Altershift: Invasion of Blackrock

[pedeng]

hi guys i finished it and i like it alllot.
i cant wait to go for the humanized undeads once its done
"humanity will rise again"

 

[Macielos]

Spoiler

I must say don't like it too much because most swaps feel extremely cheap and low effort - like orcs still living in human cities (you could add Orgrimmar style orcish structures instead of human farms and mills) and human "plague" turning orcs into humans (couldn't humans simply capture orcs as slaves instead? Then they would have a much more believable Blackmoore-style vibe).

Also, Northrend turned into a concrete jungle with irregular cliff shapes and wild grass just replaced by cityscape lawns just looks... bad. It feels like a nightmare of an urban activist who fights to protect green areas in the city from developers wanting to cover everything with concrete .

Gameplay-wise it looks decent, orcish techtree seems fine with some changes like tauren riflemen, humans also got some new toys like Gunships which is always a welcome sight.

Also, I will forget all my critique if the Highlord of Humanity turns out to be Lord Garithos and the Path of the Rightous will be purging lesser races in his name .

 

[DwarfBoy]

Also, I will forget all my critique if the Highlord of Humanity turns out to be Lord Garithos and the Path of the Rightous will be purging lesser races in his name .

The characters are still the same, it's just that their races have been swapped. So, Garithos is an orc who leads the Draneron remnants while Ner'Zhul was a kaldorei who was torn apart by the titan Kil'Jaden and turned into the Highlord.

 

[Macielos]

The characters are still the same, it's just that their races have been swapped. So, Garithos is an orc who leads the Draneron remnants while Ner'Zhul was a kaldorei who was torn apart by the titan Kil'Jaden and turned into the Highlord.

Yeah, I imagine vanilla Garithos will be replaced with an orc, but at the same time you need an identity for this High Lord - so why not use Garithos? Purging the world of lesser races (which was revealed by Kel'thuzad as the human agenda in your timeline) suits him perfectly. You don't have to keep everything apart from races exactly as it was in vanilla. Be creative, experiment! There's really lots of background that could be added to make these swapped race campaigns more engaging. Each Warcraft race has its own character and vibe. Humans are chivalric and rightous, orcs are tribal, barbaric or shamanistic, night elves are mysterious and isolationist, undead are evil and swarmy. It defines how they would act in the story you're telling with your campaign. Simply switching races and tiles without any alterations to the plot seems to me... just boring and pointless. But of course it is just a suggestion, it's your campaign.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

Warcraft 3 Altershift: Invasion of Blackrock

Arthas as orc. Jaina as shaman. Undead? You will see...

www.youtube.com

10 Foehammer FPS out 10.

...Dont take me wrong, I like classic Warcraft 3 story. Even when you replace it with a bizarre alternative. Or create an alternative to of alternative campaign.
"Altershift" shows, in my opinion, a more grounded approach towards mixing alternate storyline and Warcraft Lore. You see - we have bronze dragonflight in WoW, keepers of the time and timelines. We have traveled through different timelines: for example, Warlords of Draenor or Azeroth, where murlocs are the main race...
So why couldn't this alternate Warcraft 3 story couldn't exist?
Even more - it aligns with some specific horde-centric view upon WoW Lore: Orcs are good, humans are bad, elves are so-so, undead is... Meh, let's ignore this.

In terms of gameplay campaign shows the same game design as original Arthas story, which has nice difficulty curve and different tasks to solve.
In terms of mission designs and terrain designs: I want to disagree with @Macielos, I see that this 'ordinated' realm of Lordamere is a perfect example of how otherworldish "order" can be - it looks bizarre, unnatural, wrong, fake. If this was the theme the author wanted to show, it was done, in my opinion, perfectly.
Why didn't Arthas become human?

Should I recommend this campaign to play? Well, if you already feel dizzy after playing "I'm not King yet, Uther -> Succeeding you, father" story for millennia, you can try this - at least it shows weird stuff like @Xetanth87's "Warcraft 3 Alternate" campaigns, which were the inspiration for the author.
Looking for more 'evil titan stuff', @DwarfBoy!

 

[Macielos]

"Altershift" shows, in my opinion, a more grounded approach towards mixing alternate storyline and Warcraft Lore. You see - we have bronze dragonflight in WoW, keepers of the time and timelines. We have traveled through different timelines: for example, Warlords of Draenor or Azeroth, where murlocs are the main race...

...and even in the Murloc dimension Thrall was called Thrallgulgulgul or something like that .

Generally time travel and alternate timelines are two things through which, whether it's WoW or Marvel, writers tell us "we have no fucking idea where to go with our story". Unless it's Rick and Morty.

So why couldn't this alternate Warcraft 3 story couldn't exist?
Even more - it aligns with some specific horde-centric view upon WoW Lore: Orcs are good, humans are bad, elves are so-so, undead is... Meh, let's ignore this.

But it doesn't even feel like an alternate timeline, it's just a race swap with literally no effort to make it internally consistent.

In terms of mission designs and terrain designs: I want to disagree with @Macielos, I see that this 'ordinated' realm of Lordamere is a perfect example of how otherworldish "order" can be - it looks bizarre, unnatural, wrong, fake. If this was the theme the author wanted to show, it was done, in my opinion, perfectly.

In my opinion there is no "theme" at all. It's a plain race swap. It looks lazy.

And I'm not saying this to somehow offend the author, discourage him to continue or something, it's his choice. Apparently some people like this. Gameplay-wise it's probably okay, with some custom units and stuff.

I just see almost every single race swapped campaign for Warcraft or Starcraft chooses the low effort path, with one exception of race-swapped Brood War I once saw on Executor Nral's channel. There Raynor was replaced by Hunter Killer Draliska, the "compassionate zerg" with his own personality and backstory. Kerrigan defeated the Overmind, took over the Swarm and left Duran to the Protoss (instead of Mengsk overthrowing the Confederacy and abandoning Kerrigan to the Zerg). Protoss were the baddies, with Aldaris being their overambitious leader, they converted Duran and invaded Tarsonis instead of Aiur, and then good Terrans like Mengsk (Tassadar) and Raynor (Fenix) were making their stand against the Protoss invaders. Everything had its own unique vibe. It felt real, even though completely different than vanilla. I just wish more "race swappers" followed this way, so that playing their campaigns we could feel curious how they changed particular aspects of the plot, not just "ok, let's play this map with a different race on a different tileset".

 

[pedeng]

The characters are still the same, it's just that their races have been swapped. So, Garithos is an orc who leads the Draneron remnants while Ner'Zhul was a kaldorei who was torn apart by the titan Kil'Jaden and turned into the Highlord.

xddd lmao no way

 

[SalvatorThenorium]

I think the idea itself is cool - changing something that had already been changed in a more chaotic way -but I think it could have been done better. Like in the first mission, for example, make the village feel more orcish than human- It doesn't really make sense for orcs to live in that kind of town. That's what I expect from a reused idea. Personally, in the second mission, you should make exploration easier... cutting down those damn trees really isn't very intuitive. But that's just my opinion.