Round Table of Arkain

[Jorgonson]

Kind of a non-sequitur but I had a prediction for the Path of the Circle and was curious what people thought about it. We know that Cora and Aedale's plan is to destroy the Four and let the mortal races of Arkain chart their own course. Now, knowing what Aridon has done and is planning it's clear that getting rid of him is pretty uncomplicated morally correct decision (I mean, he basically broke the world and then maintained a status quo of violence for centuries). While we know less about Tregakh, he's seemingly motivated by a desire to take over the world and get revenge of Aridon, both of which will result in a ton of mortal deaths and oppression. Again, it seems pretty hard to find anything morally complicated about getting rid of Tregakh.

Considering this, it kind of seems like the Cricle are just... the good guys. This is especially true when you consider the implications of Cora freeing the undead nexuses. Think about it, Cora studied and schemed for years to free all the undead, which represents freeing up to hundreds of thousands of slaves from becoming unwilling participants in the end of the world. If you don't consider Cora's ulterior motives and the potential for collateral damage, her emancipation of the undead is easily the single most moral thing anyone has ever done in the Arkain universe since Brian saved the orcs (lmao).

Here's the thing though, Arkain doesn't really have morally uncomplicated good guys. It would conflict pretty heavily with the tone, at least in my interpretation of the story. So, here's my prediction on how I think Shar is going to make us question The Circle and the morality of their actions: I think The Circle's next objective after freeing the undead is going to be to track down and kill Brian. This wouldn't come about out of a genuine hatred or fear of him, as Cora knows him personally and probably has a pretty neutral opinion of him. Rather, I think the plan is going to be for Cora to absorb his power and use that to be able to directly fight Aridon. While Cora and Aedale are quite strong, I doubt they could really threaten Tregakh or Aridon in a straight up fight, but Cora does have the ability to absorb people and take their powers, which could be how The Circle becomes a serious threat to the remaining Four.

It seems pretty plausible that Aedale would be opposed to killing a mostly benevolent or at least non-megalomaniacal deity like Brian. After all, this is the character who once let the demon who tried to enslave have an extended talk with her ex out of politeness. While a bit of internal conflict between Cora and Aedale could be cool, remember that Aedale was seemingly on board with Gardon's ideology early in the True Story (which was part of her rationalization for absorbing the demon eyes) and ultimately tried to rejoin him at the Gates of Hell. I think that The Circle is going to have a talk, and agree they need Cora to absorb fan favorite character Brian for their larger aims.

Another perhaps more crackpot prediction is that Maronogin is plotting with the Redfist sisters and Kenos. Think about it though, wouldn't it kind of make sense for him to at least be signing the paychecks on this operation? I can't imagine evil deities trying to destroy or enslave the world is good for the stability of the markets, and I'd imagine Maronogin would want to get rid of Tregakh and Aridon to secure the long-term returns on his investments. For Maronogin it wouldn't be about the freedom of all mortals, but it would be good business to dethrone these insane gods.

 

[Datage]

I must say, I fully agree with you. Both Aedale and Cora have no reason to "destroy" Brian (or at least, it isn't personal, like with Treghak or Aridon). As for Kenos... well, he's an Imperial General, so, who knows? However, I'd be surprised if both Brian and Treghak aren't already aware of the machinations of The Circle. But then again, Treghak has more important stuff to focus on, and from what I understood from the epilogue, Brian seems to have retired form plotting (somewhat, since he is still writing to Gardon about dealing with the Dragon Queen).

What intrigues me the most about The Circle, however, is their morality. After all, proclaiming that "The Four are all equally bad" is a bit of a strecht. To start, all we know about Zindrach is that he was somewhat decent, to the point he would be disappointed with the current demons (which makes Ebira trying to resurrect him all the funnier). Is Brian a considerably ruthless person, who supports and defends a bunch of megalomaniacs? Yes. Can that also be said about a bunch of other characters? Also yes. And needless to say, both Aridon and Tregakh are absolute monsters with very little redeeming qualities. But then again, that can also be said about most characters!

The only thing that sets the Four apart from the other bastards is that they are considerably more powerful, knowleadgeable and difficult to kill than the rest. I guess, at the end, that main fault in the assumption of The Circle is that removing them will make things inherently better... which is not necessarily true. Sure, Aridon and Treghak are absolute monsters... but is Meya any better? Ornasion? The Bonelords? Or people like the Imperial Generals and Redfist? Those aren't going to suddenly start to behave just because the Four are gone. And what will do The Circle do then? Also "remove" these tirants? And so on and so forth? When will they say "enough"?

Or will they only kill The Four? And demons keep being exactly like they were, and the Undead go rampant, and the Empire continues with it's imperialism, and Gardon and Amari keep manipulating and deceiving. At the end of the day, killing the Four does not address the root issue that allows them to thrive in the first place. And assuming that "But I know the solution to all the problems!" the The Circle boasts... it's very Four-like, isn't it?

Imo, at the end of the day, I know where they are coming from: The Four have and unfair amount of power over everyone else, and they are not particularly good people. Henceforth, they need to lose that power... and their lives. And again, you can probably say the same about a lot of other people. If you only focus on removing "bad" people (bad from your point of view!), you will just become another genocidal megalomaniac.

 

[Kasrkin]

So we heard you wanted shieldbearers back.

Hmm

 

[Elkordy-AA]

Am I the only one who think that after aridon unite the nexus under his will (if he success of course ) he will start by attacking the orcs

 

[Plantpaladin]

Dark Elves have a better connection to the main plot since we see the big conflict coming with Undead and Undead Rebels. They are a bit of a wild card with a combination of Zeal and Treachery.(I voted for them).
Dwarves have a bit more lore and characters but they are bitter survivors from last war who want vengance We saw so much of them last time so it is harder to see a new story to explore some other part of their faction. They can make an ok support faction to the Golden Guard or Empire but harder to see as their own faction to play as.

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

Finally after i have been defeated 40 times in hundreds of failed attacks i beat this mission on hard!

One thing that cause this amount of failure is that i can't build even on blight in west map, it's weird. But even with that i win!!

 

[ILIDAN STORMRAGE]

View attachment 537842
Finally after i have been defeated 40 times in hundreds of failed attacks i beat this mission on hard!

One thing that cause this amount of failure is that i can't build even on blight in west map, it's weird. But even with that i win!!

Well it is not really the proper chanel to post this as it doesnt talk about the "new content but as as someone that also completed all of the true story on hard I have to respect the grind this is maybe the worst mission from a dificulty standpoint (I would also give an honorable mention to possesion here due to personal bias )and the blight bug (or maybe feature I am not sure) makes it even harder. This mission is supposed to be beaten by gathering all your special reinforcements and the demon behind the trees(he is important for he can heal all ) it .in one unstuppoable push (you will have more than 200 population if you gather them and can use your own pop before the proces begins to gather mages and meat wagons in ridicolous numbers)
took me a while to realise this as well but once I did that,the second atempt was a straight up sweep through the demon slave base that also destroyed 2-3 Gates in the east.

Overall this is really an achivement and something to be proud of so congrats to you(even more so since you didnt cheese the reinforcements by using rahadir as a line of defense while building your army and merely harassing the demons in his base so they didnt kill him.
You truly deserve the laurels now the worst is behind you but dont worry you will still find some crazy chalenges during your run to complete the true story.

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

Well it is not really the proper chanel to post this as it doesnt talk about the "new content but as as someone that also completed all of the true story on hard I have to respect the grind this is maybe the worst mission from a dificulty standpoint (I would also give an honorable mention to possesion here due to personal bias )and the blight bug (or maybe feature I am not sure) makes it even harder. This mission is supposed to be beaten by gathering all your special reinforcements and the demon behind the trees(he is important for he can heal all ) it .in one unstuppoable push (you will have more than 200 population if you gather them and can use your own pop before the proces begins to gather mages and meat wagons in ridicolous numbers)
took me a while to realise this as well but once I did that,the second atempt was a straight up sweep through the demon slave base that also destroyed 2-3 Gates in the east.

Possession is easy when you learn how to play with banshee, is the same with original Warcraft 3 campaign Dark Lady.

But the hardest mission so far were Green Wave, Possession (So far) and Siege of Dead Mountain, the next one i presume will be Roars in the Forest because in normal i couldn't beat this mission because the attack in rear, and lack of healing.

Even "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" maybe will be not easy but not so difficult like the others!

 

[ILIDAN STORMRAGE]

Possession is easy when you learn how to play with banshee, is the same with original Warcraft 3 campaign Dark Lady.

But the hardest mission so far were Green Wave, Possession (So far) and Siege of Dead Mountain, the next one i presume will be Roars in the Forest because in normal i couldn't beat this mission because the attack in rear, and lack of healing.

Even "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" maybe will be not easy but not so difficult like the others!

Green wave was not that bad in my opinion the dwarves units are super tanky and all enemy bases can easily be overrun by either full griphons army or bear riders and runepriests for healing and you can use the ally you have to deal with the defensive part if you keep just one or two rifles to kite the enemy waves into them. But you should keep the blodstone dwarves alive there because those elites are invincible under the healing fountain.
Roars in the forest I will trust you here but I had 2 of the kome armours(the +7 armour ones ) on zairmak and 3 of them on grozfag so that was really easy for me(I was advancing just with the 2 of them and zairmak was at the front because he had the teleport ,all my units were at the healing fountain so I can fall back there if needed with zairmak. Try that chese if you will it will be easy to pull of if you dont lose much until you reach the fountain.
Posesion was hard I know how to use banshees but not having tier 3 upgrades for 95% of the time was horible ,I chesed it by posesing all and I mean all the earth order so I can make up for my lack of quality with around 20 golems on a click

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

Green wave was not that bad in my opinion the dwarves units are super tanky and all enemy bases can easily be overrun by either full griphons army or bear riders and runepriests for healing and you can use the ally you have to deal with the defensive part if you keep just one or two rifles to kite the enemy waves into them. But you should keep the blodstone dwarves alive there because those elites are invincible under the healing fountain.
Roars in the forest I will trust you here but I had 2 of the kome armours(the +7 armour ones ) on zairmak and 3 of them on grozfag so that was really easy for me(I was advancing just with the 2 of them and zairmak was at the front because he had the teleport ,all my units were at the healing fountain so I can fall back there if needed with zairmak. Try that chese if you will it will be easy to pull of if you dont lose much until you reach the fountain.
Posesion was hard I know how to use banshees but not having tier 3 upgrades for 95% of the time was horible ,I chesed it by posesing all and I mean all the earth order so I can make up for my lack of quality with around 20 golems on a click

I try not use so much air units because it's seem to me as a "cheat", in normal mode i use mass air units but in hard i want to challenge me and win with land units mix with air troops.

With that said, i know that maybe will be impossible to win "Last Stand of Golden Guard", without mass dragons hitkilling the castle of dwarf units and Merlon castle

I will try that in Roars of the Forest, i use the old strategy in this kind of mission of using only heroes to attack enemy units to not lose my units until the crucial point of mission like boss fight, base invade.

One mission that i will try to win with land units is "End of a Uprising", i will try not use trebuchets except the inner base to defeat grey.

 

[ILIDAN STORMRAGE]

I try not use so much air units because it's seem to me as a "cheat", in normal mode i use mass air units but in hard i want to challenge me and win with land units mix with air troops.

With that said, i know that maybe will be impossible to win "Last Stand of Golden Guard", without mass dragons hitkilling the castle of dwarf units and Merlon castle

I will try that in Roars of the Forest, i use the old strategy in this kind of mission of using only heroes to attack enemy units to not lose my units until the crucial point of mission like boss fight, base invade.

One mission that i will try to win with land units is "End of a Uprising", i will try not use trebuchets except the inner base to defeat grey.

Dude if you manage all the campaign including the ending parts without using many air units you are a legend. Massing them is not a cheat the missions were designed with that posibility in mind thats what is great about arkain's balance no matter what you chose to go for it is viable but still difficult and thats the point. The Last orc mission was like you know what they have dragons so throw pragderas in the battle as well . Also last stand of the golden guard is not that bad without dragons I tried it and its kind of OK bloodclaw is menance with the war aura buffing anything in sight and the lifesteal. If you stack all the crowns of kings ,the hammer of salomar and give the spell imunity necklace on vail she becomes the ultimate healer while also being super tanky and Brian with the miss chance . If you are good at micro you can wipe the outside bases with only the heroes and the allies(maybe some siege to speed it up). The inside will be tougher however I personally snipe the castle and the workers during a suicide push and then all damage you deal becomes permanent so you will make real progress(and trust me 10 siege golems led by gardon and vail can snipe any castle). I would however be more worried about the orc last mission as I mentioned before(and the gate of hell where land units cant really pass the narrow points.)

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

i beat it in hard, without peacemaker, oh my God.

 

[ILIDAN STORMRAGE]

View attachment 539658

i beat it in hard, without peacemaker, oh my God.

Insane dude . I stopped after the 2 outer bases(Orange and blue) as I knew red had no more tomes but you are just built diferent. It is a slug at its peak pushing red.
Keep up the amazing work you really are a champion of arkain

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

Insane dude . I stopped after the 2 outer bases(Orange and blue) as I knew red had no more tomes but you are just built diferent. It is a slug at its peak pushing red.

When you learn that Ornasion ultimate finger of death is very useful against buildings make easy against red even more because there is no repair!

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

Lieutnant Claire Greendale returning after a great successful (And almost suicide) assault against Zirr Nexus destroying the capacity of the enemy to rebuild their defenses (Killing all workers and destroying the Citadel)

Whatever means necessary to win a war.

My assault i remember like Lerrig, "I destroy Three Demon Gate", "Yeah, but you lose every soldier", effective? Yes, sustainable? Questionable!

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

Easy, just cost me every unit but i beat "Roars of the Forest" in less than 15 minutes of gameplay in hard difficult!

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

It's nearly impossible beat this mission in hard difficult after Shar made the Honor and Glory batallion depawn before they engage with orange or green.

 

[Elkordy-AA]

View attachment 541923

It's nearly impossible beat this mission in hard difficult after Shar made the Honor and Glory batallion depawn before they engage with orange or green.

I beated it today the key is to destory the elves base and claim their gold mine as fast as u can then build frost wryms and rangers and the rest is up to u

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

I beated it today the key is to destory the elves base and claim their gold mine as fast as u can then build frost wryms and rangers and the rest is up to u

I am trying, this mission is really piss me off. The attack timing of the orange and green increase over time, you defeat one and he come back almost instantly not giving you time to breath or attack. With only one gold mine and the need to be high upkeep and build defenses is making me crazy.

I really miss the old mechanic of Glory and Holy Battallion now i see that they are entirely useless.

 

[Elkordy-AA]

I am trying, this mission is really piss me off. The attack timing of the orange and green increase over time, you defeat one and he come back almost instantly not giving you time to breath or attack. With only one gold mine and the need to be high upkeep and build defenses is making me crazy.

I really miss the old mechanic of Glory and Holy Battallion now i see that they are entirely useless.

That's why u need the 2nd gold mine of the elves as fast as u can if u claimed the free one well all Ai switch to attack it trust I once got attacked my All ai at same time XD

 

[lekxman22]

So shar any hints on when are we getting new chapter after Keep of Fates( tbh atm there isnt a path we can choose right?)

 

[Nicolas Warchief]

That's why u need the 2nd gold mine of the elves as fast as u can if u claimed the free one well all Ai switch to attack it trust I once got attacked my All ai at same time XD

I DID IT! FINALLY I DESTROY THIS DAMMED BASE! OH MY SAINT GOD! Now it will be more easy!

And without air units. The warden unit is perfect, even Infernal become slow against her!

Completed FINALLY OH MY GOD!

 

[Hinata28]

There's a lotta paths to play on. Hope we can play them all in the near future.

* Path of the Viper - we will play the game as what Inara's plans. Maybe using Orcs under her tutelage.

* Path of the Truthseeker - we will have to unravel the truth about the Dark One and what Amari's connection. Most probably Gorthog with backup from Moghtar and Gnolls.

* Path of the Just - we will play as the Dwarves. They're gonna do what's right on their POV. Fighting against both Zyainor and the Dominion mostly.

* Path of the Union - we will play as the Tribal Dominion, going to war once again after 2 decades of peace.

* Path of the Flames - we will see what happened to Fiona van Durce. Did Progaderas trained her well? She will unleash her master's will on the surface.

* Path of the Nameless - we will know whatever background Veln the Nameless had before the amnesia.

* Path of the Dragon - the Dragons of Zyainor, maybe under Thanok will go and fight battles against Zyainor's enemies.

* Path of the Bloodclaw - Cala'er Gardon gonna don his weapons and armor once again. He's on a path of revenge and vengeance against those who wronged his family, killed Garan and is trying to ruin Zyainor.

* Path of the Circle - we will play as those characters who are against The Fallen Four and their influence. Kenos Harron, Cora and Aedale Redfist gonna be in this path.

* Path of the Watcher - we will see Aridon's plans for total destruction of all in this world, in his "quest" of resetting the world, ridding it of the Fallen Four's influence.

* Path of the Two - we will have playable Demon faction once again. As Ebira has to reclaim the former glory of demonkind.

* Path of the Bones - here comes the Bonelords and their twisted crusade of reducing everything to bones. We will play as them on that twisted crusade.

* Path of the Beauty - we will see how Lady Meya and the Rohir Nexus has to do anything to maintain their existence.

* Path of the Desperate - King Dorten of Kerrel is now in desperate mode. We will have to find anything to resist and defeat Kerrel's enemies, be it Dominion, Zyainor or anybody else.

* Path of the Guardian - we will see how Rahandir Drakeskull has to say about what Aridon's plan of total extermination, and how he would do on the issue.

* Path of the Dark - we can see how Tregakh aka Largoth do in this path. How he would fight the other members of the Fallen Four.

* Path of the Pure - here comes the Golden Guard. Now that the grail is back, we will see the reformation of the Golden Guard and we will also see their rise once again.

* Path of the Heroes - we will play as the Heroes, doing whatever the best decisions, using their skills.


And many more paths underway. Hope we can play it all, soon enough.

 

[Elkordy-AA]

Hi Shar

is most of the paths will be connected together?

I know u said its choose ur own path but after playing the first chapters of the first path Iam starting to have a feeling that all the paths will be canon and maybe connected each telling a piece of the story..maybe Iam wrong through hope u could explain it to me?

 

[Shar Dundred]

is most of the paths will be connected together?

I know u said its choose ur own path but after playing the first chapters of the first path Iam starting to have a feeling that all the paths will be canon and maybe connected each telling a piece of the story..maybe Iam wrong through hope u could explain it to me?

The short answer is no.
There will be paths that overlap with other paths as in there will be things that happen in both, some events
might even occur in all paths but by no means always.

The reason that this is diffficult to see is that we are still on the first path, this will become more clear as time goes on.
For example, I can assure you that the Path of the Dark will go quite differently than the one you are currently experiencing.

 

[Hinata28]

I'm back updating the Legends of Arkain Fandom. Well, adding new ones and updating old ones and with my limited knowledge nevertheless.

The only thing lacking on the experience was the bugged editing software Fandom sites had. But it's fun to add and edit entries whenever I can.

I hope the Fandom be updated by anyone who had Fandom account, or just visit and add more information on entries.

 

[Pourquoi]

I'm back updating the Legends of Arkain Fandom. Well, adding new ones and updating old ones and with my limited knowledge nevertheless.

The only thing lacking on the experience was the bugged editing software Fandom sites had. But it's fun to add and edit entries whenever I can.

I hope the Fandom be updated by anyone who had Fandom account, or just visit and add more information on entries.

In that case, I'd recommend moving the wiki away from Fandom and to another host that does not spam ads at you, use an unintuitive/intrusive UI and/or keep getting worse over time, like wiki.gg (I chose this one for my wiki) or Miraheze.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Since I want to make choices more transparent with Legacy of Arkain,
the soon to be released new chapter will be accompanied by an update to the Keep of Fates.
This update will allow you to view the current status of your choices.

This is going to be interesting for you since EVERY choice in the Path of the Bloodclaw has some sort of effect on the upcoming chapter...

Stay tuned!

 

[Elkordy-AA]

Since I want to make choices more transparent with Legacy of Arkain,
the soon to be released new chapter will be accompanied by an update to the Keep of Fates.
This update will allow you to view the current status of your choices.

This is going to be interesting for you since EVERY choice in the Path of the Bloodclaw has some sort of effect on the upcoming chapter...

Stay tuned!

Umm shar about the new update u might have uploaded an older version instead ch 3 isn't appearing nor keep of fates updated

 

[Shar Dundred]

Umm shar about the new update u might have uploaded an older version instead ch 3 isn't appearing nor keep of fates updated

Must be something on your end. It worked for me when I just tested and also for others in the New Content Discussion.

 

[Elkordy-AA]

Well i only needed to delete the map and redownloaded and it worked thx

 

[swarmlord1231]

So, I haven't been here for a while, but with the legacies of arkain starting on another path and the like, I have been thinking about something, I have been thinking about making a TVTropes page for Arkain, just for fun, cause this series deserves more attention and TVTropes let's you make pages for any media.

 

[Plantpaladin]

Sure TVTropes seems like a great idea. Countless tropes to write down from the series.

 

[swarmlord1231]

Sure TVTropes seems like a great idea. Countless tropes to write down from the series.

I think so to! I may start on it tomorrow, though I apologize if this was perhaps better suited for the round table of arkain! I would love to hear if anyone is interested in helping.

 

[Kasrkin]

I'm going to stop the laid back Kas thing I've done for a good twelve years for a bit to talk about this. I don't mind the algorithm sourced voices as because in the end this is just a mod series and not a commercial product. The chance to voice dialogue and make custom soundsets for everything sounds really cool. Even if a part of me is nostalgic for the mostly terrible/cheesy voicework of 90s and 00s mods. On the other hand especially for the amount of dialogue in missions and cutscenes I like reading at my own pace and imagining the characters' own voices in my head. This also has the chance to be extremely fucking annoying with the amount of dialogue in those same missions and cutscenes. Gardon's voice is probably never going to be anything other than the melee deathknight soundset in my head anyhow.

As for music I'm not sure I'd accept it as well as generalist voicework since I'm fine with it as a joke but as a more serious thing people would 'listen' to? I don't know a part of me would always be emberassed about it, and I am still waiting on those good or terrible fan songs by the way we don't just accept art pieces here.

But the vote in this case is a community driven vote of which I am abstaining from. As Shar has said in the newspost be respectful or don't but don't take it too far, this is a topic that has a lot of different views on it. I have never minded a little bit of insults I knew the internet before the 2007 crash after all. If you do start fights; just don't take it too far. You know many of these people, and you use the same website or lurk it. Some of you have played this game since 2002 like me or you could be newer, doesn't matter, your view should still be counted.

Now Shar might be mad at me but I don't mind, he's probably right to do so.

But remember, it is called the round table after all. Good night and good day to everyone.

 

[Jayborino]

I guess I'm unclear from the news post what the options for AI tools even are beyond audio stuff. And in those cases, all Shar will do is add more work onto himself by adding things beyond what is natively in the game. I'm all for using it to save time on rote tasks, but I'm not understanding what the use case is for something like this other than adding voice lines and/or music.

There is a case for voice lines for non-native speakers who may understand the dialogue by listening rather than reading, but we've also gone this long that I'm not going to make the case for other people who can advocate for their own damn selves. On a personal level, I don't think anything like that would materially add to the project and also risks clashing with the characters folks have spent a decade creating in their head.

We live in an odd moment re: AI where there are serious issues to tackle, but many (in the gaming community especially) choose the most worthless possible fronts to fight them on. Some folks lose their minds over AI and I don't know if it's worth that level of heat on top of the extra effort to utilize it at all.

I still voted "don't care" because what the fuck do I know, I'm just some asshole who plays games who uses AI for some value add tasks at work. Bottom line: use it to help yourself, not add more work or acquiesce to nagging people.

 

[Banaconaconut]

First time I wrote here, but have been following and playing since the First Books. God, I always forget how old this story is.
Anyway, I'm not too expert on the consequences or stuff in regards to AI - but I would not mind using it for voice acting. Let's be honest, Arkain dialogues are LONG and many don't really like reading for a few minutes straight while listening to that "huwaaa-ahhhh-ahhh- huwaaa" warcraft 3 background music.

My only issue with AI is that it ruins potential but in this case, we can't really expect Shar to pay people to voice act for a fan passion project/mod or however custom campaigns are called. So using AI in this case would not really take away anything, but rather add what isn't normally possible to be there.

As for the music.... ehh, I'm not into it, music is 100% about passion, passion which AI surely doesn't have. Plus, it's way too rng. Music is one of the difficult hit or miss even in other proper gaming studios. Sometimes the dev team would think the music is perfect, but fans don't and now they're forced to hear it or listen to nothing at all. My point in regards to music is that it's a bit riskier, a bigger hit or miss compared to just the voice acting.

Hearing Duke Redfist's voice as chew on his kids would be amazing to hear.

Of course this is just my view on things.

 

[Karmondia]

If the quality is good, I don't mind A.I. voice acting or music at all. If you ask me, use A.I. however you wish, Shar! I always wished for voice acted Arkain, I think this has potential!

 

[r.ace613]

For a fan project, I think using AI only for voice acting might be fine, but at times it can be awful tbh. Everything else should remain man-made, especially music if you ever use any of them (I mean not like you are using AI to harm people in this context anyway but as Banaconaconut mentioned, passion is something only humans have, AI doesn't)

 

[fbsonar]

Cannot open Strawpoll, sad.

What I wanted to say is that I don't mind AI voiceover. I already played some projects with it and see no issues.
But I wouldn't like to see using AI in art. Better off something from vanilla assets or something already made on the Hive than some gross AI-generated shit.

 

[Morris]

I respect the fact that you are even asking the community before making a decision. That alone says a lot about how seriously you treat Arkain.


Personally, I do not support the use of AI for voice acting inside the campaign. No matter how advanced it becomes, it cannot truly replicate human emotion, nuance, or the subtle imperfections that give characters weight and authenticity. Arkain’s strength has always been its atmosphere and writing, and synthetic voices risk flattening that emotional depth.


That said, I do not see an issue with using AI in a limited, controlled way for secondary or external elements. Things like experimental songs, background material, or supplementary content outside the core campaign could be acceptable if handled carefully and with strong quality control. The key difference is that these uses would not interfere with canon storytelling or character delivery.


Arkain has always felt personal because it is personal. As long as the creative core remains human-driven, selective and restrained use of AI for non-essential additions would not undermine that foundation.

Another path worth considering is searching for voice actors directly within the community here on Hive. There may be members willing to contribute either voluntarily or for compensation. If funding becomes the obstacle, you could explore launching a small campaign through Patreon or a similar platform specifically to support voice acting. That would keep the performances human while giving supporters a direct way to strengthen the project.


And I say again, Arkain’s identity is built on personal craftsmanship. Preserving that human element in the campaign itself should remain the priority.

 

[Karmondia]

Personally, I do not support the use of AI for voice acting inside the campaign. No matter how advanced it becomes, it cannot truly replicate human emotion, nuance, or the subtle imperfections that give characters weight and authenticity. Arkain’s strength has always been its atmosphere and writing, and synthetic voices risk flattening that emotional depth.

I disagree, A.I. voices are starting to become really good at replicating human emotion. There are also different methods of making A.I. voices. There is of course Text to Speech, but there are also things like Retrieval Based Conversion, where you, or someone (a real human) speaks the dialogue, and the A.I. replicates the exact same intonation and nuance, just with a different voice.

Another path worth considering is searching for voice actors directly within the community here on Hive. There may be members willing to contribute either voluntarily or for compensation. If funding becomes the obstacle, you could explore launching a small campaign through Patreon or a similar platform specifically to support voice acting. That would keep the performances human while giving supporters a direct way to strengthen the project.

I feel like amature voice acting could ruin the seriousness of the story. Hive is not exactly filled with voice actors, and even if we could find enough people to do this sort of thing, the quality of it would vary depending on the person.

And, while of course, I support hiring professional voice actors, the cost of that would be astronomical, for a fan project like this, I don't think that's realistic. Not to mention it would also take ages to get the right person, hold auditions for the roles, re-record lines that came out wrong, etc. What if the voice actor becomes unavailable, but there is a new chapter of Arkain, that requires him? With A.I., it's not an issue, but with real people, in my opinion, things have the potential to get complicated.

And I say again, Arkain’s identity is built on personal craftsmanship. Preserving that human element in the campaign itself should remain the priority.

I agree, but I don't think Arkain's identity is at any risk here. The story is still written by Shar, the maps are still made by Shar, the models are still by Blizzard and the people here at Hive, good A.I. voice acting would only enhance the story, I think.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Now Shar might be mad at me but I don't mind, he's probably right to do so.

I see absolutely no reason to be mad here.

use it to help yourself, not add more work or acquiesce to nagging people.

This is definitely going to be the case.
If the poll has a pro-AI result, that doesn't mean people get to nag me about "finally adding AI voice", I am sure that is clear to everyone here.
Now it DEFINITELY is.

First time I wrote here, but have been following and playing since the First Books. God, I always forget how old this story is.

Nice to have you here, I am always happy to see long-time players around!
Yeah, I know what you mean, I keep being reminded of it.
I think I still have a document from 2012 somewhere. No idea where I put it though.

As for the music.... ehh, I'm not into it, music is 100% about passion, passion which AI surely doesn't have. Plus, it's way too rng. Music is one of the difficult hit or miss even in other proper gaming studios. Sometimes the dev team would think the music is perfect, but fans don't and now they're forced to hear it or listen to nothing at all. My point in regards to music is that it's a bit riskier, a bigger hit or miss compared to just the voice acting.

For a fan project, I think using AI only for voice acting might be fine, but at times it can be awful tbh. Everything else should remain man-made, especially music if you ever use any of them (I mean not like you are using AI to harm people in this context anyway but as Banaconaconut mentioned, passion is something only humans have, AI doesn't)

I think music (vocals at least) and voice acting are on a pretty similar level. I understand what you are saying however, it is a valid point.

Hearing Duke Redfist's voice as chew on his kids would be amazing to hear.

Best dad.

I always wished for voice acted Arkain, I think this has potential!

It does. But it also has a looooooooooooooooooot of text. The camp scenes alone are already a lot.
On a side note, I had this idea about having other characters interact in those "camps" as well, adding even more dialogue between different characters.
Or even have player be able to switch character mid-camp to get more dialogues & variants.
I think it is clear why I did not go with that, the project is big enough as it is. The camp scenes have enough dialogue and it would become overloaded. Both me and players would have lost our minds if there had been dialogue options per Gardon child for every other Gardon child i. e..

Cannot open Strawpoll, sad.

A strawpoll setting about VPN users being blocked I am afraid.
I don't like enabling it, but for topics that people can be emotional about, a loud minority might attempt to abuse such a thing.
I will however consider your post & its content as part of the poll.

But I wouldn't like to see using AI in art. Better off something from vanilla assets or something already made on the Hive than some gross AI-generated shit.

As far as I am aware, there are some 2D artists that use AI supportively for icons with a lot of effort put into it.
There is an argument to be made for those. Personally I do not have the 2D skill to create such things, when I have to make an icon myself, for a unit i. e., I am making a screenshot icon.
For low level stuff lazily created, there needs to be no discussion about it. As I said in my newspost, laziness is a huge factor why low level AI slop exists.
If I use a shovel to hit the earth instead of, you guessed it, shovel it, I am using that tool the same way those people use AI (also a tool). The result is also similar.

I respect the fact that you are even asking the community before making a decision. That alone says a lot about how seriously you treat Arkain.

And I appreciate that so many of you participate in the discussion & vote in the poll, I really do. It is also always nice to see familar faces.

Personally, I do not support the use of AI for voice acting inside the campaign. No matter how advanced it becomes, it cannot truly replicate human emotion, nuance, or the subtle imperfections that give characters weight and authenticity. Arkain’s strength has always been its atmosphere and writing, and synthetic voices risk flattening that emotional depth.


That said, I do not see an issue with using AI in a limited, controlled way for secondary or external elements. Things like experimental songs, background material, or supplementary content outside the core campaign could be acceptable if handled carefully and with strong quality control. The key difference is that these uses would not interfere with canon storytelling or character delivery.


Arkain has always felt personal because it is personal. As long as the creative core remains human-driven, selective and restrained use of AI for non-essential additions would not undermine that foundation.

Another path worth considering is searching for voice actors directly within the community here on Hive. There may be members willing to contribute either voluntarily or for compensation. If funding becomes the obstacle, you could explore launching a small campaign through Patreon or a similar platform specifically to support voice acting. That would keep the performances human while giving supporters a direct way to strengthen the project.


And I say again, Arkain’s identity is built on personal craftsmanship. Preserving that human element in the campaign itself should remain the priority.

A very strong post that I am very appreciative for. Thank you!

I feel like amature voice acting could ruin the seriousness of the story. Hive is not exactly filled with voice actors, and even if we could find enough people to do this sort of thing, the quality of it would vary depending on the person.

And, while of course, I support hiring professional voice actors, the cost of that would be astronomical, for a fan project like this, I don't think that's realistic. Not to mention it would also take ages to get the right person, hold auditions for the roles, re-record lines that came out wrong, etc. What if the voice actor becomes unavailable, but there is a new chapter of Arkain, that requires him? With A.I., it's not an issue, but with real people, in my opinion, things have the potential to get complicated.

The thing is that it is not "just" the person but also the available technology and the setup around the recording itself.
Background noise, echo, microphon quality, software... there are many factors at play here. You can't expect people to have an audio studio at home.
I am not against community voice acting or anything of the kind. I still remember the times when modders did this and had some pretty cheesy voice acting. Cheesy but made with dedication.
The past decade has however shown that this is easier said than done.
A huge factor in all of this, both regarding the case for AI voice acting and actual voice acting, is that Arkain has a LOT of characters at this point.

I am satisfied that we can all have a constructive discussion about this matter here

 

[cleavinghammer]

$0.02:

Most AI-voiced campaigns I've played have the same issue where they sometimes get the tone or accent wrong (especially when fantasy names show up and it never knows the correct way to pronounce something, like "King Tuhreenus" for "King Terenas") and it breaks immersion. Sure, it can probably be fine-tuned but that seems a lot of extra work when simply reading the subtitles and imagining the voices has always worked for me.

If AI can deliver a good performance, why not use it, but most of the time it's only decent enough to go unnoticed, until a dramatic moment is delivered with the intensity of someone giving their name and number at the DMV or an infodump is given with venomous contempt.

Regarding AI art, eh... I don't consider myself an "AI bad therefore anything using AI bad" fanatic, but again it seems like extra work to filter out the slop/fix the best ones of the batch to make it fit with the general aesthetic.

Personally I'd rather play a campaign made with recycled WoW icons and voicelines (not models though, that's too jarring) with silent cutscenes than one where the emotions are off and the icons are an incoherent mess. If the plot is interesting enough, then visuals and audio are merely window dressing.

But that's just me.

 

[Navy45]

Personnaly I votes in favour of AI use for voice acting. I've played quite a few other campaigns that use it and, while a few are very rough, most are quite decent. (I've played old RTS games with lower quality voice acting ^^)

I don't know much about the process of using AI, but getting something of quality seems to still require quite some work so I wonder how usable that would be for Arkain, considering the size of the script, but I trust Shar to only impliment it if it doesn't impact the quality of the experience so I don't worry there.

From a moral point, I feel like being able to add voice acting to projects that could'nt have gotten it otherwhise is one of the few cases where AI actually provides an advantage without costing more, so overall I'm in favour.

 

[g4ndalf]

Regarding the AI matter, Arkain has always been a great project even without voice acting, and has achieved to receive a giant fanbase that supported it and are still actively engaging in it's content for over a decade now

So in my opinion i think Arkain will still be the same (if not even better) using AI voices for the characters after all it is the lore and gameplay that made this project the way it is today

My only concern is if that would add even more effort on the production of the maps and takes away from the quality of the map itself, though i trust that Shar knows what he is doing and that using AI will hopefully help him deliver better quality maps and perhaps even speed up the production of said maps.

In short as long as AI will help increase the quality of the maps i will definitely vote for it, if not then it won't be a problem to leave things as they are.

 

[Hinata28]

For me, either way is fine. Using AI as voice actors is fine. But using AI to make the storyline, nope. I am following Shar's project since the first Books of Arkain was released and I played it when it was ran from the old Warcraft patches. It was sad that I can't play the further versions due to me can't find someone who can update my Warcraft to the optimal patch required. I liked it when Shar exhausted his efforts onto storytelling.

But I'm onto adding entries on the Arkain Fandom, if I get some information or data from the game. In terms of AI use, I am in favour of these:

• Using AI as voice actors in storytelling and cutscenes. But retain the basic voice lines in game.
• Using AI to refine the game textures.
• Using AI to upgrade the character imaging.

And that's that.

 

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

AI gets demonized way too much, so I've voted for freely using it. (That's my opinion and no one's gonna change it, not discussing that. I'm absolutely pro-AI as it is the future.)

The thing is this; As you said, it's a tool. The things it is capable of ultimately depend on you - like for example quality control, using proper prompts etc etc. This can be as much work as doing it yourself and you decide where you could use the tools help and to what extent. It's not just "Put X and presto", it's much more complex than that. Also what all the raging people always forget is that AI is especially great for those that neither have the contacts, money or skill to do stuff themselves. I'd rather have someone realize their vision through the help of AI than having that vision wither and die.

Edit: Regarding adding AI Voice, keep in mind that there is A LOT of text, so duration of production aside, iirc there's a file size limit for custom campaigns? Keep that in mind when adding voice as at least the compilation campaign is one hell of a beast ^^

 

[Elkordy-AA]

If its for voice acting than iam cool with i just hope u don't use it in writing the story

 

[Shar Dundred]

But using AI to make the storyline, nope.

If its for voice acting than iam cool with i just hope u don't use it in writing the story

Absolutely.
That will never ever happen.

Arkain's story works through me as its writer and creator, I wouldn't trust an AI with even a single line of dialogue.