Let's Go Thrall the Way in Warcraft III

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Go Thrall the Way in Warcraft III

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Regalingualius posted:

Wouldn�t surprise me if the Slaver was originally intended to be a hero (or at least an elite troop) from a cut faction.

I know this is from a few pages back, but it was indeed supposed to be a hero. Hero units in Warcraft III have two very distinct features: a glowing aura and a glowing weapon. The Slaver has both.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 04:14

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 02:21

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Tenebrais posted:

I would assume these Blackrock orcs are left over from the second war, either didn't join Thrall after escaping internment or never got rounded up in the first place.

Correctamundo. The Alliance was not perfect in handling all that business.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 18:49

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Warcraft III struck an excellent balance between characterizing the major players of each faction while also developing the personality and motivation of their armies. While Blizzard has a history of shallow writing, WCIII's approach worked out for two reasons:

1) You never spend so much time with the big people that their two-dimensional nature becomes overwhelmingly apparent.
2) Even the basic core of all four factions are made up of a variety of sub-factions (the Alliance features Dwarves and Elves alongside Humans, the Horde features Trolls and Tauren with the Orcs, ect)

Starcraft II focused way too much on interpersonal relationships between flat characters, and the story suffered because of it.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2018 22:32

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Blizzard is apparently in the process of doing a secret thing related to Warcraft III, likely to be either Warcraft III HD/Remastered or Warcraft IV. I personally doubt that it's HD/Remastered, considering that multiple SCII projects dedicated to remaking Warcraft III have been in motion for some time, but there's still a reasonable chance that it will be.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2018 23:51

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Walrus Pete posted:

"Some fans are doing it (kinda) in SC2's editor" isn't even close to a reason for Blizzard to not do something. Of course it's a remastered WC3.

Renee completely rebuilt all of Warcraft III's units and abilities in SCII using the Official Warcraft III HD Art Dependency (which Renee also worked on, as far as I'm aware). While you're right that it won't stop Blizzard from remaking WCIII themselves (as evidenced by the WoW Vanilla thing that they announced a while back), there's no "kinda" about it.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 00:36

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Walrus Pete posted:

Fair enough (I haven't even thought about SC2 in years, let alone checked out the custom game scene) but my point was that Blizzard - particularly the people making top-level business decisions - couldn't possibly give a poo poo about what the SC2 community is making when it comes to making those kinds of decisions. I also don't think they'd be reaching out to WC3 esports pros if they were announcing a brand new game. Those guys, no disrespect intended, don't rate that kind of early information.

You would be surprised on both counts. Blizzard has pulled from and relied on the SCII and WCIII communities a lot over the past few years. Hell, I'm friends with one of the guys that was contracted to document the Galaxy Editor and write at least half of the tooltips - a job he got because he was so active in the SCII modding community. A combination of the RTScrafts' incredible moddability and not being the major money-makers like Overwatch and World of Warcraft has led to Blizzard treating them a little differently than you would normally expect.

Granted, I may have completely missed the mark and you turn out to be right. However, I also know that there are execs who are super pissed about DotA getting away from them and they're not keen on making the same mistake twice.

DoubleNegative posted:

I'm gonna have to check this out, just for curiosity's sake. Might make for an interesting update at some point!

Also because I was such a fan of Mass Recall, so I like seeing things redone in the SC2 engine.

You might be interested in Armies of Azeroth, a mod that was looking to recreate the campaign. I haven't kept up with its development (I only heard about it about a year ago and its last update was in 2016, something that is unfortunately not very promising), but there's likely to be some content that you could look into for the LP's sake.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 06:19

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

You don't have to make a unit based on a Peon unless something has changed from the days that I did WCIII Modding. The Kobold Tunneler is just kinda... there.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 18:57

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

lobster22221 posted:

Ah you are right, I was basing that information on a hive workshop thread I saw a while back, and I don't remember ever coming across that during my map editing days.

There's also the Kaeo Cube, which is a cube with Kaeo's face on it that happens to be on fire.

I don't know either.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2018 00:21

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

SirSamVimes posted:

Isn't it the Sammycube?

Yes it is! The Galaxy Editor is the one with the Kaeocube and it's been years since I touched the World Editor, so I got them mixed up.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2018 03:17

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Several fun details about The Culling:

Stratholme has a zoo, holding a variety of monsters and a unique Critter named Filson the Rat. Filson has 100% Evasion, meaning that he will dodge any attack made against him. The player must either click on him until he explodes or use splash damage (via a Mortar Team), which evasion does not work on. He drops the Talisman of Evasion, an item that passively grants 15% Evasion (which completely negates 15% of attacks made against the user), which would make Arthas even more insanely, brokenly durable.

There are a variety of unused audio files for The Culling. Nearly all of them were deemed "too disturbing" and were cut as a result.

Mal'Ganis: Obviously...you are not as strong as the Dark Lord believed. Now, feel the wrath of the Scourge, as you drown under the flood of the living dead!
Peasant: The roof is collapsing! Run!
Peasant: What did we do to you?
Peasant: You're suppose to be our prince!
Peasant: You're suppose to be the Defender of Lordaeron!
Peasant: The King's men are attacking! Run for your lives!
Peasant: The walls are falling in! Get out!
Peasant: What have you done? What's going on?
Peasant: Mercy, milord!
Peasant: What have you done!?

Originally, killing children was part of the objective. Similarly to the unused audio files, this was beyond the level of hosed up that Blizzard was willing to commit to at the time, so it was cut.

Neither the unused audio or the child-killing were removed completely, and can be re-enabled by popping open the mission in the World Editor and fiddling with the appropriate triggers.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2018 05:55

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

achtungnight posted:

Maybe I'm misremembering the Mission.

The LP just covered it, though? Like, the update is right there.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 01:49

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

I hadn't recognized until this LP that Arthas decided to build his new base on top of the fallen Undead one. That seems like... not the wisest move.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 06:01

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

DoubleNegative posted:

Thassarian went out in search of Arthas and was instead found by Captain Falric, who killed him and raised him as a death knight.

So, wait. Did Thassarian die at Falric's hands, or did Falric die at Thassarian's hands? "Him" isn't very clear here.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2018 03:33

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Poil posted:

Death knights are strange. They only really have two good skills but they are utterly amazing to the point of probably being too strong. Animate dead isn't very useful unfortunately. You have no control of whether it will reanimate a knight or a peasant. The units being invulnerable is a downside since it means they can't be attacked at all so the AI will ignore them and instead go after your real units.

IIRC the Invulnerability part of Animate Dead was added for that exact reason - to take the edge off of accidentally raising something that wasn't very good at damage output, in which case you could at least use it for body-blocking.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2018 21:30

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

lobster22221 posted:

Is there a source for that?

Nope! I'm just going off of what I remember from when I was big into the WCIII modding scene.

Aces High posted:

I thought Shades couldn't attack, interesting that they have attack lines.

They can't. It was added in case the Shade soundset was added to a unit that could attack. WCIII was designed to be extremely mod friendly.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2018 19:48

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

I used to read through the Warcraft II and III manuals whenever I was bored and had already read everything else in the house. My favorite parts of the Warcraft II manuals (both Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal) were the ink artwork.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2018 20:20

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Calax posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jQ36ixLeq8 Man cheats were great.

IIRC that song was a spoof of Command & Conquer's Mechanical Man, given that both series(es) were the hottest poo poo that the RTS scene had at the time.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2018 06:45

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

Regalingualius posted:

I do like the crypt fiends for breaking up the aesthetic of the Scourge a bit by showing that they're not just all bog-standard zombies, they're all sorts of gruesome monsters.

I too enjoy the Scourge's equal-opportunity undead party. It's not just humanoids that can be re-animated!

# ¿ Apr 4, 2018 01:21

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

lobster22221 posted:

On a not really related topic, I really like how Blizzard made warcraft 3 focus on higher HP units with active abilities to differentiate itself from starcraft's extremely expendable, but very large, armies.

Part of it is practicality. If you put the focus on high-HP units with high micro requirements, your game is less likely to get choked by unit populations in the three to four figure range.

Not that the vast majority of the Custom Maps gave a poo poo about that.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2018 00:25

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 02:21

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

lobster22221 posted:

I think those same custom maps didn't understand much about game design in general.

2 billion agi hero with health so high that the number doesn't display? Seems good.

how dare you talk poo poo about my super cool red-tinted frostmourne arthas that's totally zero from megaman < :mad:

# ¿ Apr 5, 2018 01:19

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Go Thrall the Way in Warcraft III