Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne - Page 3

TheGrandSlayer · 01-30-2003, 09:22 PM

New Heros
To answer these questions, blizzard is creating entirely new campaigns(complete with CG cut-scenes, which lead designer Rob Pardo estimates is about 80-90% the size of Warcraft III. You’ll play human, undead, and night elf arcs. There’s no orc campaign in the main storyline-more on that in a bit.
While there’s no new playable race (alas, no Burning Legion!), there will be one new hero and two new units for the each existing race, along with tons of new spells, items, and abilities. This is the work in progress, so not all the new units for the expansion have been decided on yet, and note that those mentioned here could change over time as a result of Blizzard’s incessant tweaking.

Humans
The new Human hero is the blood mage, an offensive spellcaster with four brutal fire and chaos spells at his disposal. Flame strike is an area-of-affect damage spell, like blizzard, that rains fire on the rargeted area. Mana flare is another area-affect spell spell, specifically aimed at the enemy spellcasters. When cast, Mana Flare sends a "disco-globe" into th sky that will shoot out lightning bolts at any casters(including heros) in the area that attempt to use mana. Third is banish, a single-target spell that you can cast on an enemy of friendly unit to temporarily banish that unit from the material plane. Any banished enemy unit will be unable to attack, while a banished friendly unit will take no damage-perfect for a hero in trouble. Finally, there’s Mark of Fire, a high-level spell that will transform any friendly unit into a tough demon unit with a powerful melee attack.
Alone with the blood mage, two other units are planned for the human side. The spelllbreaker does just what it sounds like, breaks the magic of enemies into two cool abilities. Spell immunity is a passive area-of-affect spell that renders all nearby friendly units immune to debuffs, and spell steal is an auto-cast spell that steals buffs cast on enemy units(like bloodlust) and casts them on nearby friendlies. The other new unit is the dragon hawk, an aerials unit with both ground and air attacks, and one powerful spell, Fog, which can effectively disable enemy towers.

Night Elves
The night Elves are also getting a new, more offense-oriented hero, the warden. Think "elf ninja" here-fragile, with few hit points, but quick stealthy, and deadly. Her two main abilities are essentially mean to be used together. The blink ability allows her to do instant short-range teleports, while the awesome Fan Of Knives causes her to spin around and shoot knives at enemies in all directions. Sneak in, kill-everything, sneak out. Though she’s low on hit points, she’s well protected by her ultimate passive ability, Spirit Of Vengeance, which will hunt down and destroy any unit that actually kills her. It’s a nice trick-kill the warden if you must but then be prepared to die afterwards.
Blizzard had one another new Night Elf unit ready at press time: the mountain giant, a big, beefy melee unit meant to help protect the weaker archers, huntresses, and dryads through the use of his taunt spell, which will draw enemy units to him and away from others.

Undead
The undead are getting a lot nastier with their new hero, the Crypt Lord--a bigger uglier more powerful version of the arachnid crypt fiends, with both offensive and defensive abilities. Using impale, he can skewer a unit with a horn on his head and toss it in the air for major damage. Defensively, he can cast Thorny Shield, which will cause him to burrow underground ad shoot out spikes on his outer shell, making him nearly invulnerable. The crypt lord can also summon two creature types out of his body: Carrion scarabs , tough melee fighters, and locust swarm, which will follow and surround units, issuing constant damage.
No new undead units are done yet, but Blizzard did tell us about the two new abilities for existing ones. First, crypt fiends can now burrow, like Starcraft’s Zerglings, remaining hidden to all enemies but air units. Second, necromancers can now raise skeletal mages along with skeletal warriors, providing an extra layer of ranged attack.

Orcs
Finally, the new Orc hero is a shadow hunter, a troll "Island voodoo master," primarily designed to provide backup healing and defensive support, an early-game weakness of the orcs in Warcraft III. Planned abilities include Hex, basically a variation on the Warcraft II polymorph spell, which turns a targeted enemy unit into a random critter, such as a chicken, pig or frog; Healing wave, a powerful group-healing spell that casts a "chain of healing" among nearby friendly units; Serpant Wand, which summons a staff on the ground that serves as a temporary "tower" with a defensive range attack; and fourth a as-yet-unnamed spell that will render all nearby friendly units totally invulnerable until the hero is stunned or killed.

Shop Till You Drop
Along with new units, each race will also get a player-buildable shop, with unique items to specifically aid each race. The orc shop, for example, will have healing salve for regenerating hit points, while the Night Elves’ shop will sell moonstones, which immediately change the time to night. Blizzard is scattering several new items, and power-ups through the maps as well, such as the Chest of Gold, which awards you an instant 250 gold; the Tome of Retraining, which lets you unspend skill points; and the Philosopher’s Stone, which will change an item you select into a different, random item of the same level.
The frozen Throne will introduce new neutral buildings, the most significant of the which is the tavern, where neutral hero’s-such as an undead ranger- will lounge, available for purchase by any race. Tavern hero’s will function like player-built heroes, with unique spells and abilities, and once purchased can be revived as your altar upon death. (At this point, blizzard plans for neutral heroes to count towards your maximum hero limit-not supplement it.)
Numerous welcome gameplay tweaks are also in store, largely the response in user suggestions. You’ll now have the ability to queue buillding construction-meaning, if you have the resources you can effectively lay out your town in advance and order one worker unit to keep building it up. There’s now much better pathfinding for flying units, which previously tended to get in each other’s way, and in a welcome bit of news for perennial Battle.net losers, a new handicap setting will allow you to reduce the better players unit hit points in advance to even out the challenge.
Speaking of Battle.net, The Frozen Throne will shop with many new multiplayer maps as Warcraft III did, along with two new editing tools for the huge mapmaking community out there. The campaign editor supplements the world editor and will allow users to make their own contiguous campaign-linking maps together with a trigger system-that will appear on the player’s Custom Campaign menu(Blizzard is including a sample custom campaign here-and that’s where you get to play as the orcs, whose role in the main story line was essentially done.) The spell effect editor lets mapmakers edit existing spells in the game for custom maps. You can only modify existing spells-you can’t create new ones from scratch.

I wanna check out the Crypt Lord, sound sweet, But their making this to much like Starcraft from what I heard

Obsidian the Black · 02-01-2003, 09:20 PM

Pfft, the dragon hawk and Warden are alread in WC3, cant they just make new units for ToI?

TheGrandSlayer · 02-01-2003, 09:57 PM

Yes but the thing is you couldn't recruit them.

Niadh · 02-01-2003, 10:09 PM

New NE hero sounds quite cool, Human things are quite different, Undead, can you say Zerg?

And Orcs sound like they are filling gaps quite well.

And the dragon hawk fits in in a special way, from waht it says in repeated clickings.

TheGrandSlayer · 02-02-2003, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Niadh:
[QB]Undead, can you say Zerg?

[QB]

Zerg...There I said it...But yes

Blizzard gave birth to twins

Niadh · 02-02-2003, 02:17 PM

But one was left in the cupboard a few years to make it look better thwn released.

They better not decide the Lich King is really just Kerrigan in disguise with some overlords nearby.

Obsidian the Black · 02-03-2003, 12:36 PM

Ohh you gotta love Kerrigan, she was SOOOOOO Cool! Love the green and the hair, and the spiney things out of her back....

TheGrandSlayer · 02-08-2003, 09:20 AM

Itza new undead hero!
The Crypt Lord

These ancient, evil behemoths were once the mighty kings of the subterranean spider kingdom of Azjol-Nerub. Though the Nerubians fell before the wrath of the Lich King during the fabled War of the Spider, the insidious Crypt Lords were swayed over to the Lich King's ranks and granted considerable power and the immortality of undeath. Now the giant, thundering beasts serve as the Lich King's mightiest warriors and the guardians of the Scourge's holdings in Northrend.

Niadh · 02-09-2003, 11:40 AM

Why were the spider people ruled by beetles?

That would be the best question about it yet.

TheGrandSlayer · 02-11-2003, 08:58 PM

New in game Crypt Lord AND skele mage (Near Necro)

Looks like hes got some passive aura that does spikey damage Im gonna love playing that hero

Imagine what he SOUNDS like!Over sized Nerubian voice? Sweeeet...

[ 02-11-2003, 09:00 PM: Message edited by: TheGrandSlayer ]

01-30-2003, 09:22 PM	#21
TheGrandSlayer Red Wizard of Thay Join Date: October 5, 2001 Location: In front of my computer Age: 34 Posts: 860	New Heros To answer these questions, blizzard is creating entirely new campaigns(complete with CG cut-scenes, which lead designer Rob Pardo estimates is about 80-90% the size of Warcraft III. You’ll play human, undead, and night elf arcs. There’s no orc campaign in the main storyline-more on that in a bit. While there’s no new playable race (alas, no Burning Legion!), there will be one new hero and two new units for the each existing race, along with tons of new spells, items, and abilities. This is the work in progress, so not all the new units for the expansion have been decided on yet, and note that those mentioned here could change over time as a result of Blizzard’s incessant tweaking. Humans The new Human hero is the blood mage, an offensive spellcaster with four brutal fire and chaos spells at his disposal. Flame strike is an area-of-affect damage spell, like blizzard, that rains fire on the rargeted area. Mana flare is another area-affect spell spell, specifically aimed at the enemy spellcasters. When cast, Mana Flare sends a "disco-globe" into th sky that will shoot out lightning bolts at any casters(including heros) in the area that attempt to use mana. Third is banish, a single-target spell that you can cast on an enemy of friendly unit to temporarily banish that unit from the material plane. Any banished enemy unit will be unable to attack, while a banished friendly unit will take no damage-perfect for a hero in trouble. Finally, there’s Mark of Fire, a high-level spell that will transform any friendly unit into a tough demon unit with a powerful melee attack. Alone with the blood mage, two other units are planned for the human side. The spelllbreaker does just what it sounds like, breaks the magic of enemies into two cool abilities. Spell immunity is a passive area-of-affect spell that renders all nearby friendly units immune to debuffs, and spell steal is an auto-cast spell that steals buffs cast on enemy units(like bloodlust) and casts them on nearby friendlies. The other new unit is the dragon hawk, an aerials unit with both ground and air attacks, and one powerful spell, Fog, which can effectively disable enemy towers. Night Elves The night Elves are also getting a new, more offense-oriented hero, the warden. Think "elf ninja" here-fragile, with few hit points, but quick stealthy, and deadly. Her two main abilities are essentially mean to be used together. The blink ability allows her to do instant short-range teleports, while the awesome Fan Of Knives causes her to spin around and shoot knives at enemies in all directions. Sneak in, kill-everything, sneak out. Though she’s low on hit points, she’s well protected by her ultimate passive ability, Spirit Of Vengeance, which will hunt down and destroy any unit that actually kills her. It’s a nice trick-kill the warden if you must but then be prepared to die afterwards. Blizzard had one another new Night Elf unit ready at press time: the mountain giant, a big, beefy melee unit meant to help protect the weaker archers, huntresses, and dryads through the use of his taunt spell, which will draw enemy units to him and away from others. Undead The undead are getting a lot nastier with their new hero, the Crypt Lord--a bigger uglier more powerful version of the arachnid crypt fiends, with both offensive and defensive abilities. Using impale, he can skewer a unit with a horn on his head and toss it in the air for major damage. Defensively, he can cast Thorny Shield, which will cause him to burrow underground ad shoot out spikes on his outer shell, making him nearly invulnerable. The crypt lord can also summon two creature types out of his body: Carrion scarabs , tough melee fighters, and locust swarm, which will follow and surround units, issuing constant damage. No new undead units are done yet, but Blizzard did tell us about the two new abilities for existing ones. First, crypt fiends can now burrow, like Starcraft’s Zerglings, remaining hidden to all enemies but air units. Second, necromancers can now raise skeletal mages along with skeletal warriors, providing an extra layer of ranged attack. Orcs Finally, the new Orc hero is a shadow hunter, a troll "Island voodoo master," primarily designed to provide backup healing and defensive support, an early-game weakness of the orcs in Warcraft III. Planned abilities include Hex, basically a variation on the Warcraft II polymorph spell, which turns a targeted enemy unit into a random critter, such as a chicken, pig or frog; Healing wave, a powerful group-healing spell that casts a "chain of healing" among nearby friendly units; Serpant Wand, which summons a staff on the ground that serves as a temporary "tower" with a defensive range attack; and fourth a as-yet-unnamed spell that will render all nearby friendly units totally invulnerable until the hero is stunned or killed. Shop Till You Drop Along with new units, each race will also get a player-buildable shop, with unique items to specifically aid each race. The orc shop, for example, will have healing salve for regenerating hit points, while the Night Elves’ shop will sell moonstones, which immediately change the time to night. Blizzard is scattering several new items, and power-ups through the maps as well, such as the Chest of Gold, which awards you an instant 250 gold; the Tome of Retraining, which lets you unspend skill points; and the Philosopher’s Stone, which will change an item you select into a different, random item of the same level. The frozen Throne will introduce new neutral buildings, the most significant of the which is the tavern, where neutral hero’s-such as an undead ranger- will lounge, available for purchase by any race. Tavern hero’s will function like player-built heroes, with unique spells and abilities, and once purchased can be revived as your altar upon death. (At this point, blizzard plans for neutral heroes to count towards your maximum hero limit-not supplement it.) Numerous welcome gameplay tweaks are also in store, largely the response in user suggestions. You’ll now have the ability to queue buillding construction-meaning, if you have the resources you can effectively lay out your town in advance and order one worker unit to keep building it up. There’s now much better pathfinding for flying units, which previously tended to get in each other’s way, and in a welcome bit of news for perennial Battle.net losers, a new handicap setting will allow you to reduce the better players unit hit points in advance to even out the challenge. Speaking of Battle.net, The Frozen Throne will shop with many new multiplayer maps as Warcraft III did, along with two new editing tools for the huge mapmaking community out there. The campaign editor supplements the world editor and will allow users to make their own contiguous campaign-linking maps together with a trigger system-that will appear on the player’s Custom Campaign menu(Blizzard is including a sample custom campaign here-and that’s where you get to play as the orcs, whose role in the main story line was essentially done.) The spell effect editor lets mapmakers edit existing spells in the game for custom maps. You can only modify existing spells-you can’t create new ones from scratch. I wanna check out the Crypt Lord, sound sweet, But their making this to much like Starcraft from what I heard __________________ [img]\"http://www.thepunishermerchandise.com/television/amazing_spider-man/animated_punisher.gif\" alt=\" - \" /><br />\"Hey Mr.Smith!\"<br />\"Dave...\"<br />\"SPACKER Dave!\"

02-01-2003, 09:20 PM	#22
Obsidian the Black Elminster Join Date: May 8, 2002 Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire Posts: 470	Pfft, the dragon hawk and Warden are alread in WC3, cant they just make new units for ToI? __________________ Caelic's Wowwiki information page

02-01-2003, 09:57 PM	#23
TheGrandSlayer Red Wizard of Thay Join Date: October 5, 2001 Location: In front of my computer Age: 34 Posts: 860	Yes but the thing is you couldn't recruit them. __________________ [img]\"http://www.thepunishermerchandise.com/television/amazing_spider-man/animated_punisher.gif\" alt=\" - \" /><br />\"Hey Mr.Smith!\"<br />\"Dave...\"<br />\"SPACKER Dave!\"

02-01-2003, 10:09 PM	#24
Niadh Elminster Join Date: August 16, 2002 Location: Scotland Age: 40 Posts: 401	New NE hero sounds quite cool, Human things are quite different, Undead, can you say Zerg? And Orcs sound like they are filling gaps quite well. And the dragon hawk fits in in a special way, from waht it says in repeated clickings. __________________ A Knight is sworn to darkness. <br />His heart knows only hatred.<br />His sword destroys the helpless,<br />His might imprisons the weak.<br />His wrath upholds the wicked, <br />His word speaks only lies.<br /><br /> [img]\"http://www.boomspeed.com/niadh/newiwsig.jpg\" alt=\" - \" />

02-02-2003, 02:17 PM	#26
Niadh Elminster Join Date: August 16, 2002 Location: Scotland Age: 40 Posts: 401	But one was left in the cupboard a few years to make it look better thwn released. They better not decide the Lich King is really just Kerrigan in disguise with some overlords nearby. __________________ A Knight is sworn to darkness. <br />His heart knows only hatred.<br />His sword destroys the helpless,<br />His might imprisons the weak.<br />His wrath upholds the wicked, <br />His word speaks only lies.<br /><br /> [img]\"http://www.boomspeed.com/niadh/newiwsig.jpg\" alt=\" - \" />

02-03-2003, 12:36 PM	#27
Obsidian the Black Elminster Join Date: May 8, 2002 Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire Posts: 470	Ohh you gotta love Kerrigan, she was SOOOOOO Cool! Love the green and the hair, and the spiney things out of her back.... __________________ Caelic's Wowwiki information page

02-08-2003, 09:20 AM	#28
TheGrandSlayer Red Wizard of Thay Join Date: October 5, 2001 Location: In front of my computer Age: 34 Posts: 860	Itza new undead hero! The Crypt Lord These ancient, evil behemoths were once the mighty kings of the subterranean spider kingdom of Azjol-Nerub. Though the Nerubians fell before the wrath of the Lich King during the fabled War of the Spider, the insidious Crypt Lords were swayed over to the Lich King's ranks and granted considerable power and the immortality of undeath. Now the giant, thundering beasts serve as the Lich King's mightiest warriors and the guardians of the Scourge's holdings in Northrend. __________________ [img]\"http://www.thepunishermerchandise.com/television/amazing_spider-man/animated_punisher.gif\" alt=\" - \" /><br />\"Hey Mr.Smith!\"<br />\"Dave...\"<br />\"SPACKER Dave!\"

02-09-2003, 11:40 AM	#29
Niadh Elminster Join Date: August 16, 2002 Location: Scotland Age: 40 Posts: 401	Why were the spider people ruled by beetles? That would be the best question about it yet. __________________ A Knight is sworn to darkness. <br />His heart knows only hatred.<br />His sword destroys the helpless,<br />His might imprisons the weak.<br />His wrath upholds the wicked, <br />His word speaks only lies.<br /><br /> [img]\"http://www.boomspeed.com/niadh/newiwsig.jpg\" alt=\" - \" />

02-11-2003, 08:58 PM	#30
TheGrandSlayer Red Wizard of Thay Join Date: October 5, 2001 Location: In front of my computer Age: 34 Posts: 860	New in game Crypt Lord AND skele mage (Near Necro) Looks like hes got some passive aura that does spikey damage Im gonna love playing that hero Imagine what he SOUNDS like!Over sized Nerubian voice? Sweeeet... [ 02-11-2003, 09:00 PM: Message edited by: TheGrandSlayer ] __________________ [img]\"http://www.thepunishermerchandise.com/television/amazing_spider-man/animated_punisher.gif\" alt=\" - \" /><br />\"Hey Mr.Smith!\"<br />\"Dave...\"<br />\"SPACKER Dave!\"

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