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Hour of the Scourge - Andorhal v20170307

Hour of the Scourge
An Altered Melee map project

So... I was bored, then I thought to myself "well, let's waste some time and create some random heroes in World Editor", I came up with some quite interesting ideas, then I thought to myself "well, this could turn out to be a good campaign start, I have some really fun heroes here", I was then deciding if I wanted another RPG campaign, or something more simple and familiar, then I thought to myself "well, I am already working on a RPG campaign it is quite a lot of work making those, so I better do something that won't be as painful", my final decision... Or what it would be... A macro based campaign to add up to my main campaign story, something short, right to the point and relaxing, using the heroes I've created and factions related to them... Then finally I thought to myself "well, you know what would be cool? If I could play these heroes and their factions in a normal melee map" and that's Hour of the Scourge - Andorhal.

This project is an altered melee map that allows you to play with four different factions from the WoW Wrath of the Lich King lore. You can be the Argent Crusade, the Kirin'tor, the Forsaken or the Scourge itself. Let me try to explain them down below.

The Argent Crusade

argent-crusade-png.257870

Brave warriors of the Light that banded together to fight the darkness of the Scourge. The Argent Crusade (at least here) is composed by Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas survivors that united their forces to fight the Lich King after his arrival in the Plaguelands.

They play mostly like the normal humans from Warcraft 3, the catch is that their units can be boosted bearing overpowerness with quite a few available upgrades, from Holy Weapons that grant additional attack for mana to Guardian of Ancient Kings which grants a chance of a burst heal whenever a unit falls below 10% health.

The Kirin'tor

kirintor-new-png.257872

The wizards of Dalaran were finally able to rebuild their wondrous city after the events of the Burning Crusade, now under the leadership of Rhonin, the Kirin'tor launched and offensive against the Scourge and the Blue Dragonflight, with the help of the Horde and the Alliance, in hope of containing these threats once and for all.

The Kirin'tor is what you would expect from a magocratic faction, pretty much all of their units are mages, from the most basic frontliner to the most advanced tier 3 unit and being mages they are all quite resorceful, being able to empower their forces with arcane enchantments, cripple their enemies with debuffing spells and dealing absurd amounts of damage in exchange of being very fragile.

The Forsaken

forsaken-png.257871

Sylvanas Windruner, now Queen of the Forsaken, rules the ruined kingdom of Lordaeron. In an attempt to build a force strong enough to take over the Lich King, she has maintained the Dreadlord Varimathras under her wing, occupied most of the neighbor territories of Lordaeron and allied herself with the Horde, but the Lord of the Dead may show up at her doorstep earlier than what she could have imagined, far earlier than what she needed to prepare.

The Forsaken are very dependent on the late game as their initial tier forces are rather weak compared to the other factions, but the children of Sylvanas can quickly gain the strength to overcome their foes through powerful unit upgrades and the development of the dreaded Grim Plague. As undead, the Forsaken required blight for a passive health regeneration, something that their ordinary built buildings do not provide, they rely on alternative methods to tend to their wounded, such as the usage of Herbalism (an upgrade to the Garden of Sorrows which allows the building to heal), Apothecaries (supportive spellcaster with a powerful healing ability) or the development of the Synthetic Blight, which will grant some buildings Blight Regeneration and multiply all Forsaken organic units health regeneration by 5 while on blighted ground (take this advantage to overcome the Scourge through attrition, using their own blight against them).

The Scourge

scourge-png.254413

At last the Lich King has awakened and the undead legions sails from Northrend back to Lordaeron so the Lord of the Dead may reconquer what used to be his first kingdom, but the Scourge is not exactly what it used to be, the Lich King knew that his enemies would be more than prepared this time and that he needed much more than simple rotting corpses to purge the living. Following his loyal necromancers and brainwashed skeletons and zombies, Arthas brings the mighty Ymirjar, undead half-giants that worship the Lich King as their Death God and were granted tremendous power through undeath, also there are the cunning and deceiving San'layn, once the last survivors of Kael'thas expedition with Illidan to the Frozen Throne, these unlucky elves were turned into vampiric monsters to serve the Scourge, and finally, the full might of the Azjol'Nerub empire, because you just can't have enough undead spiders, you have to bring them all!!!

The Scourge is by far the most complex faction of the four, it is divided into three sub-factions that you must choose from at the start of the game:

Death


scourge-death-png.257875

You can follow the Path of Death, to train Necromancers and summon a legion of skeletons to overwhelm your enemies, and if normal skeletons were not enough, you can summon giant ones! From the Temple of the Damned, train your mighty and fearsome Ymirjar.

Darkness

scourge-darkness-png.257874

You can follow the Path of Darkness, if you really like some spiders, spawn a swarm of nerubian units, from Carrion Beetles to Mind Disruptors and freakin' skeletons mounted on Crypt Fiends!

Blood

scourge-blood-png.257873

You can follow the Path of Blood, if you really like some Castlevania vibe, build tons of tombs and summon the vampiric San'layn, that while fragile, can deal absurd amounts of damage if well managed.

Will of the Lich King


Finally, upon reach tier 3, The Black Citadel, you can research Will of the Lich King, which will allow you to use the whole Scourge techtree in a single army.

One major difference of the Scourge is their supply production, it is not generated by Zigurats anymore, but rather the Graveyards, but since they are not as cheap as a normal supply building, your production can be supported by other means that vary according to the path you've chosen. For Path of Death, since your army is composed by pretty much skeletons, it is only fair that what would produce supply is your Necromancers, they cost supply, but can produce it as well. For Path of Darkness, your Zigurats can be turned into Spirit Towers to produce some additional supply, finally for Path of Blood, the San'layn really like their tombs, so it is exactly that what will generate supply for them, the San'layn Tomb is the same building that is used to train your basic vampiric units.



If you have issues making the map appear in your WCIII maps section, just rename the file by removing the version info (leaving it simply as "Hour of the Scourge Andorhal")

I appreciate any feedback, as I am still adding stuff to the factions and balancing them out.

**MODELS AND TEXTURES**

110000
-Grendel
~Nightmare
67chrome
acolyteofdoom
Afronight_76
Alpain
AndrewOverload519
armel
assasin_lord
Avsky
BLazeKraze
Boogles
Cavman
Champara Bros
cotd333
crl
Daenar7
Direfury
Edge45
Elenai
exfyre
Fuzzyfury
General Frank
Gottfrei
GreyArchon
grunt
HappyCockroach
Hayate
Hexus
Himperion
horusrogue
IamMclovin
infrenus
JesusHipster
JetFangInferno
Juice_F
Just_Spectating
kangyun
Kino
Kitabatake
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Kwaliti
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Orc1n
PeeKay
Power
Pyritie
Rao Dao Zao
Reflex
Sellenisko
skrab
sPy
Stefan.K
SuPa-
Sxar
Teldorei
Thrikodius
Tranquil
Ubernator
Ujimasa Hojo
Vitchie08
Wandering Soul
warhog
WILL THE ALMIGHTY

**ICONS**

~Void~
13L4M3
AL0NE
asdasdgfrw
-Berz-
BETABABY
D.ee
Dalharukn
darkdeathknight
Darkfang
DeathKnight
Eagle XI
Golden-Drake
GooS
HappyTauren
Heinvers
Hellx-Magnus
INSEKT
Justicebringer
KaplanHorus
KelThuzad
Kimbo
kola
Legal_Ease
mortal
Mr.Goblin
NFWar
Nudl9
Paladon
PeeKay
San
Sg0D
shiiK
Sin'dorei300
SpasMaster
stein123
The_Silent
TheKaldorei
Trigger.edge
VaLkYroN
Warcrafty
zbc

+Added alliances dialog at the start of the match
*Rebalanced some Argent Crusade units
*Fixed a glitch that allowed Undergates to spawn Broodlings while building

At the start of the match, players receive a dialog that includes alliance options, each button represents a player and the one clicked will set a shared vision alliance with the respective player, if it is computer controlled a two way alliance is automatically set. I plan on tweak this system later to allow a more dynamic alliance management, but for now this should do the trick.
I received some pretty good feedback about the faction and used it to rebalance it a little bit:
Grand Crusader
Blessed Armor
Now gives a 30% spell damage reduction and a 15% thorns aura effect

Judicator
Food cost increased to 4, up from 3

Pladin
Smite
Decreased duration to 8 on units and 4 on heroes, down from 10/5

Lord Commander
Rebalanced some of his AoE spells, made them weaker

Highlord
Crusader Strike
Rebalanced the cooldown and mana cost to increase its level up value

Golden Strider
Increased attack damage and improved attack rate
Undergate
Even thought the Undergate had its abilities disabled while still playing the build animation, it would still spawn Broodlings. This has been fixed.

*Decreased Crypt Lord's Ultimate mana cost
*Decreased minimum move speed for all units
*Decraased the cooldown for the Undergate's Dark Summoning ability
*Updated the alliance system

The this was way too weak, had to tweak it

Modified so the abilities that are supposed to paralyze may be more effective

300 seconds was way too much, I like the mobility that this thing gives you, so thought about reducing the cooldown so it may see some better usage

As I said, the alliance system has been updated as follows:

When the game starts, players are prompted with a dialog that allows them to choose between Team 1, Team 2 and No Alliance, so you can play 1v1, 2v2 or free for all.

If there is an AI player controlling any of the main factions, you will get an option to directly ally yourself with it.
+Added a new scouting unit to the Argent Crusade: Pathfinder
+Added a new scouting method to the Kinrin'tor: Magic Sentry
+Added a new functionality to the Death Priest's Death's Touch ability
*Minor update and bug fixing to the alliance system
*Minor balance changes to the Crypt Lord hero
*Minor bugs and tooltips fixing
Basic scouting unit, trained at the Town Hall, has hight movement speed, sight range and can cast Enlightenment which grants vision of a target unit, but cannot attack.
Similar to the Sentinel's Owl ability, allows your Town Hall and Arcane Towers to place a scouting spell on a target tree from a long range. Each Town Hall has 6 charges, each Tower has 3 charges.
I felt like this ability a little bit lackluster for a Tier 3 caster ultimate ability, so I decided to add some more impact to it, now on top of nullifying a target's armor it will also damage it whenever it attacks or cast a spell
Contents

Hour of the Scourge v20170307 (Map)

Reviews
Rufus
Approved. I have tried this in the Grand Review Exchange already, and it worked fine, and it has some pretty cool new and creative ideas, such as the plague spreader.
Pretty nice and promising. Will give this a try.


I'm also trying to create an altered melee map based on WoW factions that has paths. I may ask for help.

Feel free to ask, I'll be glad to help. Also the map isn't protected, so feel free to check out the triggers if you want to take a look on how the mechanic works.
 

Ardenaso

HD Model Reviewer
Level 32
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
1,804
Feel free to ask, I'll be glad to help. Also the map isn't protected, so feel free to check out the triggers if you want to take a look on how the mechanic works.

I'm trying to make a unit X that when loaded with units Y/Z, the projectiles of Y/Z will fire outside X to the enemies in range. Something like Phoenix Fire based skill I guess.

Also, may I use your "path" system? My altered melee will also have paths.
 
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Level 5
Joined
May 23, 2015
Messages
142
Nice Idea, played the Scourge so far, I like the vampire elves, but they seem to be very weak and not powerfull wich was lame (also the male vamps look a very cool in wow, sad none here), now the necromancer path seemed pretty strong with the half giants, but Valkyr seemed too expensive and not so powerfull.

Bug I found was in upgrading the frost wyrms and the half giants did not get the damage and armor upgrades, but the other units did, also after I did the second necropolis I could research the other paths, I started with the necromancer one, but then could do blood and spiders, also the permanent skeletons for necromancers got a skill to turn archers, but I clicked it and nothing happened. Also the last spell for the half giant mage requires the banshee upgrade.

And I could not turn the zigurat intu a defensive tower, dont know if your intention was that, if it was what is the defense for scourge?!

Still great models and cool factions here, gona try the others later, in any case great job man.

Edit: In the same game the AI Forsaken used a hero called Blood Prince, I'm trying Forsaken but can not find it, is it some hidden stuff?
 
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Nice Idea, played the Scourge so far, I like the vampire elves, but they seem to be very weak and not powerfull wich was lame (also the male vamps look a very cool in wow, sad none here), now the necromancer path seemed pretty strong with the half giants, but Valkyr seemed too expensive and not so powerfull.

Bug I found was in upgrading the frost wyrms and the half giants did not get the damage and armor upgrades, but the other units did, also after I did the second necropolis I could research the other paths, I started with the necromancer one, but then could do blood and spiders, also the permanent skeletons for necromancers got a skill to turn archers, but I clicked it and nothing happened. Also the last spell for the half giant mage requires the banshee upgrade.

And I could not turn the zigurat intu a defensive tower, dont know if your intention was that, if it was what is the defense for scourge?!

Still great models and cool factions here, gona try the others later, in any case great job man.

Thanks for the feedback, I will tweak the san'layn units and the val'kyr so they may be more viable.

The upgrade and Death Priest training bugs will definitely be fixed on the next patch (two weeks from now), thanks for pointing them out.

I don't think I got exactly what you meant about the second necropolis, you were able to research the other paths by simply building a new one?

The skeletons must be close to a graveyard in order to turn into archers, as described in the ability tooltip.

Ziggurats are exclusively used as support buildings (to regen mana and be upgraded into a shop) and unit production for the Nerubians. The Scourge's defensive structure is actually a unit, the Plague Spreader trained at your Necropolis.
 
Level 5
Joined
May 23, 2015
Messages
142
Thanks for the feedback, I will tweak the san'layn units and the val'kyr so they may be more viable.

The upgrade and Death Priest training bugs will definitely be fixed on the next patch (two weeks from now), thanks for pointing them out.

I don't think I got exactly what you meant about the second necropolis, you were able to research the other paths by simply building a new one?

The skeletons must be close to a graveyard in order to turn into archers, as described in the ability tooltip.

Ziggurats are exclusively used as support buildings (to regen mana and be upgraded into a shop) and unit production for the Nerubians. The Scourge's defensive structure is actually a unit, the Plague Spreader trained at your Necropolis.


Ok, I'm still bumped by not finding the Blood Prince unit the computer Forsaken used against me, and playing the forsaken I found only one bug, the ultimate of Putress is to revive a unit, but when he revives an enemy unit it stays in control of the enemy helping him.

And another thing wich was a pain, seen Forsaken lack anti air stuff, at least Scourge had Frostwyrms, but in the end of the game the Kirin Tor AI had like about 6 Green Dragons level 10 and all I had was Dark Rangers to take them down, had to make like 10 towers near enemy camp to finish them (and still killed all my heroes), another upside I suppose are the spiders that got the net thing to bring down dragons still the mages having an army of Green Dragon seemed weird.

Oh and to answer your question: Yes playing Scourge as soon as I made a new necropolis to defend a mine it had open the other 2 paths (blood and spider), so I got all, could not get the heroes cuse I had already got 3 (Necro, Lich, DK) still could build all Scourge bases, and all upgrades as well.
 

Dekadeep

D

Dekadeep

Lovely map!!! <3 but it still needs some more tweaking ;)
 
Ok, I'm still bumped by not finding the Blood Prince unit the computer Forsaken used against me, and playing the forsaken I found only one bug, the ultimate of Putress is to revive a unit, but when he revives an enemy unit it stays in control of the enemy helping him.

And another thing wich was a pain, seen Forsaken lack anti air stuff, at least Scourge had Frostwyrms, but in the end of the game the Kirin Tor AI had like about 6 Green Dragons level 10 and all I had was Dark Rangers to take them down, had to make like 10 towers near enemy camp to finish them (and still killed all my heroes), another upside I suppose are the spiders that got the net thing to bring down dragons still the mages having an army of Green Dragon seemed weird.

Oh and to answer your question: Yes playing Scourge as soon as I made a new necropolis to defend a mine it had open the other 2 paths (blood and spider), so I got all, could not get the heroes cuse I had already got 3 (Necro, Lich, DK) still could build all Scourge bases, and all upgrades as well.

Yeah, the revive bug is a thing that I've completely forgotten about, I'll need to add custom triggers for that thing as it clearly does not work by simply modifying the base ability.

The AI doesn't play using the same techtrees available for players, actually they are simply using reskined original units (priests simply using druids models, but with the same priest abilities, for example), that's temporary though while I still balance out the factions so I can create AI for them. That's why you see tons of dragons, the Blood Mage has been replaced by an Archdruid, which instead of summoning a Phoenix it summons a Green Dragon, that might be causing some bugs, so I'll take a look on it later.

The Forsaken only have Gargoyles as air units and I might leave it like that, air superiority was never a Forsaken thing in lore, so this will remain their weakness in the game.

I'm still trying to figure out the Necropolis bug though... As you are only supposed to research all three Paths after researching Will of the Lich King from a Black Citadel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you guys, I'm glad you are enjoying this map. The next update should be released during the first week of April.
 
Level 5
Joined
Jun 18, 2021
Messages
39
I remember playing this, it's a great map, the author really put love in it, I just love how unique all the races (Except for The Scourge, but that was intentional) are.
 
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