
- #RTS GAMES WITH CUSTOM GAMES LIKE WARCRAFT 3 MOD#
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There's just a lot of these factors coming into play that, from a technical standpoint, I think we can deliver-this is the right time. With Steam becoming ubiquitous, there's no longer the massive manufacturing barrier to entry. "You see Blizzard having much smaller teams for Hearthstone, Overwatch, etc. "With Unity being much more mature, Unreal Engine becoming free, on a technical level, game development has shifted to favour smaller teams" Batas says.
#RTS GAMES WITH CUSTOM GAMES LIKE WARCRAFT 3 MODS#
He also notes that as mods have grown to become traditional games, traditional games development has changed to become much more like modding. was fun because you'd play it between ladder games, but people aren't going to want to pay money for it. "I remember that one of the biggest objections had been, like 'this can't stand on its own two feet'. "I think the first thing that tipped me off was League of Legends taking the Dota formula and making a standalone game" he says.
#RTS GAMES WITH CUSTOM GAMES LIKE WARCRAFT 3 SOFTWARE#
After working on non-gaming related software for several years, however, Batas felt the pull to return to games. Gari went to work for Riot, and the map itself saw successors in the form of StarCraft 2's Squadron TD and Dota 2's Legion TD Reborn. If it was five years ago, even if the ideas was right, I just don't think the tools and services would be there.Įven so, Batas had decided to hand over Legion TD 2 to the community in order to pursue other opportunities by the time he left college. I mean, just being able to go onto YouTube and seeing people in Germany just loving the game and laughing and mispronouncing everything is just the funniest." They can get mad at you for screwing it up, or love you for doing it right. Even though you made it, when people get invested in it, it becomes theirs. "When people are having fun playing your game there's a lot of responsibility that comes with that" Batas says "it's no longer just your own. I learned to never ever release a version right before I go out."Ī hobby project had become a full-time responsibility for somebody on the cusp of college. I'd be like 'oh, God, mom and dad, sorry-can we get this to go? I gotta go'. "Julian or another friend would text when I was, like, at a restaurant, and they'd be like 'you broke this thing, people on the forums are going crazy'. "It was literally scary, like 'wait a minute, this is not just our little creation'" he says. So after that happened, Legion TD became wildly the most popular game in Warcraft 3."īatas had no idea the map would explode in the way that it did. They were moving onto League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, Dota 2. Obviously, historically, no one's as successful as DotA, but by this time people were leaving Warcraft 3.
#RTS GAMES WITH CUSTOM GAMES LIKE WARCRAFT 3 MOD#
It basically became the most successful mod on Warcraft 3. It was just the four of us and all of the sudden, within a month or two, there were tens of thousands of people playing. Some would rehost the game, and so it started. "Since we made the game we usually stomped them, but out of the four we played against one of them would be like 'this is actually really fun'. "Me, Brent, and two friends, we would all jump in the game together, and then we would play against four randos" Gari says. This was late in the game's life, but it still had a dedicated international playerbase-and it was still possible for a new custom map to capture that audience's imagination. "There's something about it that just struck me."īy 2009 Warcraft 3 was already seven years old. "I had a sense that the core gameplay of this game is actually really fun" Gari says.

It’s about strategic decision making, theorycraft and mathematics, low on micro but high on macro. Instead of towers you assemble defensive fighters in formation, splitting your time and resources between bolstering your frontline, hiring offensive mercenaries, and developing your worker line. Two teams of four compete to be the first to kill the enemy king, with each player responsible for defending a single lane. This is a direct sequel to a popular Warcraft 3 competitive tower defense map that was, according to its developers, played by over a million people.

Legion TD 2 is notable first and foremost because it challenges that trend. Many of their ideas have appeared elsewhere, but full-on successors have been less forthcoming: primarily a matter for the StarCraft 2 arcade, or Dota 2’s custom games scene. Outside studios haven’t stepped in to rebuild games at scale. The audience for tower defense is and has always been huge, but those original custom games haven’t received the DotA treatment. This part of WC3’s legacy has been less visible, however, than the rise of the MOBA. Here the legacy stretches deep into Flash and mobile-into ‘casual’ games, PopCap, and half the games you've bought in Steam sales over the last half-decade. Equally, it was Warcraft 3 custom games that turned tower defense games into an explosively popular modern concern.
