The storyline of WC3:RoC continues with FT, and it continues well. Illidan, who had been MIA at the end of RoC, returns, with the hope of crushing the Lich King for one of the last demon lords still around after the defeat of Archimonde. Other returning characters are Tyrande Whisperwind, Furion Stormrage, Prince (Now king) Arthas, Slyvanis Windrunner, and more. The story is great, and its more intriguing than the one in RoC, and we also get some backstory relating to the original two Warcraft games, which is great. Its amazing how Blizzard managed to integrate the stories of the three games. I haven't delved into multiplayer much, because one drawback of this game is that everyone is now a Level 1 player to start off, so, as a former Level 5 guy, I'm now playing Level 10 RoC players who have become the same level as me, which is intimidating. A couple of drawbacks are the lack of cinematics (Only two), and the sad absence of an Orc campaign, replaced by a bonus campaign designed to showcase the new advances in the map editor. While the new advances are neat, nothing can replace good old fashioned orcs. Also, some of the new multiplayer maps are terrible. They brought back boats in this game, but the only real benefits to the boats are troop transport. While there are battleships and frigates, they are really only there to protect the transports. The addition of boats was actually a more annoying thing, as now there are missions and maps that split everything into islands, and you need to get boats just to get them. Overall, this game is great, and a worthy addition to any PC game collection.
This game will go down as one of the best expansion packs ever. It has more new content, units, heroes, and other items than most games do let alone an expansion pack. You have 26 missions plus 3 missions from the Warcraft III demo. And one of the missions (called Act I) contained 15 quests that had 41 sub-quests to be completed, and though it wasn't that hard, there were a couple of challenges here. It took me (according to the game time counter) almost 2 hours to complete, but with the cut scenes, it was closer to 3 hours. The best thing (and I probably shouldn't mention this but I will) was that when you finished this bonus campaign, it said to be continued at the end. Then it informed you that you would soon be able to download Act II and Act III for free from Blizzard once it was completed. So free stuff is on the way. As for the 25 mission single player game, I found it quite challenging (unlike one of the other reviewers). These missions seemed longer and harder than Warcraft III. I think any fan of Warcraft will love it. Another cool feature is when doing melee attack and armor upgrades, you can do all available upgrades at once instead of waiting for one to finish and then have to go back to that building and start another. This expansion pack has more stuff packed in it than any other (except maybe Total Annihilation: Core Contigency) and like I said before, more than some games. If you liked Warcraft III, i suggest you get this expansion. If your like me, you will like all features of this game. I liked it better than the original.
I just finished the single user part of this game. It is a great game. I am not going to do a full review of this game since it has been done elsewhere. I am just going to record a few things I noticed while playing this game.
1. There is no new orc campaign in the main story arc. The bonus Orc campaign is not part of the main story. Also, it plays more like Diablo than Warcraft.
2. The bonus campaign only contains the first act, but with promise that 2 new episodes can be downloaded. Does this mean that future episodes are not free? I wonder if Blizzard is trying to start a subscription service.
3. This program (v.1.10) suffers from serious memory leaks. This means that eventually your computer will run out of virtual memory. If you are running an advanced operating system like Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you can just restart your program every few hours. I shudder to think what will happen if you were to be running Windows 98. However, Blizzard is very good about updates. So, if you log on to Battle Net at all, the problem will probably be fixed through a update download through Battle Net eventually.
"This is an entrancing game. Once you start, you cannot stop. Valuable enhancement to warcraft iii."
"This game was wonderful. I love it!!! 2nd favorite game, behind starcraft: brood wars"
