Frozen Throne semi-review

Having played this a bit, I'll say what's surprised me so far.

First off, this is the best expansion I've seen yet. It actually changes the way the game plays.

In any case, so ABF knows, I was right. There ARE battleships as well as transports. More than that, rather than just the goblin shipyards, there are also human, night elf, and so on shipyards (all neutral buildings mind you) with unique ships. More than THAT, there are a lot of neutral monsters and such that can traverse water all on their own. This means ship combat has returned better than WC2! It's sweet indeed.

The naga are so well developed they are like THIS close to being their own seperate race. You even get to control them during at least one single player mission. They aren't quite developed enough for multiplayer though. With some work and a massive patch, maybe Blizzard could actually provide us with a 5th race.

The Orc campaign is the one dissappointment, though it's a very minor thing. Only the first chapter is included. When you beat it, it says you can download the rest when Blizzard has completed them from their site. I personally can't wait for them to complete these chapters. Even though the Orc campaign is pretty much just a diablo-like set of missions, it's still pretty fun since you have multiple units all the time. In the first chapter though you don't once get to control an orc base. Probably won't in the other two from the looks of it.

The rest of it is very nice indeed. The story so far is in fact NOT the Brood War ripoff some of us had assumed, especially with the last campaign being undead. A lot of what happens during the campaigns is uniquelly warcraft.

The new heros and units don't just ADD to strategy like in Brood War. They totally change the strategies one uses. Hard to list examples but with all the new weird moves added it's very different feeling. Fortunatly, a lot of the changes (like food cap limit) aren't applied to Reign of Chaos, meaning you can play a truly "original" mode of play and not just Frozen Throne minus Frozen Throne units, should you want to play the old style.

Oh yes, air combat is muchly expanded thanks to the added air combat units. Not many were added but it was enough to get it near Starcraft's level of air combat. This is yet another total change in how the game plays. While Reign of Chaos had some air units that were great to eventually upgrade to, as in super powerful creatures, Frozen Throne has a nice flying armada to choose from with FAR more than just power to draw one to them, and thus they will be wanting at least some of the special moves the new flyers have. Air combat is not just a smash fest in the sky now. It's fully developed and something people will WANT to do. Sea combat is very similar, and now dominating the seas will be equally important.

What I haven't done yet is see how many neutral shipyards are in the Frozen Throne "standard" multiplayer maps. I should hope a lot of them are in there.

Oh, and one particular Pandaran brewmaster plays a part in the main story, the Orc story. Though his story is very much like the weird creature who joins one's party in an RPG. He's tagging along to find exotic ingredients for his ales.

Sounds great! I should be able to get it within a week or two. :)

Did you know Capcom has the publishing rights for Warcraft 3 in Japan?

http://www.capcom.co.jp/pc/

Odd...

Well I beat the game, and I love it. I will say that the story leads me to believe Blizzard may be planning on making the Orc story more than just a "bonus"... While some moments were Brood War based, a lot was original. I will say that Frozen Throne is a tad on the easy side. It's got the same difficulty level as Reign of Chaos. Still, it was very fun and I can always play it on Hard Mode. I just would have liked more of a challenge.

Anyway, the Human Alliance campaign should REALLY be called the Blood Elf rebels campaign. After the fiirst mission, not a single human is under your control and you loose your association with the alliance. They even go as far as to replace all human and dwarf units with elven counterparts.

The Undead campaign splits into two seperate stories which you go back and forth between through the whole thing. Sylvanas is the main character of one while Arthas is the main character of the other. While one might think Arthas is the Kerrigan clone, it's actually Sylvanas who acts most like her. She frees herself from under the rule of the lich king and forms a band of undead called the "forsaken". She wishes to basically destroy Arthas. The game ends without resolving her story though, except to say that the very last outpost of humanity in the East is wiped out by her. Arthas eventually has to kill Illidan, who was sent by demonlord Kilja'den (I dunno, all demon names sound alike to me, but it should sound familiar, he took over the legion so you know, which is most certainly still around) to destroy the Frozen Throne. Since Arthas has "story power" meaning all HIS goals will ALWAYS be accomplished, even over the wills of other heros :D , he wins. Arthas was SUPPOSED to free the lich king after that, but instead he smashes the throne and the lich king and Arthas fuse together into one being. The End.

The Orc Campaign is the founding of Duratar... at FIRST. Then, humans arive from the East and for some reason begin attacking the Orc outposts. After Thrall was betrayed in an attempt to parley with these people, he sends the character you play as to deliver a message personally to Jaina to get an explanasion. That's when it ends. My theory is the final survivors of the East managed to escape and go west (gee, what's with humans and running across the sea to the west in terror after being horribly defeated?), and now some old hatreds have arrisen when they realize the Orcs have already claimed this land (the next chapter is actually called Old Hatreds according to the VERY sharewarelike "Get the next two chapters!" screen at the end of this chapter). I certainly think there's more to this then Blizzard wants us to believe. The humans have to survive somehow, and I hardly think the Orcs are as uninvolved with the affairs of the East as Blizzard is telling us. I would think the idea of a new Lich King who wants to rule all of everything would at least SOMEWHAT concern the Orcs, since they live on some of "everything".

Arthas rocks!

I don't have the game but can't help read some spoilers about its ending anyway... and of course there is WoW which says plenty about what will happen...

Anyway.

Kil'jaeden SHOULD be a familiar name -- he showed up in Warcraft II, remember... he's the demonlord who told the Orcs to go find the Tomb of Sargeras, I believe. Second in command of the Legion before its head died in RoC...

Oh, and now we need a major explanation -- how in the world do the Humans/Dwarves/etc. keep an empire in Azeroth? It seems that in TFT they wipe out the rest of the Human nations... so will there be a second expansion that explains how the Undead are pushed back and the Humans and Dwarves re-establish civilization there...

Oh, and new Human-Orc hatred was ineviable... even non-demon controlled the two definitely don't seem the type to be able to get along...

Decided the whole lot of what I said is a huge spoiler for those who haven't even played Reign of Chaos yet.

Yeah I know who he is, I just couldn't remember how to spell the guy's name. I mean, just to make it clear, Frozen Throne even explains who the guy is (and he's a large fellow, larger than Archimonde).

I haven't read up on World of Warcraft. I'm not really a MMRPG kinda person, because of well, money, though if World of Warcraft is somehow miraculously free online play, I'd certainly play it. So, the humans have reestablished themselves in Lorderon according to that eh? I imagine something major would have to happen between Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft for that to work. Either yet ANOTHER expansion will be released, or it'll all be worked out in the next few chapters of the Orc campaign. I still highly suspect Blizzard is hiding something major about those chapters... I also think the band of humans attacking the orcs in chapter 1 have nothing to do with Jaina. They may be remnants of the second war that were lost for a long time and never heard the news. I could also be wrong of course. It's just strongly hinted at that these humans are acting on their own, possibly with a mindset like the racist captain of the last outpost of humanity for instance.

And also, near the end of Reign of Chaos, they did seem to get along very well indeed. In fact, in Frozen Throne it's VERY obvious that Thrall has a massive amount of respect for Jaina and a strong friendship with her (which is why he nearly fell into a trap to kill him, though I don't think they would have been able to do that even if he had gone). It seems from the names of the upcoming chapters that the second one deals with either the reemerging of the old hatreds or possibly the defeating of what's left of the old hatreds. Are the orcs and humans enemies again in World of Warcraft or something?

No, the Humans aren't controlling Lordaeron... just Azeroth (and in Kalimdor of course), I think, and the Dwarves are in Khaz Modan...

Also in WoW, those Undead led by Sylvanas -- the Forsaken -- are a playable faction in the game... they are allied with the Orcs in that game, but its a alliance of convenience -- they want to kill everyone, starting with the other Undead and then the mortal races. Nice people... :)

I'm not sure if in WoW Orcs and Humans are actually at war or if they just dislike eachother... haven't really read up on that. But I will say this... Jaina might respect the Orcs, but there are plenty of other Human leaders who won't...

You double posted twice now and twice messed up the spoiler tag.

Anyway, I just read up on the game and it's interesting. Forgot about Azaroth the nation. Nice to know humans survived enough to still have a kingdom. I'll be interested in seeing what goes on with the Orc and Human relations. The orc's temporary alliance with the forsaken is sure to VERY quickly go horribly wrong one way or another. The Orcs with their new determinism for freedom certainly don't trust someone with the ability to possess anyone she wants easily, and of course the Forsaken love to kill things, things that are alive, so you know, they'll be dead.

The main worry though is Arthas/Nerzul, who now runs pretty much most of Lorderon. There's also Kil'jaeden who is still ruler of the burning legion, which is certainly still around (though with three less dread lords mind you, thanks to Sylvanas). Also, what became of the blood elves (last of the high elves) and the naga? They were all serving under Illidan when he was killed at the end of Frozen Throne (assuming Undead truly is the full ending and the upcoming Orc chapters don't end up revealing more about this issue), so I wonder if they all managed to escape, all were killed by Sylvanas, or all were later enslaved by the burning legion (that's most likely, Illidan was following an order directly from Kil'jaeden when he was killed).

Its a MMORPG, so that alliance might last a while... they generally don't change those things when its a MMORPG, I'd think...

Hmm, the Elves... well we all hope that some High Elves escaped and went back to the Alliance, right? You can't kill off all the High Elves!

Oh, and yes, the Undead main force in Lordaeron is the main threat... I'm sure that in WoW there'll be some Lordaeron zones to go to full of undead to fight...

No, but they already destroyed the only source of the High Elve's power when they destroyed the sun well.

As I said above, the Blood Elves are the stars of the so called human campaign. Throughout it, you don't get control of a single high elf, though many blood elf units have the same abilities as their high elf counterparts, they get it from another source. It seems the blood elves are addicted to magic as always, and are grabbing it from any source they can get their hands on, eventually depending on demonic energies. I'm sure many high elves escaped and didn't actually become blood elves, but they would have to find a new source of magic. Probably magical scrounging will be enough to explain it since that's what the blood elves did at the start of the campaign. As for multiplayer, well story is absent from that so having all the forces there are in the game is no problem.

But Blood Elves ARE High Elves...

Did I not make it clear I understood that above? I assumed when you spoke of high elves surviving you weren't including the blood elves since they are in fact a bit different now.

In the absence of real evidence all we can do is guess... and hope that not ALL the High Elves went demonic in their quest for magic after the occurances of the end of WC3...

Prince Keal and the Naga are still lefted on icecrown glacier , Ner'Zhul is alive again in Arthas stolen body, So he will likely finnish Ilidans forces so I suspect blizzard may add a new exspanion were they are rescued by a powerful new freind.
Blizzard never usally makes more then one exspansion but Rob pardo producer and co founder of blizzard said anything is possible and they could make one though they have no plans right now, but if everyone gets a surge of new ideas they could do it.

The Forsaken undead are in WOW now.

But the scourge is sort of dessapeared and I doubt Ner'Zhul would take a picnic knowing his enemies still live.

If they make another expo I hope the orcs get the finnishing role and not be thrown aside as Ner'Zhul is a serious enemy and even traitor towards them, being the one who sold them to the legion years ago when Ner'Zhul was the elder Shaman and later warcheif before he was turned into the Lich king.

I hope Khadgar comes back, As heck dreanor still exist known as Outland and if orcs could survive dreanor implosion why not Khadgar and the human expedition ,Turalyon,Alleria,Krudane,Dannath.

Plus Khadgar would be pissed at Ner'Zhul and maybe even feel responsible for Lordearon and his home Dalaran destruction. failing to kill the orc on dreanor.







[ spoiler ]
Want to know who is responsible for attacking the orcs , check the cover of warcraft II and see the human with the cool hat , Thats him the admiral who attacked durotar, you will find his special made skin in the build editor .


SPOILER!

Its Jaina's father, Admiral Adealin proudmoore.[ /spoiler ]