Blizzard DotA and Left2Die

[Oninuva]

New to the Blizzard Convention this year is the Map Editor Panel and with it comes a whole bunch of goodies and cool information. Lead Level Designer Matt Morris and other team members discussed a whole bunch of map making topics including three new Blizzard maps that they used as examples.

Inspired by the immensely popular Warcraft III map “Defense of the Ancients” (DotA), Blizzard has decided to create their own version of it for Starcraft II. DotA is basically a map where two sides have huge armies that are evenly matched and fight each other with no side gaining much ground. Throw in a couple heroes and you have a large scale and intense battle. Blizzard DotA will feature iconic Blizzard Universe heroes such as Jim Raynor, Kerrigan, Muradin Bronzebeard, and Sylvanas.

Read all of it here.

 

[Viikuna]

Its nothing more than a sign of weakness.

They are starting to realize that their crappy editor is a failure, sc2 modding scene is smaller than they expected and now they are trying to promote their sorry-ass editor with these new maps.

And yea, they are trying to remind people that it was their wc3 editor that created DotA, now when theres all DotA 2, HoN, LoL and other games going for breakthrough.

 

[Sim]

Yay for Left2Die, I loved that map from the campaign.

Nay for Blizzard Dota :thdown: There are already enough DotAs around, what do they hope to accomplish with this?

 

[Galdiuz]

Actually they made that DotA to try out the inventory system and for testing a hero selection system.

 

[Romek]

> Yay for Left2Die, I loved that map from the campaign.
I hated it until I completed it. It was very hard to actually get going on Brutal. It'll certainly be interesting for multiplayer though.
I wonder if any other campaign missions will be made multiplayer. This is the second one, I believe.

 

[Viikuna]

That mission was actually one of the easiest missions for me, in brutal.


The key is just to build a damn strong defence around your mineral line and main building and not try to defend all those 3 entrances.

Then you just mass reapers, which are fast kill and zombies very quickly and demolish buildings in no time. ( But I can guess that its way more difficult if you dont do that Tosh mission first and get reapers for this one )

 

[Romek]

> The key is just to build a damn strong defence around your mineral line and main building and not try to defend all those 3 entrances.
I defended all three entrances. Once I had a few bunkers there though, the rest of the mission was very easy. I too, massed reapers.

 

[Oninuva]

Blizzard made maps to promote Warcraft III too..

 

[sqrage]

Its nothing more than a sign of weakness.

They are starting to realize that their crappy editor is a failure, sc2 modding scene is smaller than they expected and now they are trying to promote their sorry-ass editor with these new maps.

Did you not read the post? They have a whole panel dedicated to the Editor in the Blizz Convention. Obviously they need some reliable and quality content to display there.

 

[2-P]

Lol, just ignore him, he takes every opportunity to rage at Blizzard.

See, it goes like this:
Blizzard promotes and actually cares about map making -> obviously the reason must be that the're doing it because the editor sucks -> Blizzard sucks
Blizzard doesn't care about map makers -> whine about how much they're neglecting us -> Blizzard sucks

It's a win-win situation.

Blizzard Universe heroes such as Jim Raynor, Kerrigan, Muradin Bronzebeard, and Sylvanas.

There were some well known heroes but most of them were.... who the heck is that?.
That male ghost sniper was super lame, I demand NOOOOOOOVAAAAAA!

 

[Viikuna]

Lol, just ignore him, he takes every opportunity to rage at Blizzard.

Thats kinda true yea. But the thing still is that sc2 modding is nowhere as big as they hoped, and thats obviously one reason behind this stuff.
I guess its good that they are trying to do at least something, but they are still not fixxing any of those real issues, which kinda sucks.


Anyways, I also think it would be cool if they only used existing characters from starcraft, warcraft and diablo -universes.
Guess it would be too much moddeling for them and maps cant have too much custom content anyways, thanks to that lame filesize limit -.-'


And yea, anyone else thinks that Ultimaton is probably the most stupidiest and lamest name for some big-bad-ass-hero-torrasque-ultralisk -creature?

 

[Flare]

Anyways, I also think it would be cool if they only used existing characters from starcraft, warcraft and diablo -universes.

I thought that was exactly what they were doing

*reads the article again*

And yea, anyone else thinks that Ultimaton is probably the most stupidiest and lamest name for some big-bad-ass-hero-torrasque-ultralisk -creature?

There's probably worse names

 

[sqrage]

Thats kinda true yea. But the thing still is that sc2 modding is nowhere as big as they hoped, and thats obviously one reason behind this stuff.

What makes you say that? Do you have any statistics as to how lively SC2 mapping is? I can pretty surely say that it's just as lively if not more so than WC3 was when it was first released. Hell I'm not sure 80% of people who back WC3 back when it was released even knew it had an editor.

 

[Daskunk]

Thats kinda true yea. But the thing still is that sc2 modding is nowhere as big as they hoped, and thats obviously one reason behind this stuff.

I don't think they ever realistically expected it to be that big until at least HotS, if not LotV. Irregardless of what they actually think, the blizzcon panel was obviously supposed to shed a positive light on the modding community and the sc2 editor.



By the way, is there any reason why the other two maps, Auir Chef and Star-jewled weren't mentioned here? (You can read more about them here.)

 

[Siretu]

Even if you don't care about the dota, there's still reasons to love this as a mapmaker. They will be open for the community to check through. There will also be a lot of new material done specifically for all these maps.

Also, as was previously mentioned, they made these maps to test certain aspects to see if they had any stupid limits.

I also love the chess layout on the dota. The towers looks awesome.

 

[Slapshot136]

they released maps for wc3 as well you know, just to show what their game can do - they had something like azeroth grand prix which was similar to mario karts, they also had bomber command from which I stole some loading bars from, and I liked playing their monolith defense as well (although the creeps were rigged)

this is just more of the same, it's not because the editor is crap compared to the wc3 one (it has some things that are better while others that are worse, also give it time so 3rd party programs can make it better)

 

[BANANAMAN]

Where can i download them?

 

[Tom_Kazansky]

Siretu is right, gotta love the new materials

@Slapshot136, yea but I think they released those just for references

so errm... they're gonna make a "fantasy DotA" into a "sci-fi DotA", right?
I don't think the current DotA would fit with SCII, lol

 

[Bloodcount]

these maps are under development then ?

 

[Galdiuz]

They we're all playable during BlizzCon. I only tried Chef Auir and StarJeweled and those worked good, though I guess they want to improve some things.