Rating: 
Summary: Blizzard rocks! (Slightly Spoilery)
Review: I was never a huge fan of RTS games. I tried Diablo and hated it, I just never really got into them. I think it wasn't that the genre wasn't for me, I just hadn't discovered the beauty of Warcraft yet. When I decided to give Warcraft a try, I was hooked. WCIII kept me at my computer for weeks. I played non-stop, I was obsessed!! I've been waiting for Frozen Throne to come out just so I could experience that feeling all over again and Blizzard doesn't disappoint.Along with an extension of the storyline, there's a new race (although they don't have their own campaign), more focus on the Blood Elves, Illidan becomes a more central character -- great storyline. It's a really natural progression in the storyline although it doesn't feel as epochal as the 'Reign of Chaos' storyline, but perhaps Blizzard is saving that for the next WCIII expansion ... ;) There's a few new models, the shop building is cool, the new heroes (including the neutral ones) are cool (two words: Pandaren Brewmaster), and just overall I was really rather impressed. Considering how much time has passed since WCIII Reign of Chaos was released, Blizzard really outdid themselves here. There are a TON of optional side quests, which really expand the game playing experience for me and a lot of secrets that really add more fun, if that's even possible. A few complaints though: -The Orc RPG isn't finished, I am bummed about this, I am dying to find out what happens! I'm willing to be patient and wait for the download though.
-No Naga campaign, I was really hoping for one. They are thrown in almost as a plot device and I really hope Blizzard explores their origins, their reasons for being in Azeroth and they become a more integral part of the story other than a foil for Illidan.
-No Orc campaign for that matter, they're off doing their own thing in the Mini-RPG
-Too few cinematics; I'm a big RPG fan and love Square's FF series and Blizzard does a really great job with their cinematics, but they were sorely lacking in this game. Where in ROC there were several, I believe there's only 2 in Frozen Throne. My complaints about this game aren't important enough or numerous enough to discourage anyone from buying this game. If you loved Reign of Chaos, you will love it. Even if you don't think you will like it, try it. I'm not about to spoil the ending for anyone, but Blizzard is most definitely going to make another WCIII expansion after this one; best cliffhanger since Bobby Ewing showed up in the shower on Dallas.
Rating:
Summary: Tense and totally replayable
Review: The best thing about this expansion pack is that it has retooled the economy of WC3: Reign of Chaos, and has placed the four races on a much more balanced playing field. On top of which, the recently released Frozen Throne 1.12 patch makes a multitude of changes to the 1.07 version, furthering the equitability of this fine game. Building costs have been drastically reduced for starters. This leaves you with more money to spend on troops. The upkeep levels have been increased to 50/80/100 for no, low and high upkeep respectively. Larger armies hence play a larger role in the game. New heroes have been added, all of which are quite good, and modifications have been made to the attack and defence systems. For example, heroes now do 'hero' damage, which deals 100% damage to everything, except fortified buildings. Gryphon Riders, Frost Wyrms and Chimearas all do 'magic' damage, which is best against heavy armour (Orcs, Knights etc). These are just a couple of the many changes made to Reign of Chaos. Most, especially after you install the patch, you won't even notice. But combined they make the game much more exciting. The single player game is good, if not a little easy on normal, but that's okay. Play it on hard instead! But, the multiplayer, and I know every other person who has played Warcraft 3 says this... the multiplayer is gold! Pure gold baby! I never get sick of it. Even games against the computer are very good as well. The computer is a solid, thinking competitor and often gets the better of me, so it's always a race against the clock to get all aspects of your army up and running smoothly. If you've got Warcraft III, you must get this expansion. It improves what I already considered to be one of the best games I've ever played.
Rating:
Summary: No words to explain this game
Review: This is the best expansion to a game possible. I thought starcraft was good but Blizzard went out of its way to design the game concept. I am at a lost of words over this. I think I'll go and play it right now.
Rating:
Summary: This Doesn't Often Happen in the Movies!!
Review: What I mean is the sequel here outdoes the original game. Blizzards Warcraft III was a long awaited high-end 3D title with some innovation as combining an RPG (Role-Playing Game) questing game with a RTS (Real-Time Strategy) war game. The idea, although not totally original, had never really been done as successfully as they did it. Unfortunately, (although the game was very good) it had a number of things that disappointed fans of the original game, those who had come to expect so much of Blizzard. The Frozen Throne corrects most of those issues, adds some other nice features, and one of the most innovative single player mission series I've ever seen in this genre. I've played most of the DUNE, C&C, Starcraft, and other RTS series for years, and even an RTS addict like myself has to confess to a little boredom with the basic format. The general rule of single player RTS games is you send out gathering units to bring in gold, wood, crystal, gas, oil, or whatever thing gives you the purchasing power to build your base structures. You build a base, upgrade it, get a lot of fighting units, and then go and destroy the enemy bases. I've played at least 3/4 of the missions thus far, and perhaps two could be held to that strategy.
What they did do was craft several scenarios where you had detailed, specific quests, and resources if needed they were uncovered along the way. When bases were used, they were more often than not, already built up and ready to go. New units, heroes and such were generally on the high end of the tech tree. This made it so that was little need for the 101, learning-curve missions, usually provided for new players. The learning method employed, (if you can call it one) is intuition and problem solving. Meaning, in various missions you will have a need to use some of the new powers. For instance, I must have spent the majority of a maze-type mission trying to figure out why I couldn't get to certain power-ups. Then I realized that one of my hero's powers, a "blink", allowed him to teleport a short distance. That power included the ability to go up, or down a height level. When I began using this, I then discovered that there were still some areas I couldn't get to on the map, because they had not been explored. I had no flying units to explore them, so I didn't know how to get there. Finally, I realized that a power contained with an old standard unit, was an owl that could perch in a tree, and view an area. This opened up an area for me to "blink" to, and gain the power-ups desired. The Orc missions are all questing, and almost like a traditional RPG. There was no base building, or any unit construction at all in the Orc missions. You explore areas, find items, and fight monsters. You can go up levels, and become stronger by spending more time fighting monsters. I put my heroes on patrol in one area, and they killed their way back and fourth for over an hour. This allowed me to gain money for weapons, armor, and move up a few levels. The Orc Campaign ends by promising future missions to be posted, (for free download) on Battle.Net, Blizzards online multiplayer server. One better thing is that they made some decent new powers for the heroes. In WC III the original, most of the powers could be found in some form in the original Warcraft and Warcraft II games. They were not always with the same characters but few original spells were incorporated. It seems strange because with four races instead of two, you would expect to get double the types of spells, but it didn't work out that way in practice. Many spells heroes could have had were passive abilities. Others like a heal spell, were incorporated in many forms with different units. The new expansion changes that by adding several new, and fairly original, useful, spells for its characters. On the RPG front many new power-up items were added, with widely varied power levels. I'm not sure how this carries over to the online game, but the right combo of power-ups can make a medium level hero perform like a high level hero. I've seen items that add as many as 15 total attribute points. In the original game you were lucky if you found a plus 3 item for any single attribute. Many items took one of the valuable six slots in your hero's pack and added only one attribute point. They've also added many quick, no-pack, power-ups that are consumed as soon as they are picked up. Like other RPG games, they now have unique, and historical relic items that often add extra-special abilities. In other words it is a great game, and much improves on the original release. Hopefully Blizzard will now look to do for Starcraft, what they did for the world of WC III, but not make us wait 3 years for it to happen.
Rating:
Summary: Great Expansion to a Great Game
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Fun, just... fun.
Review: A fun game. Can you only buy one game this year? Maybe reconsider. Do you have cash to spend on your incredibly expensive gaming habit? Pick this up, it won't dissapoint. Broke? Steal a copy.
Rating:
Summary: Serve Thawed!
Review: My, Oh My! I cannot express the hatred I had for this game when it was originally released in the Summer of 2003. In November 2003, I decided to jump the bandwagon and see for myself what Blizzard has done with this expansion pack. There is no turning back now...I am in love all over again. To sum it up, Frozen Throne adds 4 heroes (1 to each race), a host of new units with new abilities, 5 new neutral heroes, player built shops, host of new maps and enhanced battle.net features. This is not your ordinary "Let's add 6 maps, a new game mode and call it an expansion pack" kinda gig. The game is much deeper than it originally seems at first glance. Players of Reign of Chaos will feel right at home with the controls. Be warned and get ready for some frustration as adjusting to the economy system of Frozen Throne will take a little getting used to. Many will tell you that cost is down in Frozen Throne, and this is true to some extent...but they neglect to tell you that nearly everything costs more lumber now. Old strategies often fail, so don't expect to win with that old Reign of Chaos strategy. Frozen Throne affords some variety on a level not seen in Reign of Chaos, that is you no longer see people getting the same units in every game. In the old days, you'd know what your opponent was getting if say, he was an orc player. Frozen Throne also exhibits a slower style of gameplay than featured in Reign of Chaos. This is not a bad thing at all. People no longer tech (upgrade) as quickly as they did in Reign of Chaos as there is more emphasis on tier 1 units (particularly melee) to survive early game. The game is balanced as can be and updates are a plenty. As the case with all Blizzard games, online play is a blast. For the hardcore strategist, Frozen Throne aims to please and boasts a surprisingly long campaign considering it is just an expansion pack. If games of this genre are your bag of tricks, don't miss out...pick this title up today!
Rating:
Summary: Is this an expansion pack or a new game?
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Blizzard's beautiful BALANCE
Review: This isn't merely an expansion. - This is practically a whole new game. The software team at Blizzard has outdone themselves once again, bringing us yet another great Role-play stategy masterpiece. Frozen Throne gives us more Warcraft 3, chock full of great new units, diverse new heroes, and 26 new levels in the campaign/story of Azeroth. Frozen Throne is full of new items, creeps, and multiplayer options and levels. I really can't think of anything worth complaining about concerning this release. I myself found Warcraft 3 to be a little difficult; even after playing for months and honing my skills. Fortuneatly, if you have a hard time with Frozen Throne and get tired of punching the monitor in aggravation, you can now adjust the difficulty of your opponent. Three settings: Easy, Normal, and Insane. There is also a nifty Handicap option in the setup screen that can make computer controlled players a bit weaker. So aside from the cool new units and heroes, this game brings more balance to the Warcraft experience. Blizzard has done a great job adjusting and modifying units, hit points, and build times from the previous game. For instance: Some buildings now build faster, certain units cost less food points, and the total food cap is now raised. - Adversely, some buildings now take longer to upgrade, heroes gain experience slower after a time, and particular items are now more expensive etc.. The list goes on. Though I am glad to report that just about all of the changes are good. The game is better balanced and a bit more fun now. The new units and maps (even has weather effects now -/snow/ rain) breathe new life into the Warcraft world. This is definitely a better offering than the original Warcraft 3. -Hardcore RTS/RPS gamers and newcomers alike would be foolish to pass up a seat on The Frozen Throne.
Rating: 
Summary: warcraft III FROZEN THRONE single player campaign review
Review: This review is mainly dedicated to the single player campaign portion of the frozen throne expansion. Overall, the campaigns are just as fun as the first campaigns of warcraft III, Reign of Chaos, though a little easier. Principally, the campaigns are still designed to familiarize yourself with the strengths of the new creeps, neutral heroes, and new units for each race. The individual scenarios that make up the campaigns are helpful for newer players to become familiar with the new build contingencies (for multiplayer or custom games).and However the campaigns by themselves are also fun to play. The new races are really exciting, especially the Naga. Also new super powerful semi-hero type units really enhance the gameplay and create new advantages for each race. However, I was disappointed by the lack of cinematics throughout the campaigns... I've completed both the sentinels and alliance campaigns...(2/4) and only seen the one opening cinematic. (the cinematic sequences are one of the top strengths of Blizzards' games and unfortunately are somewhat lacking in this expansion) I'm hoping that the game designers are saving the best for last. Summary: PROS:
*excellent new terrain - greater use of water and visually creative backgrounds
*dynamic new neutral races - Naga - have land and sea ability
*powerful new units and upgrades- allow for new race specific strategies and advantages...
*easier to multitask and manage queues and units (can put upgrades in same queue as units - peons and workers can queue buildings)
*less time spent building armies and obtaining resources Cons:
*single player campaign is relatively easy...
*enemies are easily overcome by very powerful heroes, most fully upgraded for you
*fewer cinematics between campaigns as in previous blizzard offerings
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