The Heart of Storms: Dusk of Draenor (Release)

[Verdun]

They will be working all the time unless deleted, though they would probably not affect the game too much as most assets do not replace default Wacraft III ones and use new paths (so only the game menu and some icons and sounds will be replaced).
Considering Warcraft III's relatively small size, I'd recommend making a standalone copy of clean game installation and use it for HoS only.

That might just be a general local files issue not a HoS issue again, so my apologies is this is the wrong forum, but I noticed that if I use the HoS world editor, even imported terrain art seems to get overwritten again by the custom HoS files? Is there a way to prevent that, or do I need a non-HoS version to use custom terrain in the editor again?

 

[Rommel]

That might just be a general local files issue not a HoS issue again, so my apologies is this is the wrong forum, but I noticed that if I use the HoS world editor, even imported terrain art seems to get overwritten again by the custom HoS files? Is there a way to prevent that, or do I need a non-HoS version to use custom terrain in the editor again?

Yes, local files replace default files for all maps in that installation. The best solution is to make an additional game folder (I have 3 of them myself). You can also rename/remove local files folders while they are not needed.
If neither of these work, you can import a file into the map itself, and it takes higher priority than local files.

 

[Verdun]

Yes, local files replace default files for all maps in that installation. The best solution is to make an additional game folder (I have 3 of them myself). You can also rename/remove local files folders while they are not needed.
If neither of these work, you can import a file into the map itself, and it takes higher priority than local files.

see, the weird thing is, even the files I manually imported were overwritten... But anyway, I think I will just make mutliple game folders, like you said! That really is the best solution

 

[Kallel]

INCREDIBLY high quality campaign. I really hope we will get to see the rest. Kudos.

 

[BaiyuGalan]

This is the best quality maps I have ever seen! It even allows play in version 1.27.

 

[Rommel]

@BaiyuGalan
Thank you so much! And yes, 1.27 is fully supported and in fact was the original version it was made for)

 

[abbsomes]

I can't see many of models.. it's green box...

 

[Rommel]

I can't see many of models.. it's green box...

Hello,
This means local files were not enabled or not placed correctly (in game root).

 

[Ravager16829]

I can't see many of models.. it's green box...

As Rommel said, you are going to need the Local Files, which must be placed in game root. But before you can do, which version of game are you currently using?
If Reforged, then sadly no. The author only recommended at least 1.27 (no Reforged) to play the campaign without problems.

 

[abbsomes]

As Rommel said, you are going to need the Local Files, which must be placed in game root. But before you can do, which version of game are you currently using?
If Reforged, then sadly no. The author only recommended at least 1.27 (no Reforged) to play the campaign without problems.

1.31 version. no reforged.
And I also downloaded Local Files and got in into War3 folder and nothing changes.

 

[Verdun]

1.31 version. no reforged.
And I also downloaded Local Files and got in into War3 folder and nothing changes.

I believe 1.29.2 was the last version where it is guaranteed to work?

 

[Ravager16829]

1.31 version. no reforged.
And I also downloaded Local Files and got in into War3 folder and nothing changes.

Please see this:

In short:
1.You need 1.27 or 1.29 to play this campaign! 1.31 is NOT officially recommended because the author might risk for you about lots of issues when you played this campaign with that version.
2.To install the HOS files, you must enable Local Files first, then place the contents into the game root. If you have an existing War3Patch.mpq for the case of 1.29, delete it!

 

[Himperion]

I got this campaign this week. Installing wasn't that much of a trouble in 1.26, that it happens is that the end Cinematic or crash or send you to the main menu instead of loading the next chapter, so saving during the last moment posible is a good policy.

Prologue: Beyond that part of getting out of the Arena for the first time, the chapter gets easier once you get the healing banner. The second to last boss is probably the biggest obstacle in the map, i lost most of my troops, but the final segment is rather easier to do. The Dranei Skull is the mvp on this level.

Chapter 1: Imagine my face of horror when i found the healer without the Draenei skull and had to recover it... The first 5 minutes is the worse part of the level and not in a good way, beyond this part everything becomes more tolerable, the last fight with the Draenei that can repair structures is weird.

It "This guy can repair towers, use him" and i'm how do i'm supossed to do this? This feeling is worse on the Chapter 2.

Throwing a techtree at full is a natural progression on Campaigns based on know races, even a full Naga tree, wouldn't cause this feeling of being lost.

Similar, this isn't a complain or a critic don't take this bad, but the Draenei defenses at a model design and size in map feels weak and confusing. For example in the Human techtree you know what defense launch piercing, what does area damage, or what kills mages, similar with the undead, but the Draenei defenses lack of that personality where i put the eyes on a defended section and i know what i got, and what i need.

 

[abbsomes]

Please see this:
View attachment 430126
In short:
1.You need 1.27 or 1.29 to play this campaign! 1.31 is NOT officially recommended because the author might risk for you about lots of issues when you played this campaign with that version.
2.To install the HOS files, you must enable Local Files first, then place the contents into the game root. If you have an existing War3Patch.mpq for the case of 1.29, delete it!

Thank you but.. I downloaded 1.27 and 1.29
and downloaded and moved localfiles
but it doesn't work.. maybe i should give up.

 

[Ravager16829]

Thank you but.. I downloaded 1.27 and 1.29
and downloaded and moved localfiles
but it doesn't work.. maybe i should give up.

Local Files must be enabled first through Registry Editor. There is a thread already about that feature.
After that, you can place the content directly in the game folder. If you are using 1.29.2 and have an existing "War3Patch.mpq", delete it.
I'm also pointing out that if you have other mods that requires a Local Files, delete it so that it doesn't interfere with other mods.

 

[Raven80]

Hopefully this will get updated for 1.35...
Anyway, looks dope AF

 

[fantocan]

Just tryed at ver 1.29.2 and it was a massive failure, just giant green blocks and black stuff... too bad, screenshotss look nice, but not downloading another version of the game for one map... I blame Reforged!!!

 

[Ravager16829]

Just tryed at ver 1.29.2 and it was a massive failure, just giant green blocks and black stuff... too bad, screenshotss look nice, but not downloading another version of the game for one map... I blame Reforged!!!

Massive failure because of green blocks and black stuffs? I think not. You missed the important thing during the installation, which is the Local Files.
Follow the instructions on my post above (which includes a picture). This will solve the common problems with this campaign.

 

[HuanJuan]

I was finally made it to the end of the campaign.
May I ask, this is the final version of the Heart Of storms first part?(I found the right part, sorry, I'm blind sometimes)
"The project is finally at a version we are proud to call first (but not last) release out of beta stage."

It was a challenge, very dense and compact experience so to speak. Very good one, and I think, this campaign is the best, and forever.
Most of the units has lore & backstory, sadly some of the Frostwolf units had no backstory or Lore.
I need to search for more words, but hope it's enough.
Thank you guys the campaign. It was an experience!

 

[Rommel]

@HuanJuan

Thank you so much for your kind words! We're really glad you liked it :3
Frostwolves are "bonus" units, and only the "main" units get lore descriptions. But we plan to change that (among many, many other things) in Act II)

Stay tuned, something really big is coming pretty soon!

 

[Rommel]

There's been some silence on HoS forum lately, but not because we've nothing to tell you about - on the contrary, we have news too big for the announcement that was originally planned, so it takes a bit more than we expected.
Stay tuned. It's coming.
And meanwhile... here's a little teaser.

 

[Rokoltira]

buggy for me

 

[Lump Beef Broth]

buggy for me

Could you elaborate on the problem you encounter? I believe it would be helpful to the team to know about your experience and issue you may encountered, so they can address it.

 

[Rokoltira]

show map well and not show units and hero for me

 

[Ravager16829]

show map well and not show units and hero for me

What version of Warcraft 3 are you currently using on? If you don't see units and hero models, then you are going to need Local Files.
Check my post above for detailed information about playing this campaign without issues.

 

[Rokoltira]

1.36 version

 

[Lump Beef Broth]

1.36 version

Currently Act I of HoS only supports a clean (non-modded) English version of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, patched to 1.27b or 1.29.2 (Not Reforged). You can read the installation guide on description of the mod. You'll also need to install the local files (link provided in the mod description) as well.

 

[Ravager16829]

1.36 version

Reforged doesn't support this campaign. You might encounter lots of issues when you attempt to play this.
Rommel suggested that 1.27 or 1.29.2 were the recommended version to play it.

 

[jardasplay]

So are there any plans for non-modded version?

 

[NovaLan]

So are there any plans for non-modded version?

I suspect importing all these assets into one single campaign file will exceed w3n size limit.

 

[deepstrasz]

I suspect importing all these assets into one single campaign file will exceed w3n size limit.

Are you sure there's such a thing as .w3n file size limit? I am not aware. There is however a limit for .w3x/.w3m map file sizes.

 

[NovaLan]

Are you sure there's such a thing as .w3n file size limit? I am not aware. There is however a limit for .w3x/.w3m map file sizes.

Yes, there is. The limit is 1.5 GB and that's why some campaigns like CSW and Quenching (in the future) needs an installer to get all the assets installed.

 

[aeman]

how do i fix error 0?

 

[TwoAcross]

finished chapter one, but no new chapters after that
1.30.4 btw

 

[Uraman]

finished chapter one, but no new chapters after that
1.30.4 btw

type UNLOCK in the Prologue.

 

[Ravager16829]

how do i fix error 0?

If you downloaded the 1.29 game file, then please make sure you checked the comment above. Start the game by using the correct exe.
If you are using the other versions, it could be caused by the game not being terminated completely.

finished chapter one, but no new chapters after that
1.30.4 btw

You can use the "unlock" command (must be entered during the Prologue) or use this method (only possible on 1.31, if you still can't access the other levels).
But Rommel suggested using the "unlock" command for this campaign.

 

[Blasterixx]

Hello! I played/tested this custom campaign on War3 version 1.29 and it worked, I didn't encounter any bugs, and now the review...

Spoiler: Review

Let's start with the Story shall we, what can I say, I am not a fan of playing custom campaigns that retell the same story of War3 or Wow for that matter unless you change the stories into something else, and with this one, I am not sure since I didn't play Wow, I am not sure if you followed the Wow story exactly or if you changed it, but either way, that's beside the point, I did enjoy the story (with the orcs), it was interesting to see the events of pre-War3 with Draenor and it's inhabitants and their struggles against the Burning Legion, I can see there is a lot of potential with these stories, lots of interesting characters, especially from the orcs side, like all the Warlords for example.

Now... about the Draenei, I can't say I like them, I just don't find them cool or worth protecting/playing as them, in my eyes, I couldn't relate to their problems as much as I wanted to and I did try, I feel like we skipped some important story bits that shows to the players why exactly should we care so much about the Draenei, like why are they the focus of the story, what's so special about them other than their futuristic tech and fancy weapons.

The main characters of the Draenei other than Valen were pretty bad as well, I am not sure why would these so-called advanced race of humanoids be so childlike in their approach to things, they mostly only wanted revenge, even when it comes to allies, they talk in an arrogant/angry manner to them, I guess that's how they are as a species? but if that's true, then that's my point, why should I care about them again?

To be honest, I didn't expect to play as the Draenei, I very much liked playing as the orcs, they were so much more interesting to play as than the Draenei, the main orc characters were extremely easy to understand and relate to, and everything seemed so simple when it came to their stories but when we changed course for the draenei everything became worse.



Now all I just said about the story is very subjective, but what I will tell next is not.


I would like to think that everyone, and by everyone I mean all the players that play War3, knows the importance of Gameplay and that said gameplay is the soul of any game/map, and when the gameplay is pretty bad, then you can have the best story of all time and your game will still suck.

Now you might ask, wtf am I talking about, well here are the problems I noticed by playing this custom campaign:

1. The BIGGEST problem By far! with the gameplay is that I can barely notice where my heroes are on the screen or the enemy heroes for that matter, this is a core aspect of Warcraft 3! Heroes are supposed to pop up instantly in your vision, they are supposed to be the light in the darkness, you should notice them from a mile away because they are supposed to be the most important aspect of the game, and yet, this custom campaign fails to implement that aspect!



ALL heroes REQUIRE a hero glow, they are not supposed to look like an average unit, I think we all understand this right?

In every mission I played especially in the ones where you have tons of units on the screen, I just couldn't see where my heroes were, it's like I was playing Reforged all over again, this is one of the biggest problems with Reforged as well, the heroes/units visibility is atrocious, you just can't tell the heroes and units apart, same thing with the allied units and enemy units.

With the units, you can kinda tell them apart in this custom campaign because of the different colors they have but I would say it's still 50% - 50% even with the units, some of these new unit models you implemented in this campaign are just not made for gameplay, they still look too similar one to the other (ally to the enemy) There is a reason why the original warcraft 3 units work so well despite their models being so old, at least you can tell from a mile away which unit is which and if it's an allied one or an enemy one.

2. The second issue I noticed while playing this, is that the hotkeys for spells are z x c v instead of q w e r!

I am at a loss . . . How and WHY would you implement such a thing, I simply cannot comprehend why would anyone use z x c v instead of the Normal hotkeys that are q w e r, please do tell me an example of another game that uses these hotkeys, another RTS game, that is where you control more than 1 unit.

Why is this such a big issue you may ask? well, I'm gonna tell you. It is an issue because as I said, this! is an RTS game where you control multiple units at the same time, so you have to control different groups like your heroes, and then the other units, and to do that, you need different control hotkeys, which are 1 2 3, etc, on the keyboard, so... since your hand has to stay in the left corner side of the keyboard to control said unit groups then, of course, it comes naturally to use the q w e r hotkeys for the spells of the heroes/units you control, since these hotkeys are so close to each other!

Now compared to the q w e r, the z x c v are super far away from the Numpad hotkeys of 1 2 3, they are literally on the other side of the keyboard, at the bottom! so you can imagine that is a problem for the gameplay aspect since you have to constantly move your left hand up and down the keyboard or keep your fingers in an awkward position to be able to control units and use spells at the same time, that is just pure cancer.


3. The terrain as beautiful as it may be, does have a problem, related to playability again, units tend to blend with the terrain and it becomes harder to see them on the screen, which is a big problem, it is kinda funny how you got all these fancy looking new unit models but what's the point of having them when I can barely see them on the screen.

A few examples:

Spoiler

If it wasn't for the health/mana bars my heroes would be almost invisible.

without health bars being on all the time you can clearly see the problem.
Those 3 warlocks are almost invisible as you can see there, my heroes included, if it wasn't for the green circles they would also be invisible.

Talking about each mission in particular:

- The Prologue was alright, I didn't encounter any issues with it, the only problems are related to the big issues stated earlier about gameplay and visibility which exist in every mission.

I did like this text from Rogaar, I think it is pretty badass not gonna lie

Spoiler

One thing that I noticed while playing the prologue tho is that Rogaar tends to die pretty fast being melee with low hp, since he is an int hero I don't see why he should have melee attack range in the prologue when he does have range attacks in the next missions.



- Chapter 1

In this chapter, we start playing with the draenei units a bit, which I didn't mind since I had the orc heroes. (yea for some reason I don't like the Draenei units, it might have something to do with their low hp and that they die pretty fast I guess)

In this chapter the terrain is slightly better with the contrast between the terrain and the units, the units can be seen more clearly here.

But that didn't stop me from losing my heroes multiple times, because despite the better terrain, my heroes without the hero glow still look too similar to a normal unit and they can still die without me even knowing they did, which is stupid.

There is also another problem in this chapter right here:

Spoiler

I was near the end of the chapter when one of my heroes went slightly to the left and he just died, which made me quite mad not gonna lie...

Basically, there shouldn't exist something like an instant death mechanic in a mission where you get defeated for losing your heroes once, maybe add that in a boss fight sure, but not in a normal mission, I also noticed some fel meteors were falling near that fel fire and those also can 1 shot you I think, not 100% sure, any way you get my point, I highly suggest removing those "death" zones, these zones don't make for good gameplay since they force the player to reload/restart the game and that is frustrating.




- Chapter 2

- Out of the start while I was playing this for the first time I did it without mining any gold, you might ask why did I even do such a thing, it sounds like suicide, and yes! you would be correct, but believe me, when I say that I didn't do it on purpose, that goldmine skin looks exactly like a building and so in my eyes, I started this mission with no goldmine

It didn't help of course the fact that my worker units started the mission by being afk in a random spot in my base near the trees, when the mission starts the draenei workers should be already mining gold so the player knows that there is a goldmine. (Yea I know that the goldmine does show up on the mini-map but I just didn't spot it the first time I played this mission, I still blame that building skin for the goldmine)

Spoiler

Also, what even is that number in the top right corner for? the Karabor survivors thing? weird.

- Another problem I noticed and it did show up in this chapter more since is a base vs base mission, the Draenei towers are a mess, not only do their skins look way too Sci-fi but their projectiles are almost invisible so I can't even tell if they do dmg or not, the Draenei towers to me just feel useless, there are 4 types of them as well, but since they all look pretty similar and have these fancy sci-fi skins to them, I can't tell them apart to notice what they do individually. . . is a mess.

They also get destroyed pretty fast by the enemy units as well so I just gave up on them pretty early when I played this mission.

- This chapter is huge, considering a lot of events happen only on this mission, after I defeated the 3 orc bases and their portals and started the part with my boy the orc blacksmith, I thought I was already in the next chapter lol, but no, it was the same chapter to my surprise.

- I did enjoy this chapter, but because of the big negatives I stated previously, the gameplay sucked, there is no satisfaction in fighting enemy heroes when you can barely notice them on the screen, most of the time I didn't even know I was fighting them since they all look the same, turns out that hero glow was a bigger aspect to Warcraft 3 than I ever imagined ha.



- Chapter 3

- This chapter started well, I always liked to see these types of missions in custom campaigns where you can ally yourself with a random base against others, but sadly that's where the positives stop

Now let's talk negatives:

- If I didn't hate Draenei units enough already, this mission made me despise them even more, they stand no chance against the orc/ogre/monster units that the enemy factions were having, it wasn't even in the same dimension, it was like children fighting adults! the only good aspect was that my heroes were somewhat decent and I was managing to hold the enemy units off with them.

- Luckily I managed to ally myself with the Bloodmaul clan and started playing with their much stronger units and oh boy, remember what I said about the Draenei towers and how useless they are? well... the ogre towers are the complete opposite of that, they are op as fuck! I just built 6 towers in each base and that's it, the enemy units were getting evaporated

- Now the real problems started to emerge after I allied with the red Ogre clan, for some reason the enemy kept sending tons of units against my weaker draenei base, and they were sending a LOT, but I somehow managed to defeat them slowly, and when I got to the enemy ogre base in the east I noticed something stupid, all those waves of enemy units were just spawning every 2 minutes in the center of their bases, like why, fighting them was already hard enough, I couldn't even manage to destroy a few buildings cuz another wave of almost 100 food army was casually spawning inside the enemy base, it became quite ridiculous, fighting so many units when my units were shit and my heroes weren't that op enough to fight countless waves of enemies nonstop, especially when they run out of mana.

- The worst part comes now after I somehow managed to destroy all the enemy ogre bases, there was only the imperatrix base left to destroy, and I went south with my main army, and somehow the enemy army managed to get past mine, so they went straight to attack my base which at this point was pretty destroyed and undefended, and in my mind, I thought I was ok, but I wasn't and they destroyed my main building and I got defeated... great...

Funny how that works, I lose my main building and get defeated and the enemy loses their main buildings and they are fine, 10 out of 10 logic!

- Big problem with this chapter, it has too many unnecessary dialogues, the worst part is that while the dialogues are going on I cannot concentrate on my gameplay! especially that weird dialogue with the inner demon thing, when that dialogue is going on I just lose control of all units/buildings for some reason...

- I can't state how much I hate this thing where when I ally with a base and prior to that, this base was super strong! with tons of units spawning from their base to fight and after I ally with them.... nada, they become weak as fuck, no units spawn anymore, and on top of that I gotta control them and help them survive.... as if all of a sudden they need my help to survive?!.... I despise this shit

This is a very common trope not only in games but in all of fiction, when you fight an enemy, that enemy is strong, but when that enemy becomes your ally, then he becomes weak! 10 out of 10 logic once again!


- My units take too much time to create, Until I can create 1 unit from 1 building the enemy already spawned 2 waves of 100 food units each, which seems fair?!?!
You know is retarded that even when I use "warpten" cheat-code my units still take a long time to create




- Chapter 4

- This is also a weird chapter, I did like how it started, but that last group of Dranei units was really hard to defeat for some reason, i think i got defeated 4 times before i managed to kill them by kiting them.

Gul'dan's spells weren't as strong as I imagined them to be:

For some reason, his first spell stayed at level 1 and it never leveled up!

His second and third spells are just buffing spells, they buff the allies or debuff the enemies and then the ultimate is some weak dmg aoe spell that doesn't do much of anything, I did notice a trend with hero spells, compared to the classic hero spells from the original War3 heroes, these new spells are just bad, the only good spells are the ones that are similar to the classic spells, like the shockwave from the draenei girl hero.

- I did like how Guldan's allies kept coming one by one to help, that was neat.







- The finale was interesting to watch, once again cool and fancy skins and the visuals are great, the main problem is that I have no idea what was going on, who were these characters, where did they come from, how they are related to anything, why should I care about them, you can make the best-looking cutscene in the world, but if I have no idea what's going on in it then it's all for nothing.




Other random things I noticed:

- When there is a dialogue the sound gets lowered for some reason as if the dialogue is voice acted, but it's not, so why would the volume of the sounds get lowered down when a dialogue/text is going on, it just makes the gameplay worse.




~Positives

- The strongest aspect of this custom campaign in my eyes are the cutscenes, some of them are indeed on a whole nother level compared to other custom campaigns, combined with the good dialogue they do have an almost movie quality to them, the only thing missing is the popcorn


- Now the cutscenes wouldn't look that great without the terrain and all those extra custom things you added to the campaign.

The terrain does look amazing and makes for some epic cutscenes, BUT... but that can also backfire in the gameplay department, like I said in the negatives section they do decrease the visibility overall, that is the negative sadly of adding all those extra fancy doodads, so the answer is to make the units/heroes stand out more!

- Another great aspect is the music, I really liked it, especially the beginning part of the song that plays in Chapter 2.

After some searches, I managed to find it > World of Warcraft - Malach, Angel Messenger (starts at 2.30 timer)

What can I say despite Wow having tons of issues, one thing is for certain, they did make exquisite music that will live forever and blow people's minds.

- I do like that the allied A.I. can control units and use spells, train units, etc. while you also have share control of them, but there can be problems with this, an example is when you make the workers of the allied base do something (mine gold/wood) and after a few sec the A.I. makes them do something else, I feel like there needs to be an option for the player to either fully control an allied base or let the A.I. fully control it and do their own thing.

- I did like the new U.I. of the campaign before starting the actual game.

Spoiler

- Same with the loading screen, I very much enjoyed the art on it, this is indeed an aspect that many Map makers/authors gloss over it, this is why the original campaign had a certain charm to it, one big aspect was the loading screen art!






Overall I can say that I didn't have a good time playing this campaign, Most of the dialogues were written well, especially when the orcs and ogres were talking, but the Draenei, except Velen, when they were talking I was like, "Could you shut the fuck up already" every time they were talking it was like a kid throwing a tantrum.

The story itself is just the old pre-War3 story all over again, nothing new or unique, and I think my hatred for it is also based on the fact that is somehow Wow related, anything Wow related in Warcraft 3 custom campaigns for me is a huge negative since I hate Wow and I don't think Wow and War3 match.

No matter how good-looking the game is, how smooth and detailed the skins of the units/buildings/etc, and how good and fancy the terrain looks, as long as the gameplay is bad then the game is bad, it is that simple, this custom campaign reminded me a lot of Reforged in a way and that says a lot.




~Sugestions to make the gameplay better

1. Add hero glow to all heroes so they are seen everywhere at any time, no matter how many units are on the screen.

2. Make all units stand out more in contrast to the terrain.

3. Make all units, especially the high-detail ones like the monster units, stand out more when the same type of units fight each other, so you know which unit belongs to which army, when 1 big ogre fights another big ogre I should instantly know who is an ally and who is an enemy without having to hover my mouse over them to find the answer.

4. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4 there are too many enemy units coming in big groups to attack your bases, and they also attack too frequently (especially in Chapter 3), I was playing on hard and then on normal to test, and it seems like they keep sending those big groups of units no matter on what difficulty you play, which is bad.

5. There is too much dialogue happening at the same time while I have to concentrate on my gameplay and is very distracting, lots of unnecessary dialogue most of the time, and the player can get easily overwhelmed especially when you have to control multiple bases, armies and heroes, all which have alien skins and spells, so you aren't used with playing with them to begin with.

6. The hotkeys need to be changed to Q W E R or have an option so the player can switch between them.

7. Besides the items from the shops and 1 or 2 other random items, there aren't many other items to be found in the entire campaign which is sad, there have to be more items to be found in all chapters from mini bosses and random strong mobs or even side quests!






My rating for this custom campaign is a C Tier with 55 points out of 100

 

[matias371]

Hello! I played/tested this custom campaign on War3 version 1.29 and it worked, I didn't encounter any bugs, and now the review...

Spoiler: Review

Let's start with the Story shall we, what can I say, I am not a fan of playing custom campaigns that retell the same story of War3 or Wow for that matter unless you change the stories into something else, and with this one, I am not sure since I didn't play Wow, I am not sure if you followed the Wow story exactly or if you changed it, but either way, that's beside the point, I did enjoy the story (with the orcs), it was interesting to see the events of pre-War3 with Draenor and it's inhabitants and their struggles against the Burning Legion, I can see there is a lot of potential with these stories, lots of interesting characters, especially from the orcs side, like all the Warlords for example.

Now... about the Draenei, I can't say I like them, I just don't find them cool or worth protecting/playing as them, in my eyes, I couldn't relate to their problems as much as I wanted to and I did try, I feel like we skipped some important story bits that shows to the players why exactly should we care so much about the Draenei, like why are they the focus of the story, what's so special about them other than their futuristic tech and fancy weapons.

The main characters of the Draenei other than Valen were pretty bad as well, I am not sure why would these so-called advanced race of humanoids be so childlike in their approach to things, they mostly only wanted revenge, even when it comes to allies, they talk in an arrogant/angry manner to them, I guess that's how they are as a species? but if that's true, then that's my point, why should I care about them again?

To be honest, I didn't expect to play as the Draenei, I very much liked playing as the orcs, they were so much more interesting to play as than the Draenei, the main orc characters were extremely easy to understand and relate to, and everything seemed so simple when it came to their stories but when we changed course for the draenei everything became worse.



Now all I just said about the story is very subjective, but what I will tell next is not.


I would like to think that everyone, and by everyone I mean all the players that play War3, knows the importance of Gameplay and that said gameplay is the soul of any game/map, and when the gameplay is pretty bad, then you can have the best story of all time and your game will still suck.

Now you might ask, wtf am I talking about, well here are the problems I noticed by playing this custom campaign:

1. The BIGGEST problem By far! with the gameplay is that I can barely notice where my heroes are on the screen or the enemy heroes for that matter, this is a core aspect of Warcraft 3! Heroes are supposed to pop up instantly in your vision, they are supposed to be the light in the darkness, you should notice them from a mile away because they are supposed to be the most important aspect of the game, and yet, this custom campaign fails to implement that aspect!



ALL heroes REQUIRE a hero glow, they are not supposed to look like an average unit, I think we all understand this right?

In every mission I played especially in the ones where you have tons of units on the screen, I just couldn't see where my heroes were, it's like I was playing Reforged all over again, this is one of the biggest problems with Reforged as well, the heroes/units visibility is atrocious, you just can't tell the heroes and units apart, same thing with the allied units and enemy units.

With the units, you can kinda tell them apart in this custom campaign because of the different colors they have but I would say it's still 50% - 50% even with the units, some of these new unit models you implemented in this campaign are just not made for gameplay, they still look too similar one to the other (ally to the enemy) There is a reason why the original warcraft 3 units work so well despite their models being so old, at least you can tell from a mile away which unit is which and if it's an allied one or an enemy one.

2. The second issue I noticed while playing this, is that the hotkeys for spells are z x c v instead of q w e r!

I am at a loss . . . How and WHY would you implement such a thing, I simply cannot comprehend why would anyone use z x c v instead of the Normal hotkeys that are q w e r, please do tell me an example of another game that uses these hotkeys, another RTS game, that is where you control more than 1 unit.

Why is this such a big issue you may ask? well, I'm gonna tell you. It is an issue because as I said, this! is an RTS game where you control multiple units at the same time, so you have to control different groups like your heroes, and then the other units, and to do that, you need different control hotkeys, which are 1 2 3, etc, on the keyboard, so... since your hand has to stay in the left corner side of the keyboard to control said unit groups then, of course, it comes naturally to use the q w e r hotkeys for the spells of the heroes/units you control, since these hotkeys are so close to each other!

Now compared to the q w e r, the z x c v are super far away from the Numpad hotkeys of 1 2 3, they are literally on the other side of the keyboard, at the bottom! so you can imagine that is a problem for the gameplay aspect since you have to constantly move your left hand up and down the keyboard or keep your fingers in an awkward position to be able to control units and use spells at the same time, that is just pure cancer.


3. The terrain as beautiful as it may be, does have a problem, related to playability again, units tend to blend with the terrain and it becomes harder to see them on the screen, which is a big problem, it is kinda funny how you got all these fancy looking new unit models but what's the point of having them when I can barely see them on the screen.

A few examples:

Spoiler

View attachment 441366
If it wasn't for the health/mana bars my heroes would be almost invisible.
View attachment 441367
without health bars being on all the time you can clearly see the problem.
Those 3 warlocks are almost invisible as you can see there, my heroes included, if it wasn't for the green circles they would also be invisible.

Talking about each mission in particular:

- The Prologue was alright, I didn't encounter any issues with it, the only problems are related to the big issues stated earlier about gameplay and visibility which exist in every mission.

I did like this text from Rogaar, I think it is pretty badass not gonna lie

Spoiler

View attachment 441368

One thing that I noticed while playing the prologue tho is that Rogaar tends to die pretty fast being melee with low hp, since he is an int hero I don't see why he should have melee attack range in the prologue when he does have range attacks in the next missions.



- Chapter 1

In this chapter, we start playing with the draenei units a bit, which I didn't mind since I had the orc heroes. (yea for some reason I don't like the Draenei units, it might have something to do with their low hp and that they die pretty fast I guess)

In this chapter the terrain is slightly better with the contrast between the terrain and the units, the units can be seen more clearly here.

But that didn't stop me from losing my heroes multiple times, because despite the better terrain, my heroes without the hero glow still look too similar to a normal unit and they can still die without me even knowing they did, which is stupid.

There is also another problem in this chapter right here:

Spoiler

View attachment 441370

I was near the end of the chapter when one of my heroes went slightly to the left and he just died, which made me quite mad not gonna lie...

Basically, there shouldn't exist something like an instant death mechanic in a mission where you get defeated for losing your heroes once, maybe add that in a boss fight sure, but not in a normal mission, I also noticed some fel meteors were falling near that fel fire and those also can 1 shot you I think, not 100% sure, any way you get my point, I highly suggest removing those "death" zones, these zones don't make for good gameplay since they force the player to reload/restart the game and that is frustrating.




- Chapter 2

- Out of the start while I was playing this for the first time I did it without mining any gold, you might ask why did I even do such a thing, it sounds like suicide, and yes! you would be correct, but believe me, when I say that I didn't do it on purpose, that goldmine skin looks exactly like a building and so in my eyes, I started this mission with no goldmine

It didn't help of course the fact that my worker units started the mission by being afk in a random spot in my base near the trees, when the mission starts the draenei workers should be already mining gold so the player knows that there is a goldmine. (Yea I know that the goldmine does show up on the mini-map but I just didn't spot it the first time I played this mission, I still blame that building skin for the goldmine)

Spoiler

View attachment 441407

Also, what even is that number in the top right corner for? the Karabor survivors thing? weird.

- Another problem I noticed and it did show up in this chapter more since is a base vs base mission, the Draenei towers are a mess, not only do their skins look way too Sci-fi but their projectiles are almost invisible so I can't even tell if they do dmg or not, the Draenei towers to me just feel useless, there are 4 types of them as well, but since they all look pretty similar and have these fancy sci-fi skins to them, I can't tell them apart to notice what they do individually. . . is a mess.

They also get destroyed pretty fast by the enemy units as well so I just gave up on them pretty early when I played this mission.

- This chapter is huge, considering a lot of events happen only on this mission, after I defeated the 3 orc bases and their portals and started the part with my boy the orc blacksmith, I thought I was already in the next chapter lol, but no, it was the same chapter to my surprise.

- I did enjoy this chapter, but because of the big negatives I stated previously, the gameplay sucked, there is no satisfaction in fighting enemy heroes when you can barely notice them on the screen, most of the time I didn't even know I was fighting them since they all look the same, turns out that hero glow was a bigger aspect to Warcraft 3 than I ever imagined ha.



- Chapter 3

- This chapter started well, I always liked to see these types of missions in custom campaigns where you can ally yourself with a random base against others, but sadly that's where the positives stop

Now let's talk negatives:

- If I didn't hate Draenei units enough already, this mission made me despise them even more, they stand no chance against the orc/ogre/monster units that the enemy factions were having, it wasn't even in the same dimension, it was like children fighting adults! the only good aspect was that my heroes were somewhat decent and I was managing to hold the enemy units off with them.

- Luckily I managed to ally myself with the Bloodmaul clan and started playing with their much stronger units and oh boy, remember what I said about the Draenei towers and how useless they are? well... the ogre towers are the complete opposite of that, they are op as fuck! I just built 6 towers in each base and that's it, the enemy units were getting evaporated

- Now the real problems started to emerge after I allied with the red Ogre clan, for some reason the enemy kept sending tons of units against my weaker draenei base, and they were sending a LOT, but I somehow managed to defeat them slowly, and when I got to the enemy ogre base in the east I noticed something stupid, all those waves of enemy units were just spawning every 2 minutes in the center of their bases, like why, fighting them was already hard enough, I couldn't even manage to destroy a few buildings cuz another wave of almost 100 food army was casually spawning inside the enemy base, it became quite ridiculous, fighting so many units when my units were shit and my heroes weren't that op enough to fight countless waves of enemies nonstop, especially when they run out of mana.

- The worst part comes now after I somehow managed to destroy all the enemy ogre bases, there was only the imperatrix base left to destroy, and I went south with my main army, and somehow the enemy army managed to get past mine, so they went straight to attack my base which at this point was pretty destroyed and undefended, and in my mind, I thought I was ok, but I wasn't and they destroyed my main building and I got defeated... great...

Funny how that works, I lose my main building and get defeated and the enemy loses their main buildings and they are fine, 10 out of 10 logic!

- Big problem with this chapter, it has too many unnecessary dialogues, the worst part is that while the dialogues are going on I cannot concentrate on my gameplay! especially that weird dialogue with the inner demon thing, when that dialogue is going on I just lose control of all units/buildings for some reason...

- I can't state how much I hate this thing where when I ally with a base and prior to that, this base was super strong! with tons of units spawning from their base to fight and after I ally with them.... nada, they become weak as fuck, no units spawn anymore, and on top of that I gotta control them and help them survive.... as if all of a sudden they need my help to survive?!.... I despise this shit

This is a very common trope not only in games but in all of fiction, when you fight an enemy, that enemy is strong, but when that enemy becomes your ally, then he becomes weak! 10 out of 10 logic once again!


- My units take too much time to create, Until I can create 1 unit from 1 building the enemy already spawned 2 waves of 100 food units each, which seems fair?!?!
You know is retarded that even when I use "warpten" cheat-code my units still take a long time to create




- Chapter 4

- This is also a weird chapter, I did like how it started, but that last group of Dranei units was really hard to defeat for some reason, i think i got defeated 4 times before i managed to kill them by kiting them.

Gul'dan's spells weren't as strong as I imagined them to be:

For some reason, his first spell stayed at level 1 and it never leveled up!

His second and third spells are just buffing spells, they buff the allies or debuff the enemies and then the ultimate is some weak dmg aoe spell that doesn't do much of anything, I did notice a trend with hero spells, compared to the classic hero spells from the original War3 heroes, these new spells are just bad, the only good spells are the ones that are similar to the classic spells, like the shockwave from the draenei girl hero.

- I did like how Guldan's allies kept coming one by one to help, that was neat.







- The finale was interesting to watch, once again cool and fancy skins and the visuals are great, the main problem is that I have no idea what was going on, who were these characters, where did they come from, how they are related to anything, why should I care about them, you can make the best-looking cutscene in the world, but if I have no idea what's going on in it then it's all for nothing.




Other random things I noticed:

- When there is a dialogue the sound gets lowered for some reason as if the dialogue is voice acted, but it's not, so why would the volume of the sounds get lowered down when a dialogue/text is going on, it just makes the gameplay worse.




~Positives

- The strongest aspect of this custom campaign in my eyes are the cutscenes, some of them are indeed on a whole nother level compared to other custom campaigns, combined with the good dialogue they do have an almost movie quality to them, the only thing missing is the popcorn


- Now the cutscenes wouldn't look that great without the terrain and all those extra custom things you added to the campaign.

The terrain does look amazing and makes for some epic cutscenes, BUT... but that can also backfire in the gameplay department, like I said in the negatives section they do decrease the visibility overall, that is the negative sadly of adding all those extra fancy doodads, so the answer is to make the units/heroes stand out more!

- Another great aspect is the music, I really liked it, especially the beginning part of the song that plays in Chapter 2.

After some searches, I managed to find it > World of Warcraft - Malach, Angel Messenger (starts at 2.30 timer)

What can I say despite Wow having tons of issues, one thing is for certain, they did make exquisite music that will live forever and blow people's minds.

- I do like that the allied A.I. can control units and use spells, train units, etc. while you also have share control of them, but there can be problems with this, an example is when you make the workers of the allied base do something (mine gold/wood) and after a few sec the A.I. makes them do something else, I feel like there needs to be an option for the player to either fully control an allied base or let the A.I. fully control it and do their own thing.

- I did like the new U.I. of the campaign before starting the actual game.

Spoiler

View attachment 441482

- Same with the loading screen, I very much enjoyed the art on it, this is indeed an aspect that many Map makers/authors gloss over it, this is why the original campaign had a certain charm to it, one big aspect was the loading screen art!






Overall I can say that I didn't have a good time playing this campaign, Most of the dialogues were written well, especially when the orcs and ogres were talking, but the Draenei, except Velen, when they were talking I was like, "Could you shut the fuck up already" every time they were talking it was like a kid throwing a tantrum.

The story itself is just the old pre-War3 story all over again, nothing new or unique, and I think my hatred for it is also based on the fact that is somehow Wow related, anything Wow related in Warcraft 3 custom campaigns for me is a huge negative since I hate Wow and I don't think Wow and War3 match.

No matter how good-looking the game is, how smooth and detailed the skins of the units/buildings/etc, and how good and fancy the terrain looks, as long as the gameplay is bad then the game is bad, it is that simple, this custom campaign reminded me a lot of Reforged in a way and that says a lot.




~Sugestions to make the gameplay better

1. Add hero glow to all heroes so they are seen everywhere at any time, no matter how many units are on the screen.

2. Make all units stand out more in contrast to the terrain.

3. Make all units, especially the high-detail ones like the monster units, stand out more when the same type of units fight each other, so you know which unit belongs to which army, when 1 big ogre fights another big ogre I should instantly know who is an ally and who is an enemy without having to hover my mouse over them to find the answer.

4. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4 there are too many enemy units coming in big groups to attack your bases, and they also attack too frequently (especially in Chapter 3), I was playing on hard and then on normal to test, and it seems like they keep sending those big groups of units no matter on what difficulty you play, which is bad.

5. There is too much dialogue happening at the same time while I have to concentrate on my gameplay and is very distracting, lots of unnecessary dialogue most of the time, and the player can get easily overwhelmed especially when you have to control multiple bases, armies and heroes, all which have alien skins and spells, so you aren't used with playing with them to begin with.

6. The hotkeys need to be changed to Q W E R or have an option so the player can switch between them.

7. Besides the items from the shops and 1 or 2 other random items, there aren't many other items to be found in the entire campaign which is sad, there have to be more items to be found in all chapters from mini bosses and random strong mobs or even side quests!






My rating for this custom campaign is a C Tier with 55 points out of 100

Ohhh man you saved my day, what a review I don't even need to add more considering how objective and detailed you were.

I was wondering if it was out of shape on the microing units or what. All the efforts on the visuals and the story are not enough, for me the gameplay will always be the main aspect and it needs to be improved (a lot!!).

Spoiler: Example

Check how he lose his hero at 13:50. Bad play? Yeah it could be consider as bad play, but in fact AI is focusing low hp units always, so the melees ones wounded have to be out of combat all the time and if you blink you lose your hero (and he is hard to distinguish with current graphs) and that's it, you will have to verify your last save.

In a chapter, when you get max lvl with your hero too soon, but the chapter is pretty long and there are no permanent items to search for, only consumables, no secret paths... Where's the fun? It's like you're playing a game of endless suffering and just waiting for a new chapter to feel like you're scaling and growing. But yeah its just my opinion, someone else could get fun of it, but not me, to me Heroes are the core of WC3 (and how good are they balanced too) and biggest factor of success of WC3 about other RTS games.

I didn't like the codex books... I didnt know if they were optional quests or just more lore content. During the prologue I was only able to finish one optional quest, the rest were just discovered, but not finished, I even used "iseedeadpeople" at the end to check if I was leaving anything behind, but I didn't see anything.

It would be unfair to give a low score, considering the great effort of the authors and the potential of the campaign to be one of the best.

 

[Paul Bryle Tamiat]

Those this work on 1.28 cause I when I try the first mission it crash

 

[Ravager16829]

Those this work on 1.28 cause I when I try the first mission it crash

There seems to be a missing part during the installation, most notably the Local Files and the game version:
1.Make sure you have Warcraft III (Classic version, NOT Reforged). It could be either 1.27 or 1.29.
2.Make sure your HoS Local Files is in your game root. Activate the Local Files first with the registry.
3.Download the campaign and put it in "Documents\Warcraft III\Campaigns" (if you are using 1.27, then put it in the "Campaigns" folder inside the game root).
4.Start the very first chapter, and when it loads, hit ENTER and type in "unlock".

 

[MogulKahn]

Finished first 3 maps in the first 2-3 days after release, but after that life became pretty hectic, so I was unable to finish it until the end until for a long time.

I see that people mentioned majority of issues I have also had with the game, so there is no need to repeat them one more time. Except that second? map with the Draenei. That one was extra overwhelming. I think you need to add an extra map or something, where we gonna be introduced gradually to their tech-tree. Right now it is just too much.

Overall one of the best experiences I have had with Warcraft 3 custom campaign. Really good job.

But I want to focus on your tech-tree design. One really underrated part of your campaign. How you have managed to pull off a lot of really cool and unique things without using custom abilities. I have nearly 20 years of experience with Warcraft 3 and what I have recognized is that when it comes to unit spells and abilities - less is always more. People are trying too hard to make things more "interesting", but Warcraft 3 in it's core is a simple game. Too many effects on one skill doesn't work that good in RTS games (opposite of MOBAs).

Draenei mana (everywhere) system is really cool. Design of their defense structures is a top notch. Special mention to Soulbinder unit. Really unique approach to an unit design. Also thematically them being connected to the machines, because machines are made out of their souls is pretty damn cool. But I have to mention one thing that caught my eye while playing. You are having in every race couple of units that overlap with each other, at least from my point of view. I understand Footman - Knight relationship where one is supposed to replace another in the late game, but you have for example in Draenei Elekk Knight and Vindicator (not sure on the names). Elekk Knight is a little bit more aggressive, while the other one is more defensive, but still, they fulfil the same role.

Ogres were my favorite. Their lack of flying and ranged units fits them thematically amazing. But from the other side that kind of made them limiting in the quality of the race. Couple of pretty similar units with similar roles.

Orcs were cool, but unfinished. You have managed to capture their WC 1 feeling really good, but I would have preferred extra T3 units.

Also, voice acting is just amazing. I recognized Gragas's voice in that drunk Ogre, so I was curious, are those voice taken from some other games, or you have made them by yourself?

Cannot wait for the second part! Thank you!

 

[Rommel]

Howdy there, folks. Apologies for being here less often that I'd like and missing quite a few messages. HoS Act II and HoS Melee are being worked on at the same pace as Act I was 2 years ago, and the long-promised big announcement is on its way. Yes, we planned to make it much earlier but since there so much was being done each month, we went "okay, let's postpone it and better include more" a few times thus far. Some cool stuff will soon be here.

@Blasterixx
Thank you for your detailed review! Glad you liked the visuals! We're considering all the listed issues with Act I graphics, balance and storytelling, and addressing them in Act II. This, in particular, will include more clear descriptions of mechanics, easier missions, and heroes standing out more against units. In HoS, however, heroes play a less prominent role as we're aiming at slightly different gameplay.
Regarding the divergence of Warcraft III and WoW settings, in our opinion, there's no such thing since Warcraft Chronicle book trilogy is the canon story of Warcraft universe, incorporating both RTS series' and WoW plot into one, and we're basing HoS on it (with our additions where it comes to non-canon heroes and events). Act I was supposed to tell the story of orc (and half-orc) protagonists who fight on the side of the draenei at the eve of the Rise of the Horde events, so it is what it is ^^
And yes, we're aware the prologue mission has certain visibility problems. Sadly not much can be done here as the setting's red, grey and brown, with protagonists wearing the same colors. That's a single mission issue though.
And team glow can be turned on with the 'heroglow' command

@MogulKahn
Thank you so much! Your faith in the project is indeed very inspiring!
Orcs in Act I don't have the full tech tree as some of its units only appeared in Warcraft II era - such as Juggernaut, Death Knight and both types of enslaved red dragons. In Act I we tried to compensate for that with summoned Legion demons, as well as clan-specific orc variants.
Regarding voice acting, we have original actors' voice work for most protagonists and some units (such as Warlock, Magus, Rangari etc) and we're also using a lot of Blizzard's voices. However, we do also use sound files from other games such as Paladins and DotA2. We're keeping some of them where they fit well, but in general that's a temporary measure in the absence of voice actors. In Act II, we plan to do some AI-generated and edited voice to provide more variety.

Stay tuned, folks, and thank you again)

 

[Raven80]

This project really does look awesome but that whole instalation fiesta and yet another version of the game i have to keep in my pc really discourages me to even try it...
Anyway, wish you good luck and hopefully one day it will get the update for the current game version

 

[Fan_of_Aeroblyctos]

Edit: if somebody is interested in the answer, Ravager16829 already answered me in another (wrong) thread (The Heart of Storms: Dusk of Draenor (Release)). I quote his answer below.

Hi everybody,

If this is not the right thread to talk about bugs, could you tell me where I can do it? I would then move my question there.

If this is the right place, am I the only on who has the models replaced by big 3d green and black squares?

Here is what I did:

-install the 1.27 version of ROC and TFT with my keys
-allow local folders
-I put the The Heart of Storms Dusk of Draenor 1.68.w3n in the campaign folder
-I found it in custom campaigns
-I chose hard
-I launched it
-Immediately, I saw that the first screen is black. I click on prologue. Then the cinematic is black. I clicked on esc, and the game begins: a lot of models are big cubes of green and black squares (see hereunder).

What I tried:

-I put every setting on "high" since I saw in the original thread that we should not use low settings

additional info:

I have win10, on a 2020 gamer laptop.

Could you help me?

In advance, sorry if I did not follow some instructions given on the original thread. I searched for information, with no avail.

View attachment 447412

Answer:

The Heart of Storms: Dusk of Draenor (Release)

The project is finally at a version we are proud to call first (but not last) release out of beta stage. After a very long wait and, finally, 2 years of intense development (as it was relaunched in 2020 and worked from the ground up, only keeping a few old assets and the story), Heart of Storms...

www.hiveworkshop.com

Make sure you ask this kind of question on that separate thread above. The moderator might see your post being made on wrong thread and will move without warning!

Make sure you have followed the instructions correctly, especially this one:

Spoiler: Install Instructions

View attachment 447414

Look for the "Local Files Installation Guide". You have to install the HoS Local Files as well, not just enabling the feature! Put it in the game root directly.

 

[Rommel]

Visions of the Future: Act II & HoS Melee Development Update

Art by Nexis It's been over a year since the first Heart of Storms announcement here on Hive. With Act I released this January, and Act II worked on for a while, the time has come for the next major development update. We planned this one as early as in May, but cool stuff kept coming and we...

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[Nyctaeus]

A terrifyingly well-developed project, bordering "overdeveloped" if such term even exists. A rare example of overambitious megaproject that managed to deliver it's promises, and manifested as release that's simply bursting at the seams with content.

Maps provide lots of stuff that's sometimes hard to catch up with. Mechanics sometimes overlap during gameplay in the moments like duel of Yrel with two-headed ogre gladiator in the map involving retrieving lost artifacts. We control multiple factions in like 3 maps, which I consider a situational mechanics that can overwhelm player capabilities of multitasking. Map with the Fel Gate was clearly an overkill in this regard. In short, maps can get quite chaotic sometimes. I suggest to include more calmer and slower moments in future releases, especially considering the fact, that we play new and very complex techtrees. Throwing player in the middle of Battle of Karabor as brand-new Draenei techtree, and with control of two Draenei players was hard to control for my mental capabilities.

I have a feeling that development team wanted to pack so much juice into so few maps, that in the end, it become very hard to balance as experience, and has quite high entry treshold. While the maps aren't necessary too hard in terms of difficulty and well-balanced, they require players to quickly learn new things and lots of multitasking.

But that's all of the naysaying. Omg, the good sides of this thing... Breathtaking visuals, beyond-impressive modpack, master-grade terrain work, excellent voice work, excellent dialogues and writing, the mood... I have no idea if it's even possible to not forgive this project a little chaos with that nearly impossible level of quality.

Loved Arnak's plot. A man so complex, so devastated with life, so rigorous, so honorable, surprisingly mature and at the same point, so wild, so savage, so full of anger and so eager to find a place in the world that makes completely no sense. Yrel is as crazy, as devoted and as wrathful as I expect her to be. Rogaar is my personal favorite character of this campaign, for being unique, mysterious mix of many words, many themes and a living embodiment of completely inert, dying world.

K'ara is really scary and while mostly silent, her interactions with Velen display complex, void-tainted and alien personality. All maps of Battle of Karabor are excellently written and made, overwhelming with a theme of a battle that's impossible to win, but that still needs to be fought.

An overarching conclusion of the experience is my very deep impression, that you guys managed to really believably portray a completely crazy, opressive and depressive world at it's downfall. Everybody is crazy about something. Everybody is violent, convinced about beliefs, determined to push for their agenda and completely lacking any sense of balance. Reason and common sense should be the very things that signal the end of the world and Draenor as portrayed in Dusk of Draenor is positively opressing player with this very feeling. At the same time, the world is very mature and detailed. There is a reasoning behind even the most unstable and derailed characters, and nobody acts simply because somebody "is evil". Nobody is like simply "good" either. I suspect this was one of your goals - portray all possible kinds of going nuts for all variety of reasons, and this goal is certainly achieved in a way I can easily describe as convincing.

A chaotic masterpiece. Further chapters needs some polishing of form to be more focused and less tiring to play, but the project presents a quality level that's almost unrivalred anyway.

 

[Rommel]

A chaotic masterpiece

Thank you. We are glad you liked it, and reviews like these, detailed and complete, give us strength to continue.

“Overdeveloped” is the right word, yeah, as we basically went with not just squeezing too much content into a relatively small campaign, but also upping the visual quality far beyond what was originally planned - in earlier versions, we didn’t even consider remaking all tilesets, for example. Draenor itself was actually meant to appear in a couple flashbacks in 2006 version (which was what Act II is now, story-wise) and we expanded it to a campaign once we realized we can do a proper Draenei race and Karabor tileset.

(in fact, normal draenei models and structures were virtually nonexistent back then, we took Mythic's (Vinz's) buildings as base, and Hawkwing was kind enough to provide geosets)

Draenor was always meant to show how high are the stakes if orcs managed to bring a whole world to its death throes, so we’re glad to hear we got it right. It’s a savage and uncompromising place but it’s also devoid of optimism that comes with similar primordial settings, it’s not going to evolve, it’s just being torn apart first figuratively then literally. The final mission is basically the event horizon, you undo whatever hope is left, playing as Gul’dan who lives up to his nickname, Destroyer of Dreams.

Regarding difficulty, we learned our lesson. Original Chapter 4 sounded very good on paper but turned out a Dark Souls-like mess in reality, and that's after several nerfs (prior to that, as our chief tester described it, it was pre-nerf C'Thun hard). In Act II, we will try to make more moments closer to phases II-III of Chapter 2 (Karabor), and Chapter 3 (Frostfire) base missions. We want to shift more towards Nova's campaign in SC2 (heroes, customization, subphases without overstretching the duration), while avoiding Kerrigan from the same game (entire missions completed by heroes without using units and bases).

Thank you once more. And see you soon!

 

[MogulKahn]

A terrifyingly well-developed project, bordering "overdeveloped" if such term even exists. A rare example of overambitious megaproject that managed to deliver it's promises, and manifested as release that's simply bursting at the seams with content.

Maps provide lots of stuff that's sometimes hard to catch up with. Mechanics sometimes overlap during gameplay in the moments like duel of Yrel with two-headed ogre gladiator in the map involving retrieving lost artifacts. We control multiple factions in like 3 maps, which I consider a situational mechanics that can overwhelm player capabilities of multitasking. Map with the Fel Gate was clearly an overkill in this regard. In short, maps can get quite chaotic sometimes. I suggest to include more calmer and slower moments in future releases, especially considering the fact, that we play new and very complex techtrees. Throwing player in the middle of Battle of Karabor as brand-new Draenei techtree, and with control of two Draenei players was hard to control for my mental capabilities.

I have a feeling that development team wanted to pack so much juice into so few maps, that in the end, it become very hard to balance as experience, and has quite high entry treshold. While the maps aren't necessary too hard in terms of difficulty and well-balanced, they require players to quickly learn new things and lots of multitasking.

But that's all of the naysaying. Omg, the good sides of this thing... Breathtaking visuals, beyond-impressive modpack, master-grade terrain work, excellent voice work, excellent dialogues and writing, the mood... I have no idea if it's even possible to not forgive this project a little chaos with that nearly impossible level of quality.

Loved Arnak's plot. A man so complex, so devastated with life, so rigorous, so honorable, surprisingly mature and at the same point, so wild, so savage, so full of anger and so eager to find a place in the world that makes completely no sense. Yrel is as crazy, as devoted and as wrathful as I expect her to be. Rogaar is my personal favorite character of this campaign, for being unique, mysterious mix of many words, many themes and a living embodiment of completely inert, dying world.

K'ara is really scary and while mostly silent, her interactions with Velen display complex, void-tainted and alien personality. All maps of Battle of Karabor are excellently written and made, overwhelming with a theme of a battle that's impossible to win, but that still needs to be fought.

An overarching conclusion of the experience is my very deep impression, that you guys managed to really believably portray a completely crazy, opressive and depressive world at it's downfall. Everybody is crazy about something. Everybody is violent, convinced about beliefs, determined to push for their agenda and completely lacking any sense of balance. Reason and common sense should be the very things that signal the end of the world and Draenor as portrayed in Dusk of Draenor is positively opressing player with this very feeling. At the same time, the world is very mature and detailed. There is a reasoning behind even the most unstable and derailed characters, and nobody acts simply because somebody "is evil". Nobody is like simply "good" either. I suspect this was one of your goals - portray all possible kinds of going nuts for all variety of reasons, and this goal is certainly achieved in a way I can easily describe as convincing.

A chaotic masterpiece. Further chapters needs some polishing of form to be more focused and less tiring to play, but the project presents a quality level that's almost unrivalred anyway.

I am firm believer that they should have added at least 2 missions before the beginning. First, because of plot reasons, because if you are unfamiliar with a Warcraft lore, you would have never known why all of this is happening on Draenor, campaign is starting in the middle of the war, and second, to familiarise players with Draenei and Ogre tech-trees.

 

[Nyctaeus]

My experience with content design strongly pushed me towards "zen" school of design over the years. Give players time to think, to make mistakes, to try this or another thing and some "filler" content is also good, because this is exactly all the less-engaging space an average player requires to get familiar with all aspects of the mod. Exodus was in more favorable position, because it's being played as customized human techtree, but still we provide player rather slow tempo and absolutely no rush.

Please, don't find my words condescending, as I have no doubt that you guys absolutely know how to do your job. I rather think, that current, super-condensed form of DoD is a result of years of reworking and adjusting things, and the more polishing is being applied, the more hermetic and resistant to change a map will be. DoD alone has enough content to be 10 maps, and some of them could be more lore/character development/techtree/exploration focused. Ofc. I don't suggest rebuilding entrire campaign, because that's nearly impossible. And what we already have is very good.

I hope that experience with DoD will serve as a basis to think how to balance gameplay in further acts of HoS. This project has everything to be ultimate banger of the community, and it already is, but it needs balance and space to show things and make everything easiy digestible for players. It's okay to be boring from time to time. It's okay to give players a moment to breathe, read/listen to dialogues or simply explore things around for no apparent reason, before the campaign throw her/him into the frey of battle another time. Slower moments counterbalance more action-intense maps, and provide brain with time to cool down and reset the adrenaline after more intense arcs.

 

[Bogdanov89]

The screenshots look absolutely amazing.

I very much hope it gets made compatible with whatever is the latest version of Reforged (classic graphics mode).