There’s a THIRD campaign for the undead. So it’s Night Elf first, Blood Elf (human variant) second, Undead third, and a bonus Orc diablo-type campaign you can do at any time. That’s a lotta levels. And here I was thinking the second campaign was the last one. This seems every bit as long as the original game.
Those elf peons (Workers) were slaying me with their voiceovers. I cannot stop laughing. If you thought elves were gay before, I assure you: you have no idea.
Puh-leez. I’ve had it preordered for the last month.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, do not. It’s a question of desire. If you could get a copy of retail Half-Life 2 a week ahead of everyone else, would you? It’s a given that we all have it preordered, so why wait.
Lots. I have a short attention span. What was the question?
I think you could be satisfied if you just bought all these games and scrawled on each box in red crayon “HOMM3:”. sort of a roll your own expansion trick.
You don’t know I was talking about the Heroes series. Maybe I wanted the legendary Incubation series to be brought back to life by Blizzard. :P
I never really understood the complaints about WC3’s interface (in the QT3 review). Starcraft, you’d have a valid case against, but WC3’s was rock-solid. Almost everything you could’ve wanted it to do, it did, and then some.
Like the tabbed subgroup option- hit tab and it flips between your unit types, selecting all of the same type of unit you’ve got highlighted. Hold control and click and just that group responds to the command. What I would’ve give for commands like that in Rise of Nations. Or the group spellcasting commands that starcraft could’ve DESPERATELY used.
From what I saw in the beta, they improved the interface even more for the expansion- adding peon build queues, TA-style waypoint paths, queuing research, creeps in the minimap, followers automatically set to attack, stuff like that. I imagine there’s even more in the final. WC3’s interface is beautiful, in my opinion, leaps beyond that of Age of Mythology or Rise of Nations.
It’s been awhile, but I don’t think WC3 let me stack commands the way I could in TA. I also don’t like the limited group selection in WC3. Just let me lasso 30 units and move them all.
Don’t worry, Bub. It turns out that wumpus is the one who decides what the laws are regarding IP and copyright. It’s well documented in the Everything Else forum.
Don’t worry, Bub. It turns out that wumpus is the one who decides what the laws are regarding IP and copyright. It’s well documented in the Everything Else forum.[/quote]
He is happy to pre-acquire a game while following Cleve around with a piece of lumber beating him about the head and neck for his unethical beliefs/behavior. There is a name for that, but I cannot think of it. Hypocr…no… Hypodermic…no…hippopatamus, that’s it.
Good point Erik, and knowing Wumpus it’s very likely that he’s going to be doing that. I was just teasing him anyway, given his recent Everything Else post on why it’s lame to download a video game or a DVD, given how big those files are (and how you don’t get the extras). Obviously he downloaded Frozen Throne (and came up with this awesome thread title pun) because he just couldn’t help but go for “cool” points by reviewing it before anyone else.
One comment. If you want to make a science out of “fun”, you have to create a positive feedback loop between what people are actually doing online and what you are putting in your games. This is one of the big reasons why Blizzard is so successful.
He is happy to pre-acquire a game while following Cleve around with a piece of lumber beating him about the head and neck for his unethical beliefs/behavior.
Yeah, because hate speech = intellectual property laws. Good one, supernegro.
I’m not in the habit of posting game reviews. I only covered this here because I was struck with how amazingly good this expansion is-- it has exceeeded even my high expectations. I wanted to share that in advance so you guys can plan accordingly.
Now that the game is officially out, I assume we can talk about it. I got tied up with some other things, so I wasn’t able to complete Frozen Throne until tonight.
Granted I’m something of a WC3 fanboy-- primarily because it puts the S back in RTS, with its focus on strict, ultra-low unit caps and economic upkeep penalties to mitigate the “rich get richer” phenomenon.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I’d say this is one of the best expansions I’ve ever played. It’s incredibly diverse in its mission structure, and best of all, it’s a not-so-subtle reimagining of the game which plays to all the strengths of the original design (heroes, balance), while removing a lot of the weaknesses (missing RTS conventions).
In other news, a group of burly men and I will be waiting for you on battle.net with our new “level 1” accounts.
I finished the Reign of Chaos campaign last night after a year long hiatus at the start of the Night Elf chapter in preparation for this thing. Very impressed so far with Blizzard’s expansion.
As you mentioned, the new missions are imaginitive, the upgrades make damned sense and provide satisfying extensions to the formula, and I love the low unit caps and upkeep drawbacks making for a more tightly knit and focused play experience.
Have yet to try multiplayer, but the campaign is great shit.
Also, the skirmish AI on normal is pretty goddamn hard*. The amazing thing is, the AI doesn’t cheat-- it actually builds the same sort of stuff and uses the same strategies you’d see online. The amount of intelligence in the computer play is actually quite remarkable. It is not obviously exploitable, and the sensation of “hey, I’m playing a person” is at times almost tangible.
This feeds into the campaign play as well; many of the levels have you competing against one or more AIs to achieve various objectives (eg, the capture the flag level, the hold multiple points level, etc).
don’t worry, there’s an easy level, and there are even gradations of easy now
