These items are very rare and very powerful. Additionally, there are a couple of new item classes, including Artifact and Unique. Created by Goblin tinkers, the Penguins amuse their owners by squeaking whenever activated. Perhaps our most amusing new item is called the Clockwork Penguin. They range greatly in power and functionality - from an Arcane Scroll that heals, restores mana, and gives a protective buff to a Celestial Orb of Souls that can resurrect the dead. Some can only be purchased from remote shops out in the wilderness, while others can only be acquired after slaying a vile beast or powerful boss monster. The items are scattered throughout all three of the acts in the orc campaign. What are some of the new items available in the orc campaign? Tim Campbell: Basically, we tried to create as great a variety of items as we could in order to provide some interesting surprises for players. Heroes can advance in level past the typical 10-level limit, can acquire 4th-level versions of each of their spells and 2nd-level versions of their ultimate abilities, can spend 'hero points' to increase their attributes, and can find and use the almost 40 new items that were created just for the orc campaign. Players can unlock additional heroes to increase their party size, hire mercenaries for extra muscle, purchase pack beasts for extra inventory space, and store excess items in a 'stash' that is carried over into each of the later acts. Along the way, wide varieties of new monsters, unique magical items, and quests will be encountered. For example, the orc campaign has a greater focus on RPG elements, presenting players with sets of maps that can be traveled back and forth between in nonlinear fashion - whenever players wish. This focus on individual heroes allowed us to bend or break a lot of the 'rules' that exist within the other three campaigns in the Frozen Throne. Instead, players get the opportunity to control a small party of heroes. For example, there are no bases to be constructed, no resources to be harvested, and no upgrades to be researched. What are the differences between The Frozen Throne's main campaign and the orc missions that will make them fun and compelling? Tim Campbell: The first thing that most players will notice is that the orc campaign is focused on controlling a much smaller set of units than is typical for most RTS games. This wound up giving us several advantages: we were able to tell the 'real' orc story instead of coming up with some way of forcing them into the main storyline, we were able to try out several new level-design concepts, and in general we were able to just break away from standard RTS conventions and inject a lot of new gameplay elements into the campaign. We decided to separate the orc storyline from that of the rest of the races and to approach their campaign in a fundamentally different manner. At some point in development, a light bulb went on over someone's head, and we decided to connect these two things. Additionally, over the course of creating Warcraft III, we had generated many ideas that were simply unfeasible for a normal RTS campaign - but were absolutely begging to be tried. However, none of us wanted to make a Warcraft game that didn't feature a storyline for the orcs - it just wouldn't have been Warcraft without them. Even though we really wanted to fit them into the main storyline of the Frozen Throne, we realized that in order to get it to work, the orcs' portion of the story was bound to wind up feeling very forced and contrived.

Can you walk us through the reasoning that led to the creation of the bonus RPG orc campaign in The Frozen Throne? Tim Campbell: Unfortunately for orc fans like myself, their storyline just didn't work well with the Arthas-versus-Illidan direction that we took in the expansion. In his answers you'll find all kinds of goodies about the difference in gameplay, role playing elements, what to expect in these next two acts, and how the whole thing ties into the upcoming MMORPG World of Warcraft.

Tim Campbell, one of the level designers from The Frozen Throne was nice enough to sit down for a Q&A session about this campaign. Role-playing elements received a big boost and heroes became the focus with normal units only taking a mercenary status. The bonus orc campaign from The Frozen Throne was certainly a bit of a move away from the traditional RTS involving building, massing, and attacking, but had a whole appeal of its own.

Warcraft 3 orc