[Role Playing Game] Reviving an Old Project: Lothaleven Wars

[skillzmfg3]

Greetings everyone!

With the recent announcement of WC3 Reforged my passion for Warcraft has generally been reignited. While I do enjoy playing other people's custom maps my real passion lies in creating my own maps. Now while you read, please do keep in mind I haven't done anything WC3 related in quite a long time and my understanding of how things work might be outdated. Also, before you go any further, I'd like to say that the whole map was created by myself, and since we all know epic maps require multiple people working on it tirelessly keep your expectations on a realistic level.

With that out of the way...I present to you Lothaleven Wars!

The map itself was inspired by many custom WC3 (and other) games I've played throughout the years. Mostly it's an RPG scenario where you evolve your lowly commoner character into a mighty hero that's supposed to defeat the opposing force. Unlike most RPG maps (that I played at least), PVP is a huge part of my scenario, since it features two factions fighting for dominance over the map.

At the beginning of the game, you have a choice between two factions. Choosing a faction will determine the type of heroes you can play in the future. So the Lothaleven faction has Humans and Elves, Human trainees can evolve themselves into either Warrios, Clerics or Assassins while Elves are naturally more adept at magic and can evolve into Arcanists, Battle-Mages and Rangers. As for the South Hammer Horde faction they can be either Trolls or Orcs. Trolls can choose to be either Headhunters or Shadow Hunters and Orcs can evolve into Warriors or Blademasters while both of the races share the Shaman class. You 'evolve' by hitting level 10 on your Trainee and going to your faction's capital and stepping into the circle of power. From there it's pretty much just a leveling race to level 60, which is max. While levels are important and will make you more powerful, itemization also plays a huge role and you should spend your gold on items wisely. Items can be either bought from merchants, dropped by unique zone bosses or earned via quests.

Lothaleven Starting Point

South Hammer Starting Point

Speaking of Quests...there are only a few in game. The reason is, I find them to be very complicated to make due to triggers sometimes acting in unexpected ways. I don't know if there is an easier way to make quests nowadays, but I use the default wc3 editor trigger window to make them. Each quest can be done only once and will yield experience and gold only to the Hero that completes it (nearby heroes don't benefit). Since quests make the game feel alive, I would very appreciate if you could give me some feedback on them or even give me a hand in creating some more.

Arcanist Class

Warrior Class

End Game - After you've chosen your class, leveled up, finished some quests and obtained powerful items, it is time to strike down your enemies and win the game. You can do so by destroying the Fortress or the Hall of Wisdom depending on the faction you're fighting for. This will usually require the effort of multiple high level players, since the closer you are to the enemy base the stronger units will attack you.

Third Faction - There is a third neutral faction within the game - Night Elves. They are mostly controlled by the Neutral Passive player, but if you attack their base, they will turn Hostile attacking everyone on sight and occasionally creating ambushes on unsuspecting players. I am not entirely sure what else I could do with them so any fresh ideas on this would be very much appreciated.

Elven Base

That pretty much sums it up for this map. I don't want to go on about it for too long, since first hand experience is the best anyway. If you're interested so far, download it and give it a try, it would mean a lot to me. Post your opinion below, positive or negative, as long as it is constructive I'll take it. If you'd like to help me out a bit more with the development feel free to message or e-mail me, any and all help is appreciated. Cheers guys!

 

[noob]

can you add a quest log that give pointers to stuff like "how to gain a class"
I tried walking on all the circles in allied towns and it did nothing.

 

[Tanni]

The idea is very fresh and unique. I like it. I do feel as though the terrain lacks a bit. There are a few tutorials on how to make better terrain:
Advanced Terraining Tutorial
Terraining - Complete Terraining Tutorial
I myself struggle with terrain a lot so I often search basic how-to's and the like, just to see if I could do something to the map that may help in making it prettier.
This does look like it has loads of potential, though!

 

[skillzmfg3]

can you add a quest log that give pointers to stuff like "how to gain a class"
I tried walking on all the circles in allied towns and it did nothing.

My mistake I didn't clear this up in the initial post. To gain a class you first need to hit level 10 with your trainee, at that point you'll gain a letter in your inventory from the leader of your faction, telling you you need to choose a class. From there on, the circle of power is 'unlocked' and you will be ported to the class picking room once you walk into it.

The idea is very fresh and unique. I like it. I do feel as though the terrain lacks a bit. There are a few tutorials on how to make better terrain:
Advanced Terraining Tutorial
Terraining - Complete Terraining Tutorial
I myself struggle with terrain a lot so I often search basic how-to's and the like, just to see if I could do something to the map that may help in making it prettier.
This does look like it has loads of potential, though!

Thanks for the feedback! I definitely realized the terrain was a bit off and I've often tried improving, and actually I still do. But since it's a huge map I do it little by little. I will definitely check out the Tutorials you posted and try to implement them as much as I can. Glad you like the concept!

 

[Thunder1]

why there are no quest when i go to the soldier?

 

[noob]

I am going to see if I can open the map and check if there is a soldier supposed to give a quest.
I found out: the soldier does give you a reward when you bring an item that you can not guess other than by reading its tooltip: kill each boss monster on the map and you are bound to find the item to bring back.
I dislike this map because it is made for multiplayer but destroying the opponent fortress takes ages when there is no opponent heroes and if there is opponent heroes it is quite likely it never ends by victory but only by players leaving because more than two hours is way too much and it can easily take that much time.
I think a rather simple fix would be dividing by 10 the life of everything and making level ups much faster.

 

[skillzmfg3]

I am going to see if I can open the map and check if there is a soldier supposed to give a quest.
I found out: the soldier does give you a reward when you bring an item that you can not guess other than by reading its tooltip: kill each boss monster on the map and you are bound to find the item to bring back.
I dislike this map because it is made for multiplayer but destroying the opponent fortress takes ages when there is no opponent heroes and if there is opponent heroes it is quite likely it never ends by victory but only by players leaving because more than two hours is way too much and it can easily take that much time.
I think a rather simple fix would be dividing by 10 the life of everything and making level ups much faster.

why there are no quest when i go to the soldier?

The Quests are there but you just have to pick up the bounty items from unique creatures (Usually have a red tint and are slightly bigger so they stand out) and then hand them over to the nearby units with an exclamation point hovering above their heads. Although I do intend to add some sort of clues and directions about which creatures to kill to get the bounty items, I also want to keep exploration rewarding so people don't just stand in one spot and afk grind until they hit 60.
As for the amount of time the game could last...I'll try and see what my options are, if enough people give similar feedback I'll probably nerf it a bit.
Thanks for trying it out!

 

[noob]

I think that there should also be some quests to reward people that attacks bases early like "destroy an opponent outpost" quest.
Or yet reward killing units of the opponent team a lot instead of not rewarding that at all.

 

[skillzmfg3]

I think that there should also be some quests to reward people that attacks bases early like "destroy an opponent outpost" quest.
Or yet reward killing units of the opponent team a lot instead of not rewarding that at all.

I am currently working on adding quests that encourage and reward the PvP aspect of the scenario. I still have a lot of triggering to do but after it's done I'll post the updated version of the scenario here.