I figure, since I keep referring to it, I might as well explain why I hated it. I'll give a brief recap in italics, so if you already know the plot, you can skip those.

For starters, it imitates StarCraft's storyline. I mean, I accept that there won't be any exceptional creativity in these games' storyline and don't ask for it, but when you use the same story for your two successive RPGs, you're crossing the line.

Anyway, we start off with a tutorial campaign about Medivh getting Thrall and the Horde to go to Kalimdor. I'll get back to Medivh and his job by the end of Reign of Chaos' campaign, at which point he officially reveals himself. Anyway, there's not much here, since it's essentially a tutorial, and optional (Blizzard graciously doesn't force us into playing through tutorials we don't need).

Reign of Chaos' storyline begins with the Human Campaign (of course.) I'll actually call it by its proper name, the Alliance, because calling a faction that has three human units (including the workers), four dwarven units and two elven units (later five) "the humans" seems a bit unfair to me. You get to know your main character, Lordaeron's Prince Arthas, and his faction by fighting in WarCraft's established hostility. In other words, you're killing off orcs who raided a human village to get human sacrifices for their demons, the Burning Legion. Arthas shows that he is prone to emotional outbursts by going into a berserk rage when you fail to prevent the sacrifice. A recurring hero from previous games, Uther the Lightbringer, tries to counsel Arthas in the Paladinny Ways and recommends that Arthas keeps control over his rage, or may become as bad as the foes you've fought. This is our first glimpse into Arthas' character flaw that will be abused to turn him evil.

Anyway, after this set-up, we get into the actual plot, there's nasty plague in the north and the dead turn into the Undead. So Arthas and his ex-girlfriend Jaina take up the investigation and discover that the plague is being carried through infected grain and aided by a human Cult of the Damned lead by Necromancer Kel'Thuzad that aims for perfection via Undeath.

Arthas reaches a turning point when we learn that one of the largest cities in the north has been infected with plagued grain, and the people will all be turned into Undead. Arthas wants to purge the City, killing off its inhabitants to ensure that the plague doesn't turn them into Undead, or spread out further. Uther and Jaina find this to be too excessive and want nothing to do with it. So Arthas goes on by himself and succeeds, but the thus far apparent origin of the plague, the demon Mal'Ganis, taunts Arthas and dares him to confront him on the northern continent of Northrend. Arthas amiably does so. There, he meets another old friend, the dwarf Muradin Bronzebeard. Together they fight against Mal'Ganis' forces, but they are vastly outnumbered and Arthas seeks out the cursed sword Frostmourne to give him the strength he needs to accomplish his vengeance, sacrificing Muradin to do so. In the end, Arthas succeeds, but remains alone in Northrend. He will later return to Lordaeron where he will murder his father, claim the throne and go about murdering people at will.

The focus of the Alliance campaign is Arthas' corruption. It is played in a credible fashion, which already makes it better than some noteworthy movies I could name. For instance, the turning point doesn't go:

Mal'Ganis: Hey, Arthas, kill those innocent children.
Arthas: Sure.

Instead, it goes something like:

Mal'Ganis: Hey, Arthas, I'm going to turn all these innocent children into a horde of murderous Undead and set them loose upon your country, and there's nothing you can do about it!
Arthas: Not if I kill them first!

Arthas' flaws are revealed early on, but he's still depicted as an overall good guy, nobody's perfect after all (except Uther the Lightbringer). His fall from grace is gradual, reasonable and significant.

I saw the campaign as slowly stripping away Arthas' justifications and rationalisations until the truth is laid bare, and that he's just out for self-gratification. Because Mal'Ganis wounded his ego and he wants to kill him to soothe his pride. From the second mission, where the Orcs sacrifice some human villagers before you can save them, it becomes apparent that Arthas doesn't take failure well, so when the Cult of the Damned with Kel'Thuzad and Mal'Ganis keep killing the people he's sworn to protect, then raising them as Undead and turning them on their countryman, Arthas takes it as a personal affront. And Kel'Thuzad and Mal'Ganis keep taunting him about it.

There is some credit to his decision to burn down Stratholme, and it does indeed put an end to the Undead threat... for now. However, his extremism alienates his friends and allies, which contribute to his feelings of betrayal and paranoia. Furthermore, he is easier to manipulate alone.

When he takes the fleet to Northrend, he's already sacrificing his justifications. Sure he can claim that as long as Mal'Ganis lives, the threat remains, or he can demand justice for those of his people who died, but as the threat flees from Lordaeron, so too are his methods less acceptable, as he is no longer in a desperate situation.

Where the Lich King was previously forcing Arthas' extremism and furnishing justification for it, now he takes it away. When King Terenas recalls Arthas' forces, Arthas has to sabotage his own fleet to continue the war. The Undead guarding Frostmourne warn Arthas against its use. The very dais Frostmourne hangs above is graven with a dire warning - one that can only have been placed there at the Lich King's express will. And finally, the sword itself cannot be wielded without Arthas sacrificing his friend, destroying the excuse that he came for justice or to avenge the crimes of Mal'Ganis. In truth, all he wants is revenge, and Frostmourne gives it to him. Arthas is now completely evil, and to seal it off for good, Frostmourne devours his soul, as Tichondrius explains at the beginning of the Undead campaign.

You might be thinking this isn't much of a rant, if I thought it was good and interesting. But this is simply how I interpreted the story at the time. It turns out, I was completely wrong, and it's apparently much dumber. I'll refer back to this at the end of The Frozen Throne.

Throughout the campaign, Medivh flies in and tries to convince human leaders to desert their kingdoms and bring all their people across the ocean. If this is starting to sound idiotic, you're only starting to see what's wrong with Medivh in Reign of Chaos. I can only imagine that he also went to Azeroth, Stromgarde, Gilneas, Kul Tiras, Alterac, Quel'thalas and Khaz Modan and was also told to shove off by the leaders of those respective kingdoms.

The second Campaign is the Scourge's, because again, we're following the order determined by StarCraft and that is being reused for StarCraft 2. If you're wondering, the Night Elves are the Protoss and the Orcs are unimportant. You again have Arthas, who reverts to level 1 as a Death Knight, and go around massacring Lordaeron, Quel'Thalas and Dalaran. Aside from slaughter for sluaghter's own sake, you do this to resurrect Kel'Thuzad and to summon the archdemon Archimonde.

If I don't say much here, it's because nothing especially interesting happens. The Scourge's purpose was to wipe out threats to the Burning Legion's return, and that provides plenty of excuses for battles. It's important to the storyline, as the summoning of Archimonde is the catalyst for the Legion's return, and the final phase of the storyline, but it's not very interesting.

Kel'Thuzad, however, is noteworthy. He's loyal and seems to actually be friendly with Arthas. In fact, if you accept the Cult of the Damned's philosophy of perfection through rebirth into the Undead and the Scourge's goal of reanimating the world, Kel'Thuzad may well be the only genuinely good character in the entire Undead faction. He's certainly the closest. Kel'Thuzad is an interesting character, in a campaign that features some exceedingly bland heroes. Tichondrius is your typical mid-level villain, soulless Arthas doesn't even have character traits other than being enraged anytime he doesn't get his way, and the Lich King is off screen.

Oh, back in the Alliance campaign I implied that Uther was perfect, but this is clearly false - he gets killed by a level 3 Death Knight with a pack of Ghouls. That's like if the Overmind got killed by Aldaris hacking at it with a bunch of Zealots. It's a waste too, Uther would have been a cool recurring antagonist for the campaign, instead we get Sylvanas, who is as bland as most of the other characters in this campaign, and Antonidas, whom we barely even see.

Then we get the Horde campaign. The Orcs discover a new land, make some new friends and ally with the Alliance forces lead by Jaina. Other Orcs go back to being controlled by the demons and you have to fight them.

If we go into actual plot important information though, nothing happens in this campaign. I can only assume this is because there were only three races in StarCraft.

The first two mission of this campaign, you'll be fighting against creeps. Centaurs and Quillbeasts and Harpies. That's not a good sign.

One could say that the alliance with the Alliance was significant, and I guess it could be, internally, (I'd have to know something about World of WarCraft lore to say for certain) but for the sake of the plot, it isn't. Since the Horde and Alliance are together in all subsequent appearances in the campaign, you could have essentially replaced them with only one race and the effect would have been the same. And because the Alliance campaign actually had plot relevance, they get priority. So if you replaced every Horde/Alliance appearance with Alliance alone, you'd have no Horde appearances in the entire game. That's really bad, especially for people who liked playing Orcs. I mean, Orcs were there all the way back in WarCraft: Orcs and Humans, they really got shafted in this instalment.

Another possibly significant incident that deserves more attention than I really gave it is the conflict between Grom Hellscream and the Night Elves. If I haven't mentioned the Night Elves yet, it's only because they haven't appeared at all. At last, you'll get to fight them for two missions. That's all you'll ever see of them outside their own campaign. If their campaign wasn't instrumental to the plot, you could have called this game WarCraft III: Corpses and Humans. Anyway, Grom kills a Night Elf demigod which provides some justification for the Night Elves continuing to fight them even in the midst of a Demonic/Undead invasion. I've got to love Grom Hellscream, the Orc Blademaster, calling Night Elves "the perfect warriors" when you're mowing down dozens of Archers with just Grom and two Grunts. I know he hates Humans, but let's give fair credit where it is due, shall we?

One event that is definitely not important is the climax where Thrall fights a possessed Grom and they then kill the demon Mannoroth to free their race from demonic taint. The reason this isn't significant is that the whole demonic taint thing was retconned into the campaign in the first place to give the Orcs a reason to turn good without having to deal with the nasty ethical repercussions of slaughtering and burning their way through an entire continent populated by Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes. It wasn't their fault, they were possessed! But now they aren't anymore. See, they've killed the demon (incidentally, we see more possessed Orcs in The Frozen Throne, because apparently, it doesn't have to be Mannoroth's blood, and Pit Fiend's will do). So I refuse to give this plotline importance. And really, I expect most true Orcs fans will agree with me, because they probably loved the Orcs back in their berserking, pillaging and maiming days.

In the final campaign of Reign of Chaos, the Night Elf Sentinels try to expel the foreign invaders in their forest, when suddenly, a Demon/Undead army arrives! It's the Burning Legion, and they have returned to claim the Well of Eternity, a found of incredible magical power guarded by the Night Elves. You spend the first half of the campaign waking up Druids, then the Night Elf traitor Illidan gets freed and he uses demonic magic to destroy Tichondrius and purge Felwood of the Legion's influence. However, the fact that he used demon powers to do so enrages his brother Malfurion, who expels him from Ashenvale because he is too reckless and is a danger to the Night Elves.

In the final mission, you ally with the Horde and Alliance to delay Archimonde's ascent of Mount Hyjal while Malfurion sets up a trap (he's going to worker rush Archimonde with a worker that does not even have a genuine attack... though I guess it works because Archimonde counts as a "summoned unit". I can genuinely understand Archimonde falling for that trap though. If I were Infested Kerrigan, I would not expect to be Probe rushed.) Your plan succeeds and the Burning Legion's invasion is halted.

It's here that all Reign of Chaos' flaws become evident. But first, the Sentinel Campaign itself. It is underwhelming. In a seven mission campaign, you spend one of them fighting Orcs and Humans, which is fine, and another hiding from Demons and Undead and Orcs and Humans. Which is also okay. I mean, not great, but it's okay for early missions in the campaign. Then you get three of the remaining five missions waking up Druids. Are we ever going to actually fight the Legion? At least Aldaris and Fenix were kicking Zerg around long before Tassadar and Zeratul returned. We really only have the last two missions fighting the Legion - and one of them is Illidan doing it "wrong". He's not even fighting the Scourge, he's fighting Satyrs with Demon and skeleton support. Still, at least we're doing something.

Illidan is an interesting character, though we see little of him here, so I'll come back to him in the Expansion. Malfurion is our Tassadar, I guess, but not as awesome. Part of that is probably because Tassadar already had serious credibility from challenging Infested Kerrigan to a duel, completely duping her with a hallucination, and using the whole thing as a diversion to assassinate a Cerebrate. Not to mention incinerating entire Terran planets whenever they got covered too thick with Zerg. Malfurion was sleeping until halfway through the campaign.

Tyrande serves as Aldaris, in that she's the traditionalist who is in charge of the defence and yet keeps fighting the wrong opponent. Of course, she doesn't fight Malfurion (her lover), but instead objects to a truce with the Horde and Alliance, even though they see them fighting against the Legion and Malfurion recognises the value their support could gain. She also goes off and frees the Betrayer, Illidan Stormrage, just out of spite because Malfurion forbade it. Yes, petty, vindictive and shortsighted, very alluring traits. Aldaris has some great character development at the end of StarCraft and in Brood War, but Tyrande... remains pretty much unchanged, I guess.

As for Reign of Chaos as a whole, we get this "united against a common enemy" crap that I previously mentioned dreading in StarCraft II. The Alliance, Horde and Sentinels all join together to fight the Scourge and Burning Legion. Like PerrinsAxe complained in the opening post, the world-ending threat that was previously never even mentioned to exist is prevented. (Seriously, the Hybrids could have been threat enough without needing to wipe out all existence!) The end to StarCraft had Terrans and Protoss united, but it wasn't really Terrans in any representative quantity, it was just Raynor and his boys. I'd have preferred to have the Terran tech tree limited in that mission to demonstrate that Raynor's Terrans was an insignificant contingent of that race (I really doubt Raynor had access to a fleet of Battlecruisers), but oh well.

There's some serious undermining of past titles here too. The campaign is really about the Scourge (as the representatives of the Burning Legion) and the Night Elves, and a continuation of their ancient struggle. The Orcs are completely irrelevant in the storyline. The Humans are relevant only insomuch as they are responsible for producing Arthas, the Scourge's enabler, as well as a significant amount of their troops, and they actually resist the Scourge long before the Legion gets summoned. Also because the spellbook of Medivh, a human, was necessary to summon Archimonde. In the grand scheme of Reign of Chaos, they are not very significant though. Undermining the two core races of the franchise is bad enough, but because the Horde was created to destroy the Sentinels, and facilitate the Legion's return, Orcs and Humans, Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal only happened because Kil'jaeden or whoever else was in charge opened the Dark Portal in Azeroth rather than Kalimdor. That's right, in canonical lore the entire franchise up to this point only exists because Gul'dan couldn't use Mapquest. I'm sure all the Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Elves (High-flavoured), Ogres, Gnomes, Goblins and Trolls (Amani-flavoured) who died in those wars are really happy to know their deaths had meaning.

The other big problem is Medivh. He's really not that clever. I implied that his strategy to get the Alliance across the sea was pretty much bound to fail - even if they had enough boats to carry the entire population of the Western Kingdoms. Thrall and Jaina went not because they're wiser than the others, but because Thrall and his Orcs were on the run, being hunted down by the Alliance, and a new continent gave him the chance to establish a home for his people. He says this several times in the Orc campaign. Jaina, I have no idea. She sensed that he was 'very powerful' but I don't know why she derived 'trustworthy' from that. Of course, Medivh does address her right after her boyfriend slaughters and burns Stratholme, so maybe she was emotionally vulnerable or something.

No, the big problem with Medivh is that he had the whole thing backwards. he should've been trying to convince the Night Elves to come to this side of the Ocean. If everybody had allied against the Scourge and Legion in Lordaeron, then they could have prevented the Scourge from overrunning Lordaeron, Alterac, Dalaran and Quel'thalas and adding the bodies to their numbers, they could have prevented the resurrection of Kel'Thuzad, and most importantly they could have prevented the Scourge from getting their hands on Medivh's spellbook, and therefore summoning the demons in the first place! And on the other side, instead of just a rag-tag group of Alliance refugees, you could've had the seven Human kingdoms, the Dwarves and the High Elves fighting against the Scourge. Sure, you wouldn't have the Tauren, but that's a fair exchange. And best of all, since the Night Elves already know about the Burning Legion, it would have been easy to explain the threat and have it be credible! But I guess that would have been too easy.

Anyway, on to The Frozen Throne. I should note that The Frozen Throne has no Orc Campaign. And the Horde makes (almost) no appearance in any other campaign (some unaffiliated Fel Orcs do show up for two missions in Outland) so if Orc fans felt screwed by the Horde's lack of plot significance in Reign of Chaos, it's about to get much, much worse. Instead, we get what I can only assume was a beta for World of WarCraft, in which you play as the Half-Ogre Rexxar and complete quests for rewards and kill respawning enemies for gold and experience. I haven't played World of WarCraft, but does this sound like a fair assessment of the game? Sounds like Diablo to me.

The expansion opens with the Night Elves (they're our Protoss, remember?) hunting down Illidan. They're Wardens, not Sentinels this time. Our heroine is Maiev Shadowsong, Illidan's Warden. We didn't see her or know of her when we busted out Illidan, but we did kill some of her girls (all fighting Night Elves are women, men can only be druids) which again begs the question of why Tyrande thought that was a good idea. You'd think killing Night Elves to free the worst criminal in your race's millenial history in the midst of a demonic invasion just because your boyfriend told you not to would be a stupid idea. But the past is the past, so let us continue. Maiev wants to bring Illidan back in chains, but Illidan's found some new allies - Naga, a serpentine sea species descended from Night Elves who were plunged into the ocean when it was formed millenia ago. These are not a playable race, but you're still going to see a lot of them. Aquatic movement was a new feature in The Frozen Throne, with boats and Naga, and boy did Blizzard abuse it. I don't think I've ever seen an actual multiplayer game where it came into use, but it's going to be everywhere in The Frozen Throne. The Naga are newly introduced, but their existence fits with preestablished Night Elf lore. Illidan somehow needs a boat to flee Kalimdor, despite the fact that he can walk on water. I don't know.

You pursue him to the Tomb of Sargeras, a location from WarCraft II the Tides of Darkness. We'll see the only Horde affiliated Orcs in the expansion here, there's an old Stormreaver hermit, and you Gul'dan and his Warlocks in a flashback. There's also some Undead Orcs. One Orc, some corpses and a flashback, which is why I used "almost" earlier.

There, Illidan retrieves a powerful artifact which he seeks to use to destroy the Frozen Throne, where the Lich King is entombed. He is doing this in service to the Burning Legion, who have realised that the Lich King was betraying them, but his methods would risk destroying the world, so Furion and Maiev stop him.

Furion then gets pissed that Maiev left Tyrande behind in the midst of the Undead Scourge because she was still pissed at her for murdering her Wardens and releasing Illidan. So Furion and Illidan join together to save Tyrande, and then Furion lets his brother go. Maiev is pissed and pursues Illidan.

The Night Elves come dangerously close to being relevant, but really, if we count Illidan as a demon instead, they fail pretty miserably. They do interact with Naga and Blood Elves (High Elves gone emo) but both of those are Night Elf descendants anyway, and the Night Elves don't leave a lasting impact. They also fight some Undead Scourge in Lordaeron, but they leave even less of an impact here.

I said earlier that we should talk about Illidan, and I guess now's as good a time as any. Illidan and Furion may well be the only things of interest in this campaign, unless you appreciate the nostalgia derived from returning to the Tomb of Sargeras and seeing Gul'dan again. Tyrande is annoying as ever, and Maiev is a fanatic with a one track mind. Illidan is addicted to magic, and demonic power is pretty much the only source that can provide him with enough after he's tasted so much from the Well of Eternity. At the same time, he's loyal to his brother and his people and tries to fight the demons. In Reign of Chaos, he consumed a powerful demonic artifact, the Skull of Gul'dan in order to gain the power to destroy Tichondrius. In doing so, he was helping the Night Elves fight the demons, but also getting his fix for his arcane addiction. Here, he does something similar. The archdemon Kil'jaeden offers Illidan power in exchange for destroying the Frozen Throne. Figuring that the Undead were the enemy of all, he eagerly accepts, as this gives him a justifiable excuse to provide for his addiction. He visibly hates Maiev, and does try to kill her repeatedly, but he shows no particular desire to fight his people, especially Tyrande and Malfurion, and spens most of the campaign trying to escape. In the end, he helps his brother save Tyrande, and he genuinely seems to not want to harm anybody. Still, he remains exceedingly dangerous and reckless. In the end, he exiles himself to Outland, pursued by Maiev, where he hopes to hide from the demon Kil'jaeden who will likely not be pleased with his failure.

The second campaign in the expansion is the Blood Elf campaign. Prince Kael'thas tries to save his people, who are prey to arcane addiction since the destruction of their power source in Quel'thalas. To make it worst, he is betrayed by the Alliance and forced to escape to Outland, where he throws his lot with Illidan.

I think every Horde fan will be pleased to know at this point that the Alliance also got shafted in The Frozen Throne. Or maybe that just makes it worse. While speaking of the first campaign, I insisted on calling it the Alliance Campaign rather than the Human Campaign because there were also significant numbers of High Elves and Dwarves in the faction. We don't get none of that here though, after the first mission, you'll never control a Human or Dwarf, only Blood Elves (and Naga). Hilariously, even though you control Naga throughout the campaign, half of it is in Outland, a tileset that doesn't have water, and the only missions where you get to use their seafaring abilities, they come in a restricted number. If their amphibious qualities were the reason they were put in the game, then it sure failed remarkably here.

Anyway, I mentioned earlier how the Horde used demonic possession as an easy excuse to get out of any guilt over the Great Wars in WarCraft and WarCraft II. Well, apparently someone figured out that might not be enough, because the apparent leader of the Alliance in this segment is a ridiculously racist caricature. I have no idea who the Grand Marshall Garithos is supposed to be, and I have no idea why Prince Kael'thas (more accurately King Kael'thas, since I seem to understand that his father Anasterian Sunstrider died during the Scourge invasion of Quel'thalas) is subservient to him, nor why King Magni Bronzebeard would allow this in competent buffoon (oh yes, he's incompetent too, in case it was implicit in the use of the terms 'ridiculous caricature' to command his Dwarves, but apparently that's the case. Anyway, even though Lordaeron is in ruins and controlled by the Scourge, and that they're outnumbered and without supply, this Grand Marshall Garithos decides to leave the Blood Elves - not only a significant portion of his forces, but also the only spellcasters in his army, and some of the best in the game - to face the Undead Scourge alone, in an obvious attempt to kill them off. This will apparently be used in World of WarCraft as an excuse for why the Blood Elves are part of the Horde rather than the Alliance. Because even if the Orcs ravaged Quel'thalas in the Second War, Trolls have been enemies of the Elves for generations, and the Undead are responsible for the devastation of Quel'thalas in the Third War and their inability to sustain their magical addiction and commanded by the reanimated corpse of the elven ranger-general who tried to stop the Scourge in the first place, well, hey, there's a random dead racist idiot somewhere in Lordaeron who apparently outranked the King of the Elves.

If we forget Garithos (and I wish I could) and the fact that instead of the Alliance faction we'll be commanding Naga and Blood Elves (and as an Alliance player, I am disappointed) the campaign is still not very impressive. It's essentially about how Illidan wants to use Outland so he can hide from Kil'jaeden and harvest demons to sustain his and the Blood Elves' magical addiction. After dealing with the Scourge at the very beginning, the antagonists are underwhelming. You face that Garithos idiot, then you have to free Illidan from Maiev (this being the third and final time you will see Night Elves other than Illidan outside of their own campaigns) and then face some unaffiliated Orcs and a demon that Illidan himself describes as weak and indolent. And of course, you control Illidan himself, who is absolutely kickass and can take on armies by himself if you equip him with a Mask of Death.

The entire campaign is just setting up the final arc, providing Illidan with sufficient forces (Blood Elves and Naga) that he can pose a threat in the Undead Campaign. At the end, Kil'jaeden finds you anyway, and Illidan lies and pretends he was just gathering his forces to attack Icecrown directly. Kil'jaeden accepts this, so off you go to kill the Lich King.

The final campaign in The Frozen Throne is about the Undead. Interestingly, this is pretty much the only campaign in WarCraft III where you have a genuine 'civil war' style scenario, where you face off against your own race. As the Lich King's power falters (getting Frostmourne into Arthas' hands apparently caused a hole in his prison and his power is leaking through) Arthas has trouble retaining control over his Undead, and his own powers begin to fail - in this campaign Arthas starts out level 10 and will grow weaker as you progress, which is an interesting twist. Arthas will have to make his way to the Frozen Throne, defeat Illidan and free the Lich King.

Meanwhile, Sylvanas Windrunner, the banshee who commanded the elven defence back in Reign of Chaos regains her freedom thanks to the Lich King's faltering power. She tries to assassinate Arthas but fails due to Kel'Thuzad's loyalty, so instead while Arthas is off North, she starts fighting with the Burning Legion's leftover demons who were put in control of the Scourge in Lordaeron. She wins and starts a new Undead faction, the Forsaken.

Arthas makes his way to the summit of Icecrown glacier, defeats Illidan in a duel and takes the Lich King's helm for himself, merging with Ner'zhul and becoming the Lich King.

The most hilarious thing about this campaign is that because his control is waning, Arthas keeps calling to his minions' loyalty. It's funny because most of them are Undead, but a lot respond well anyway. Satisfied members of the Cult of the Damned, maybe?

Anyway, the campaign is pretty straightforward. Sylvanas has three Dreadlords to defeat, and you get one mission for each of them. You meet Garithos again, under mind control from one of the Dreadlords, but once you kill it, you promise to let him have Lordaeron if he helps you defeat the last Dreadlord. Being an idiot, he believes you and agrees. Seriously, who put this idiot in charge of anything? Even if he is a noble, and I don't know that he is, this has to be beyond what influences can get you. The Arthas part is also simple - you fight your way through enemies until you reach the top.

Anub'arak is another loyal Undead, but he doesn't get as much development as Kel'Thuzad. Frankly, I haven't much to say about him, he just follows Arthas along and is obedient. There's apparently some history between Jaina, Arthas and Kael'thas, but I don't know what it is.

The real problem with The Frozen Throne is the ending. Arthas becomes the Lich King. Now, the manual tells us that what Ner'zhul needed was "some hapless dupe who was torn between darkness and light". So remember way back at the beginning of this post when I explained about Arthas' descent into evil? Well, apparently, I was wrong and Arthas is "torn between darkness and light". No, seriously, when has Arthas ever shown any inclination for good since Frostmourne devoured his soul? He himself says that he feels no sorrow or remorse over any of the things he's done, including the cold-blooded murder of his own father and the slaughter of his mentor.

The last cinematic has voices berating him, although he's "haunted" by his actions, but nothing he has said or done ever indicated anything like that. You can't just expect us to believe that.

With those requirements I could have expected someone like Illidan or Grom Hellscream to be Ner'zhul's host, those two were obviously trying to help and to do good, but their demonic addictions caused them to reckless and sometimes terrible things. I could have accepted those two as "torn between darkness and light". Kael'thas was still good, but his addiction could have driven him down that path too, in time. But Arthas? Arthas was truly and wilfully evil.

Anyway, I may have forgotten some stuff, I've been writing this for a while, it's much longer than anticipated.