Talk:Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 22:26, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Hey, I played this :) Look for a review posted here by the end of the week. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 22:26, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

After review, I'm placing the article on hold. The basic structure of the article is fine, but it needs a lot of work.

• Prose:
  • While keeping the gameplay of the main game, The Frozen Throne adds a number of tweaks to improve player experience. You have to assume readers aren't going to be familiar with either the article subject or the base game, and you shouldn't have info that's only in the lead. What kind of game is The Frozen Throne?
    • Clarified. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Likewise, there's issues with details that I don't think make any sense in this article when they're divorced of context, and this is a huge problem for the gameplay and plot sections. You haven't explained what the food limit is, so The food limit has been increased from 90 to 100, and the upkeep requirements have been relaxed by 10 food units each means nothing (it barely means anything to me and I played the game constantly.)
    • Expanded. Hopefully I caught everything. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Is it Warcraft III or Warcraft 3? Be consistent.
    • Sorry, I missed that one. It was only one instance which I changed. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
  • In addition, The Frozen Throne re-introduces naval battles—reintroduces from where? I know it's Warcraft II, but readers won't.
    • Added. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Two new auxiliary races, the Naga and Draenei, have also been added.[6][4] The Naga feature in all four campaigns, and as playable units, allies, and enemies; while the Draenei, which are actually more sophisticated creeps, are found only in the Blood Elf missions. What is an auxiliary race? What are creeps? You haven't mentioned the Blood Elves yet.
    • Yeah, that is I think one of the last parts I did not rewrite. Changed. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
  • What is the World Editor, etc. etc.
    • See above, should all be addressed now. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Not explained or introduced in the setting: who the Night Elves are, who Illidan Stormrage is, who the Blood Elves are, who the Alliance is, who Arthas is, who the Lich King is, who Sylvanas Windrunner is, who the Demon Legion is, etc. etc. The Setting and characters should have much more of an introduction to the universe and setting up characters rather than just listing them off.
    • Expanded. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

• References:
  • All the citations that are just to the game itself (such as current ref 4) need a better citation, whether to the game manual or a secondary source. Citing the game itself is really only acceptable for the game's plot where it's clear where the details are coming from, and even then it's not ideal.
    • Okay... WP:PSTS says you can use primary sources if you don't rely too much on it and gameplay can be reliably sourced to the game. Nevertheless, I removed this ref and parts that I could not source otherwise (and were not really that important). SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
  • What makes Gamestar.de, Gamer.nl, and Blizzplanet reliable sources?
    • GameStar is a leading German PC gaming magazine. Gamer.nl is included in the WP:VG custom search engine for reliable sources and listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources#Other reliable. I changed the third one. SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

• Images:
  • File:Orc minicampaign.png has no compelling fair use rationale detailing why it should be in the article. It either needs to be beefed up or removed (it's pretty much impossible to tell what is going on in the shot anyhow.)
    • Replace with a better image. SoWhy 20:08, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

• Misc.
  • The development section is rather thin. I don't think that's a significant issue for GA, but it lacks much insightful detail into the actual creation of the expansion and would probably leave readers wanting. Blizzard didn't release dev diaries, there were no previews, etc?
    • I dug into the web archives and added some more. SoWhy 20:08, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:48, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

I added some comments above and made some changes to the article. I'll look at the rest tomorrow. Thanks for taking the time to review this! Regards SoWhy 20:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: Again, thanks for the review. I think I addressed everything above. Please check and see what else needs to be done. Regards SoWhy 20:08, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in responding. Overall the article is better, although the changes have introduced some more issues, both in sourcing (you have long statements that are no longer adequately sourced to the original citations, for example the food and upkeep mentions in gameplay) and in length. Rather than adding a lot of details for who characters are, I think a better option is removing details that are extraneous to the main thrust of the story; the more details and verbose plot summaries are, generally the less comprehensible they are for readers. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 20:34, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: Thanks for the response and I hope everything is good with you. I'll recheck the sourcing later but I'm unsure about the other comment. On the one hand you say The Setting and characters should have much more of an introduction to the universe and setting up characters rather than just listing them off. but on the other hand you think it's now too many details? Can you elaborate a bit further because I cannot really reconcile both statements. Regards SoWhy 08:50, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Plot summaries should have enough info that readers can figure out what's going on without having to link away from the article; they should not have more info than necessary to understand the plot. So for example, the details about how the Blood Elves are the guys left from the destruction of the sunwell; likewise, you front a lot of details from the first game and give the reader place names and people that don't come up for paragraphs, so they're hard to keep track of. If Illidian's initial imprisonment isn't important enough to remark on, I'm not sure why the detail about him consuming the demon relic matters, since it doesn't change the status quo. Likewise the exact details about the Orc, human, and elf alliance to defeat the burning legion doesn't seem very relevant beyond the fact that it sets up some action in this game, so it can be glossed over. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 00:08, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: I think I got it and I trimmed the plot by 1K+ characters. Better now? As for sourcing, I checked and removed some bits but the rest seems still correct. Anything I missed? Regards SoWhy 15:00, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: Sorry to bother you again but maybe you missed my last message. I'd really like to work further on the article if needed but I would need some pointers what is left to do. Regards SoWhy 13:52, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: --PresN 15:10, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

< Apologies for the lack of response, there was a family situation which took up my time. I regret that your GAN had to be left in the lurch. I've gone through the plot section and made some revisions to try and reduce repeated linking and introductions; I also removed a few proper names and characters who weren't referenced again—if you can summarize characters rather than telling them to readers to shorten things and it doesn't materially affect the outline of the plot, it's a good thing to do. I have just a few remaining issues:

* File:Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne - Naga base.jpg is better than the previous image, but it's still lacking in terms of a solid custom fair use rationale (it looks like it belongs to a cover or box art rather than a gameplay screenshot.) The rationale doesn't have to be something really long, but it should directly tie into specific critical or development content that's in the article. For example, File:Oxenfree overworld.png's justification for inclusion is illustrating the core 'walk and talk' mechanic of the game, which has a lot of coverage in the parent article, as well as illustrating the game's overall look, which is covered in both development and the reception. You need something similar. In terms of a better FUR that would support content in the article, the reception section talks about the look of the new units and buildings, as well as the Naga being cool but reviewers being disappointed they weren't a playable race in multiplayer—could you get a screenshot showing the Naga buildings and units more close up? (we don't really need the gameplay chrome as much.)

*You have a remaining stray sentence that don't really have paragraphs attached to them (the final line in the reception section.) This should either get cut, merged somewhere else (in with other gameplay comments in the reception) or ideally expanded out a bit more. (I'd also suggest fleshing out multiplayer reception and this line would be best above the paragraph about the campaign rather than after, because the previous parts of the section were mostly talking about gameplay specifically before moving into details about the plot.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 16:21, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

No worries, David Fuchs. I hope everything is better now but if you still need some time, by all means, take all the time you need. I really don't mind (and GA reviews are going slowly anyway considering the backlog at GAN). I exchanged the image to one that shows the new units and buildings in detail and beefed up the section a bit as well as the NFUR template. I also expanded the stray sentence with some more info about multiplayer but left it behind the plot section as one review explicitly compares multiplayer to single-player and it would make no sense otherwise. Regards SoWhy 19:51, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Great. Struck the above, they look better. I'll take another look at the article soon and see if there's anything else, if not I'll pass. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 20:57, 29 December 2018 (UTC)