other units do)
That's your lot. A LOT of the tweaks and stuff are apparently being added into regular Warcraft 3 (interface changes etc...) so you'll have a lot of it in the patch. I may be missing some more subtle stuff but I'm glad I got to try it out early. Showed me it wasn't worth buying:). In short, I'll be sticking with plain old Warcraft, since we're getting a lot of the stuff anyway:)
In short: I love the original WC3, play it to DEATH, but the expansion just doesn't bring anything really worth having to the table, especially not at that price!