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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.
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
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!
They raised the cap by 10 food at each upkeep stage (low upkeep starts at 50, high at 80, and unit max is 100). I'm sorry you don't like innovation :(
I prefer the low unit cap. It makes keeping your units alive a higher priority. You have to think how to create/group units. In starcraft you could simpley make 70 zerglings fully upgraded for damage and take out just about any town, then when they are all dead make a dozen or so slower units for clean up while the other player is trying to rebuild his town.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
The upkeep and the unit limitation are and will continue to be one of the strong points of Warcraft III. It's the best way I've found to penalize the mass early zerging, and give a tangible benefit to those who economize.
There are dozens of RTSes out there that don't have upkeep or unit limits built in. Good old Total Annihilation/TA: Kingdoms. C&C Generals. SW:GB lets you set the limit up to 250 (though prepare to get swarmed by the computer, even on easy). Or you could try to adapt your strategy to a new situation. A challenge other than just trying to build the most units before the other guy.
Give them some cash, as the binary versions are better than the source (they've got some propriatry stuff in there). Honestly, I paid a tiny sum about 6 months ago, and so far I've been able to play WCIII, Civ 3 and Counterstrike with no problems what-so-ever (then I've got Quake3 and Mutant Storm as native Linux binaries, but that's a different story).
Yes, official support would be nice, and it's a shame that only the likes of Carmack, UT developers and Bioware are willing to give us Linux gamers what we want, but the more noise we make, the more likely people like Blizzard are to take notice. They'd also start paying attention if TransGaming start posting profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars (so go pay them).
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
...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 love Blizzard today, and always do. I could care less about whether Blizzard is open or closed source, because I buy their software to do one thing: play it. I don't pay a continual subscription fee (or license renewal fee) to do so; Battle.net is free to use.
Fact of the matter is, I have thoroughly enjoyed every game that Blizzard has created. I can't say that about *any* other developer out there, though some come close. Blizzard's games aren't for everyone, but the one thing they do know is their audience, and every game is polished very heavily for that target group.
Don't get me wrong, I love many other games of all genres; there's very little I don't like (one of the benefits of being easily amused, I suppose). But I have always been able to count on picking up a Blizzard game from the shelf confident that I'd take it home and have a game that installs without compatibility issues and is fun to play.
As for the closed source whining? I doubt anyone is going to use the game engine of Starcraft to run a hospital's server, or use the Diablo II engine as the basis for an open source OS, or something of that matter. And those folks who were working on Freecraft? Hey, maybe they could have done something a little less blatantly obvious and would never have been bothered. ("hey, I know, let's make an open-source RPG that achieves a lot of what Bioware's games do!" "I know, let's call it 'Faldur's Gate!' No one can complain about that, it's not even remotely indicative of a rip-off from the original product!")
Sorry if this seems a bit of a flame; I don't intend it to be that harsh. I just grow weary of everything being either open-source or evil. It's like the hyper-environmentalists who chain themselves to every piece of driftwood because a new beach area is opening up or something. I believe in fighting for a cause, but I also believe in picking battles that really matter.
Mmmmm.... Pigeons. Sometimes, they come with notes attached...it's like...a fortune cookie with wings.
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?