To the Bitter End

[Soul Reaver]

The story is great, spells are good and I liked every mission of this campaign.5/5

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Love it thnx.Best part was that you got 5 heroes and you can understand every single one of them +rep 10/10

Happy to hear you enjoyed it too! I felt that it was important to add the heroes one at a time over the course of the game so you can get used to them (both personality and ability wise) - I'm glad that it sounds like that worked!

 

[Calendar]

At chapter 4, so far love this campaign. Playing Warcraft 3 again after a very long time, and wow if this doesn't have Warcraft 3 terrain I will believe if someone told me it's a stand alone game. Great story with large background, the spells really good, simple (can't say the same with Fei's ultimate) yet the visual really showing these Companions really powerful compare to normal people (or WC3 default heroes).

I'm sucker for RPG (mainly JRPG), the difficulty is balanced I think (so far I don't load save files), not too easy and not too hard although I'm still at chapter 4. Curious, will Morganem boss battle (I assume he is the last boss) be like 20 min+ ?

 

[Soul Reaver]

At chapter 4, so far love this campaign. Playing Warcraft 3 again after a very long time, and wow if this doesn't have Warcraft 3 terrain I will believe if someone told me it's a stand alone game. Great story with large background, the spells really good, simple (can't say the same with Fei's ultimate) yet the visual really showing these Companions really powerful compare to normal people (or WC3 default heroes).

I'm sucker for RPG (mainly JRPG), the difficulty is balanced I think (so far I don't load save files), not too easy and not too hard although I'm still at chapter 4. Curious, will Morganem boss battle (I assume he is the last boss) be like 20 min+ ?

Glad you're enjoying it so far, and really happy to hear the campaign stands so well on its own!

Truth be told Chapters I, II and III are the easiest of the lot - IV is where it gets a difficulty spike and overall it's a difficult campaign (by design). And as I personally hate grinding in RPGs, this campaign doesn't reward it, so you won't be able to make things any easier for yourself by trying to grind.
That said, if you're finding it's starting to be TOO difficult (to the point of not being fun) you can press Enter to bring up the chat, type in "medium" or "easy" and hit enter again to modify the difficulty. That'll stick even through Chapters until you enter "hard" in the chat to revert it to the default (hard) difficulty.
In any case I do recommend you save regularly (maybe in more than one slot) as you might need to do some reloading in the future.

I won't give away too much regarding the final boss battle as I really don't want to spoil it but yes, even without any saving/loading, it's a long battle. I promise you won't find it boring though.

Please do let me know what you think once you've finished it!

 

[Calendar]

Glad you're enjoying it so far, and really happy to hear the campaign stands so well on its own!

Truth be told Chapters I, II and III are the easiest of the lot - IV is where it gets a difficulty spike and overall it's a difficult campaign (by design). And as I personally hate grinding in RPGs, this campaign doesn't reward it, so you won't be able to make things any easier for yourself by trying to grind.
That said, if you're finding it's starting to be TOO difficult (to the point of not being fun) you can press Enter to bring up the chat, type in "medium" or "easy" and hit enter again to modify the difficulty. That'll stick even through Chapters until you enter "hard" in the chat to revert it to the default (hard) difficulty.
In any case I do recommend you save regularly (maybe in more than one slot) as you might need to do some reloading in the future.

I won't give away too much regarding the final boss battle as I really don't want to spoil it but yes, even without any saving/loading, it's a long battle. I promise you won't find it boring though.

Please do let me know what you think once you've finished it!

Just finished chapter V. Yeah, I can feel the spike in IV, though you kind enough to provide the hint to beat the map in the dialogues, very good. In V now I get kinda confused because 5 heroes at once, I'm just not that good with real time micro management, need to load save 3 times to beat the boss. I don't know I think it's just my thing but I often find the spells hotkeys kinda hard to get used to since I used to the QWERDF with Q for the most left spell and F for your Q spell.

I also hate grinding if it's too excessive. And I can feel it in the map since the enemy always in the main part of the map/quest.
Yah will do the difficulty modify if I find myself load too many times, otherwise it still fun even if it's difficult.

Ah, when I said I don't load save files I mean I just don't load it, I do always save regulary in 4 slots.

Yeah, when I asked 20min+ I really mean the entirety of it (including pause to observe and think, save/load, etc.) because in JRPG last boss usually very long with no save in between "phase" and I like it that way. So with a very long boss battle and the ability to save any time I figure the execution will be very hard to make so that the players will still find it fun. But yeah no doubt in me I believe you, I mean I lost the track of time when playing so yeah kinda excited for the last boss.

 

[StormKnight]

Sorry for bothering but i need to ask this, so in Recommended section the versions that it should be played on is stated as 124 -1.28c
Which version of the game did you create this on, Soul Reaver, 1.28.5 or lesser, like 1.27.

 

[Deolrin]

^ Also, if it isn't already compatible, would it be possible to make it compatible with the latest Reforged patch? This campaign is too great to be sidelined because of some new game updates, more people need to see and play it.

 

[Ravager16829]

Sorry for bothering but i need to ask this, so in Recommended section the versions that it should be played on is stated as 124 -1.28c
Which version of the game did you create this on, Soul Reaver, 1.28.5 or lesser, like 1.27.

It's up to you, assuming you have Warcraft III version 1.26 or higher, but I'm pointing out that when you use the latest version (like 1.31.1) the campaign will be broken due to the various bugs. You can read the following post:

Since this is an issue introduced in the latest Warcraft III patch, I'm not actually going to try and 'fix' this, as later patches may fix it for me (though I will look into how to work around these issues if no fix is forthcoming). However, in the meantime I recommend not playing with the latest patches, since they seem to have quite a few problems.

The latest confirmed one working 100% is 1.26a but to be honest I think anything up to 1.30 will probably work. Tommi Gustaffson has kindly shared a link to the 1.29.2 standalone files in this thread: [Need Help] Back to 1.29 , just look for his post/link.

EDIT: I've noticed a few weirdnesses with that version too, but most of it is managable:
1. You have to start he game using Warcraft III.exe, using the frozen throne .exe file will give you a storm.dll error
2. Campaign files (including To the Bitter End) have to be stored in "Documents/Warcraft III/Campaigns" (which doesn't exist by default, so you have to create it).
3. Because it supports widescreen, some of the cinematic effects I used don't look 100% right (ie, screens that used to be all black now show things in the corners that used to be obscured). No real gameplay effect but it's a bit annoying. If you can play it in a 4:3 resolution like originally intended it probably won't have that issue.

I might have to do a lot of re-testing to fix the issues created by the widescreen stuff.

Basically, 1.26 is recommended version, but you can also download 1.29 which has a Widescreen stuff.
1.31 is probably the version you should not play. This campaign is absolutely hard and if you load your saves to retry the mission, the gameplay will be ruined due to the broken triggers. Also, the game will freeze after completing the mission.

^ Also, if it isn't already compatible, would it be possible to make it compatible with the latest Reforged patch? This campaign is too great to be sidelined because of some new game updates, more people need to see and play it.

I don't know but I guess it won't happened because Reforged doesn't support custom campaign.

 

[StormKnight]

It's up to you, assuming you have Warcraft III version 1.26 or higher, but I'm pointing out that when you use the latest version (like 1.31.1) the campaign will be broken due to the various bugs. You can read the following post:

Basically, 1.26 is recommended version, but you can also download 1.29 which has a Widescreen stuff.
1.31 is probably the version you should not play. This campaign is absolutely hard and if you load your saves to retry the mission, the gameplay will be ruined due to the broken triggers. Also, the game will freeze after completing the mission.


I don't know but I guess it won't happened because Reforged doesn't support custom campaign.

Thanks for the response, its no problem man i have alot of W3 versions, i'll definitely try and retry this campaign over time with 1.27/1.28.5 and 1.29.2.

 

[Blasterixx]

After playing this campaign and almost finishing it, here are my critiques and suggestions:
I played the campaign using the 1.29 version of War3

Spoiler: Review

~ Heroes move too slow!

There were so many instances where my heroes died or were caught in bad positions just because they move with the speed of an old snail that suffers from dementia, am i supposed to believe these are some kind of legendary immortal heroes that fought against impossible odds and they did all of that by moving slow as fuck? this just feel stupid, i'm sorry, the fire element and the troll hero having average move speed is horrible, it feels incredible punishing to play with them and to god forbid.. try to move them... especially while being in combat, as if they weren't slow enough, they will get even slower while fighting and then good luck with trying to move from 1 spot to the other, is legit painful to watch them struggle to move an inch, Soul Reaver at least has that q spell that makes him move fast for a while, but the other 2 are just horrible!

To be honest this is the main reason why i couldn't bother with finishing the campaign, i got to the end fight with the dark wizard and almost killed him, letting him with 10% but it just wasn't enough, he dealt too much dmg and i couldn't make my heroes move back and heal because is literally impossible to to so, they won't move at all, the worst part is because those 2 fuckers are so slow they actually block the other 3 faster heroes from moving as well and makes the whole team move sluggish and bump into eachother like clueless drunk bastards.

As you can already tell by reading this i am pretty annoyed and tilted because of this fact alone.

My suggestion to solve this problem is to simply make them move with "Fast" move speed instead of "Average" move speed, i am talking about the 3 str heroes, the other 2 agi ones move fast enough already.

And no, u can't just say: "but man, they are strength heroes so of course they will move a bit slower." . . . NO! i do not care what they are, no hero in any custom campaign should move that fucking slow, and if they do then that fact alone will ruin the entire campaign like it did with this one for me!



~ The Spells of the heroes (Most important aspect of the game)

What can i say, the spells are just great aren't they, i don't think anyone can say otherwise unless they would be lying or trying to be malicious, now... my only problem with the spells are the way they are positioned, you see... there is this special aspect of every war3 map or any game for that matter, where your spells are in the Q W E R T or Z X C V B position IN THAT specific order displayed in front of you in the game UI, but for some unknown reason, this campaign has the spell Q, which is supposed to be the first spell aka in the far left position, all over to where the T spell is supposed to be... over the first line of spells, and this fact alone screws with my brain so hard, since i am used to having them in the normal aka CORRECT order! So instead of having my Q spell the first spell from left to right, now there is the W spell instead...... WHY???? just why

My suggestion:

- Re-order the spells so they are in the correct positions as they should be!
Like THIS:

Spoiler

~ The difficulty is strange

The game started well enough, i actually had fun for the first half of the campaign, but in the second half things started to escalate like crazy, i started losing my heroes soo often is not even funny, i think i had to reload from my last save like at least 50 times, this fact alone is insane, and i am not a bad player, i played lots of custom campaign and maps, always on the hardest difficulty, but this campaign is just weird, the difficulty just spikes at random sometimes, 1 time i am doing fine destroying everything with me heroes and then after 3 seconds i am getting rekt somehow by some random spell and my heroes die... this ties up to the first problem, of slow move speed of the heroes, if i could have moved my heroes back and avoid their death it would have been great but not in this game!

There was also that part where each hero has to fight against a mini boss alone with those life orbs, that whole part just felt soo slow and sluggish, having 1 hero to fight soo many strong monsters with no sort of healing other than that stupid 30 sec afk heal that only gives 600 hp and 300 mana, yea sure, not only that is very weak when my heroes have so much hp and mp already, but u can only use that while you are outside the fight, u cannot use it during the fight obviously since it doesn't work, it gets canceled, so because of that i had to go afk for 3 minutes after every fight cuz i had no way of healing my hp and mana in any other way and it sucks and is boring!

My suggestion:

- Simply make the healing aspect of that item that every hero has to be instant, problem solved, maybe reduce the cooldown a bit as well i guess, but the most important aspect is that, it has to be instant! having to wait 30 seconds while your hero is out of commission being afk, is just a bad game design, there is no other way of putting it!


~ The text in the cinematics

The text moves too fast, i don't have time to read at my own pace, there is especially no time to read it doing cool voices for all characters, so the only way is to read it in your mind, but that shit is lame, in the best case scenario the text and characters would be voice acted but i think we are getting a bit a head of ourselves now aren't we, anyway as you might guess, not being able to read the text and what the characters say at a decent speed is extremely bad for the whole campaign and the story, since i need to understand the story to enjoy it, but i can't enjoy shit when i have to hurry and read as fast as possible just to be able to keep up with the speedy text, is annoying at best and at worst i am missing a lot of the story which is bad!

My suggestion:

Make the text move slower but i have no idea how to do that, i assume is not that easy to decrease the speed of the text without changing all the cinematics as a whole? either way this is the only way to solve this issue.


- Minor negatives:

I noticed there are a lot of crates and barrels in some maps, but none of them drop anything, i understand this is how the game works, since heroes already have those 4 permanent items in their inventory but there are also 2 more inventory slots which are free, so in my mind this is just weird that in the whole campaign those 2 slots will remain empty (with that one exception with the souls orb). But even then, there is no reason for those destructible crates and barrels to not have anything inside, it just feels wrong and strange, what even is their purpose for existing, just for the player to destroy them and release the air inside them?

My suggestion:

- Give a 50% chance for all destructible objects like crates and barrels to drop one of those things: Tomes, Runes of healing hp or mp, potions and maybe permanent items? but i do think it would be much cooler if the bosses themselves would drop the only items in the game, or how about putting also some secrets in the game, since i noticed there isn't much at all in terms of that, the maps are empty of anything other than the enemy mobs and some allied units.

- Final thoughts:

I know i sounded kinda harsh and i didn't really say much about the positive aspects of the campaign, but i feel like that would mean nothing since this is already a very loved custom campaign, and is being seen as one of the best, the purpose of what i wrote is to show that even tho this is seen as one of the best custom campaigns it still has some really big flaws that need to be worked on.

I feel like i got progressively more annoyed with the game the more i played it, and you must ask yourself one very simple question at the end, and that is, Did you actually enjoy and had fun with the game, and my answer to that question is unfortunately no, even tho like i said, it started good, but by the end of it all i was already too annoyed with the gameplay to keep going, it simply wasn't worth my time being in a constant state of rage.

 

[Soul Reaver]

After playing this campaign and almost finishing it, here are my critiques and suggestions:
I played the campaign using the 1.29 version of War3

Spoiler: Review

~ Heroes move too slow!

There were so many instances where my heroes died or were caught in bad positions just because they move with the speed of an old snail that suffers from dementia, am i supposed to believe these are some kind of legendary immortal heroes that fought against impossible odds and they did all of that by moving slow as fuck? this just feel stupid, i'm sorry, the fire element and the troll hero having average move speed is horrible, it feels incredible punishing to play with them and to god forbid.. try to move them... especially while being in combat, as if they weren't slow enough, they will get even slower while fighting and then good luck with trying to move from 1 spot to the other, is legit painful to watch them struggle to move an inch, Soul Reaver at least has that q spell that makes him move fast for a while, but the other 2 are just horrible!

To be honest this is the main reason why i couldn't bother with finishing the campaign, i got to the end fight with the dark wizard and almost killed him, letting him with 10% but it just wasn't enough, he dealt too much dmg and i couldn't make my heroes move back and heal because is literally impossible to to so, they won't move at all, the worst part is because those 2 fuckers are so slow they actually block the other 3 faster heroes from moving as well and makes the whole team move sluggish and bump into eachother like clueless drunk bastards.

As you can already tell by reading this i am pretty annoyed and tilted because of this fact alone.

My suggestion to solve this problem is to simply make them move with "Fast" move speed instead of "Average" move speed, i am talking about the 3 str heroes, the other 2 agi ones move fast enough already.

And no, u can't just say: "but man, they are strength heroes so of course they will move a bit slower." . . . NO! i do not care what they are, no hero in any custom campaign should move that fucking slow, and if they do then that fact alone will ruin the entire campaign like it did with this one for me!



~ The Spells of the heroes (Most important aspect of the game)

What can i say, the spells are just great aren't they, i don't think anyone can say otherwise unless they would be lying or trying to be malicious, now... my only problem with the spells are the way they are positioned, you see... there is this special aspect of every war3 map or any game for that matter, where your spells are in the Q W E R T or Z X C V B position IN THAT specific order displayed in front of you in the game UI, but for some unknown reason, this campaign has the spell Q, which is supposed to be the first spell aka in the far left position, all over to where the T spell is supposed to be... over the first line of spells, and this fact alone screws with my brain so hard, since i am used to having them in the normal aka CORRECT order! So instead of having my Q spell the first spell from left to right, now there is the W spell instead...... WHY???? just why

My suggestion:

- Re-order the spells so they are in the correct positions as they should be!
Like THIS:

Spoiler

View attachment 388140

~ The difficulty is strange

The game started well enough, i actually had fun for the first half of the campaign, but in the second half things started to escalate like crazy, i started losing my heroes soo often is not even funny, i think i had to reload from my last save like at least 50 times, this fact alone is insane, and i am not a bad player, i played lots of custom campaign and maps, always on the hardest difficulty, but this campaign is just weird, the difficulty just spikes at random sometimes, 1 time i am doing fine destroying everything with me heroes and then after 3 seconds i am getting rekt somehow by some random spell and my heroes die... this ties up to the first problem, of slow move speed of the heroes, if i could have moved my heroes back and avoid their death it would have been great but not in this game!

There was also that part where each hero has to fight against a mini boss alone with those life orbs, that whole part just felt soo slow and sluggish, having 1 hero to fight soo many strong monsters with no sort of healing other than that stupid 30 sec afk heal that only gives 600 hp and 300 mana, yea sure, not only that is very weak when my heroes have so much hp and mp already, but u can only use that while you are outside the fight, u cannot use it during the fight obviously since it doesn't work, it gets canceled, so because of that i had to go afk for 3 minutes after every fight cuz i had no way of healing my hp and mana in any other way and it sucks and is boring!

My suggestion:

- Simply make the healing aspect of that item that every hero has to be instant, problem solved, maybe reduce the cooldown a bit as well i guess, but the most important aspect is that, it has to be instant! having to wait 30 seconds while your hero is out of commission being afk, is just a bad game design, there is no other way of putting it!


~ The text in the cinematics

The text moves too fast, i don't have time to read at my own pace, there is especially no time to read it doing cool voices for all characters, so the only way is to read it in your mind, but that shit is lame, in the best case scenario the text and characters would be voice acted but i think we are getting a bit a head of ourselves now aren't we, anyway as you might guess, not being able to read the text and what the characters say at a decent speed is extremely bad for the whole campaign and the story, since i need to understand the story to enjoy it, but i can't enjoy shit when i have to hurry and read as fast as possible just to be able to keep up with the speedy text, is annoying at best and at worst i am missing a lot of the story which is bad!

My suggestion:

Make the text move slower but i have no idea how to do that, i assume is not that easy to decrease the speed of the text without changing all the cinematics as a whole? either way this is the only way to solve this issue.


- Minor negatives:

I noticed there are a lot of crates and barrels in some maps, but none of them drop anything, i understand this is how the game works, since heroes already have those 4 permanent items in their inventory but there are also 2 more inventory slots which are free, so in my mind this is just weird that in the whole campaign those 2 slots will remain empty (with that one exception with the souls orb). But even then, there is no reason for those destructible crates and barrels to not have anything inside, it just feels wrong and strange, what even is their purpose for existing, just for the player to destroy them and release the air inside them?

My suggestion:

- Give a 50% chance for all destructible objects like crates and barrels to drop one of those things: Tomes, Runes of healing hp or mp, potions and maybe permanent items? but i do think it would be much cooler if the bosses themselves would drop the only items in the game, or how about putting also some secrets in the game, since i noticed there isn't much at all in terms of that, the maps are empty of anything other than the enemy mobs and some allied units.

- Final thoughts:

I know i sounded kinda harsh and i didn't really say much about the positive aspects of the campaign, but i feel like that would mean nothing since this is already a very loved custom campaign, and is being seen as one of the best, the purpose of what i wrote is to show that even tho this is seen as one of the best custom campaigns it still has some really big flaws that need to be worked on.

I feel like i got progressively more annoyed with the game the more i played it, and you must ask yourself one very simple question at the end, and that is, Did you actually enjoy and had fun with the game, and my answer to that question is unfortunately no, even tho like i said, it started good, but by the end of it all i was already too annoyed with the gameplay to keep going, it simply wasn't worth my time being in a constant state of rage.

Thanks for the detailed review. I'll address some of it below:

Slow heroes:
- The only real slow hero is Kitharsis, and that's because that's supposed to be one of his big weaknesses. Cameron is also slow but keep in mind he has item for emergency teleports (lots of players forget about the items...). Kitharsis is going to take some hits due to his slow speed, but he does have the highest HP pool of all the heroes, so he can take it to some extent. Making all the heroes faster would significantly change the balance of the game and make it considerably easier, so I'm not keen on doing that.
(By the way, if you're feeling particularly annoyed because Kitharsis got exploded by Morganem's Funeral Pyre ability: try splitting the heroes up when he casts it so he's not running behind everyone else. And when you do have to run with him, focus on running only.)

Spell hotkeys:
- Purely looking at the keyboard and command card, your arrangement doesn't really make sense. We read from left to right and top to bottom, so why is the very first custom ability in the command card (when read top-to-bottom) using the last letter in left-to-right 'QWERT' order? Since I personally played very few other custom maps I wasn't aware there was a 'way to do it' and I'm very used to my layout now, so I'm reluctant to change it.

Difficulty:
- Yep, it's very hard, intentionally so, and you will often need to 'learn' about an ability (usually by dying to it) to know how to counter it. However, there are almost no unavoidable, massive damage nuke powers. I ensured that the most damaging/dangerous abilities can be mitigated in some way (usually by physically dodging them, stunning the caster or on occasion, using Soul Reaver's anti-magic amulet). However, I did include lower difficulties in case someone is finding it so tough that it's not fun for them: just type in "easy" or "medium" in the chat to change difficulty (this is found in the readme and the manual too).
It is finishable on its default difficulty, but saving/loading frequently is actually part of the design - repeated deaths are to be expected.

Healing:
- This is one I kind of agree with, but I've yet to come up with a better, practical solution.
The key thing about the 'tent' item is that it DOESN'T just instantly heal you. It costs you time (which in various missions is an important commodity) and it can be interrupted if anything attacks you (and in many missions you're constantly under attack, so you can only use it if you get someone to tactically protect your hero). The set healing amount is also intentional: if it was a %, even a few seconds of healing would be enough to regen the damage done by several enemy attacks, and I distinctly do NOT want people to use the tent for middle-of-combat healing unless they manage to successfully protect the character that's resting (and this is in fact an important strategy in some parts of the game). Making it insta-heal would remove the tactical aspect, the time-loss aspect and let you do ridiculous things like rest while right in the middle of a fight to get back chunks of health and mana.
If I had my way, I'd cause the game to 'fast forward' if people were resting and there were no enemies nearby, but I don't know if I could practically pull that off.

Text Speed:
- Yeah, this is a tough one. I do agree it's too fast if you want to voice-act it, but depending on how fast you read, slowing it down can make it seem painfully slow as you wait for each segment to be over with and the next to arrive. I settled on what was a reasonable reading speed for me.
If I had infinite time (and money) I'd actually like to re-do the campaign with full voice acting, but that WOULD require re-timing cinematics, and considering how carefully-timed some of them are (to match up with music cues etc), this would likely require a huge amount of work and even some script re-writes.
Making the text speed variable/changeable while still keeping the timing right would be even harder than that.

Crates and Barrels:
- All crates/barrels were included just because they looked 'right' where I put them. That they can be destroyed in the course of a battle is actually nice - I wish more terrain/doodad items were destructible in some way - but it's actually incidental. You don't HAVE to break them.
There's a perfectly reasonable lore reason why there's nothing (worthwhile) in those crates: our heroes are immortals wielding ancient demon swords and advanced firearms. They're not going to find anything remotely comparable lying randomly around in a barrel in a dusty corner of some backwater prison. If there WAS anything genuinely useful to them in those barrels... why isn't someone already carrying it (or if it's a single-use stat bonus item, why hasn't one of the enemy heroes used it)? It makes no sense.

Why no potions/secrets?
- I really, really dislike collectible consumables in games. This is because consumables mess up balancing. If I want to design a particular fight to be so tough you can only get by through the skin of your teeth by using everything you've got, but there's a healing potion ANYWHERE in the game, then it can go only two ways: either I make it both mandatory for someone to find the potion AND force them to save it for this one fight, or the player can make the fight easier than it was designed to be by finding and choosing to use the potion during it - and the more potions are in the game, the bigger this problem gets. You can see this in some JRPGs and the like: if you save all your single-use full-heals and invulnerability items for the final boss, they become a complete anticlimatic joke... because the game has to be possible to finish even without them.
So: no potions!
- Something similar goes for the 'no secrets' bit (though unlike consumables, I do like secrets in certain types of games - especially exploration-based ones). To the Bitter End was balanced around delivering a certain experience. The only secret that would be worth pursuing is one that gives some sort of benefit - but a secret, by its nature, is meant to be optional. So again, either I have to balance around EVERYONE finding the secret, or anyone who finds it will find the experience easier than I wanted it to be.
Lastly, I wanted to keep To the Bitter End streamlined. Lore-wise I wanted the main characters to pursue the current goal as dictated by the plot, not to be wandering around randomly looking for possible 'secrets'.

But all that said and done: I can understand it might not be your cup of tea - it isn't supposed to be. I personally really enjoy playing games that can be considered frustrating by some (Dark Souls comes to mind) but they're definitely not for everyone. I personally also like some old-school game design decisions that have fallen out of favour over time (eg, the need for trial and error to learn what to do and what not to do). That's me though, and if someone else just doesn't enjoy it, that's fine.

But again: if you are finding it frustrating to the point of anger, do try it on a lower difficulty level first by using the "easy" or "medium" commands.

 

[Map Designer]

Text Speed:
- Yeah, this is a tough one. I do agree it's too fast if you want to voice-act it, but depending on how fast you read, slowing it down can make it seem painfully slow as you wait for each segment to be over with and the next to arrive. I settled on what was a reasonable reading speed for me.
If I had infinite time (and money) I'd actually like to re-do the campaign with full voice acting, but that WOULD require re-timing cinematics, and considering how carefully-timed some of them are (to match up with music cues etc), this would likely require a huge amount of work and even some script re-writes.

do you use a 'time' variable as wait time for each spoken word? and then you can use that variable wait-Variable
if you could extract length of the text (either character length or words length) this will make it very easy for you to change wait time all at once just by changing the variable.

now after you have done that, you can then give a 5 option menu at the start of each map that controls the text speed selectable by player. This was implemented in other maps of hiveworkshop: Final Fantasy Epic RPG 0.9.7.3

 

[Soul Reaver]

do you use a 'time' variable as wait time for each spoken word? and then you can use that variable wait-Variable
if you could extract length of the text (either character length or words length) this will make it very easy for you to change wait time all at once just by changing the variable.

now after you have done that, you can then give a 5 option menu at the start of each map that controls the text speed selectable by player. This was implemented in other maps of hiveworkshop: Final Fantasy Epic RPG 0.9.7.3

I understand that you can use variables in wait timers, but that's not the problem.

A number of the key cinematics have the camera movements and dialogue synced to a soundtrack - and obviously, the timings of a pre-recorded song are fixed. If a specific musical cue occurs precisely 1 min 32 seconds into the song, I need all previous dialogue/camera movements to complete in 1 min 32 seconds precisely. That can't be changed by using a variable, so either dialogue would cut off or the cues would end up being missed.

While not every cinematic is affected by this, some of the very best ones are. If I were to apply variable text speeds, I would need it to be done consistently, and that's just not an option as it would break some of the above cinematics' timings.

Voice acting would work because just like the music, a given audio clip has a set length and so (with some script rewrites) I could still time the required dialogue to finish in time for the required musical queues, but as said: that's a project beyond the scope of what I can manage now.

 

[Blasterixx]

Slow heroes:
- The only real slow hero is Kitharsis, and that's because that's supposed to be one of his big weaknesses. Cameron is also slow but keep in mind he has item for emergency teleports (lots of players forget about the items...). Kitharsis is going to take some hits due to his slow speed, but he does have the highest HP pool of all the heroes, so he can take it to some extent. Making all the heroes faster would significantly change the balance of the game and make it considerably easier, so I'm not keen on doing that.
(By the way, if you're feeling particularly annoyed because Kitharsis got exploded by Morganem's Funeral Pyre ability: try splitting the heroes up when he casts it so he's not running behind everyone else. And when you do have to run with him, focus on running only.)

Like i said in the review, playing with slow units/heroes in any video game is bad design, there is no way to put it otherwise, also like you said it yourself, those are supposed to be immortal legendary heroes, and yet they move like an old men with arthritis...
Is legit painful to watch and play with them, but hey that's your design, you do you

Spell hotkeys:
- Purely looking at the keyboard and command card, your arrangement doesn't really make sense. We read from left to right and top to bottom, so why is the very first custom ability in the command card (when read top-to-bottom) using the last letter in left-to-right 'QWERT' order? Since I personally played very few other custom maps I wasn't aware there was a 'way to do it' and I'm very used to my layout now, so I'm reluctant to change it.

I legit have no idea what you are smoking with this one, did you really not play any other games in your life or what? ALL GAMES HAVE Q W E R T Y Hotkeys in that order. i can't tell if you are joking or not with this one, i am legit in awe of how insane your take is on the order of spells.
NO, no normal human being unless you are asian and you are doing the classic asian calligraphy writing will look at the spells order in a game and think to himself, hmm oh yes i want my spells to be ordered top to bottom, oh yes that is the way. . . .

Might as well put them in a random order at this point, because hey, why not, it can't get any worse than what it already is . . .

Legit please do show me an example of a game that has the hotkeys in this order like in your custom campaign, i am curious.

Healing:
- This is one I kind of agree with, but I've yet to come up with a better, practical solution.
The key thing about the 'tent' item is that it DOESN'T just instantly heal you. It costs you time (which in various missions is an important commodity) and it can be interrupted if anything attacks you (and in many missions you're constantly under attack, so you can only use it if you get someone to tactically protect your hero). The set healing amount is also intentional: if it was a %, even a few seconds of healing would be enough to regen the damage done by several enemy attacks, and I distinctly do NOT want people to use the tent for middle-of-combat healing unless they manage to successfully protect the character that's resting (and this is in fact an important strategy in some parts of the game). Making it insta-heal would remove the tactical aspect, the time-loss aspect and let you do ridiculous things like rest while right in the middle of a fight to get back chunks of health and mana.
If I had my way, I'd cause the game to 'fast forward' if people were resting and there were no enemies nearby, but I don't know if I could practically pull that off.

Ok, lets say you are right with the fact that having the healing tent item be the same way it is, having to become vulnerable and sleep for 30 seconds in order to rest, for strategical plays and what not, fine man, but damn, that does not make any sense in the late game at all, when my heroes hp and mp is soo big, that tent sleep heal becomes so utterly useless is not even funny, it would have been cool if the healing grew with the heroes as well and didn't stay the same flat numbers!

That is the thing that pissed me off the most, they are a cool aspect of the game but they are done poorly since they become useless in the late game, and the biggest problem with them is the fact that they are still needed because the way the gameplay is, after you fight 5 groups of strong monsters and you are left with pretty much 20% hp and mp, 1 more group and you are dead, no matter how good of a player you are, you can even make the smartest A.I that will ever be and make him control and micro the heroes, even him will get that low, it is impossible not to my dude, so that's why the healing has to be % wise or the flat numbers have to grow with the hero, i don't want to have to wait 2 minutes being afk just to heal my hero each time i fight a couple of groups of strong monsters, it is just bad design, again, you are simply put wasting the player's time with this bad design, and i have no idea how can you think that wasting my time as a player is somehow a good idea? where is the strategy involved here i do wonder???? Oh yes, the strategical value of having my time wasted by having to wait 2 minutes to heal with my shitty healing items that heals me the same way it did at the beginning of the game, much wow!

This goes hand in hand with the other aspect of the game and that is, the way the heroes and their items stay the same, stale, they cannot evolve, they cannot get better, the only thing that gets better are the stats and the levels of the spells, but that is not fun, there should be ways to improve your items as well, like i said through exploring a bit more, or even finding secrets, but anyway, you clearly want to make the game very linear, sure, you do you then.

Crates and Barrels:
- All crates/barrels were included just because they looked 'right' where I put them. That they can be destroyed in the course of a battle is actually nice - I wish more terrain/doodad items were destructible in some way - but it's actually incidental. You don't HAVE to break them.
There's a perfectly reasonable lore reason why there's nothing (worthwhile) in those crates: our heroes are immortals wielding ancient demon swords and advanced firearms. They're not going to find anything remotely comparable lying randomly around in a barrel in a dusty corner of some backwater prison. If there WAS anything genuinely useful to them in those barrels... why isn't someone already carrying it (or if it's a single-use stat bonus item, why hasn't one of the enemy heroes used it)? It makes no sense.

If all crates are empty and destructible then why do they exist in the first place? sure lets put 20 destructible crates in this corner for no reason, that will sure not make the player want to destroy them out of curiosity, is not like in literally 99.999% of every other games have crates that you can find shit in them...

Also if you are so keen on making things super realistic, the crates being empty doesn't make much sense since those people that live there or placed them there must have used them for something, weapons, food, etc. so where are all those? what do those people eat? air? oh right, they don't eat shit.

ALSO what do you mean you can't find good things in dusty corners of huge prisons that keep powerful beings with magical powers? are you nuts, there must be tons of cool and ancient artefacts, armory parts, weapons and items of all kinds there, not to mention when you visit all those other worlds and places, you are telling me all those ancient people and monsters don't have stored artefacts and other sacred treasures inside their castles, homes and prisons? again with the realism, where is the realism in that part ha?

You are telling me one of the most powerful Wizards that ever lived doesn't store artefacts and items of insane power in his fortress? sure you must be jesting if you are thinking otherwise.

I understand that you can use variables in wait timers, but that's not the problem.

A number of the key cinematics have the camera movements and dialogue synced to a soundtrack - and obviously, the timings of a pre-recorded song are fixed. If a specific musical cue occurs precisely 1 min 32 seconds into the song, I need all previous dialogue/camera movements to complete in 1 min 32 seconds precisely. That can't be changed by using a variable, so either dialogue would cut off or the cues would end up being missed.

While not every cinematic is affected by this, some of the very best ones are. If I were to apply variable text speeds, I would need it to be done consistently, and that's just not an option as it would break some of the above cinematics' timings.

Well that sounds cool and all with the music being timed with the dialogue, but the issue still stays the same, you can make the most gorgeous and beautiful cinematics and the best music that accompanies it but all of that is in vain if i am not able to finish reading most of the dialogue lines of the characters, that is the main point of the damn cinematic in the first place, to listen to the characters, to read their dialogue and understand what is going on with their stories and their lives, that is the most important thing and yet you made it in such a way that most players wouldn't be able to fully understand the story and what the characters have to say in exchange of some epic music parts that last a few seconds... what can i say.. gg

But all that said and done: I can understand it might not be your cup of tea - it isn't supposed to be. I personally really enjoy playing games that can be considered frustrating by some (Dark Souls comes to mind) but they're definitely not for everyone. I personally also like some old-school game design decisions that have fallen out of favour over time (eg, the need for trial and error to learn what to do and what not to do). That's me though, and if someone else just doesn't enjoy it, that's fine.

But again: if you are finding it frustrating to the point of anger, do try it on a lower difficulty level first by using the "easy" or "medium" commands.

Nah man, there is a big difference between something being hard and something being frustrating, this is clearly the latter here, from my personal experience that is, but hey, i did enjoy the good parts of the campaign, that is why i wrote and i am still writing this right now, it pains me to see how such an awesome campaign can have those small problems that ruin the good aspects, it is a tragedy, especially the hotkeys, maybe you can make it that people can choose what options to have for the order of the hotkeys atleast... anyway, i wish you well, and don't think i am a hater or anything, i just stated my opinion, i do respect people like you that create such amazing pieces of art in the shape of custom campaigns in this amazing game that is Warcraft 3 and it's infinite potential for custom maps and campaigns.

 

[Jayborino]

Like i said in the review, playing with slow units/heroes in any video game is bad design, there is no way to put it otherwise, also like you said it yourself, those are supposed to be immortal legendary heroes, and yet they move like an old men with arthritis...
Is legit painful to watch and play with them, but hey that's your design, you do you


I legit have no idea what you are smoking with this one, did you really not play any other games in your life or what? ALL GAMES HAVE Q W E R T Y Hotkeys in that order. i can't tell if you are joking or not with this one, i am legit in awe of how insane your take is on the order of spells.
NO, no normal human being unless you are asian and you are doing the classic asian calligraphy writing will look at the spells order in a game and think to himself, hmm oh yes i want my spells to be ordered top to bottom, oh yes that is the way. . . .

Might as well put them in a random order at this point, because hey, why not, it can't get any worse than what it already is . . .

Legit please do show me an example of a game that has the hotkeys in this order like in your custom campaign, i am curious.


Ok, lets say you are right with the fact that having the healing tent item be the same way it is, having to become vulnerable and sleep for 30 seconds in order to rest, for strategical plays and what not, fine man, but damn, that does not make any sense in the late game at all, when my heroes hp and mp is soo big, that tent sleep heal becomes so utterly useless is not even funny, it would have been cool if the healing grew with the heroes as well and didn't stay the same flat numbers!

That is the thing that pissed me off the most, they are a cool aspect of the game but they are done poorly since they become useless in the late game, and the biggest problem with them is the fact that they are still needed because the way the gameplay is, after you fight 5 groups of strong monsters and you are left with pretty much 20% hp and mp, 1 more group and you are dead, no matter how good of a player you are, you can even make the smartest A.I that will ever be and make him control and micro the heroes, even him will get that low, it is impossible not to my dude, so that's why the healing has to be % wise or the flat numbers have to grow with the hero, i don't want to have to wait 2 minutes being afk just to heal my hero each time i fight a couple of groups of strong monsters, it is just bad design, again, you are simply put wasting the player's time with this bad design, and i have no idea how can you think that wasting my time as a player is somehow a good idea? where is the strategy involved here i do wonder???? Oh yes, the strategical value of having my time wasted by having to wait 2 minutes to heal with my shitty healing items that heals me the same way it did at the beginning of the game, much wow!

This goes hand in hand with the other aspect of the game and that is, the way the heroes and their items stay the same, stale, they cannot evolve, they cannot get better, the only thing that gets better are the stats and the levels of the spells, but that is not fun, there should be ways to improve your items as well, like i said through exploring a bit more, or even finding secrets, but anyway, you clearly want to make the game very linear, sure, you do you then.


If all crates are empty and destructible then why do they exist in the first place? sure lets put 20 destructible crates in this corner for no reason, that will sure not make the player want to destroy them out of curiosity, is not like in literally 99.999% of every other games have crates that you can find shit in them...

Also if you are so keen on making things super realistic, the crates being empty doesn't make much sense since those people that live there or placed them there must have used them for something, weapons, food, etc. so where are all those? what do those people eat? air? oh right, they don't eat shit.

ALSO what do you mean you can't find good things in dusty corners of huge prisons that keep powerful beings with magical powers? are you nuts, there must be tons of cool and ancient artefacts, armory parts, weapons and items of all kinds there, not to mention when you visit all those other worlds and places, you are telling me all those ancient people and monsters don't have stored artefacts and other sacred treasures inside their castles, homes and prisons? again with the realism, where is the realism in that part ha?

You are telling me one of the most powerful Wizards that ever lived doesn't store artefacts and items of insane power in his fortress? sure you must be jesting if you are thinking otherwise.


Well that sounds cool and all with the music being timed with the dialogue, but the issue still stays the same, you can make the most gorgeous and beautiful cinematics and the best music that accompanies it but all of that is in vain if i am not able to finish reading most of the dialogue lines of the characters, that is the main point of the damn cinematic in the first place, to listen to the characters, to read their dialogue and understand what is going on with their stories and their lives, that is the most important thing and yet you made it in such a way that most players wouldn't be able to fully understand the story and what the characters have to say in exchange of some epic music parts that last a few seconds... what can i say.. gg



Nah man, there is a big difference between something being hard and something being frustrating, this is clearly the latter here, from my personal experience that is, but hey, i did enjoy the good parts of the campaign, that is why i wrote and i am still writing this right now, it pains me to see how such an awesome campaign can have those small problems that ruin the good aspects, it is a tragedy, especially the hotkeys, maybe you can make it that people can choose what options to have for the order of the hotkeys atleast... anyway, i wish you well, and don't think i am a hater or anything, i just stated my opinion, i do respect people like you that create such amazing pieces of art in the shape of custom campaigns in this amazing game that is Warcraft 3 and it's infinite potential for custom maps and campaigns.

The creator was incredibly charitable to go through your initial review point by point and made it quite clear that this type of campaign is an acquired taste that is not for everyone. Soul Reaver had a vision for TtBE and I think it is captured very well. I also think most people who would try to make something with similar foundational ideas would probably fail 9 times out of 10 (like almost every Soulslike that tries to be FromSoft), so the curated encounters in this campaign deserve to be lauded.

Anyways, I personally still rank To the Bitter End in my absolute top community projects. Rather than accepting that you just don't jive with what this one is putting down, you say something like "playing with slow units/heroes in any video game is bad design". The encounters in this project are all meticulously made and hero speed is a specific part of that. If the heroes all suddenly got faster, then the way the boss fights all play out will drastically change. Also, if the heroes were all faster and enemies also cast spells faster in turn, the whole thing would get TREMENDOUSLY harder.

I'm glad you at least realize that your frustration is subjective though and have kind words for the author at the end of your most recent complaints. I also got frustrated at times, but never to the point of giving up. Winning then felt that much sweeter. Yes, there are outright poorly made projects on Hive on some objective measures, but TtBE ain't one of 'em. By the way, have you tried just getting good at the game? (lmfao, got 'em, boom, destroyed, etc)

In all seriousness, your feedback does come across as someone who has gotten roasted by the maps over and over, just like the rest of us. It is a normal part of playing something like this. I also tend to have unfair, harsh words for maps that beat me a few too many times. When you finish it all though, come on back and tell us how good it felt to do. Granted, there is also no shame in lowering the difficulty.

 

[Soul Reaver]

Like i said in the review, playing with slow units/heroes in any video game is bad design, there is no way to put it otherwise, also like you said it yourself, those are supposed to be immortal legendary heroes, and yet they move like an old men with arthritis...
Is legit painful to watch and play with them, but hey that's your design, you do you

If you want to get into the lore reasons for the (relative) speed:
Soul Reaver is only fast when 'focussed' (ie, using Iron Will), otherwise he doesn't run or move any faster than a human..
Fei Serumen is well known for his speed, so even his normal walk speed is much higher than anyone else's (and it's one of his advantages, which means making everyone equally fast would eliminate that as an advantage) and can move even faster with abilities (eg, Celerity)
Cameron Aileron is not known for his speed, so it's just normal. The teleportation item he has can be used to escape in a pinch though.
Kitharsis is huge and extremely heavy and can tank hits due to his passive ability, so naturally he'll be the slowest of the bunch
Sera Poi is half-elven, and elves are known for their grace and agility, so she has higher speed than the rest

As for how that compares relative to the enemies they fight: most unboosted enemies have speed comparable to an unboosted Soul Reaver - which is to be expected as he moves at a speed similar to a human when not using his powers.
Exceptions typically come either from temporary powers (like the Dharuk's self-buff), having a mount, or from creatures like the Void Children (who are terrifying otherwordly eldritch abominations and thus aren't on the same level as a normal human) or other speed-based immortals.

If you find it painfully slow to watch people walking places, just increase the game speed. Of course all enemies will be relatively faster too and if you already find the game hard that might not be the best idea.

And as I explained earlier, increasing the speed of JUST the heroes would make the game easier, which I do not want.

I legit have no idea what you are smoking with this one, did you really not play any other games in your life or what? ALL GAMES HAVE Q W E R T Y Hotkeys in that order. i can't tell if you are joking or not with this one, i am legit in awe of how insane your take is on the order of spells.
NO, no normal human being unless you are asian and you are doing the classic asian calligraphy writing will look at the spells order in a game and think to himself, hmm oh yes i want my spells to be ordered top to bottom, oh yes that is the way. . . .

Might as well put them in a random order at this point, because hey, why not, it can't get any worse than what it already is . . .

Legit please do show me an example of a game that has the hotkeys in this order like in your custom campaign, i am curious.

I take issue with this one, so I'll explain it in detail.

Firstly, Warcraft 3 itself doesn't use QWERTY hotkeys (maybe they've been added with reforged or something but they definitely didn't back in the day). Neither does Starcraft, or Dawn of War, or any number of other strategy games. I think you're only thinking of certain recent kinda-strategy games, like DotA, and League of Legends - none of which I've ever played.

More importantly though:
The games you're most likely referring to have FOUR 'active' hero abilities. The slot in which in which the first of these abilities appears in in the command card thus uses the first letter (Q), the second uses the second (W) and so on.
However, To the Bitter End has FIVE 'active' hero abilities, which means I have to use parts of the Warcraft 3 command card that aren't used by these other games.

When you read a book, you start at the TOP LEFT. Then you go right until you're at the end of the line. Then you start on the very left of the line BENEATH the one you just read.
The exact same logic was applied when arranging which hotkeys activate which available slots in the command card in To the Bitter End:

Where:
1st = Q
2nd = W
3rd = E
4th = R
5th = T

What do you know: the very first unused slot isn't at the bottom left - it's actually on the line above it. So unless you're used to reading a page starting from the BOTTOM LEFT, and then reading the line ABOVE that one when you reach the end, my way makes more sense given the limitations of the Warcraft III command card layout.
What would REALLY make the most sense would be if all abilities were on a single line at the bottom and default abilities like attack and move also used logically ordered hotkeys but the Warcraft 3 interface doesn't allow for that.

And since we're on the subject, there's actually even more thought put into it, because the hotkeys aren't JUST equivalent to the visual position of the ability in the command card, they're also (for the heroes at least) as close as possible equivalent to the sort of effect you'll get when you press that key, regardless of hero.

Q tends to be a unique, somewhat hero-specific ability (eg, a self-buff, a heal, a strong enemy debuff)
W tends to be a damaging ability that tends to focus on one or only a few targets
E tends to be a crowd-control/area ability
R tends to be the more unique hero-specific ultimate
T tends to be a high-damage, area of effect damage nuke ultimate

So this way, you can associate the buttons with what you want to do. Need to focus-fire down a guy? Tab through your heroes, use W with each one and target the same enemy each time. Getting overwhelmed by numbers? Press E (and target). Need to nuke something? T.

Ok, lets say you are right with the fact that having the healing tent item be the same way it is, having to become vulnerable and sleep for 30 seconds in order to rest, for strategical plays and what not, fine man, but damn, that does not make any sense in the late game at all, when my heroes hp and mp is soo big, that tent sleep heal becomes so utterly useless is not even funny, it would have been cool if the healing grew with the heroes as well and didn't stay the same flat numbers!

That is the thing that pissed me off the most, they are a cool aspect of the game but they are done poorly since they become useless in the late game, and the biggest problem with them is the fact that they are still needed because the way the gameplay is, after you fight 5 groups of strong monsters and you are left with pretty much 20% hp and mp, 1 more group and you are dead, no matter how good of a player you are, you can even make the smartest A.I that will ever be and make him control and micro the heroes, even him will get that low, it is impossible not to my dude, so that's why the healing has to be % wise or the flat numbers have to grow with the hero, i don't want to have to wait 2 minutes being afk just to heal my hero each time i fight a couple of groups of strong monsters, it is just bad design, again, you are simply put wasting the player's time with this bad design, and i have no idea how can you think that wasting my time as a player is somehow a good idea? where is the strategy involved here i do wonder???? Oh yes, the strategical value of having my time wasted by having to wait 2 minutes to heal with my shitty healing items that heals me the same way it did at the beginning of the game, much wow!

It's simple: if the healing is done as a %, rather than a flat number, then:

• In the late game, resting for even a second will restore 100s of HP - enough to tank a full hit. That would make using the Tent equivalent to a sort of shield spell, rather than a 'must keep away from front lines to use' type item. It would lead to stupid strategies where it is not just viable but downright smart to use the tent at at every opportunity, even in the middle of a fight, as long as you can get in a second or two of rest.
• It would make the tent distinctly better in the above regard for high HP characters like Kitharsis while making it far less useful for fragile, damage-mitigation characters like Fei. With the design the way it currently is, every 1 HP that Fei gets from healing in any way is actually far more valuable to him than it is for any of the other heroes, and that's one of his strengths. It would once again affect balance if I changed that.

I WANT players to sometimes have to continue on without being fully healed, and the tent's limitations (combined with many missions being on a timer of one sort or another) really helps facilitate that.

That said, I do agree there are parts of the game - especially the lead up to the bosses in Chapter VII - where it would be nice if the healing would just finish quickly, as there's really nothing else to do other than wait for it to complete (you're only controlling 1 hero in these sections, after all, assuming you don't summon something to scout ahead while you rest). Unfortunately implementing a system that intelligently speeds up the game is something that I don't know how to do, or even know if it's possible, and at this point, probably am not going to do. You CAN speed up the game speed manually during these sections if it bothers you so much (numpad +).

This goes hand in hand with the other aspect of the game and that is, the way the heroes and their items stay the same, stale, they cannot evolve, they cannot get better, the only thing that gets better are the stats and the levels of the spells, but that is not fun, there should be ways to improve your items as well, like i said through exploring a bit more, or even finding secrets, but anyway, you clearly want to make the game very linear, sure, you do you then.

It's not a full RPG full of thousands of different possible builds - it's primarily an action game. But if you think the characters don't really change, I'd like you to compare the sorts of battles you're fighting in Chapter I-II with what's happening on screen in Chapters VI-VIII. I think you'll find their capabilities change quite dramatically as more heroes are added AND their abilities level up (often exponentially so).

If all crates are empty and destructible then why do they exist in the first place? sure lets put 20 destructible crates in this corner for no reason, that will sure not make the player want to destroy them out of curiosity, is not like in literally 99.999% of every other games have crates that you can find shit in them...

Why include ANY features at all and not just blank grey squares? Because it looks better. And the doodads for destructible barrels/boxes look different from the ones for non-destructible ones, and I think doodads look better when there is more variety in them.
I could have made edits to make the destructibles non-destructible but is there really anything gained by that?

Also if you are so keen on making things super realistic, the crates being empty doesn't make much sense since those people that live there or placed them there must have used them for something, weapons, food, etc. so where are all those? what do those people eat? air? oh right, they don't eat shit.

To boxes aren't EMPTY, they just don't contain anything that would be remotely useful to our heroes.

Food doesn't heal you quickly in real life (at least not in the timeframes where it would matter in this game), and that would be doubly so when you're an immortal who has natural regeneration and doesn't need to eat. Or a vampire that won't eat.
Or do you think it's bad that the boxes disappear when destroyed without leaving behind a bunch of useless crap on the floor that you have no reason interact with? It might look better if they did but that animation doesn't exist in core Warcraft III and I don't think its worth the effort of creating custom animations like that either.
Or were you thinking that our heroes should, for some reason, replace the weapons they currently have (which, after literally thousands of years of adventuring, are the best ones they've come across and are the most comfortable using in all that time) with whatever happens to fall out of a random barrel somewhere?

And - could it be that you're relying to much on expectations developed from other games and not learning from this one?

ALSO what do you mean you can't find good things in dusty corners of huge prisons that keep powerful beings with magical powers? are you nuts, there must be tons of cool and ancient artefacts, armory parts, weapons and items of all kinds there, not to mention when you visit all those other worlds and places, you are telling me all those ancient people and monsters don't have stored artefacts and other sacred treasures inside their castles, homes and prisons? again with the realism, where is the realism in that part ha?

You are telling me one of the most powerful Wizards that ever lived doesn't store artefacts and items of insane power in his fortress? sure you must be jesting if you are thinking otherwise.

The setting of Ithia is a relatively 'low-magic' one. Powerful magic, and magical items, aren't that common. Your characters and opponents have them because you're epic-level characters, but the inhabitants you meet in Chapter I is what MOST of the inhabitants are like (ie, weak, mortal, with very little in the way of magic). Magic items are exceedingly rare.

On top of that, most of the places the heroes visit would be considered 'low-level' dungeons/areas, if it wasn't for Morganem's troops occupying them. Greyholm prison is guarded by ordinary humans, and the only reason they pose any challenge to Soul Reaver at all is because he's heavily de-powered from his amnesia after his unexpected trip through the Warp at the end of the opening cinematic. So the only treasure he'd be likely to find in there is treasure you'd find in a 'low-level' dungeon. Since his equipment is epic level already, he's not likely to get very excited over anything you'd find in a low-level dungeon.

The only exception is Khaal Spire near the end which is the only place that is actually Morganem's own domain. Morganem is an enchanter by trade but is smart enough to ensure that he doesn't create powerful weapons and items to just lie around for enemies to possibly use against him - anything he has created tends to either be a structure or is currently in use by himself, his warlords or his armies, and is designed to be used only by them (the Obelisk of Strength at the start of Chapter VII is a strong example of why that's such an important consideration - insufficient security on that one is the only reason the heroes survive that Chapter).

Well that sounds cool and all with the music being timed with the dialogue, but the issue still stays the same, you can make the most gorgeous and beautiful cinematics and the best music that accompanies it but all of that is in vain if i am not able to finish reading most of the dialogue lines of the characters, that is the main point of the damn cinematic in the first place, to listen to the characters, to read their dialogue and understand what is going on with their stories and their lives, that is the most important thing and yet you made it in such a way that most players wouldn't be able to fully understand the story and what the characters have to say in exchange of some epic music parts that last a few seconds... what can i say.. gg

Learn to read faster? I can read every line with time to spare. If you're a fast reader, slow dialogue is agonizing to sit through, so if I fix it for you I break it for someone else.
And for reasons explained above, variable text speeds can't be implemented without breaking something else.

As I said, the only solution is to have every line voice acted, and if I were to do that I'd only do it with actual professional voice acting... and even if I could afford that, the amount of time it would take to implement is time I don't have right now.

Nah man, there is a big difference between something being hard and something being frustrating, this is clearly the latter here, from my personal experience that is, but hey, i did enjoy the good parts of the campaign, that is why i wrote and i am still writing this right now, it pains me to see how such an awesome campaign can have those small problems that ruin the good aspects, it is a tragedy, especially the hotkeys, maybe you can make it that people can choose what options to have for the order of the hotkeys atleast... anyway, i wish you well, and don't think i am a hater or anything, i just stated my opinion, i do respect people like you that create such amazing pieces of art in the shape of custom campaigns in this amazing game that is Warcraft 3 and it's infinite potential for custom maps and campaigns.

I don't think you can allow use-customization of hotkeys in Warcraft III custom maps/Warcraft III
I think some functionality like that might have been added with Reforged, but I don't have Reforged so I can't try it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WC3/comments/eyit6g

I think there's also third party programs that let you rebind keys but those might be against the Warcraft III terms of service (shouldn't matter for a single-player campaign but who knows what Activision Blizzard does?)

Lastly: different people have different tolerance levels for difficulty/frustration. I actually enjoy stuff that seems frustrating for others.
My recommendation remains the same: if it's so frustrating for you that it's not fun, reduce the difficulty by typing in "easy" in the chat.

 

[Blasterixx]

Well... then we agree to disagree mister

Clearly not only have i wasted my time writing a review but i also wasted your time as well by making you read it and trying to explain to me how my logic is flawed with your own flawed logic, anyway, i find it kinda funny tho, i would have never imagined i would have this kind of conversation with someone about a game's hotkeys and design, just so you know, when i said other games, i meant other warcraft 3 maps, it goes without saying that all other games, mobas, like dota, league, and what have you, all have q w e r spells the right way, my way, because believe it or not that is the easiest and best way to play games or do anything for that matter, not only that but all other Warcraft 3 maps i played, and i did play a lot, had also the same q w e r hotkey design (the ones that had a custom design obviously, there are tons of maps that bad hotkeys like L or P or even worse, some that don't have any working hotkeys to begin with).

To give you an example, trying to play a warcraft 3 map or any other game with your hotkeys design is like trying to drive a car with the steering wheel on the right side after driving the car your whole life with the wheel on the left side, it would just feel weird and bad, wouldn't it?

Is like trying to eat food with a fork/spoon with your clumsy hand instead of eating with your dexterous hand. Or using a mouse with the clumsy hand, it would feel weird and wrong now, wouldn't it?

is like trying to wear someone's else glasses instead of your own, your eyes will feel bad and might even be painful, that is exactly how i felt when playing with these different hotkeys design, i hope you somewhat understood now how important the normal hotkeys design is for me and for most people.

Now i am not gonna touch the other points since in my eyes they are less important, the main issue i had was with the hotkeys.

If you find it painfully slow to watch people walking places, just increase the game speed

Except this... like what... are you even...who in the name of Archimonde and Kil'jaeden plays warcraft 3 with normal or slow speed gameplay? just for the simple fact you even mentioned this gives me enough information of how badly you must think of me and the other players, like damn.


Also Jay, i don't remember tagging you in this conversation or asking for your opinion about your thoughts on the map, clearly you are quite attached to this map similar to the map maker, i can understand wanting to defend things that you love, but saying that i should feel somehow blessed that the map maker answered to my review is pretty weird, i could not give a flying duck if someone replied to my review or not, the main reason for writing a review is to be seen by the map maker and hopefully helping him with making the map better in any way shape or form somehow, also by writing the review i can give a rating to the map as well and finally i only write reviews on the maps that i think they are worthy obviously, like i said i love this custom campaign as well, i just wanted to point out the negatives with the hope that they would be fixed somehow, that's it.

 

[Soul Reaver]

Clearly not only have i wasted my time writing a review but i also wasted your time as well by making you read it and trying to explain to me how my logic is flawed with your own flawed logic

I didn't think it was a waste of time, because I like having the opportunity to explain the thinking behind the design decisions that I made for To the Bitter End (especially the more controversial ones) even if sometimes others don't agree with the rationale.

Though you haven't ever actually told me why the logic behind my explanations is flawed, you've only reiterated your original arguments.

i find it kinda funny tho, i would have never imagined i would have this kind of conversation with someone about a game's hotkeys and design, just so you know, when i said other games, i meant other warcraft 3 maps, it goes without saying that all other games, mobas, like dota, league, and what have you, all have q w e r spells the right way, my way, because believe it or not that is the easiest and best way to play games or do anything for that matter, not only that but all other Warcraft 3 maps i played, and i did play a lot, had also the same q w e r hotkey design (the ones that had a custom design obviously, there are tons of maps that bad hotkeys like L or P or even worse, some that don't have any working hotkeys to begin with).

To give you an example, trying to play a warcraft 3 map or any other game with your hotkeys design is like trying to drive a car with the steering wheel on the right side after driving the car your whole life with the wheel on the left side, it would just feel weird and bad, wouldn't it?

I do find it telling that you say 'qwer' spells, because you listed only four letters there. There are five 'active' spells in To the Bitter End. But I've explained that previously so ther's no point covering it again.

I also think it's telling you say it's the 'right' way and the 'normal' way. It's perhaps what you're used to from other Warcraft III maps, DotA and LoL - which have only four spells, you'll notice - but that doesn't make it 'right' or 'normal'. That makes it what you prefer, perhaps more common for what you have been exposed to more and are more used to.

But not everyone prefers that or is exposed to that. I've played a ton of different games in both different and the same genres and I guarantee: qwer hotkeys are not some universal standard. How would you ever play a game that needed a joystick and had pretty much every key on the keyboard mapped to a function?

Which makes your car-driving example such a good one: because my real-life car DOES in fact have the steering wheel on the right side (and there's a good reason for that, given that we drive on the left). And the few times I've gone overseas and had to drive a car with the steering wheel on the left? I had to drive more carefully and get used to it first... which I did. A perfect example of how not everyone's preferences or ideas of 'normal' are the same, and sometimes we need to adapt (both ourselves, and our designs) to different circumstances.

Besides, I even provided you with a link to a possible solution for you in my last post.

Except this... like what... are you even...who in the name of Archimonde and Kil'jaeden plays warcraft 3 with normal or slow speed gameplay? just for the simple fact you even mentioned this gives me enough information of how badly you must think of me and the other players, like damn.

For a start: the game speed is set to what Warcraft III's creators labelled as 'Normal', as in "conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern: characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine".
It's also the speed I play the single-player campaign on (I don't play multiplayer and have no desire to). It gives me more time to react and to think than 'Fast'

But if you want the most practical reason: try to play To the Bitter End on the Fast speed at its default difficulty. If you're already struggling to finish it, I guarantee it won't make it easier.

Well... then we agree to disagree mister

I can't disagree with the core of your review: that there are parts of To the Bitter End that don't appeal to you. And that's fine.
I never expected or wanted it to appeal to everyone - fundamentally, it's the sort of game that I enjoy, and not everyone will like what I like.

But I don't believe that your suggested solutions would make the game objectively better. They might make it appeal to you and some other people more. But I guarantee it would make it appeal to other people - including me - less.

 

[Deolrin]

I'm not particularly invested in this debate - "To The Bitter End" is a fantastic campaign and all of the design choices made sense to me - but I have to say, Soul Reaver, you are the first person I've met in all my years of playing and modding the game who actually plays on anything other than the "Fast" setting. The thought of using other settings doesn't even cross my mind! Clearly there are some fundamentally different approaches to gaming and game design between yourself and Blasterixx, which is totally fine. After all, one of you ended up creating one of the most recognizable and well put-together campaigns in WC3 modding history.

 

[Blasterixx]

I do find it telling that you say 'qwer' spells, because you listed only four letters there. There are five 'active' spells in To the Bitter End. But I've explained that previously so ther's no point covering it again.

Ok this is the last replay i'm gonna make.

You asked for an explanation? i am gonna give you the best explanation in the world for the Q W E R T Y hotkeys design!



Let me explain again from the start:

The Q W E R spells make up the first bottom row, they are the spells that are used the most often by the player, if there are games and maps (Which most of them are) that have a 5th and a 6th spell then those spells will normally go on the second row above the first row of spells, those are supposed to be the ultimate spells or passives.

We need to think in terms of rows and layers.

T Y - The top/Second row - floor 1
Q W E R - Buttom/First row - ground floor

We need to think as there is gravity in the hotkey design, similar to our world, like a building.



The Q W E spells are supposed to be the first spells in the bottom/first row, from left to right order, they are the core spells and most used spells by the hero, they have the lowest cool down so they are used very often by the player, that's why they are there in the left where your left hand is and where your eyes can see them on the left side, both your vision and your hand will correspond to them and be logical and correct that way.

The R T Y spells are supposed to be the ultimate spells (or the passives), the spells with the highest cooldown and the highest destruction potential, they are supposed to be further away from the hand of the player since they are not used that often and they are supposed to be somewhere else close to the Q W E spells obviously, the only other logical place that they can go is above them, so R will just go after Q W E since there is 1 more spot there, then above all 4 first spells aka first raw of spells, will go the last 2 ultimate ones, T and Y aka the second row.

To give even a better example, one that this custom campaign has as well, the reason why the first bottom row of spells Q W E R is there from left to right in that order can also be used as Q W E R being active spells, and the last T and Y spells could be used as passives, so it would make no sense to have a passive as your R spell in the first bottom row of spells and the other one in the second row, that would be bad and look bad wouldn't it, the correct way is for the T and Y spells to be together, since Y comes after T on the keyboard, they should stay one near eachother, the same way W comes after Q, they NEED to stay in that order the same way they are on the keyboard, otherwise there is chaos in the hand and vision coordination of your body, your eyes instead of seeing Q when your hand presses Q they have to look on the right, instead of the left.

The Q spell holding a spot on the second row has no business being there, it is isolated from his other brothers, the other low cooldown spells, for no reason, your logic is because thats how you read the book from up to down, but i have to remind you mister, we are not reading books here, we are talking about the very basic design of a game and the keyboard, we are supposed to work with the keyboard, we are supposed to read the keyboard in its style not in a book style, i hope you understood now.

it is very simple actually just read the keyboard, look at it for a second, what do you see, Do you see W E R T Y Q? or do you actually see Q W E R T Y instead, i believe we both know the answer.

Now if you want to keep this hotkeys design for your campaign is fine, is none of my damn business to force you to change anything, it is your work afterall, i wanted to simply make you understand this core concept, there is a reason why this order is used so often, it is ancient, since the very beginning of the time when the keyboard was invented.

Now HERE are a few examples of hotkeys put in the correct order:

From other custom campaigns:

Spoiler: Chasing the Down

Spoiler: Curse of the Forsaken

in this case in the second row there is D instead of T but the point still stands, the first row remains intact as it should be

Spoiler: Day of the dragon

First row of Q W E R is intact in correct order and passives are in the second row

Spoiler: Defenders of the Light

First row intact, second row passives

Spoiler: Legacy of Lordaeron

same like the others

From other ORPG maps:

Spoiler: Claim the frozen Throne RPG

First row intact, second row ultimates, in this case the game has Z and X instead of T and Y, which is fine, as long as the first row is intact you can put either T and Y or Z and X or D and F as hotkeys for the second row

Spoiler: Exoteria RPG

Same, first row intact, second row is a passive with no hotkey and the ultimate with the hotkey T

Spoiler: TBR 2

as always, first row of spells intact in correct order Q W E R and then second row with 1 passive and 1 ultimate spell with T hotkey

Spoiler: World of Sedonia

as always first row intact, second row has an ultimate spell with T hotkey and then instead of a passive is the backpack

I think those are enough examples for now, i don't want to spend like 10 years to give all examples from all maps now.

Make sure you pay atention to the last 2 examples from TBR and World of Sedonia since they are the most similar to your own 6 spells design, look how they managed to put it together without ruining the core aspect and design of the Q W E R T Y hotkeys.

I hope you understand now, all the other map makers who have maps and made their hotkeys custom, they let always the first row intact, and second row goes how it goes, ain't that important.

Think of it like this, when you build a house, or a lego, or anything, you start from the bottom then going up, what do you call the layer of concrete for example that is at the bottom of a building, you call it the first layer, first row, that's the exact same thing here in the game world, you start from the bottom layer/row with the Q W E R spells (the basic level, most important layer) then going up to the second layer/row with what was left, like passives and ultimates.

Think of the first layer/row of spells as being the hard concrete basic, you really need them, you need to use them very often, they are your core strenght, you can't put them in another order like Q on the second layer, the building will crumble, then on top of the first row comes the second layer/row of spells which has to be and it is lighter, it is less important than the first row, it doesn't have as much weight but it is still important overall, there comes the passives and ultimates, there can only be 2 or (max 3 there if u delete the + atribute button).

Soooo are you now entertained with my explanation?

 

[Silphidoath]

When the heroes have three basic abilities, two ults, and a passive, then you will have to stick with QWERT.
And based on your suggestion of the layout, either the default "assign skill" button has to go into the first row to give space for the ultimates, as in
Passive R T - The top/Second row - floor 1
Q W E Assign skill - Buttom/First row - ground floor
or the passive brought down to the first row, something like

R T Assign skill - The top/Second row - floor 1
Q W E Passive - Buttom/First row - ground floor

Which, frankly, both seem very out-of-place to me.

 

[Jayborino]

To chime back in on the whole hotkeys thing, this seems to be only about moving the buttons in the command card while the assigned hotkeys for each ability stays exactly the same. I pose this hypothetical just to make clear how this hotkey issue is not a major issue - QWERT are still used and are very intuitive in the sense of power progression. It's also pretty consistent across all heroes what the QWERT abilities each do in a broad sense. The only difference is their placement on the command card in a way that some people don't like. If the Q ability went bottom left, shifting over the other 3, while the T ultimate went in first floor, the hotkeys are still all exactly the same. After using these heroes for more than 10 minutes, it falls into habit pretty fast and if anyone is losing on later maps, it's not because of command card button placement. It's not like nonsensical hotkeys like J or U were used. Regardless, it's an interesting conversation around intuitive ability hotkeys and (apparently) where they get placed on the console.

 

[Soul Reaver]

Right, time to break my radio silence!

After the discussion with Blasterixx I reflected for a while on the hotkeys/command card. The fact is that the command card layout of Warcraft III doesn't really allow for the commands and hotkeys to be arranged logically makes every solution less than ideal - while I maintain that my original solution isn't inherently better or worse than what Blasterixx recommends in terms of logic or internal consistency, there's definitely a usability argument to be made if there are a large number of other custom maps/campaigns that have 5+ abilities and they all use a different standard.

So here we are: version 1.0.08!

The hotkeys in the command card are now as follows:
□ □ □ □
□ T Y □
Q W E R

All hero abilities have been rearranged in the command card to match Blasterixx's suggestion and bring the layout more in-line with other custom campaigns. The hotkeys for the abilities themselves are unchanged, just their physical location in the command card.

Non-hero abilities on the other hand (which typically use the four buttons on the bottom row of the command card) are physically where they have always been, but have had their hotkeys modified to match their positions (so the first ability at the bottom left is Q, the next one is W, the next one is E and the last one is R).

This change, it turns out, was a huge amount of effort - because changing the hotkeys also led to all the strings in the maps getting re-indexed, which meant the Chinese and Russian translations could no longer be inserted.
To address this, I wrote some python programs to match the newly indexed strings with their old translations - this was a huge challenge as I am not an expert programmer by any means. However, I think I succeeded, so v1.0.08 has been simultaneously released in those languages too.

In addition, there are a few other changes:

• Several cinematics have been revamped to deal with 16:9 display aspect ratios (introduced in Warcraft III v1.29). Some cinematics didn't display properly at that aspect ratio, showing things in-frame that weren't mean to be visible. It was challenging in some cases but I believe I've fixed it for all such instances.
• Explosive Shells has been given a small buff, expanding the radius at which it inflicts full damage (as opposed to the reduced damage it inflicts near the edge of its area of effect)
• Chapter V has had some triggers improved to marginally reduce the order delay during the big battle near the end
• A couple of minor fixes

 

[Deolrin]

That is huge. I love that you reflected on feedback and actually took it to heart and implemented it. You're a good man, Soul Reaver.

 

[Jayborino]

That is huge. I love that you reflected on feedback and actually took it to heart and implemented it. You're a good man, Soul Reaver.

Soul Reaver is indeed a great person. I would say this sounds like a case where the poor guy was ground down by enough complaints over something mostly pointless to put in what sounds like an inordinate amount of work to simply shift some pictures from one box to the next box over. The hotkeys mapped to which abilities is exactly the same. Regardless, I think we've all been there where we start to tackle something thinking it will be a quick fix, then it ends up being way more work and we commit to it anyways. It's rewarding in and of itself to complete I'm glad this update came with other things though, I'd like to revisit it soon! And thank goodness the ability pictures have been moved, else it might have ended up being too hard for me!

 

[StormKnight]

Soul Reaver is indeed a great person. I would say this sounds like a case where the poor guy was ground down by enough complaints over something mostly pointless to put in what sounds like an inordinate amount of work to simply shift some pictures from one box to the next box over. The hotkeys mapped to which abilities is exactly the same. Regardless, I think we've all been there where we start to tackle something thinking it will be a quick fix, then it ends up being way more work and we commit to it anyways. It's rewarding in and of itself to complete I'm glad this update came with other things though, I'd like to revisit it soon! And thank goodness the ability pictures have been moved, else it might have ended up being too hard for me!

16:9 aspect ration update was a bigger thing imo, i wonder if this confirms we can play his map on 1.29.2 and have a blast.

 

[Soul Reaver]

That is huge. I love that you reflected on feedback and actually took it to heart and implemented it. You're a good man, Soul Reaver.

Soul Reaver is indeed a great person. I would say this sounds like a case where the poor guy was ground down by enough complaints over something mostly pointless to put in what sounds like an inordinate amount of work to simply shift some pictures from one box to the next box over. The hotkeys mapped to which abilities is exactly the same. Regardless, I think we've all been there where we start to tackle something thinking it will be a quick fix, then it ends up being way more work and we commit to it anyways. It's rewarding in and of itself to complete I'm glad this update came with other things though, I'd like to revisit it soon! And thank goodness the ability pictures have been moved, else it might have ended up being too hard for me!

Thank you both, I really appreciate it.

16:9 aspect ration update was a bigger thing imo, i wonder if this confirms we can play his map on 1.29.2 and have a blast.

I actually did test it with a single run-through on v1.29.2 to check the aspect ratio fixes.
I only did the one test, but it seemed to work fine for me then, so feel free to give it a try as well. Let me know if you find any glaring problems.

 

[Blasterixx]

Hi, firstly i want to apologize for being too over critically in my previous comments, as you noticed, i mostly talked about the negative parts, about what i believed were atleast, from my own gameplay of the campaign, and of course i want to apologize for making you come back to an already old and finished project and trying to change some things, i can't even begin to comprehend how hard must have been to create such a huge project using the War3 editor and other programs, from my little experience with the world editor i can somewhat understand the difficulty of trying to create or change any kind of map/campaign and i must say it is a huge hustle to say the least

After you updated the map and posted your last comment, i immediately downloaded it and started replaying the campaign from the first mission, i finished it in 1 day i think, it went pretty fast this time since i already played it multiple times by now i suppose.

I played it on Warcraft 3 version 1.29 (because is the closest to the recommanded version of 1.24-1.28), on fast game speed.

Spoiler: Review

~Positives:

- This custom campaign sure is a classic and i am pretty sure it inspired lots of people either to create their own custom maps and campaigns or in any other ways in their own real lives to do amazing things, i know it sure did inspire me a bit!


- The gameplay and the difficulty

The gameplay is very unique, from all the custom maps and campaigns i have played, i don't think i have seen such a high level of detail put into the heroes and the fights, each map has its own unique strategies and fighting styles you can do, Also making the player start slowly with 1 Hero getting to know the spells and going on this epic adventure to gather the rest of the team, felt pretty epic to say the least!

Since this is a campaign that focuses mainly on having to control "just" the main hero units and no other units "with a few exceptions" it sure might feel at first like it would be easy, since to me atleast, having to control and fight just with a hero or two is far better then to control huge armies with different units.

In the first levels of the campaign it feels really good and somewhat easy to control and fight with just 1 or 2 heroes, but in the later levels the difficulty starts to spike, because not only you have 5 heroes to control, each of them having 5 active spells and also having unique items that have active spells as well, but the enemies you encounter like those void children and the enemy heroes have also powerful spells that can change the balance of the battlefield really easily as well, all of those combined makes the gameplay pretty difficult, i would say this campaign has of the most difficult fights from all custom maps/campaigns! It sure can get overwhelming really fast!

The fights themselves are anything but Epic! i loved how most of the times i barely managed to win even when i tried my best to do the right choices, it is surprising how much you have to actually think and strategize in these fights, having to control your heroes to the fullest, having to move and run with them as if they were your own avatar, having to use the spells at certain key moments to have the biggest effect, and if you don't do any of these, or you just do mistakes like wasting some spells and moving in the wrong place at the wrong time...well...say goodbye to your life then

I did like the difficulty tho, hence why i always play every game on the hardest difficulty, it feels nice being able to defeat a hard opponet doing your best, it does feel very rewarding!

It goes without saying that the Heroes and their spells are amazing, each Hero having an entire arsenal of unique thematic spells is a great thing to see and play with, i also liked the small detail changes in the hero's skins, it makes for a more special gameplay, even tho i know some of the skins are basically normal war3 skins, they did sure fit nicely in this map and in this world.

The pacing was also nice, everything was pretty fast and straightforward, no wasted time on anything that is not related to the story, characters and the continuation of the adventure itself.

Also the A.I. in this campaign is very clever, units and heroes can move out of and dodge certain spells you can use, and they can even cancel and destroy the sleep spells and the portals you create for example which is pretty cool, it gives the map that extra sence of reality, making you believe the enemy units have a mind of their own!


- The World and the Story

This must be, besides the gameplay, the second main thing most people, including myself, take away from this campaign and will always remember for ages to come! The story!

The story is Epic and beautiful but also tragic.

I liked how at first the player is given this somewhat simple and easy to understand goal of trying to defeat the bad guys, because they are doing all those evil things, so they must be evil themselves, it does help justify everything else you are doing with the heroes, being of course on the good side, on the righteous path to defeat the bad guys and save the people from their tyrannical rulers!

I loved how slowly going through the missions and having the chance to hear the other side of the story from the enemy heroes as well, it sure makes you think a bit more about what you are doing, even tho the main heroes were indeed without a shadow of a doubt in the right to try and save the people and destroy Morganem and the Council of Six, it goes to show you that nothing in this world is as black and white as you were let to believe (similar to the real world as well).

In the end no "evil" person thinks of himself as being evil, in their mind and eyes they are the good ones, they are the ones that fight for justice and for peace, "for the greater good", even tho most of the times trying to do that some people tend to forget who they actually were and their vision of good and evil gets warped and twisted.. and they become the very thing they swore to destroy, quite peotic.

Overall i really liked the story and the way it was played and told, Now i would have loved if the dialogues themselves were voice acted, that would have been amazing, experiencing the dialogues and the cinematics feel like watching an epic movie! (This is why i love this medium of War3 custom campaigns so much in the first place, what people can do with these cinematics is truly spectacular).


I loved every single world the heroes had to go through, Each world having a totally different look and theme to it, it really felt like going on an epic adventure alongside the main heroes, on these distant and alien worlds, they felt real!

I also liked the unique denizens of each world, from the normal bandits and people, to some ancient druids, to some badass guardian tribes that speak with some weird and funny dialect similar to the bible old testament people ("Thou art truly strange beings indeed", "We shall not let thee advance!" , "he will judge thee and decide thy fate!") I love the way they talk, it is funny but also epic, My favorite fanction for sure!


Another thing i liked about this campaign was the way the characters interact with eachother, most poeple tend to forget how important dialogues and character interactions can be to a story, and this campaign sure did a splendid job at bringing the character interaction to a whole nother level!


- The Music

Usually i wouldn't make the music part of a campaign such a big deal like giving it its own chapter, but my god! Remember when i said that the story is the second main thing that people will walk away with after finishing this campaign? well.. The first main thing is without a shadow of a doubt the music!

I remember playing the campaign for the first time and listening to the amazing songs that were playing during some of the epic moments of the campaign, the moments themselves were great, like the cinematics and the dialogues... but what brought them all together and elevated those scenes to a godlike level was the music!

The soundtracks you have chosen for each part of the campaign, especially for the fights and character introductions, were might i say, the best moments of the campaign and the best moments of any campaigns for that matter!

Even now when i close my eyes i can see Fei in front of that burning church, reading his slow and crazy monologue while also listening to the amazing song "The Becoming" by Nine Inch Nails, that whole cinematic with this song playing in the background..the screams...the beat..the lyrics... it was just perfect, this was one of the first moments from the campaign when I felt like I was watching a movie!

Spoiler

Here are my favorite soundtracks:

- Kalki (edit) E.S. Posthumus

- Pompeii E.S. Posthumus

- The Becoming Nine Inch Nails

- Tikal E.S. Posthumus (My second favorite)

- Karma Kamelot (My favorite one)

- We’re in this Together Nine Inch Nails

- Welcome Within Godsmack

- Missing Time MDFMK


If i had to give an example of another custom campaign that impressed me so much with the music in it, that would be 𝐖𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚, the music in that campaign is, i would say, at the same level as this one!

Some examples:

- grandia Xtreme Music - combat 4

Spoiler

- Shizuka theme Joel Steudler

Spoiler

if you want to play this campaign i suggest taking a look at this site, is sure worth it Campaign Creations - Wanderers of Sorceria

Also if u want to check my collection, you can discover more custom campaigns there Best Warcraft 3 Custom maps & campaigns {Blasterixx's Collection} [Ranked] - Google Drive




Now, in terms of negatives, after replaying the campaign, i can say that there aren't really any anymore, since the main problem i had was with the hotkeys not being in the right spot and since that is fixed now, everything is great!

I did found a bug tho, it was in the final fight against Morganem, When he gets to very low hp, he starts using all kinds of spells and he has a certain spell that is aoe in a line that shakes the ground, stuns the heroes and deals tons of dmg, well that spell is supposed to have a fire warning on the ground before the cast happens, i checked some videos with the fight from our favorite custom campaigns youtuber Jayborino and during his fight i noticed the fire on the ground is there, but during my gameplay (on version 1.29) it wasn't there!

I think this was the main reason why i died so many times in this fight, getting him to low hp is easy, but when he is under 10% hp, he starts spazzing out and uses all kinds of spells and because i couldn't see any indication/warning for the stunning spell, i always kept losing 1 of my heroes to it when i was attacking Morganem, I think i died atleast 20 times at that part alone!





Overall, like i said this is a classic custom Warcraft 3 Campaign, i did have a great time playing it (especially with the new hotkeys)!

My final rating is a solid S Tier with the score of 95 points out of 100!

(If this was also voice acted, it would easily be a 99)


Thanks for creating such a Masterpiece!

 

[Soul Reaver]

Thanks for the extensive review Blasterixx, much appreciated, and I'm glad you enjoyed it more with the updated hotkeys.

It's also good to hear that you managed a playthrough on v1.29.

Regarding the below:

I did found a bug tho, it was in the final fight against Morganem, When he gets to very low hp, he starts using all kinds of spells and he has a certain spell that is aoe in a line that shakes the ground, stuns the heroes and deals tons of dmg, well that spell is supposed to have a fire warning on the ground before the cast happens, i checked some videos with the fight from our favorite custom campaigns youtuber Jayborino and during his fight i noticed the fire on the ground is there, but during my gameplay (on version 1.29) it wasn't there!

I think this was the main reason why i died so many times in this fight, getting him to low hp is easy, but when he is under 10% hp, he starts spazzing out and uses all kinds of spells and because i couldn't see any indication/warning for the stunning spell, i always kept losing 1 of my heroes to it when i was attacking Morganem, I think i died atleast 20 times at that part alone!

This actually is a Warcraft 3 bug, not a 'To the Bitter End' bug, and one that's been around a long time - it's the same as the one discussed here: Graphics Issues - Missing Construction and Spell Animations

Basically, something (not sure what) can cause Warcraft 3 to stop displaying a bunch of animations properly. Undead and Night Elf buildings no longer show their proper construction animations and various spell effects no longer show up. It's happened to me just playing Skirmish games plenty of times. Unfortunately one of the affected animations are the fire effects used by the Morganem's Harbinger spell (the one you mentioned above) which makes the 'warning' fires invisible and means the player has no idea where the following blasts will happen.

The bug seems to occur completely at random, but if it ever hits you'll likely notice some other spells not animating properly either - for example, Soul Reaver's Black Steel Gauntlets won't show their shockwaves properly (the ground will still shake but the blasts won't animate)

The only way to properly fix it that I know of is to save, fully restart your computer, and reload, as per the thread I posted above.

 

[Ravager16829]

This actually is a Warcraft 3 bug, not a 'To the Bitter End' bug, and one that's been around a long time - it's the same as the one discussed here: Graphics Issues - Missing Construction and Spell Animations

Basically, something (not sure what) can cause Warcraft 3 to stop displaying a bunch of animations properly. Undead and Night Elf buildings now longer show their proper construction animations and various spell effects no longer show up. It's happened to me just playing Skirmish games plenty of times. Unfortunately one of the affected animations are the fire effects used by the Morganem's Harbinger spell (the one you mentioned above) which makes the 'warning' fires invisible and means the player has no idea where the following blasts will happen.

The bug seems to occur completely at random, but if it ever hits you'll likely notice some other spells not animating properly either - for example, Soul Reaver's Black Steel Gauntlets won't show their shockwaves properly (the ground will still shake but the blasts won't animate)

The only way to properly fix it that I know of is to save, fully restart your computer, and reload, as per the thread I posted above.

You are right, man. This is by far, the most frustrating bug I've ever seen. Even 1.31, this bug is still there.
Talking about something that can cause Warcraft 3 to stop displaying a bunch of animations properly, the most notorious reason is due to the Alt+Tab (minimize the game). Others said the bug is probably caused by the prolong use of computer before the initial shutdown.
I also played the game on my shitty laptop (4GB RAM) with Windows 10 64-Bit and I encountered this bug because of this.

 

[muaddib]

bumping a bit. just wanted to add i replayed this campaign after the various vixes and updates. still enjoyed the challenge, kudos to you soul reaver. thank you!

 

[Gogiman42]

Huge campaign bro! Good job!

 

[Ryzel]

Hey, don't know if this is monitored anymore, but first off awesome campaign! Trying to get through all the good custom content out there. I've run into some sort of issue though.
Are the attack speeds of the heroes by Chapter VII supposed to be Slow/Average? I'm at the Fei section trying to get to through to the boss, but I can't kill the Undying fast enough no matter how hard I try. I noticed my guy has average attack speed, so I looked up other playthroughs online and Fei is attacking super fast. Is there some sort of bug or any way to fix this? I'm playing patch 1.27b if that helps.

Thanks if you see this! I'd really like to be able to continue the campaign.
EDIT - I just went ahead and used cheats on the parts where it was clear I couldn't win without having the correct attack speed (basically 3 of the duels, and the final phase of Chapter VIII). Extremely well made and balanced overall. Thanks!

 

[Soul Reaver]

Hey, don't know if this is monitored anymore, but first off awesome campaign! Trying to get through all the good custom content out there. I've run into some sort of issue though.
Are the attack speeds of the heroes by Chapter VII supposed to be Slow/Average? I'm at the Fei section trying to get to through to the boss, but I can't kill the Undying fast enough no matter how hard I try. I noticed my guy has average attack speed, so I looked up other playthroughs online and Fei is attacking super fast. Is there some sort of bug or any way to fix this? I'm playing patch 1.27b if that helps.

That's a really odd one, and something I've not heard of before. 1.27b should work just fine.

Fei has a very fast attack speed even from when you first get him, and it's only supposed go up from there.
Not sure if you have any saved games from previous parts of the campaign, but could you check if his attack speed was ALWAYS slow during your game (and stayed there), or if it suddenly started being slow? If it started suddenly, are you able to figure out when? At the start of Chapter VII? Some other part?

Maybe send me an email so I can try to narrow it down?

 

[Ryzel]

Hey! Thanks for getting back to me! Yeah I have a save and it looks like it was always slow since I got him in Chapter 2. I can send it to you if you want, where can I find your email?

 

[Soul Reaver]

Hey! Thanks for getting back to me! Yeah I have a save and it looks like it was always slow since I got him in Chapter 2. I can send it to you if you want, where can I find your email?

It's in the manual, in the readme, and on the website at To the Bitter End Campaign - Contact Me.
I might struggle to load the game since I don't think I have a 1.27b version of Warcraft III on-hand but I can always give it a shot.

What you're reporting really is very strange.

I know you said you'd checked and compared it to online replays, but just checking to make sure you realize the game speed for To the Bitter End is set to 'Average' by default, which seems slow compared to the speed usually used by Warcraft III multiplayer maps - or perhaps you've accidentally set it to Slow? Do also note that the Undying are meant to be very hard to kill with regular attacks alone (thus the name) - you usually need to combo a Blood Plague or attacks from an Abyssal Mass together with your regular attacks to damage them fast enough - also getting chain stunned by their ice attacks will potentially mean you end up taking too long to kill them. But as long as you avoid getting surrounded by them and do one of the above combos it's usually not that hard to kill them a second time permanently.

What's Fei's Agility score when you get him? And what about when he's Level 50?
Does the game explicitly label his attack speed as 'medium' or 'slow'?
A screenshot of those would be good.

Can you also check your version number of To the Bitter End? In-game, bring up the chat (by pressing enter) and type in "version" (without quotation marks) and hit enter again.

 

[Ryzel]

Here's some screenshots. War 3 version number says 1.27.1.7085 which I guess is the same as 1.27b. Version number says 1.0.08. The game explicitly labels the attack speed as Average. I did have it on normal speed, but I don't think that's the issue. Let me know if you need anything else! I should say I did notice that no one's attack speed seemed to get any faster throughout the campaign despite Agility scores going up. It seems similar to something I came across on the b.net forums a while back, Bonus Attack Speed Lost on Rexxar Campaign and A campaign bug that has been there for at least 10 years . No idea if they're related or not, but who knows =/

 

[Soul Reaver]

Definitely something not right there. Even as soon as you get him in Chapter II, Fei's Attack Speed shows up as 'Very Fast' in the interface for me (and acts accordingly) - see screenshot attached.

I haven't done any weird triggers or shenanigans related to attack speed - it should be straight-up using the values I gave for the heroes in the World Editor and the resulting in-game attack speed should be handled normally via Warcraft III's standard engine. Furthermore, since your screenshot shows that this happens the moment that Fei shows up in Chapter II, it can't be related to the campaign cache (ie, the thing that transfers heroes between maps), since none of Fei's cache data gets created or transferred until the end of Chapter II anyway.

I can only put it down to some sort of Warcraft 3 bug, like you suggested above. Personally I've never seen it, and it turns out I'm also currently using v1.27.1.7085, TTBE version 1.0.08, which means it doesn't always happen/doesn't happen to everyone. No idea what could be causing it though. If it were me I'd try starting a new game first and seeing if happens every time, and if it does, try completely reinstalling Warcraft III, but that's up to you.

Since we're using the same versions, would be really good to get your save games so I can see if the same thing happens on my end. Could you email them to me?

 

[Ryzel]

I went ahead and e-mailed them to you!

 

[Soul Reaver]

To update anyone else following this thread: I received Ryzel's saved games, managed to open them and tested them, with some very interesting results.

Long version:

Observations
The saved games were both for Chapter II, shortly after Fei first joins the party, and Chapter VII, when he has reached maximum level.
On loading these, I noticed that all Hero-type units (friend and foe) had incorrect attack speeds when I loaded the game - they were much lower than they should be. This matched what Ryzel observed.
However, if I levelled up a character, that character's attack speed immediately jumped up to what it should be at that level. This did not match what Ryzel observed.
Normal units were unaffected, and buffs/debuffs still affect Attack Speed as normal.
I asked Ryzel to confirm if he observed similar problems in other Warcraft III campaign maps, and he said he thinks he did see it in the Rise of the Blood Elves campaign as well, though it was less obvious there as Agility-based Attack Speed bonuses are less prominent in the gameplay.

Theory
In Ryzel's instance of Warcraft III, heroes are not being awarded Attack Speed bonuses from Agility. The cause for this is unknown. It most likely affects any single-player campaign maps - it's unclear if multiplayer would be affected too.
My instance of Warcraft III however does not have this problem.
When Ryzel saved his game, it saved the current (bugged) Attack Speeds of the heroes as variables into the save file. This is why I see the same issue when I first load his game: the loaded game just plonks those (bugged) values into my game when I load it.
However, a non-bugged version of Warcraft III recalculates Attack Speed every time a hero's Agility changes (eg, at Level Up, most likely also if you use a Tome of Agility). Becuase my version of Warcraft III is not bugged, the Attack Speed corrected itself the moment a hero levelled up.

Conclusions
There exists a bug in some instances of Warcraft III that causes it to consistently not apply the Attack Speed bonuses from Agility to Hero units, at minimum in single-player Campaign maps, possibly others.
The bug is NOT 'inherent' in a particular save game/runthrough of To the Bitter End (as the bug stopped affecting the heroes when I loaded the bugged saves and levelled the heroes up)
The bug is NOT caused by To the Bitter End (Ryzel and I have the same version of To the Bitter End but do not share the bug)
The bug is NOT caused by a specific patch version of Warcraft III (Ryzel and I have the same Warcraft III version but do not share the bug)

The exact cause of the bug must be something else related to specific Warcraft III install/OS/hardware or some combo thereof.


tl;dr Short version:

The "heroes not gaining attack speed increases from Agility" bug is a strange bug in Warcraft III that only affects some people. For those unfortunate people, it affects other maps as well.
It's not a bug in To the Bitter End, which means I can't do anything about it directly.

 

[Deolrin]

This is really fascinating. I would recommend Ryzel re-install their version of the game.

 

[Gusios]

Ok this campain is making so much fun to play, BUT I heavily recommend you install cheat engine or another device that can help you manipulate/freeze health etc.

Because the only way for anyone that is not a 24/7 Warcraft player to enjoy the story is the easy mode.
BUT you wont even get all the extra cutscenes or any rewards for it.
Also the later Bossfights are just RIDICIOULOUS in micromanaging.

The campaing "To the bitter end" feels easy compared to here, where you can screw yourself even up in the character build and you're only allowed to Restart/Give-UP 3 FULL chapters later.

Oh and did I mention that this dev disabled all the WC3 cheat commands? Well they're only available on easy mode but he wont let you enjoy the full campaing.

So for every normal Player or new guy that wants a way to get through this nightmare. Install yourself some 3rd party manipulating software and just use some simple health freezes. They're enough for the most part.

It might be a good campain, but the thing that SO much is locked behind your Game Points etc. and "Replay" is just a nightmare.

My first roadblock was about 30 hours into the game on CHAPTER 5. And yeah I want to take my time to enjoy the STORY and the FULL game.

BUT NO, dev decides you have to hate yourself over and over to even get the FULL normal experience.

Please guys just save your time and play on some harder modes quickly with cheatcodes, skip EVERYTHING and after a few resets do ONE proper run, so you can FINALLY enjoy the campain.

 

[Soul Reaver]

Ok this campain is making so much fun to play, BUT I heavily recommend you install cheat engine or another device that can help you manipulate/freeze health etc.

Because the only way for anyone that is not a 24/7 Warcraft player to enjoy the story is the easy mode.
BUT you wont even get all the extra cutscenes or any rewards for it.
Also the later Bossfights are just RIDICIOULOUS in micromanaging.

The campaing "To the bitter end" feels easy compared to here, where you can screw yourself even up in the character build and you're only allowed to Restart/Give-UP 3 FULL chapters later.

Oh and did I mention that this dev disabled all the WC3 cheat commands? Well they're only available on easy mode but he wont let you enjoy the full campaing.

So for every normal Player or new guy that wants a way to get through this nightmare. Install yourself some 3rd party manipulating software and just use some simple health freezes. They're enough for the most part.

It might be a good campain, but the thing that SO much is locked behind your Game Points etc. and "Replay" is just a nightmare.

My first roadblock was about 30 hours into the game on CHAPTER 5. And yeah I want to take my time to enjoy the STORY and the FULL game.

BUT NO, dev decides you have to hate yourself over and over to even get the FULL normal experience.

Please guys just save your time and play on some harder modes quickly with cheatcodes, skip EVERYTHING and after a few resets do ONE proper run, so you can FINALLY enjoy the campain.

Hello Gusios, I think you might have posted this in the wrong map/campaign thread? To the Bitter End doesn't block cheat codes (although using them might have unintended consequences in some instances, like breaking certain triggers in maps where, for example, you could end up insta-killing a character you're meant to just reduce to low health) and changing the difficulty (via the console commands "Normal" or "Easy") won't disable any cinematics or rewards.

You've got me very curious though - which campaign was this review meant for?

 

[Портал в Силеро]

Hi. Can I add voice acting to the russian version of the campaign? I plan to do this with the help of "Silero Bot" – a program that makes it possible to voice text with the voices of Warcraft characters using neural networks. It is very popular with the russian-speaking community – almost all new maps and campaigns are voiced with its help.

(sorry for my English)

 

[Soul Reaver]

Hi. Can I add voice acting to the russian version of the campaign? I plan to do this with the help of "Silero Bot" – a program that makes it possible to voice text with the voices of Warcraft characters using neural networks. It is very popular with the russian-speaking community – almost all new maps and campaigns are voiced with its help.

(sorry for my English)

Unfortunately no - partially because if I were to ever have a voiced version I'd want it to involve real voice actors, not AI. If it was to have voice acting, I would only accept high quality acting - otherwise I'd rather let people's own imaginations supply the voices... that's inevitably better than something half-baked, in my opinion.

However, the other reason is for not wanting voice acting is because incorporating voice acting requires much more than just plonking in the sound files. The text/cinematic speed is geared toward being read, not spoken aloud, and voicing it would make it sound rushed without timing changes. Those timing changes would need to be made to almost every cinematic as a result to prevent overlap/cutting off of the sound, which presents a lot of work.

This becomes especially problematic with some of the key cinematics at the start/end, which are timed (down to the second) to musical cues as well - they would require rewriting and shortening parts of the script to make it work with voice acting, as there's really no way to extend the scenes.

 

[Zyle]

;

How can I jump to Chapter 8?

I have to change Warcraft version a few times. So it's frustrating to keep cheating the first 7 chapters

 

[Ravager16829]

How can I jump to Chapter 8?

I have to change Warcraft version a few times. So it's frustrating to keep cheating the first 7 chapters

Please read Soul Reaver's comments above. If you still have a lot of troubles on completing each chapters, you can reduce the difficulty by typing in either "easy" or "medium".

Even though your heroes do more damage to the enemies and your enemies do less damage to your heroes, this DOESN'T apply to Bosses. They are still have more health and damage, given they didn't change their difficulties. As such, it is highly recommended you make a frequent saves before and after the Boss Battles. Regular cheat codes still work, but there is a high chance the gameplay will break because of scripted triggers. This is a well-known easier solution to complete this grueling campaign.

 

[Zyle]

Please read Soul Reaver's comments above. If you still have a lot of troubles on completing each chapters, you can reduce the difficulty by typing in either "easy" or "medium".

Even though your heroes do more damage to the enemies and your enemies do less damage to your heroes, this DOESN'T apply to Bosses. They are still have more health and damage, given they didn't change their difficulties. As such, it is highly recommended you make a frequent saves before and after the Boss Battles. Regular cheat codes still work, but there is a high chance the gameplay will break because of scripted triggers. This is a well-known easier solution to complete this grueling campaign.

I even use "Whosyourdaddy", but it's time-consuming. This is the third time I reset warcraft files, so I hope there's a way to skip chapters.

 

[Soul Reaver]

I even use "Whosyourdaddy", but it's time-consuming. This is the third time I reset warcraft files, so I hope there's a way to skip chapters.

There is an 'unsupported' way you can do this.
Note that the below has only been tested with 'earlier' versions of World Editor (ie, pre-Reforged) as I don't own Reforged (and am very reluctant to give Activision-Blizzard any money to do so). That said, I think it should still work more or less the same.

• Go to your Warcraft III install directory
• Open World Editor (worldedit.exe)
  -- If it's your first time starting this you might need to click through some license agreement stuff to get to the editor, but once you do...
• Open the Campaign Editor (the button looks like an open book. It's directly to the right of the button that looks like a helmet)
• Click File > Open and find and select "To the Bitter End.w3n"
• Click on the "Loading Screen" tab
• There will be a list of Chapter buttons for each Chapter. For each Chapter button from 3-10:
  -- Double-click the Chapter Button name
  -- Put a TICK in the 'Visible' checkbox
  -- Click OK
• Once you've done all of the above, click on 'Save'
• Close the World Editor and try starting the campaign

As long as you run this edited Campaign file, all of the Chapters should be permanently unlocked.

A quick note:
The game normally transfers the skills/levels/stats of your characters from one Chapter to the next using a unit cache. However, I have some failsafe code in there that if it doesn't detect this data, it'll just start you with a character of the appropriate Level with unallocated Skill points appropriate for that Level. I've only done limited testing of this function but as far as I know it should work fine.
The only time it might NOT work is if you're moving from one version of "To the Bitter End" to a different one. In that case the cache might contain data that is incompatible (eg, if I made changes to hero stats or skills between versions). This is unlikely to be an issue for you though, as you're just changing versions of Warcraft III, not versions of the campaign itself.


EDIT:

Please read Soul Reaver's comments above. If you still have a lot of troubles on completing each chapters, you can reduce the difficulty by typing in either "easy" or "medium".

Even though your heroes do more damage to the enemies and your enemies do less damage to your heroes, this DOESN'T apply to Bosses. They are still have more health and damage, given they didn't change their difficulties. As such, it is highly recommended you make a frequent saves before and after the Boss Battles. Regular cheat codes still work, but there is a high chance the gameplay will break because of scripted triggers. This is a well-known easier solution to complete this grueling campaign.

I might have misread the above, but I think it's suggesting that using the "Easy" or "Medium" settings doesn't affect bosses.
That is incorrect - those changes to difficulty increase the damage your heroes deal and decrease all damage your heroes take, from any source, even from bosses.

Using Warcraft III's built-in cheats will sometimes work (and I've used them to help me test things sometimes) but yes, it does have the potential to break some triggers and cause weird things to happen as a result.

 

[Ravager16829]

There is an 'unsupported' way you can do this.
Note that the below has only been tested with 'earlier' versions of World Editor (ie, pre-Reforged) as I don't own Reforged (and am very reluctant to give Activision-Blizzard any money to do so). That said, I think it should still work more or less the same.

• Go to your Warcraft III install directory
• Open World Editor (worldedit.exe)
  -- If it's your first time starting this you might need to click through some license agreement stuff to get to the editor, but once you do...
• Open the Campaign Editor (the button looks like an open book. It's directly to the right of the button that looks like a helmet)
• Click File > Open and find and select "To the Bitter End.w3n"
• Click on the "Loading Screen" tab
• There will be a list of Chapter buttons for each Chapter. For each Chapter button from 3-10:
  -- Double-click the Chapter Button name
  -- Put a TICK in the 'Visible' checkbox
  -- Click OK
• Once you've done all of the above, click on 'Save'
• Close the World Editor and try starting the campaign

As long as you run this edited Campaign file, all of the Chapters should be permanently unlocked.

A quick note:
The game normally transfers the skills/levels/stats of your characters from one Chapter to the next using a unit cache. However, I have some failsafe code in there that if it doesn't detect this data, it'll just start you with a character of the appropriate Level with unallocated Skill points appropriate for that Level. I've only done limited testing of this function but as far as I know it should work fine.
The only time it might NOT work is if you're moving from one version of "To the Bitter End" to a different one. In that case the cache might contain data that is incompatible (eg, if I made changes to hero stats or skills between versions). This is unlikely to be an issue for you though, as you're just changing versions of Warcraft III, not versions of the campaign itself.

One can also edit the "w3p" files with Notepad, which is located in the "C:\Users\Username\Saved Games\Warcraft III\Profile". It does the same thing as you did before. It's a file that records the progress of the custom campaign. Simply add this string at the mid-end of this document:

ButtonXX=1

Where "XX" indicates the mission number (in this campaign, there are 10, including the Prologue and Epilogue chapters).

I think this method is intended on 1.31.1 (since World Editor has a lot of broken things with this version), but if you have older versions (which is more stable for most custom campaigns), editing the campaign file through World Editor by making all buttons visible is probably the safest method.

 

[Ahman]

Is there a way to turn off the stupid music ?