Tolkien-based Warcraft III games
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As one of Blizzard Entertainment's most successful real-time strategy games, Warcraft III enabled the development of many popular custom games based on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Starting as a relatively small group of map makers on Reign of Chaos, the community later expanded into the The Frozen Throne expansion pack and has now developed many different games. Thanks to the Warcraft III World Editor, many custom unit skins and effects have allowed the makers to recreate the ambience of the world of Arda. It is today considered that thousands of players regularly play these games. Although they are commonly referred to as Lord of the Rings games after the book upon which many of them are based, they may also derive from The Silmarillion and other works by Tolkien.
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[edit] The Ring Wars
One of the older and most popular Tolkien games on Battle.net, The Ring Wars or RWs simulates Middle-earth as it is described in The Lord of the Rings, at the end of the Third Age. The players are equally divided according to the forces of good and evil (6 vs. 6 players), with Gondor, Rohan, the Elves, the Fellowship of the Ring, the Shire, and the Dwarves in the first team, whereas Mordor, Isengard, Minas Morgul, Harad, the Easterlings, and Moria form the latter. These teams must fight each other and win the War of the Ring. The game heavily relies on teamwork as well as proper coordination and combination of allied forces in order to outnumber opponent forces and destroy their bases and spawns. Considering that there is also a large number of heroes involved, expert players tend to develop micromanagement skills in order to kill enemy units more efficiently. Units spawn automatically at the player's bases, and the players need to build castles at the spawns in order to increase the number of units spawned.
[edit] Strategies and tactics
The strategies employed by each team may greatly vary. Tactics and strategies commonly known as towering (Building a large number of towers in one spot to defend it more easily, often used by Gondor), waving (repeated use of multiple-damage spells) and rushing (early coordinated team attack on an enemy base, often used on Dale) or the Southern region of Gondor, are often used by most players.
The Ring-bearer (Hero who carries the One Ring, initially Frodo) has a specially important role: if the Ring falls into the hands of Mordor or Isengard, a powerful Dark Lord returns, thus securing a win for evil. However, if the Ring-bearer manages to take the Ring to Mount Doom where it can be destroyed (a strategy known as Ring Drop), many evil players would face instant defeat. The Ring therefore occupies a central role in the game.
[edit] Versions and controversies
Almost no one can remember who made the original RWs on Reign of Chaos, and it is often disputed. RoC RW was developed by Darkryu until version 9.5, which had considerable issues, but basically laid the framework for all future Ring Wars maps. 9.8 beta, edited by ZugZugGeneral, became the most popular and still played Reign of Chaos version. Clan AoME (the last Reign of Chaos clan) later attempted but for the most part failed to bring about new maps, with their unsuccessful versions 10.0 and 10.1.
On The Frozen Throne, the map has undergone changes from several map makers, such as the famous MMG_God, FatChicksUnited, Vilad, TNL_Eldarion and Zanda.
The newest version is B28d [1]. The most popular is forever to be disputed as either 17D (FatChicksUnited) or 18b (MMG_God).
[edit] War of the Jewels
A map which debuted in the summer of 2003, created by ForsakenOne and GezGas, the War of the Jewels or WotJ relates to Tolkien's Quenta Silmarillion and the war fought to recover the Silmarils or Silmarilli, the three great gems that were forged by Fëanor and stolen by the Dark Lord Morgoth. The war takes place in the First Age, on the westernmost part of Middle-earth otherwise known as Beleriand. Unlike Ring Wars, it has a total of four teams with disproportional numbers of players:
- The Noldor including Hithlum (Red), Gondolin (Blue) and Nargothrond (Teal)
- The alliance of the Sons of Fëanor (Purple) and the Dwarves (Yellow)
- The Sindar including Doriath (Orange), Ossiriand (Green) and Falas (Pink)
- The Forces of Evil including the Easterlings (Light Blue), Tol-in-Gaurhoth (Dark Green) and Angband (Brown)
Each team must fight for its survival and the eventual dominion of its people. The game relies on micromanagement but depends much more on regular units than heroes. Like most major LotR games, it uses the same spawning system as Ring Wars but has a population limit of 150 units. The makers have also developed a diplomacy mode which allows players to vote and change teams during the game in order to avoid unbalanced teams. Like RingWars, players must build castles to upgrade their spawns so that they aren't heavily outdone by the more experienced players.
A common strategy, which has been criticized by many LotR players, is turtling. The strategy relies on staying inside one's base and building a lot of towers to defend choke points, farms (with healing power) to defend towers and walls to protect archers. As a result, a defending player can hold off an attacking army at a very successful rate. The high number of archers and towers also allow the player to focus fire the most threatening units, such as heroes. Noldoli cities such as Gondolin or Nargothrond are especially easy to defend since they are surrounded by high mountain walls and only offer two narrow entrances. However, most players tend to turtle in their bases when their team is losing and their forces are inferior to those of the enemy.
The current version, 4E, was made by LordBevan without any official permisson from the original map makers [2]. However, GezGas has been attempting to update a previous yet very popular version of WotJ, 3D [3]. This project was partly started in hopes of honoring the death of the original lead map maker, ForsakenOne, who died while working on the next generation of WotJ, War of the Simaril Also SuXoR has finished his WOTJ map and it is in honor of ForsakenOne and is really detailed and great custom skins by Gil-Galad [4].
Additionally, a WotJ League [5] was recently established on US East in order to encourage further improvements in WotJ gameplay.
[edit] The Second Age of Middle Earth
The Second Age or SA is a relatively new map that was released during fall in 2005 by MMG_God. The map is that of Middle-earth during the Second Age and focuses upon the Last Alliance of Gil-galad and Elendil against Sauron. One could consider this map to be Ring Wars set at an earlier time, as the One Ring also occupies an important role in this game. However, the gaming concept is very different, and only a few characters of Ring Wars (mostly immortal elves such as Galadriel, Elrond and Círdan) can be found in this map. Again, the players are equally divided among good and evil (6 vs. 6 players), according to the following nations:
- Gondor (Red), Lesser Gondor (Blue), Western Elves (Teal), Arnor (Yellow), Dwarven Realms (Orange), Eastern Elves (Green)
- Nazgûl Realms (Purple), Goblins (Pink), Easterlings (Gray), Harad (Light Blue), Angmar (Dark Green), Mordor (Brown)
The map is incredibly detailed, and has generally been praised for having the best terrain of all LotR games. Another great map maker Holy_Sausage has created other variants of the second age map for Reign of Chaos.
[edit] War of the Third Age
A map made by Aerovox. The map is also known as "WotTA" and focuses on the war between Good and Evil. The map has two teams of five players (5 vs 5) made up of the following forces:
- The Good Team consists of Gondor (Red), Rohan (Blue), Dol Amroth (Teal), Elves and Ents (Yellow) and the Fellowship (Orange)
- The Evil Team consists of Isengard (Green), Mordor (Brown), Haradrim (Light Blue), Nazgûl (Dark Green) and the Easterlings (Gray).
The map focuses focuses on the book instead of the movies. It is slow-paced when compared to Ring Wars and will likely prove to be a good alternative, with the difficulty levels of each kingdom varying greatly.
This map is also famous for its revolutionary use of circular walls, such as the famous seven walls of Minas Tirith.
The War of the Third Age is also different from most other LotR maps, where castles must be built in order to get better spawns. In WotTA, these castles are automatically generated.
[edit] Helm's Deep
The Battle of Helm's Deep is generally recognized as being among the oldest and most popular LotR games. There are many versions of Helm's Deep, but all of them share similarities and are based on the Battle of the Hornburg described in The Two Towers. The newest official version is known as Helms Deep vReal. Just like Ring Wars, it debuted as an early Reign of Chaos map before it expanded into the Frozen Throne expansion. Instead of a complex strategy map, it rather focuses on the actual defense of Helm's Deep. The map is also largely inspired by the movie version of The Two Towers, as the Elves never took part in the battle in the original. Heroes such as Haldir of Lórien here fight at Rohan's side, following Jackson.
A version of Helms Deep, created by asasin850 and Thundafist, concentrates more on the books, with Éomer in Haldir's place, and Erkenbrand following Gandalf when he arrives. This map also has 'Flags' which can be captured, and spawn extra units.
Players who come to play this siege map will fight for either Rohan or Isengard. The game features many gameplay ideas still used in newer maps today such as form changing (Archers turning into Swordsmen) and the use of siege ladders to climb up walls.
[edit] Battle for Middle-earth
This map was created by LegenD-FirE. The map has been an on-going project for several years and has had several clan followings.
Commonly referred to as 'BFME' the map is based around the conflict in Middle-Earth between Sauron and the free people of the West during the Third Age. The map has two teams of five players (5 vs 5) made up of the following forces:
The Good Team consists of Gondor (Red), Rohan (Blue), Dol Amroth (Teal), Ents (Yellow) and the Fellowship (Purple), whereas the Evil Team consists of Isengard (Green), Mordor (Brown),Harad (Light Blue), Nazgûl (Dark Green) and the Easterlings (Gray).
As with similar maps such as Ring Wars and War of the Jewels, units spawn automatically at the player's bases, and the players need to build castles at the spawns in order to increase the number of units spawned. The players are also in control of heroic units featured in The Lord of the Rings, these heroes are capable of turning the tide of battle though do not revive once dead. With over 50 unique heroes featured in Battle For Middle Earth the game is really brought to life!
The map has had a very long and popular history, though its popularity soared when it migrated from Reign of Chaos (ROC) to The Frozen Throne (TFT) and during versions 3.5 - 3.6. BFME was popular in the respect that, unlike other LotR maps such as Ring Wars, it allowed players to build much larger armies and with which they could lay siege to the larger and more detailed bases.
The defining feature of BFME was the much larger bases that brought the battles depicted in The Lord of the Rings to even greater life. BFME was largely based around scenery and did encounter numerous balancing issues in the early stages.
[edit] Other maps
[edit] Minas Tirith
The Defense of Minas Tirith is a siege map with a similar concept to that Helms Deep but rather focuses on the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the actual defense of Minas Tirith, capital city of Gondor. Like most minor maps, it can be found under many different versions. Nevertheless, it remains relatively popular. One of the most popular Minas Tirith maps was created by Master-O in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, but later it was edited by various players making the map fairly impossible for the Evil Team. Master-O used the Dalaran tileset for his Minas Tirith, which makes it easily noticeable that it was the Minas Tirith from Master-O, it was one of his first maps and later created other LotR maps of high quality.
The main strategy for this game is for the forces of good to defend with their troops in Minas Tirith, sometimes even battle in the Pelennor Fields, or Osgiliath. For the evil team they would have to train and build soldiers which would take around a second to complete and order the men to attack Minas Tirith with the aid of ladders, siege towers and heroes.
[edit] Battle of the Five Armies
Also codenamed BFA, it was started by KoI-Radagast and Aragorn.Elessar (former Chieftain of clan AOME). The map focuses on the actual Battle of the Five Armies fought at Erebor, as it is told of in The Hobbit. It was beta tested by resident pro Computer(Sheep)
[edit] Age of the Trees
Also known as AoTT, this map was originally made by KoI-Radagast. It is set at the end of the Years of the Trees, a time when Melkor (later known as the Dark Lord Morgoth) and the great spider-spirit Ungoliant destroyed the Two Trees of Valinor.
[edit] Fellowship Maps
These are maps that hold up to nine players with each player controlling one person from the Fellowship. The most notable and hailed as the most well put together is FoME (Fellowship of Middle-earth) made by ArmyofAragorn.
[edit] LotR Risk
This map was created by gamemasterflex on Azeroth (USA East). He is known as the chieftain of Clan PLAY. Various versions of LotR risk have been released such as LotR Risk 3.0 by Grimreafer and LotR Risk 5.6-5.7 by Gil-Galad, the newest version of this game to this date is Middle Earth Risk 1.0 made by Gil-Galad and clan ERU.
[edit] LotR Footies
This map was created by TheMoneyLover on Azeroth (USA East). He is known as the creator of Isengard Unleashed. But the project was abandoned. But he was later referred as the Footies King, for he introduced the first LotR Footies and Star Wars Footies to Battle.net. Like other Footmen Frenzies, there are 4 bases consisting of 3 players per base. The tiers and heroes are all based upon Tolkien's characters and races throughout Middle-earth. There are 11 tiers each upgradable 4 times, and they are: Gondor, Rohan, Isengard, Mordor, Moria Goblins, Dale Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents, Mirkwood Spiders, Rivendell Elves, and the Army of the Dead. All heroes have unique abilites that match each and every personality.There are over 80 heroes.
[edit] LotR Castle Defense
[edit] External links
Community websites:
