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Warcraft III MapsWhen Blizzard Entertainment released Warcraft III in the summer of 2002, they did their fans a wonderful service by releasing a powerful, easy-to-use editor with which to make custom maps. Combined with the facilities of their battle.net online service, creating maps and sharing them with the community of Warcraft players became incredibly easy. Always eager to flex my game design instincts, I buisily set about creating several multiplayer maps that would emphesize teamwork and team strategy.DAOC Battlegrounds
"DAOC Battlegrounds" was my second try at capturing the action of Mythic Entertainment's MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot in a Warcraft III map. Unlike my first attempt, which was perhaps too broad in scope, DAOC Battlegrounds focuses strictly on the fast-paced "battlegrounds" combat of DAOC. Three teams are vying for control of one keep. The first team to hold the keep for ten consecutive minutes is the winner. "DAOC Battlegrounds" began as an edit to my DAOW map. I was tinkering with the dark art of creatign custom spells in wc3 in an effort to refine the feel of DAOW to be more like the game it was based on. I quickly came to the conclusion that DAOW was just too slow paced to put more effort into. In DAOW, players really enjoyed the challenge of fighting against other players; but the rest of the map just acted as a barrier to get to this fun part. The logical direction to follow was already laid out in Mythic's answer to players looking for fast action: the battlegrounds. Situating the action around a central keep focuses the players on a single objective, ensuring that they come into frequent conflict with eachother. The three-team dynamic ensures that the keep defenders are always outnumbered, making keep defense an intense struggle. I am much happier with DAOC Battlegrounds than I was of DAOW - as both an interpretation of DAOC and a fun multiplayer wc3 map. Download DAOC Battlegrounds (version 0.16 - NOT COMPATIBLE WITH LATEST BLIZZARD .W3M FORMAT) Aeon of Elder Heroes
My first map of any popularity was "Aeon of Elder Heroes". The map was my take on the "Aeon of Strife" style maps that were prevalent on battle.net in the fall of 2002. These style of games featured two warring armies where 6-10 players controlled powerful heros for either army. This map was so popular that many people began editing it and releasing their own variations, such as "Aeon of Elder Kings", "Aeon of Legendary Heroes" and "Aeon of Ultimate Heroes". Unfortunately, many people released their edits to my map without significantly changing the name, thus I was crowded out of my own version-number space. My latest version is numbered "Whuffie" in honor of the uselessness of the version number appended to any "Aeon of Elder Heroes" map. (for the curious, the last "official" version number that I released was 0.08) 
Created from scratch after a weekend of playing AOS:LoN online, AoEH was based on the idea of watching your hero grow and mature over time. Where the previous AOS games had heroes that progressed through ten levels, I added the concept of replacing each hero with a more mature, more potent form every time he reached level 10. Each version of the hero was stronger and had new skills, and thus reinforced the ideas of maturation and growth. Players were more attached to their heros over the course of a game because they had nurtured them from scrawny soldiers into legendary heroes. Download Aeon of Elder Heroes Aeon The Gathering
As a variation on all the two and three team AOS maps for Warcraft III, I created the first five-way AOS map entitled "Aeon The Gathering". Loosely based on a five-player variation of the card game "Magic The Gathering", Aeon The Gathering features five armies at war with eachother. Positioned in a pentagonal arrangement, each player is allies with the two players adjacent to him and is enemies with the two players opposite to him. To win the game, a player must eliminate both of his opponents. This creates an interesting layer of politics ontop of the straight-forward combat of two player AOS. Each player shares one enemy with each of his allies, yet that enemy is friendly to his other ally. As well, a player's allies are enemies of eachother. Tactful manipulation and persuasion of one's allies to take out the common opposition is a highly effective strategy. However, once one player is eliminated, there are now two players poised for victory by defeating different enemies. In some circumstances allies become enemies in the final push to victory. Download Aeon The Gathering Dark Age of Warcraft
 "Dark Age of Warcraft" was my reinterpretation of the massively multiplayer online game Dark Age of Camelot by Mythic Entertainment. DAoW is partly a tribute to a game that I had enjoyed, and partly a statement that its complexity could be abbreviated into a simple Warcraft map. The topology of the map is a rough miniaturization of the three DAoC realms of Albion, Hibernia and Midgard and the frontier areas between them. The map also features interpretations of all 33 character classes from classic DAoC. 
 At the start of the game, 3-12 players are divided amongst three teams representing the warring realms of Albion, Hibernia and Midgard. The members of each team pick four of the heroes unique to their realm and set forth to battle monsters and the other realms. The ultimate goal is to gain entrance to the dungeon of the evil demon Legion and be the first team to vanquish him. Along the way each realm must complete several smaller dungeons within their realm as well as capture the frontier keep and defend it against the other teams. 
Teamwork and team strategy is rewarded on many levels in Dark Age of Warcraft. The first aspect of team strategy is in which heroes to pick. Different heroes have different strengths and selecting a viable combination of complementary heroes is important to forming a competetive team. The second aspect of team strategy is in properly using the abilities of each hero for the benefit of the group. An efficient team will progress more quickly. The third aspect of team strategy comes as the group must choose wether to spend its time completing dungeons, hunting for magic items, or proceeding into the frontier to vye for the keep. The final aspect of team strategy is how to do battle against the other teams. Even the strongest teams can fall if they are attacked at a moment of opportunity. Ultimately the realm with the best teamwork will reach the demon legion and lay him low. Download Dark Age of Warcraft Unit Comparator
In a game with as many units and combinations of units as Warcraft III, it can be difficult to anticipate just how a given matchup will turn out. Add to that the balance changes that frequently accompany game patches, and you have a definite need for a way to easily try out many different unit matchups. I originally made the "Unit Comparator" map to fill exactly this need. Later, I expanded it to a multiplayer map complete with a moderator controlling unit access privledges so that it could be used as a teaching tool. Download the Unit Comparator |