[Arena] War of the Ring: Mirkwood Arena

[Korialstrasz]

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Introduction

Hello everybody,

I welcome you to my map preview/development thread for my first serious map: WotR: Mirkwood Arena. The goal of this map is to keep an simple arena styled map interesting with dynamic waves, different game modes, choosable difficulties and the lovely style of the old game "War of the Ring".
Once I feel like I'm able to, I will release an alpha/beta version under this post. But this may still take a while, because I don't want to ruin the first testings with an unfinished map.
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Game Modes

When the game starts the first player in the list will have the possibility to choose the game mode. Right now there are two game modes planned, and the beta will be released with one of them to get an idea how the map plays.


Casual Mode

This mode will be played like any other arena mode in wc3. Random generated waves of enemies that get stronger every time swarm in from the sides and try to storm your hill in the middle to destroy you and your friends. This mode gets different every time you play it because the waves you face are randomly generated based on the strength of each enemy. That means that the waves should be on one difficulty level but still spawn different enemies and combinations. The focus of this mode will be an effortless play without annoying the player with story elements and rough objectives.

Story Mode

The story mode will have scripted waves with the addition of dialogues and story elements. However, the goal of the waves in this mode will be, that they are different from normal arena waves that swarm from the sides. These waves will actually require you to move around in the arena and get the objectives done, while defeating the enemies coming and/or waiting for you. This could be holding checkpoints, destroy objects and other things that your enemy prepare for you.
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Classes & Enemies

Playable Classes

Elven Archer - Swift & long ranged agility hero, which can keep enemies on distance with cyclones and stun arrows. He works with a stealthing cape that makes him harder to spot & hit. The longer the game goes the higher his range gets, but this range has to be used correctly or otherwise you will shortly die because of your low defence and healthpool.

Dwarf Shieldbreaker - Strong strength melee support hero, which reduces the armor of his enemies with his strong hammer hits. While he does that, he can also stun all the enemy around him, knock them back and and survive for a long time. His weakness is his low auto attack range and his slow movementspeed.

Elven Lightbringer - Intelligence support hero, which has one of the highest auto attack ranges in the game to support his enemies from far away. With his skills, he can protect his allies for a short amount of time from all damage, imprison enemies inside of pure light, remove de-buffs from his allies and cleanse them from stuns. His weakness is his low damage output.

Dwarf Axethrower - Short ranged strength hero, which makes worth of his axes and has the possibility to change between different fightingstyles, like throwing burning axes, sharpened axes that he throws through enemies and hits multiple of them and switching to melee attacks. He makes use of his strength to deal a lot of damage, but is vulnerable to long ranged attacks.

Ranger - This allrounder agility hero can stealth himself and regenerate life while he does that, he cannot move in the process and it gets cancelled once he is attacked by an enemy. He is immune to poison and can hit more enemies that stand together with his greatsword.

more coming soon...


Regular Enemies

Goblin Spearman - Very weak fast moving and attacking melee unit. Has no special ability and the lowest healthpool in the game.

Orc Bowman - Weak ranged unit that shoots arrows over a short distance. Has no special ability in the casual mode and can get burning arrows with higher building damage in the story mode.

Orc Slasher - Regular melee unit that has a normal healthpool and damageoutput. Has no special ability.

Goblin Slavedriver - Supporting melee unit with a high healthpool and very low damageoutput. His special ability is 'Crack the Whip', which is used for motivating his allies to move faster and hit harder.

Ringwraith - Special melee unit with a low healthpool and low damage output. His special ability is 'Blackout', which reduces the damage and armor of any enemies that stand around him. He can also detect invisible and stealthed units.

Giant Spider - Special melee unit with a normal healthpool and low damage output. His special ability is 'Paralizing Venom', which slows enemy units by a lot and deals damage over time.

Haradrim Slasher - Strong melee unit with a normal healthpool and high damage output. His special abilities are 'Spitting Poison', which deals poison damage to one enemy over time and 'Stealthed Cloak' which makes him hard to see and hit.

Uruk-hai Standard-Bearer - Strong melee unit with a normal healthpool and medium damage output. His special ability is the command aura, which highers the damage of surrounding melee units for 20%.

Uruk-hai - Strong ranged unit with a high auto-attack range and high damage output. His special ability is "Stunning Shot", which stuns enemies with every second shot and knocks them to the ground so that they can't move for a few seconds.

Black Rider - Strong special melee unit with a high healthpool and fast movementspeed. His special abilities are "Mana Implosion" and "Complete Silence".

Troll Stonethrower - Strong artillery unit that throws big rocks on his enemies over a huge distance. His attacks deal splash damage and cannot be dodged.

Troll Bonecleaver - Very strong melee unit with a gigantic healthpool and strong axe swings. He hits everyone in the range of his axe and can sometimes double his damage with empowered attacks.

Enemy Bosses

Grishnákh - Is the cunning captain of Saurons forces. He uses fire damage and explosions to destroy his enemies.

Shelob - A dark and evil figure that uses the form of a giant spider. She is very cunning and uses poison and web attacks to defeat her enemies.

Khamûl - A nazgul and Saurons lieutenant of Dol Guldur. He is the owner of the arena in Dol Guldur and enjoys killing the heroes of Middle-Earth inside of it. He strikes with great power and shadowsteps through the arena. He has to be defeated to free Dol-Guldur from Saurons grip.

more coming soon...

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Noteable Features

Items

You will be able to buy one out of several starting items. This item will provide several stats that point your character in one direction of playstyle. After you've commited for one item, you can not buy another one, except you sell yours again. These items are upgradeable from +1 to +9 and the stats get better the higher you upgraded the item. On the last level there is even a special skill that is only useable with that item. An example would be: Strength Axe, which provides Strength, HP and Armor. There will also be Items that mix up different kind of stats for allrounder characters. This makes up space in the inventory for several consumables like potions, scrolls and so on.

PVP-Rounds

Every 8th round, there is a Player vs. Player fight between two random players. Both get their hero in the fight, aswell as two unit types of the minions of mordor, that they have to randomly choose out of three types for each of them. The winner will get a few amount of gold, and the loser will gain a few amount of experience. This mode can be turned on or off at the beginning of the match, depending on the preferance of the first player.

More coming soon...

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Screenshots

Spoiler: Terrain

more coming soon...

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Credits

HerrDave - For great terraining work and the WotR models.
LiquidEntertainment and Activision - For WotR and all the little graphics out of their game.
Ilya Nazarov - For the amazing Mirkwood picture.
MindWorX
GhostThruster
-Berz-
Rheiko
T.D.W.
Bribe
Sin'dorei300
Chaosy
Elenai
NFWar


If anyone is not mentioned, but should be, just message me.

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Outro

Thanks for coming to my development thread of this LotR Arena map. I hope you did like it, and if you have any questions, want to give me feedback or would like to see some features added, just put a message below this post, and I happily read and answer them. I will try to keep improving the map and this thread, so that you guys know what has happened. Again, thanks for your time and have a nice day.

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[Rheiko]

I like the ideas for the mode. Both casual and story mode sound interesting. I thought some uruk-hai in the story are melee units too.

Best of luck with the project!

 

[Chaosy]

Loved the original game :3

 

[Wareditor]

Good luck on this cool project!
Can't wait to try it out

 

[Korialstrasz]

I like the ideas for the mode. Both casual and story mode sound interesting. I thought some uruk-hai in the story are melee units too.

Best of luck with the project!

Unfortunately no. They only had ranged units in the game. Really wondering why they did that, but the answer is probably balancing.
However, I really like the Uruks and may add some more unit types anyways. Maybe one of them will be a melee Uruk-hai. Not sure what his special ability could be tho, gotta put some thoughts into this.

Loved the original game :3

Oh I did too. And I still play it, atleast sometimes. Oddly underrated and unknown game even though it has so many wc3 elements.

Good luck on this cool project!
Can't wait to try it out

Thanks for the kind words! Those are very motivating!

 

[Korialstrasz]

Update No. 1 on this thread:

Just a little heads up so that you guys know how it is going. Finished the casual mode today, which will also be the mode you can test inside of the alpha, once it is released. Working a lot on balancing and also added two new unit types, the Black Rider and the Uruk-hai Standard-Bearer.
I did also work on some new features for the map and added them to the first post. I will especially talk about the items in my map and PVP-Rounds.

At the moment, I am really working a lot on the map and I am making faster progress than I would imagine. I do not want to set a date for an Alpha yet tho, so it has to be: SOON.

 

[HeroEditor]

Great! I wanted to make a WotR game in WC3 engine for some time, but that takes a lot of work and skills I don't posses.

When I was younger, there was always some kind of rivalries, for me, between WC3 and WotR because they are very similar games, but the main thing that makes WC3 better are the heroes.

I'm eager to see all the ideas and models you are going to use.

 

[Hoth]

Very interesting, I played WoTR a lot before playing warcraft 3. WotR had a special physic system that you don't find in Warcraft 3. Are you planning to include this in your arena map?
Anyway it looks realy promising, good luck !

 

[Korialstrasz]

Great! I wanted to make a WotR game in WC3 engine for some time, but that takes a lot of work and skills I don't posses.

When I was younger, there was always some kind of rivalries, for me, between WC3 and WotR because they are very similar games, but the main thing that makes WC3 better are the heroes.

I'm eager to see all the ideas and models you are going to use.

Thank you very much for your message! Yes, it was the same for me. I always felt that some mechanics in WotR were better than in Wc3. And it probably would definitely seem that way still up today. However, they were missing important parts like good balancing, an own server system like bnet and the powerful editor. Also there were only two races instead of four, which may also have been a problem in terms of variety.
But I'm glad to see that I can bring some memories back with my map, and again this would not have been possible without the models of HerrDave. So basically we should be thankful to him for reviving the WotR nostalgia.

Very interesting, I played WoTR a lot before playing warcraft 3. WotR had a special physic system that you don't find in Warcraft 3. Are you planning to include this in your arena map?
Anyway it looks realy promising, good luck !

Depens on what you mean with physic system. With the help of Rheiko I was able to recreate the Uruk-Hai knockback shot and Legolas' active shot ability. Those will be in the game, and once I will get more fluent in 'Wurst', I will try to rework them up to perfection. But I do not remember any more different physics than the knockback ones. If I forget something please help me remember. Would be really happy to do all the physics that are possible to do out of the original game.

 

[Hoth]

Depens on what you mean with physic system. With the help of Rheiko I was able to recreate the Uruk-Hai knockback shot and Legolas' active shot ability.

Yes that's what I was talking about. I can't remember if there was something else, I may play it again to check it out.