Campaign Maps + Geography Discussion

General Discussion
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Hi
I’ve bought WC3 a total of 4 times and played over 10 000 hours, replayed the campaign 6 times and been a moderator & custom map creator in Warcraft 3 several times.

Something I noticed when they let people play the Culling of Stratholme campaign chapter is that they changed the city’s geography to no longer be even remotely close to the Warcraft 3 original campaign map. The new Culling of Stratholme no longer includes an undead base, no longer have a zoo, human base located in the south (instead of the northwest) and is acurately created to appear like in WoW.

What this implies is that the Blizzard WC3 developer team is not interested in being absolutely pure in their reforging of the Warcraft 3 campaign. They made the Stratholme campaign map ressemble the appearance of Stratholme in WoW.

Can we expect to see this logic consistently applied to the entire game? If so, then the reforging of the Warcraft 3 campaign will have to make a lot of changes to the original campaign because Warcraft lore have been changed several times since 2003.

What will happen to the Frozen Throne Night Elf Campaign? In the original campaign Maiev lands at Suramar in The Broken Shores and it’s all Sunken Ruins map. You can even venture into the ruined libraries on this map and the Tomb of Sargeras is located right next to the Suramar library!

Or how about the Draenei and Outland? When you meet Akama they proclaim to be the Draenei and not the Broken Ones and in Outland everything looks like Hellfire Peninsula, will there be Terokkar Forest, Shadowmoon Valley and Zangarmarsh environments in the campaign maps?

What about Barrow Den where Illidan is locked in? In WoW the Warden prison was placed in the Broken Isles continent but in the old Warcraft 3 campaign it’s in Kalimdor!

What will happen to the geographic zone Winterspring? An old explanation as to why Winterspring in Warcraft 3 had no snow was that it quickly went through a hot spring season, but seasons never change in WoW.

Or how about the most obvious one, the campaign map loading screen. When you go through the campaign you can see where your journey is on a map, but the maps are completely outdated and the pathway on a WoW map will look very different.

What should be done?
Should WC3 Reforged be 100% original material purity or should it be adapted to fit perfectly into the current Warcraft lore and geography?

I think it is best for both old and new players to play through campaign maps as acurate as possible to whats been developed in World of Warcraft. New players from WoW will not be confused when looking at a Sunken Ruin Suramar populated with Murlocs and Orc Skeletons (instead of being populated by Nightborne Elves inside a protected bubble) and the old players will get a new campaign experience to enjoy.

This means making completely new campaign maps, perhaps even rewriting the event sequences to be consistent with the current state of Warcraft geography and lore. Like for example; the whole Broken Shore area will have to be remade to ressemble the Broken Shore continent created in World of Warcraft.

Make all maps acurate to fit the current Warcraft lore and the geography! Prioritize the acuracy and consistency of WC3 Reforged campaign maps!

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This is actually an amazing idea. I love it! Terokkar Forest, Shadowmoon Valley, and Zangarmarsh tilesets are a great idea!

The original Warcraft III World Editor had a bunch of great assets to draw from that were not made to be an asset list. From what I could tell, the original Warcraft 3 team in 2002 created the campaign as they intended, then left the campaign components available for users. Remastering the campaigns as you describe would cause the Classic Games team to innovate new and interesting Tilesets that players could use in custom maps in ways that all of us might not even have thought of yet!

I vote “yes.” You are correct!

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I agree they should do this. because I have played WoW a bit here and there but not a hard core fan and when I visit place that are in W3 I see the resemblance but I do notice the difference and I would love for that lack on continuity to be fixed

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This is not a small change to the WC3 Reforged we’re talking about, this is a major change that will make it stand out as different from the original WC3.

Blizzard is a company who is known for consistency, high quality and listening to the players. I personally believe it makes the most sense to prioritize the current lore & geography of Warcraft seen in World of Warcraft than to rebuild the original lore & maps of WC3.

So here’s an incomplete list of things that would have to be changed if geographic consistency is applied.

  1. A complete remake of the Night Elves campaign in both Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne. Northern Kalimdor and the Broken Isles will have to be remade to look similar to WoW Kalimdor & Broken Isles.

  2. Caravan missions like protecting the Tauren kodos in Kalimdor and Kael caravan in Silverpine forest have the acurate paths found in WoW.

  3. All of ‘Founding of Durotar’ areas be remaked to look like Durotar, Orgrimmar, Theramore Isle, Dustwallow Marsh to the best extent as possible.

  4. Include Terokkar Forest, Zangarmarsh, Shadowmoon Valley environments in the Blood Elves Outland campaign.

The list goes on to basically touch every single map and geographic location. Please Blizzard, put in the effort to make the entire Warcraft 3 Campaign ressemble the locations we know of from World of Warcraft.

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Completely agree blizzard needs to do this or they are going to cause more confusion then they think which is going to make less people buy it.

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I agree that Maiev’s journey needs to be revisited to address the recent retcons.

While she did follow Illidan through Winterspring in Frozen Throne and there was no snow, Winterspring is also very high above water, which contradicts with the moment Illidan escapes by boat.

It would probably be best to “soft retcon” the loading screen to show Maiev tracking Illidan down through Azshara instead of Winterspring, and adding more autumnal colors to the map terrain.

I’m not exactly a huuuge fan of the Stratholme remake (I really liked the “squareical” design of the old map) but I’m excited to get to experience the same mission in a different way, knowing we can still play the original version on good ol’ Warcraft 3. My only concern is how they could remaster the two Dalaran missions, given than in WoW Dalaran is the size of a walnut compared to its depiction in both Warcraft 3 in-game and the Archimonde cinematic.

The Akama problem is a real one. Judging by the Culling demo, they haven’t recorded new dialogue for the cutscenes/interludes. It would be an easy fix to just have Akama give a quick backstory to his heritage through an interlude, but then they’d have to re-record every dialogue in the game to preserve sound quality.

Concerning Suramar/Sunken Ruins, maybe having Maiev land in Thal’dranath would be more appropriate? For those who are out of the loop, Thal’dranath was supposed to be the new zone for patch 7.3 of Legion, but they scrapped it in favor of Argus (and because there were already too many high elven ruins in the Broken Isles). I could see that being a better explanation, and Thal’dranath is shown to be south-east of the Broken Shore in Legion (as per the WoW - What’s Next panel in 2015), so it would also be a fair distance away from that huge glowing dome that is Suramar for it to not be directly visible (although the Tomb of Sargeras is like 1km away from Suramar, so N’zoth knows how they’re going to make it all blend in together).

In terms of Illidan’s prison, I believe it was abandoned after Tyrande rampaged through it? I got the impression the Vault of the Wardens in Legion was their new outpost, but I may be wrong. It’s got to take more than 15 years to build such a huge hole in the ground, elevators’n’all.

Overall super-excited for this remaster and hoping they’ll pay attention to the finer details/retcons such as the ones you mentioned in your topic and deliver us a great game with a cohesive, “evergreen” revised campaign in terms of gameplay and, most importantly, lore!

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i just hope they dont change it too much… like getting rid of easter eggs like the zoo, the large Penguin in northrend, the Sasquatch… :confused:

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Maiev didn’t set sail from Winterspring, the Night Elf campaign there started at Azshara’s coast with Nagas destroying fishing villages and boats.

You cannot move the Warden Prison accross a massive sea with all of it’s giant prisoners. They put the Warden prison on the Broken Isle continent because they wanted to concentrate all story elements into one large continent. The location of the Warden Prison + Barrow Den sleeping druids was originally somewhere in Northern Ashenvale (currently known as Felwood).

To have lore acurate to the current Warcraft lore they will have to make a lot of changes to the dialogue. That is the reality of the situation.

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Hah, good catch, I need to brush up on my TFT elves!

Oh boy if the prison location is in fact also a full-on retcon, this and the Diablo announcement have done me in today.

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Blizzard have too good sense of a humor to pass the chance to create new Easter Eggs. Who knows, they might recreate the old easter eggs, they might add new ones, they might even have both.

I personally believe they are physically unable to pass the chance to hide a rock’n’roll death knight Arthas somewhere in the Northrend maps. Just sayin’.

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I would honestly prefer they remaster/update things to remain as close to Warcraft 3’s original ideas/maps/displays. I’m sure it’s a minority opinion, but I really don’t like the changes WoW made geographically and lorewise, and the maps [both loading screen and gameplay-wise] would be better off sticking closer to the original. Just thought the idea should be included.

Edit: also thought I ought to add that I’m not a huge fan of some new voice actors, such as Sylvanus’, and while they said there would still be the option to use old graphics and such, it would be great if retaining the original voices was to be an option as well.

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It is definitely an easier option for the WC3 Reforged developer team to be as original as possible. Making it all as before but with HD is a smaller challenge than to completely reimagine the campaign in hopes of making it fit together with the current lore & geography of Warcraft.

From what can be seen of the Culling of Stratholme at BlizzCon, they’ve already adopted the idea to have maps that ressemble WoW geography.

It’s definitely going to be somewhere inbetween the original purity and the WoW ressemblence, where exactly is up for discussion.

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if thats the case then i would be happy… although this really isnt an easter egg… my favorite warcraft mission is when you play as sylvanas and you have to mind controll the bandits, the ogres, murlocs and trolls… i love everything about that mission and i hope they don’t do too much to completely change how that one plays out.

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Same here. While I don’t mind the changes WoW made, I want Warcraft 3 to be as close to the original as possible, including all the Easter Eggs! Not to mention that the Undead base being there rewarded good players, since you could take it out and remove the spawning waves that came after your base, leaving you to only deal with Mal’Ganis and his guard. I’d also like to keep the original voice lines, just touched up a bit.

Sorry other people, that’s just how I feel! :frowning: I’m hoping this is just due to it being a demo/early dev version.

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I third this motion really. I’d argue, if anything WoW made the lore less coherent and easy to pick up to anyone incoming to the Warcraft series. You need so much background knowledge to understand why things are they way they are in WoW. The great thing about Wc3 was that it both continued the prior games story, but did it in a way that literally anyone could pick up and understand easily. Messing with that formula significantly invites serious disaster. Minor tweaks to maps here or there, and re-orientations of the maps to better fit the camera angle (like to show the statue at the entrance to Stratholm) are fine minor additions, but taking out easter-eggs and retconning maps to their “newer” WoW state (essentially cede’ing story control over to WoW entirely, and thus making any attempt at a Wc4 neigh impossible) would do some irreversible, long-term damage to the story line for essentially an arbitrary “cosmetic boost.”

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Very surprised and slightly disturbed to see so much support for completely rewriting a classic game. I’m not much of a purist, and I don’t mind the occasional small tweak, but I would definitely prefer to keep things as close to the original as possible, at least as far as story elements are concerned. Changing the Stratholme map is already pushing the limits of what I’d consider acceptable. I don’t want to see anything beyond that.

I also hope they keep as much of the original voice-acting as possible. I strongly prefer the original Sylvanas to the actress who plays her in WoW.

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I actually think the changes are really cool like what they did with Stratholme. So long as the core adventure is essentially the same, I’d actually like to see more changes to the map when visiting places that would become iconic in world of warcraft, like they did with Stratholme.
Even tweaks to the script to better reflect the new lore developments that came with things like Draenei. Overall I don’t want major narrative differences though and for the maps to still have the same functions and goals they always did. (Also keep some of the maps the same, if they don’t need the change.)

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I would prefer they keep things the same but on Grubby’s videos about the game it was said they would be adjusting some of the more mediocre levels to be more engaging. Not sure exactly what that means but I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if “universe consistency” was a priority as well. I hope this means they’ll remake the final Arthas vs Illidan cutscene at the end of TFT.

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I’m torn on this. I have no idea why they have removed the Stratholme zoo - solely because it’s not in WoW? That would be terrible. It’s a cute location full of easter eggs.

Some missions would not make sense in WC3 with the WoW geography. Hearthglen being ducked in a corner instead of being on the straight road to Stratholme would be weird. And the mountain ridge (like all other mountain ridges in WoW) is only there to remove the access to the seashore, and to frame the zones.

Dalaran in WoW is smaller, true, but it’s just scaling. The real problem is all the islands in the Lordamere Lake. The first two Blood Elf missions should be left untouched in the geography department.

Illidan indeed escaped through Azshara. But it shouldn’t be a retcon - Winterspring transitions into Azshara quite nicely… if you remove those retarded mountains that they put there in WoW. Well, maybe it is a retcon…

Maiev’s journey through the Broken Isles is full of lore from WC2, fighting Orcs should be left alone unchanged. But about the giant dome - was it really visible to everybody there? Or was it invisible to the outsiders? That’s what my headcanon was always like, but I never played Legion. It does look purple from the outside, I guess.

The Outland missions make no sense at all from the WoW perspective. Why are you even mentioning Zangarmarsh? Because it has a closed gate? That would mean the penultimate mission should encompass the entirety of Outland, and that’s silly. Plus, I can’t imagine Orcish camps in Zangarmarsh, lol.

The Black Temple/Black Citadel/Hellfire Citadel distinction is an utterly unsalvageable mess.

But wait, I’ve almost forgot about the genocide of Quel’Thalas! WC3 put the Sunwell in Silvermoon! Even though there was the Isle of Quel’Danas on the map! I could totally see their scrapping a Quel’Danas mission back in 2002 because it would’ve been a 4th one in Quel’Thalas, but it’s just my imagination.

And what’s about Dar’Khan Drathir? The role of the traitor is played in WC3 by a random dude with a stick (that actually uses the model of a human ambassador)! That would be a neat addition. But wouldn’t more dialogue be needed?

Also, what’s about Thas’alah? According to the new lore from Legion, it was a giant tree in the south of what would later be known as Ghostlands (where Deatholme would stand), and it enchanted Alleria’s bow. It was cut down by the Scourge. Would be a glorious addition! Along with the Rune Stones?.. But the teleports should remain as in WC3, made for a very unique chapter (that I actually failed complete actually when I was 5 lol).

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Caravan missions like protecting the Tauren kodos in Kalimdor and Kael caravan in Silverpine forest have the acurate paths found in WoW.

I don’t think that’s necessary. WoW maps are really very very zoomed out, and it’s about scaling. Like the cities: lore-wise there are thousands and even tens of thousands of people living in some cities, yet in WoW there are like hundred houses. Just look at how the Warcraft movie showed Stormwind and how it looks like in game - in “reality” all the places are much larger, like in real world. You can walk Barrens from top to bottom in like 20 mins in WoW, but in “real life” it would be like thousands of kilometers.

So in that sense, I do agree that they should make Reforged resemble what they made and changed in WoW. Because they actually do have a lot of freedom due to the scaling I just pointed out, so I’m not that worried. They can easily make it seem like same as WoW from the outside, and inside, in the core gameplay, they can still keep close to original WC3 at the same time.

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