Warcraft III: Frozen Throne

Retail Price: S$49.90 (PC/Mac)

By Mok Wen Kai· Urbanwire
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Blizzard Entertainment has a great track record for expansion sets - 1996's Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, 1998's Starcraft: Brood War and 2000's Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction. This year is no exception with the expansion set for Warcraft III: Frozen Throne.

A truly great expansion set adds extra shelf life to the game and by looking at the number of people still playing the 7-year-old Warcraft II, Frozen Throne looks set to break this 7-year record set by its predecessor.

The expansion picks up where the original Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos left off. Following the defeat of Archimonde and his minions of the Burning Legion, the unlikely alliance of the Orcs, Humans and Night Elves strive to fight off the innumerable hoards of the Undead Scourge decimating their homelands. Amid all the seemingly endless conflict, the death knight Arthas and the evil Night elf Illidan seek to control everything around them. You will first be in command of the Night Elves, thereafter leading remnants of the human race and finally, guiding the undead in the final campaign.

Now you would think, "Why did Blizzard leave out the Orcs?"

These green beings are featured in a bonus campaign, where you play as a beastmaster who has his ancestral roots with the Orcs. You befriend the Orc-ish horde and embarks on various missions together. What's so special about this campaign is how it models after Diablo, where you are required to destroy your enemies given a small band of followers instead of an empire and army. This differs from the previous campaigns where you first build up your base before assembling a sizeable assault force to lay siege on your enemies' stronghold.

The single player campaigns in the expansion set are expectedly more difficult than the ones in Reign of Chaos, as they are cleverly designed to make you deviate from clichéd strategies. The new expansion will test your wits and creativity by limiting certain units, sometimes allowing you to manage several groups of armies from the different races.

Frozen Throne includes 9 new heroes, one for each of the 4 races and 5 neutral heroes employable at the taverns if you are willing to fork out a small bag of gold. Players of the original Warcraft III will welcome other features including new units with spell-breaking abilities and novel upgrades such as "research backpack" where certain units are allowed to carry items with them during battle. One of the most important inclusions is a structure that can be built, which allows the player to buy scrolls and potions for his hero. There are also three new environments included in the expansion that players can battle in - Sunken Ruins, Ice Crown and Twisted Meadows.

The new version 1.12 patch for the Frozen Throne expansion incorporates several modifications to the game. This patch includes more affordable units and structures to reduce build time enabling the player to assemble a respectable army faster. The upkeep system has been adjusted slightly so that you can build larger armies without having to incur a penalty to your coffers. There is also a new weapon class system that determines how much damage a unit sustains from a specific weapon class. Players who decide to go against the computer in skirmish mode can choose the difficulty setting of the AI (Artificial Intelligence). This is a huge improvement over the previous version where amateur gamers were often overwhelmed within the first 10 minutes into the game against the insurmountable odds presented by an unfair competition from the AI.

Multi-player options in Battle.net has improved, allowing players to form clans of 9 players and above. The clan members can then form their own private chat channel and chart their own ranking systems. They can also compete against other clans to climb up the dedicated clan ladder. New multi-player maps and user modifications offer more hours of Battle.net fun.

Overall, Frozen Throne is an excellent expansion pack, greatly extending the possibilities of the original Warcraft III.Anyone who calls himself a great fan of the game must get his hands on it despite the hefty price tag of S$49.90. Blizzard Entertainment has once again proven that it is the maestro of expansion packs.

System Requirements

Computer: 400 MHz Pentium II or equivalent, or a 400 MHz G3 processor or better.

Operating Systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Warcraft III requires Mac OS® 9.0 or higher, or Mac OS X® 10.1.3 or higher.

Memory: Warcraft III requires 128 MB of RAM. Virtual Memory should be enabled on computers running pre-Mac OS X versions of the Mac OS®.

Controls: A keyboard and mouse are required.

Drives: A hard drive with at least 550 MB of free space (in addition to your Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos installation), and a 4x speed CD-ROM drive are required for installation and play.

Video: 8MB 3D video card (TNT, i810, Voodoo 3, Rage 128 equivalent or better) with DirectX 8.1 support. For Mac OS® systems, a video card consisting of an ATI Technologies or nVidia chipset with at least 16 MB of memory is required.

Sound: A DirectX-compatible 16-bit sound card is recommended. Warcraft III will work with the built-in sound features of the Mac OS®.

Access to Blizzard Entertainment's online gaming service, Battle.net, requires a low-latency, active Internet connection rated at 28.8 Kbps or faster.

Multiplayer games played over a LAN require an active connection to a TCP/IP network.

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