ith any Blizzard expansion, everyone wants to know if what’s new is as good as what they’ve come to know and love. No fear, WarCraft fans. That familiar feeling is back in full effect, but the play has been twisted a bit. The franchise as a whole has been angling towards offering a more robust role-playing experience, and Frozen Throne seems to be a large step in that direction. Throughout much of the new single-player missions, you will get the distinct feeling that the days of nearly anonymous characters battling similar figures has hereby ended. Of course, Frozen Throne’s parent title was the purveyor of this play type, but its expansion – in the parlance of our times – has taken it to the next level.
There are many instances where you’ll find yourself completing missions with absolutely no resource-gathering whatsoever, as you strive to keep your characters alive throughout various maps. Again, this isn’t a novel creation in itself, but Frozen Throne definitely uses it to drive the plot more than its predecessor. The resulting level tempo is broken up nicely, and the missions themselves seem more thought out and pertinent to the story arc. The new race introduced for this expansion is the serpentine Naga, who have been awakened to layeth down the smack for assorted reasons. As expected, you’re able to play this race eventually, but they’re not available for multiplayer scenarios.
Graphically, it’s obvious that Blizzard has paid close attention to detail, as evidenced by your demon hunter’s footprints burning into the ground or boiling water when he steps into it, but the overall look seems to be aging a little too quickly for my tastes. The models are blocky, and the textures suffer from muddiness. The spell and particle effects are still good, and your battles will certainly have the potential to be enormous, but it’s time for a visual update.
That being said, Frozen Throne is the quintessential expansion pack; with more to do, see, and experience on many different levels. The single-player campaigns should occupy your time for at least a dozen hours, and the CG cutscenes are as good as you had hoped they would be. There’s absolutely no reason that I can think of not to buy this game if you consider yourself a WarCraft fan. The multiplayer portion is also improved in typical battle.net form. Blizzard has not taken its fans for granted, and it shows in the game’s excellent pacing and engaging plot.