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Return of the King

Return of the King
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This is a custom campaign providing continuation to The Scourge of Lordaeron human campaign, but this time king Terenas manages to survive Arthas' betrayal and actually follows Medivh's instruction to leave Lordaeron.

Features:
  1. Completely new plotline following characters such as Terenas Menethil, Darius Crowley and Uther the Lightbringer
  2. Two new playable heroes (already mentioned above)
  3. New playable unit type: Knight of the Silver Hand
  4. Interlude chapters with well-known music from World of Warcraft

  • King Terenas Menethil II - king of Lordaeron, after Arthas' betrayal forced to leave his homeland with hopes of creating new settlements for the Lordaeronians
  • Lord Darius Crowley - a Gilnean noble, formerly exiled by king Genn himself, but in the face of the undead invasion pardoned for his wrongdoings
  • King Genn Greymane - king of Gilneas, badly remembered by the Alliance because of his behaviour during The Second War, meeting with king Terenas for the first time in years he feels regret over his actions
  • Uther the Lightbringer - paladin of the Silver Hand, former Arthas' teacher, now one of the last leaders of the Lordaeron forces in Eastern Kingdoms
  • Lord Garithos - one of the leaders of Lordaeronian resistance against the scourge, decides to join forces with Uther during their meeting in Andorhal
  • Archmage Antonidas - leader of the Kirin Tor, faced with a seemingly impossible task of protecting the city from Arthas' undead army

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Assets used in the campaign:
  • King Terenas - "King" by Tranquil
  • Genn Greymane - "Genn Greymane" by Stefan.K
  • Prologue map - "Agerron" by ByMighty
  • Knights of the Silver Hand - "Warcraft 2 Knight" by loktar
  • Music - "A Call to Arms", "Invincible", "Stormwind" by Jason Hayes / Blizzard Entertainment

Changelog:
  • Antonidas' Frost Bolt can no longer target structures
  • Heroes retain their items in chapters 7 and 8
  • All peasants in chapter 5 now change owner to player
  • Enemies in chapters 2, 7 and 8 now use AI scripts for more challenging and balanced gameplay
  • Minor map changes in chapter 7 to adjust AI pathing scripts
  • Warsong orcs in chapter 6 are no longer targeted as neutral
  • Added an event with furbolgs in chapter 7
  • New enemy faction in chapter 7 - Burning Legion, with several demons scattered across the map
  • Buffed Shandris in chapter 7

The campaign was created and playtested on the current Warcraft III Reforged version with Classic graphics, so it likely won't work with Warcraft III 1.31.1 and below.



I have started working on this campaign at least a year ago and throughout that time changed a lot of story and a few maps, so I really hope you enjoy it!
Contents

Return of the King (Campaign)

Reviews
deepstrasz
The premise is far fetched. I feel a great opportunity was missed by not making a canon campaign with Terenas during Warcraft II or before. Some units are selected during cinematic mode (Terenas at the end of chapter 1, when meeting Shandris). Kind of...
I just finished the campaign - it was okay BUT the campaign needs updates
The enemy bases does not build any units OR after a long time they barely build any units
Like in chapter 2, the main base has 3 ghouls, 2 crypts fiend, the enemy hero and they dont build any units
I use the cheat vision to see what's going on and I'll put the screenshots below
At some point all my champions lose their items
Antonidas can stun buildings (why?) ONLY with frost bolt, but if we use fire bolt is not working
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Thank you for the feedback, I already started to fix the bugs and posted the new campaign file

At some point all my champions lose their items
Should be fixed now, turns out the game can't reload caches with long names

Antonidas can stun buildings (why?) ONLY with frost bolt, but if we use fire bolt is not working
After thinking it through I decided to turn off the option to target structures altogether

Also fixed the thing with peasants in chapter 5, it seems when they enter the gold mine they're not detected as units in region


I need more time to fix the units production issue, in the earlier tests enemies spawned way too many units and just attacked with everything they had in the start of the game basically giving player no chance to build any defenses. I will maybe try using AI script only for attacks and triggers only for production and see how it turns out...

Also, could you explain what is wrong in the screenshot with Balnazzar?
 
Thank you for the feedback, I already started to fix the bugs and posted the new campaign file


Should be fixed now, turns out the game can't reload caches with long names


After thinking it through I decided to turn off the option to target structures altogether

Also fixed the thing with peasants in chapter 5, it seems when they enter the gold mine they're not detected as units in region


I need more time to fix the units production issue, in the earlier tests enemies spawned way too many units and just attacked with everything they had in the start of the game basically giving player no chance to build any defenses. I will maybe try using AI script only for attacks and triggers only for production and see how it turns out...

Also, could you explain what is wrong in the screenshot with Balnazzar?
Is there any way for you to have both production and attack waves be done through AI. Having the enemy be just spawning troops randomly can often leave players with a sense they are not fighting a real opponent, which kind of saps motivation to play. There should be lots of non-protected campaigns on hive that you can look through to see how they do their AI enemies/allies.
 
Is there any way for you to have both production and attack waves be done through AI. Having the enemy be just spawning troops randomly can often leave players with a sense they are not fighting a real opponent, which kind of saps motivation to play. There should be lots of non-protected campaigns on hive that you can look through to see how they do their AI enemies/allies.
After some tests I atually managed to make it work in AI scripts, although even with the triggers in most maps I just told the computer players to periodically use production structures to queue up unit production, so they weren't just spawning units out of nowhere. The only chapters with enemies spawning troops are chapter 1, where they are meant to attack from a road, not their main base, and in chapter 5, where I wanted to make it look like they are summoned through portals.

I will probably post an updated version of campaign with new AI scripts today, but I'm not yet sure if everything is working as intended.
 
hi guys i noticed the barrow den scenario where elf human and orc unite against the undead
what was cenarius doing with that good mine?
and why those furbolgs were pacifist? i killed them jsut for fun but XD this is fun
 
hi guys i noticed the barrow den scenario where elf human and orc unite against the undead
what was cenarius doing with that good mine?
and why those furbolgs were pacifist? i killed them jsut for fun but XD this is fun
I kind of had a dilemma what to do with the furbolgs.
On one hand, it would make no sense for them to attack night elves, since even in previous chapters they were working together, but it would also be kinda weird if they joined the player after walking there with any orc or human unit, so I just left them there as neutral with plans to change it in the future, and maybe I will add a quest or an event regarding them...

As for Cenarius, I presume you meant to say gold mine, but he was not doing anything to it. The spell he is channeling in the chapter is supposed to bait Balnazzar to attack him.
 
hi guys i just finished the this enjoyable fun. and dammit i just lmao at it
will it be continued? although many things are alive yet like slyvanas and antonidas and muradin
high five to pingpot especially for the ending music from Human campaign arthas(when he gets his vision and become's a chad)
 
Nice story arch, almost no bugs*.

However, it's very basic, there's barely any customization (e.g. units, spells, models or anything for that matter). Basically just plain old RoC races.
Also it's VERY easy.

* In chapter 6, you cannot interact with Warsong - e.g. repair their buildings or use most of the spells on their units (it says "Unable to target neutral units").
 
Nice story arch, almost no bugs*.

However, it's very basic, there's barely any customization (e.g. units, spells, models or anything for that matter). Basically just plain old RoC races.
Also it's VERY easy.

* In chapter 6, you cannot interact with Warsong - e.g. repair their buildings or use most of the spells on their units (it says "Unable to target neutral units").
I originally intended the orcs to be neutral to highlight how they are only cooperating with Terenas because they have to and not because they want it, but I get why it would be considered weird, so in the newest version I changed them to allies with the player.

Also, what version of the campaign were you playing? If you played version 1.0 or 1.1 then you should know in 1.2 and above the AI is more balanced and more aggresive than before.
 
I originally intended the orcs to be neutral to highlight how they are only cooperating with Terenas because they have to and not because they want it, but I get why it would be considered weird, so in the newest version I changed them to allies with the player.

Also, what version of the campaign were you playing? If you played version 1.0 or 1.1 then you should know in 1.2 and above the AI is more balanced and more aggresive than before.
Right, I understand that story-wise, but it's kind of awkward gameplay-wise. Thank you for changing it.

I played version 1.2 and to me it really seemed very easy. But of course, that's subjective. I've been playing W3 basically since it came out and I've beaten over a hundred of custom campaigns. Maybe if you intend to keep improving this campaign, you could consider adding difficulty levels.
 
  1. The premise is far fetched. I feel a great opportunity was missed by not making a canon campaign with Terenas during Warcraft II or before.
  2. Some units are selected during cinematic mode (Terenas at the end of chapter 1, when meeting Shandris).
  3. Kind of weird that Arthas became a Death Knight regardless of Muradin's intervention.
  4. Definitely not a fan of recycled original campaign maps.
  5. Now Balnazzar is stronger than when Uther bashed him in that previous chapter, so much so, that even Cenarius runs from him. So here Balnazzar is legion? Where are the others? Why did he get so much importance?
  6. Not sure if intended to get flying troops to aid Cenarius during the duel with the dreadlord.
  7. Meh, I thought the new death knight would be Garithos not Arthas again.
The gameplay is generally old school more akin to the first games from the series. The story sometimes seems a parody.

Thanks to Chernobyl Brotherhood for extensive footage.

Approved.


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I started playing the campaign. I am at ch5. I will come back with a review soon.
 
Good campaign. It is fun and simple. It suffers from poor execution, however. The dialogue is well written but there's not that much of a story. The maps are good and the ideas are good, but the maps are taken from wc3 official maps (however I do like the idea, some changes to the map to make them seem more distinct would be good) some custom stuff there and there which I liked. You've got the guts to make a great campaign and this one was nice indeed. I'd rate it 3.5 if I could.
 
So I enjoyed it. Overall its fairly simple like other people have mentioned however I did not encounter any bugs.

Is there suppose to be only one mission with Knights of the Silverhand?
 
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