The online beta test for Blizzard's upcoming expansion pack for Warcraft III continues, and we--and many other faithful Warcraft III fans--have been following its progress with great interest. We have updated impressions on the latest changes in the beta, as well as race-specific updates for the night elves and the orcs, but please note that this information is based on the expansion's beta test and is subject to change before the development is complete.

The beta of The Frozen Throne is currently up to version 3.07; the 3.06 patch was released earlier this week, and 3.07 just hit the wire. The new versions add minor interface upgrades like letting you filter custom games by map creator and map size (so that you can, for instance, filter out hero arena maps if you prefer). Blizzard has also tweaked creep monsters slightly so they'll generally no longer attack your flying units on sight (unless you've specifically set your units to "attack-move" any nearby enemies), which is in line with the developer's desire to encourage players to scout and expand.

However, the team at Blizzard clearly made sure to use the last week or so to also reevaluate the selection and effect of the magic items in the game--many items have been slightly tweaked to reduce their duration or power, and some new items have been added. For example, prior to the 3.06 patch, one of the most frequently abused items in the game was the wand of illusions. This item can now be used only on friendly units, which eliminates the popular tactic of using the wand to create duplicate neutral "creep" monsters and then dragging a huge army of angry creeps into your opponent's base.

In another example, Blizzard has introduced magic items called runes to the game. While runes were removed from the drop tables in the 3.07 patch because they weren't quite ready to be included, we got to use a few of them in version 3.06. Their functionality may change in the final version, but as of now, these items are "used" the second you pick them up. Essentially, they serve as temporary boosters for your army. So, for example, the speed rune let your units move much more quickly than normal. It wasn't a small effect, like the boots of speed, which grant +15 percent movement--the speed bonus was very noticeable. The greatest benefit of this rune seemed to be that you could reach creep camps very quickly and take them out before your opponent.

Blizzard also recently introduced two new neutral heroes, the pit lord and the beastmaster. The pit lord is a strong, melee-based hero with very powerful offensive abilities. His three normal abilities are rain of fire, howl of terror, and cleaving attack. Rain of fire is a powerful, area-effect ability that functions similarly to the human archmage's blizzard, except that it rains fire instead of ice upon enemies and it inflicts a bit of extra damage over time upon any enemies it hits. Howl of terror is an area-effect ability that temporarily reduces the amount of damage that affected enemies can inflict, while cleaving attack causes the pit lord's normal attacks to do additional damage to nearby enemies. The pit lord's level-six "ultimate" ability, doom, puts an unbreakable curse on an enemy unit that causes damage to the affected unit over time and turns it into a doomguard unit under the pit lord player's control when it dies.

The beastmaster is also a strong melee hero, but his abilities let him summon reinforcements in the form of a grizzly bear, a quilbeast (a large warthog), or a thunder hawk. Each of these summoned creatures currently lasts a long time in the game (the grizzly bear remains for 70 seconds, for instance) and can be useful to either draw fire or serve as a support unit. The grizzly bear is a powerful melee unit that seems almost as effective as a water elemental for drawing enemy fire. The quilbeast is a ranged unit that fires quills at your enemies, and the thunder hawk is a flying scout that, when summoned at the beastmaster's highest skill level, becomes invisible by default. The thunder hawk's scouting abilities don't seem especially useful, considering that you'll need to have already built a small force to clear the creeps around a hero tavern to even hire a beastmaster, but the grizzly bear can create a good diversion for your enemies (and actually take a bit of a beating before it goes down), and the quilbeast can fill in holes in your army if you need ranged attacks in a pinch. The beastmaster's level-six ultimate ability, stampede, hurls an angry horde of exploding animals at his enemies.

We also revisited the game's specific races this week, including the orcs and the night elves. As we've previously noted, Blizzard is continually taking steps to encourage players to incorporate underused units into their strategies. For instance, the humans' new blood mage hero still isn't seeing much action, so that hero has had its spell abilities, speed, and range increased. Similarly, the orcs' batrider units, which sit very high up on the orcs' technology tree (they require both a fully upgraded fortress and the voodoo lounge shop building) have been improved. Batriders have more hit points, and they can inflict damage more quickly with their unstable concoction ability (which now causes instantaneous damage). More importantly, batriders now inflict siege-based damage upon enemy buildings, which makes them exceptionally useful for tearing down your opponent's expansion bases.