Creep Alliances

[Reznor]

So I was watching a stream of Warcraft 3 and it got me thinking, what if you could ally with certain races of creeps on melee maps? For instance, in the lore Night Elves were allied with all dragon flights except black. What if that were incorporated into the game where if you play as Night Elves on a melee map, all the dragons that would normally be hostile become rescuable units? You wouldn't gain experience from them because you're not killing them, but you do get a free dragon out of it.

• Another thing I noticed is that none of the level 10 dragons really have any spells. I feel like some spells that dragons could incorporate are breath of fire for red dragons, blink for bronze dragons (since they have knowledge and some control over time, this would be them stopping time to travel short distances), and raise dead or summon infernal for black dragons.
• Each race has specific creeps they can ally with. For Night Elves, it would be dragons (except for black and nether dragon flight), Furbolgs, and Wildkins. For the Undead, it would be black dragon flight, pretty much any creep on the Felwood tileset, and any demonic units. For Orcs and Humans, I was thinking that they could buy contracts at mercenary camps. So Humans could ally with bandits and any other Human creeps on the map, and Orcs could buy contracts with Fel Orc or Demonic creeps on Outland maps, and Trolls could be a free alliance on Lordaeron, Northrend, and Ashenvale maps for the Horde.
• So for a certain amount of gold and possibly lumber, half the creeps on the map could become your allies. I feel like the Night Elves and Undead would become very powerful in this regard since the Night Elves have such a strong connection with nature and the Undead have a huge amount of influence in certain parts of the world of Azeroth and beyond.
• Centaur could be a buyable alliance for the Night Elves because they are connected with Cenarius in lore.
• What sort of alliances would Northrend creeps like the Magnataur share? Would they be more closely tied with Cenarius or with the Scourge? Nerubians would possibly be part of the Scourge, or be a buyable contract with either the Night Elves or Humans since in lore the few surviving Nerubians who weren't cursed with undeath directly opposed the Scourge, and this is evident in some of the last Undead missions in the Frozen Throne.
• Another thing that could be added are creep heroes, like hero dragons, hero dark wizards, hero Centaur Khans, etc.

What sort of balancing issues could happen based on this change to melee maps and how would you resolve them? If anybody wants to undertake this project, please link me your work so I can check it out myself, as I'd love to see my idea be made real.

 

[deepstrasz]

You could make an altered melee map. No one's going to stop you.

As far as melee goes, you have to consider balance. Flying units with Blink might be pretty strong. Plus, lorewise only black dragons would be the enemy of any other dragon flight. Black dragons are earth based so necromancy and demonic magiks is a bit too much.
Black dragons are not really friendly with anyone but themselves. They are opportunists. So, undead, orc, just a temporary deal.

Considering contracts and interests in general, anyone could work with anyone.

Centaurs are not well seen by night elves and especially the Cenarian Circle. They are twisted in their eyes as dark trolls are for night elves.

Nerubians will never be part of the scourge unless they are undead. They hate the Lich King and the undead because they were decimated by its/his influence.

 

[Reznor]

I see. The reason why I wanted somebody else to make it is because I'm not very skilled in map making, and the version of Warcraft I have doesn't include the map maker anyways (I'm playing on a mac). As of late, I can't even get the game to boot up. It says "failure to initialize, error 3". Any idea what error 3 is? I tried checking the battle.net forums, but it's incredibly hard to find tech support for mac users that isn't coming directly from Blizzard. If error 3 is a pan-OS problem, then I'd be able to identify where the problem is and how to fix it. All of your points are well-noted, but I disagree about the contracts thing. I don't think certain races would wish to do business with others, even if there was gold on the line. For instance, I find it strange that as a human, you can hire succubi and doom guards. Or the fact that as a night elf, you can buy dark trolls from mercenary camps. I know you are a pretty active user (I've seen you post on a lot of other threads), so thank you for taking the time to read my post and comment, it was greatly appreciated.

 

[deepstrasz]

Well, you could always try there forums:
Idea Factory
Project Recruitment

(I'm playing on a mac). As of late, I can't even get the game to boot up. It says "failure to initialize, error 3". Any idea what error 3 is?

@PurgeandFire if you will please.

I find it strange that as a human, you can hire succubi and doom guards.

I don't. It's all about context. Like, how Kel'thuzad became "evil" voluntarily, any mage or whatever human faction could have interest in demons.

Or the fact that as a night elf, you can buy dark trolls from mercenary camps.

Well, maybe those elves are satyrs or Highborne?

Of course, if we are to consider the current Warcraft III timeline, things are complicated and some races/factions would just not have as many "allies" as others.

 

[Reznor]

Ok, thanks for your help. And that does give me a good idea. Are there any factions in lore aside from the sentinels that might ally with trolls or black dragons? Illidan, for instance. I know in Battle for Mount Hyjal, the last vanilla Night Elf mission, you can hire dark trolls. I guess the trolls and elves were willing to put aside their differences to stop Archimonde. Since my questions have been answered, I'd like to turn this thread into a lore discussion thread.

 

[deepstrasz]

I don't know. Black dragons are pretty much extinct anyways. Why the Sentinels specifically? I mean it's not like they're more corruptible than the Watchers or any other group aside the druids.
Illidan, well, that could work, again with the right context

But I guess @Razosh could give you more details especially related to World of Warcraft.

 

[Reznor]

By the way, I noticed you PM'd me a couple months back. Something about Mission 5 of a 5 mission demo campaign. Apologies, but I don't quite understand how to PM people back, So I'll just ask you here. I can't tell you what version I'm playing on quite yet since I can't get my copy to work, but once PurgeandFire answers me, I'll get you that info. And I was thinking of the Sentinels since they're the main faction of the Night Elves. The sentinels are to the night elves what the orcs are to the horde. The horde probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the orcs, or it's composition would be dramatically different. I think the Tauren would be more inclined to join the Alliance since they and the Night Elves share very similar beliefs about nature. The trolls wouldn't be in the picture at all because they only came into the horde during the second war. forsaken would probably be their own faction and not part of the horde. I completely forgot about the Watchers, but I feel like they wouldn't ally with black dragons or trolls because of night elf laws. Assuming that all watchers have the same mindset as Maiev, they would be stubborn in doing business with anybody who doesn't align themselves with night elf law. That being said, they and the humans of Lordaeron would become fast friends since Lordaeron is lawful good of the morality spectrum. They'd probably respect the Scarlet Crusade as well since the Scarlet Crusade is fanatically loyal to their cause, which is a trait that the watchers, or at least Maiev, view positively. Scarlet crusade, however, is chaotic good because their methods can often times be barbaric, just like how Arthas purged Stratholme. How do you invite people to join a thread? I'd like to invite Razosh over here.

 

[deepstrasz]

Click to see how to start/access PMs (now called Conversations):

Spoiler: click images to enlarge

To access an already started conversation just click Inbox and then on the Conversation you want to write in. In case Inbox doesn't show any like in the picture, click Show All.

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I already invited him by writing his account name and in front of it @ in a previous post here.

 

[Reznor]

Oh, ok. I accidentally started a conversation with PurgeandFire alone. I thought the @ was useless unless he was already in the thread. I'm used to commenting on youtube threads, but I rarely use the posting features here. Anyways, I have to go to work, so apologies that I'm going to drop off from posting for a couple of hours. Just leave your posts here and I'll get to them when I can.

 

[deepstrasz]

I thought the @ was useless unless he was already in the thread.

No but there's an issue that no more than 5 accounts at a time get notifications when doing that in one post.