Category: PC Gaming

Completed all Warcraft 3 had to offer.

Orc campaign in the Frozen Throne is considered a bonus campaign, because it’s not really a strategy. Instead, it’s a ARPG. Another precursor to World of Warcraft. Considering it’s still an RTS engine we’re talking about, it’s pretty impressive: with a hero stash, side quests, respawning enemies and even dungeon instances.

Still, it tries to introduce the Frozen Throne Orc units, like Troll Batrider, but since you can steamroll everything with your heroes, it’s kinda pointless.

The final mission is basically DotA: you control only your overpowered heroes, while bases spawn units.

The death of Admiral Proudmore that was immortalized by Warbringers doesn’t seem that glorious:

I rarely do final thoughts, but since it was quite a long journey I as well might. Reign of Chaos is simple, but enjoyable, even if Reforges changes make it slightly broken. Frozen Throne is mostly gimmicky, and not something I’d return to.

Lich King is weakening, so Arthas travels to Northrend to help, while Sylvanas gets autonomy. She’s a one-trick-pony, even if the trick is very powerful: Possess. Still, I can understand the sexy zombie appeal.
There’s a certain power creep. In Reign of Chaos, maximum hero level was 10, and so was the maximum level of the creeps. Now you get creeps up to level 15, while Arthas gets downleveled every mission to represent Lich King getting weaker.
Still, the missions are some of the easiest in both campaigns. As Sylvanas, you can mass frost wyrm, while Arthas gets three dungeons one after the other. I completely forgot there was a Chtulhu themed Forgotten One.
I remember the last mission as very chaotic and frustrating. I think they’ve changed the map, but it is still annoying as hell. Not sure if in the original AI was as efficient in countering, because when I went frost wyrms, it massed the naga flyers, so I had to wait for Illidan to start channeling to have any chance, otherwise it becomes a complete mess.
Finally, Arthas duels Illidan and even wins, becoming one with the Lich King.

Second campaign is for Blood Elves, led by Prince Kael, whom we’ve met in the first campaign. Humans abuse them, and they also feel the need for a magic source, since the Sunwell was destroyed by Arthas.
Their Spellbreakers are amazing, an Human version of Driads, basically: immune to magic, with dispell, and mana burning effect on top. Dragonhawks are specialists: either to disable towers or frostwyrms. Since elves don’t have heavy infantry, they get naga instead.
The dungeon is basically practicing the same trick over and over again: block enemies with sturdy spellbreakers, then flamestrike the middle of it, as spellbreakers are immune.
Then comes the DotA mission. I didn’t remember it was there, but it is DotA: you can control only your heroes, and all the other units spawn automatically, and you fight for the caged Illidan.
My main problem with the Blood Elf campaign is how gimmiky it is. You put against netherdragons, that have heavy armor, so resistant to archer, but weak to magic, but they are also immune to magic, so they don’t have weaknesses at all.

I ended up going into High Upkeep and massing Dragonhawk Riders, basically playing Warcraft as if it was Starcraft.

Instead of following with Frozen Throne, I decided to give Classic campaign a try. As I suspected, Reforged completely broke the balance of the original. In my ways, the original is easier: Human riflemen are much more potent, for one. AI focuses on closest enemy, not on the most injured one.
I was surprised that the Culling map, where Arthas competes in killing infected townspeople, is completely different in the remake. In the original, your base is at the top, in the remake, it’s at the bottom. Not sure why the changes.

Also, as I suspected, the final mission in the Human campaign in original wasn’t anything special.

Can be easily done with mass gryphins, and Malganis is rather useless in it.

Also, we came a long way, didn’t we?

The Night Elf campaign is bizarre. First mission, you can construct only archers, and need to overrun a double base: orcs and humans. I only managed that by zerg-rush.

Then the second mission you need to sneak past Doom Guards, which I now understand demons from Warcraft 1. Which is easy, because it turns out night elf invisibility mode kicks in almost immediately, and even stops enemies attacks: if a demon was swinging his sword at an archer that went invisible, the archer won’t get hit.

But then you need to plow throw Undead base, with a limited and not very sizeable army. I’m not sure if on Normal you’re supposed to destroy the entire base, but on Hard I only managed to run through everything.
Best Night Elf unit are the Dryads. They are fast, ranged, magic immune, have automatic dispell and slow poison. Maybe you can’t only mass them, but you almost can. Paired with bears, they can win some battles without even micro.

Funny, I always thought Malfurion is an elk-centaur, just like Cenarius. Turns out he’s a druid riding an elk. Also, I didn’t remember Illidan is his brother. And they were both in love with Tyrande.

Arthas points Illidan to Skull of Guldan. They have this clear homoerotic tension between them, must be because Jaina left Arthas, and Illidan spent 10K years in prison.

The skull is what allows Illidan to turn into demon, kill Tichondrius, second dreadlord killed in this game, and get expelled, all in the length of two missions.

Final mission is another last stand, and it is as unfun as the Undead one. That’s the only mission I decided to complete on Normal, as on hard it gets quite ridiculous.
The idea is that you first help defend the Human camp, once it falls you retreat to the Orc camp, and finally you hold final land of defence in your own Night Elf camp. But I managed to stop them at Orcs.

A nice detail, when Medivh tells his story, there’s both recreation of events from Warcraft 1, where you actually hunted him in a dungeon, and from Warcraft 2, where it shows two headed ogres and troll axe throwers.

In survival missions, I always try to flip the script and destroy the bases that spawn enemies. In the last Undead mission, I didn’t manage that, but otherwise, it is not hard. I didn’t even realize it’s the final mission in their campaign.

Orc campaign starts pretty easy, despite them lacking early heal. The only point I was doubting myself is when facing Cenarius. He has ridiculous amount of HP, and either self-heals or has some kind of invulnerability skill.

You also get the chaos orcs in that mission, which I didn’t remember. Their warlocks are similar to Undead necromancers, but with a fireball skill, which I never used, because it required too much micro. They replace shamans, which is ironic, because shamans are great without micro. Also grunts, kodos and wolf riders all become “fel” and get chaos damage, which is good against any armor.

Then there’s the plato mission with wyverns. It isn’t hard, as in the enemy can’t beat you, but because the opponent has almost infinite gold, and you can only deploy from zeppelins, it’s also takes forever to beat him. I ended up cheesing the dwarf hero with wyverns.

In the last Orc mission, I’ve got Spirit Walkers, which I think is a bug, since those were only added in the Frozen Throne expansion.
It is quite ridiculous, because Infernals, which are one of the best units in the game, can land in the middle of your base, stunning your peons and killing half of your troops. They have heavy armor, which means they take less damage from piercing attacks, and more from magic attacks, but they are also completely immune to magic, so nevermind, they have no weaknesses.
But actually, it’s no so bad. The Tauren hero I left at the Human base, because Infernals tend to target him, and he’s a great meat shield and also buffs human knights. And the fel orcs don’t have trolls with them, so they can be cheesed with mass wyverns.
When Hellscream kills Mannoroth in the canyon, I always thought the pitlord injured him. Turns out, he died in the explosion 🤷‍♂️

The funniest thing is that I managed to execute tower rush on the first Northrend mission.

It was all fun and games until final mission of Human campaign, Frostmourne. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but Mal’Ganis was able to counter my every strategy, recovering every time. I thought that I could do mass griffins, he went mass gargoyles. I tried mass tanks, he went mass meat wagons. I went knight, riflemen and priests, he managed to destroy me with abominations and frostwyrms. The only way I managed to beat that mission without looking for a guide is by eventually destroying both his mine and town hall with tanks, so he ran out of money. No fun, just frustration.

I forgot that Arthas killed Mal’Ganis. And Uther. But the dwarf friend isn’t killed directly, looks more like an accident during release of Frostmourne.

I know I completed both Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne, but it was more than 20 years ago. And I feel like I was playing games always in a hurry back then, so I don’t actually remember much of the story.
Generally, I like the Reforged version. The only issue I have is similar to Age of Empires 2 remake: when you zoom out, the image becomes all foggy, some kind of original engine limitation. This, and also the microstutters: the game goes from 240fps to 50fps every few seconds.
My personal issue is that the game had received updates for over 20 years, so I’m not sure what version am I playing when I’m playing the campaign. I don’t remember “Sundering Blades” upgrade, for one. And did Orc grunts always had heavy armor and thus weak to magic?