|
painedforever posted:"Red Hood Guy"!? What happened to Vilefeast? And Bloodgut? Vilefeast has some...interesting things happen to him in Warcraft 2
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2018 20:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:46 |
|
|
Speaking of which - Oi Azzur, if you're around you should look at getting your Warcraft II LP up on the Archive. It's a crime that something that hilarious and with that much effort put into it isn't able to be enjoyed by everyone!
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2018 22:13
|
|
|
Dr. Snark posted:Speaking of which - Oi Azzur, if you're around you should look at getting your Warcraft II LP up on the Archive. It's a crime that something that hilarious and with that much effort put into it isn't able to be enjoyed by everyone! Easily in top 3 of all the LPs I've ever read.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2018 22:24
|
|
|
Valiantman posted:Easily in top 3 of all the LPs I've ever read. Ditto. And if you ever want to finish Beyond the Dark Portal, I’d support that too. Not that this LP ain’t great, it is thus far. But there’s a high bar established one must acknowledge. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2018 22:28
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:Ditto. And if you ever want to finish Beyond the Dark Portal, I’d support that too. You'll find no arguments from me!  I'm glad this LP has been so well received, but definitely acknowledge those that came before. The WC1 LP is linked in the OP for a reason! (and if someone finds that zip file or whatever of the wc2 lp I'll also link it there)
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2018 23:10
|
|
|
I am a bit of a lore nerd on Warcraft 2 and 3 so one quick thing to add about Alterac that I am not sure comes up in Warcraft 3... It's not just that the Kingdom sided with the Orcs, they let them pass through their land freely to attack other Kingdoms, thinking they would be spared of the Horde and one of the reasons the Horde keeps winning battle after battle. If I remember correctly Alterac controls a key choke point in the area. At one point Alterac stages a peasant revolt (which is a mission in Warcraft 2) to distract the Alliance armies and that's how they find out about the secret alliance.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 00:01
|
|
|
Dr. Snark posted:Speaking of which - Oi Azzur, if you're around you should look at getting your Warcraft II LP up on the Archive. It's a crime that something that hilarious and with that much effort put into it isn't able to be enjoyed by everyone! I'll try not to get anyone's hopes up, but apparently me from seven years ago (holy poo poo, seven years, what) was pretty meticulous in keeping things backed up. Despite all the old image files being lost in the archives, I still have all the originals. I've reached out to the LP Archive to see if I could piece everything back together and submit it. I'm not sure about finishing the story, though I still have a vague idea of where it all was meant to lead. I had a lot of free time back in those days and I still missed self-imposed deadlines! And also, major props to DoubleNegative if you can keep up with all the lore bits. I'm 99% sure that all of that information was slowly pushed out of my head over the years and what hasn't may now conflict with what is going on in the world now? Oh, man. It hurts to think about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 04:06
|
|
|
Azzur posted:I'll try not to get anyone's hopes up, but apparently me from seven years ago (holy poo poo, seven years, what) was pretty meticulous in keeping things backed up. Despite all the old image files being lost in the archives, I still have all the originals. I've reached out to the LP Archive to see if I could piece everything back together and submit it. I'm not sure about finishing the story, though I still have a vague idea of where it all was meant to lead. I had a lot of free time back in those days and I still missed self-imposed deadlines! That's excellent! I can understand if you don't follow up on it, but I for one would want to see the continuing adventures of Necksmasher and company.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 14:36
|
|
|
Great, Azzur! Hope things work out. I have some fan hopes about the future of your Beyond the Dark Portal LP myself (Vilefeast & Alleria 4Ever!), but I'm sure your original plans are better. Maybe we'll see them someday. In the meantime, if anyone wants to look at the original threads (Archives Access required)- look here and here. Enjoy. For the Horde!!!!
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 16:20
|
|
|
Trivia: In WC1/2 Orcs/Humans were basically identical to each other bar a few mage units, whereas in 3 each of the 4 factions are unique. This causes the odd situation of Grunts suddenly being significantly more powerful AFTER they lose their demonic power. Surprisingly, however, there actually IS an explanation given for this: The professional armies of the Alliance were depleted after the prior wars and subsequent petty squabbling. As a result, most footmen are equipped with low quality scale mail and broadswords instead of the steel plate and longswords of their predecessors, on top of typically being new recruits instead of experienced professional soldiers.Cythereal posted:On the other hand, the power of love between those two women is strong enough to break the curses placed on them by Queen Azshara and the Legion and let them both go hand in hand into Elune's heaven. If you go with 'implied', there's also Maiev. Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Feb 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 22:01
|
|
|
Cuntellectual posted:If you go with 'implied', there's also Maiev. Nah, there's never been anything suggested about Maiev's romantic inclinations. She had a female close friend, and that's it, Maiev's character otherwise revolves completely around Illidan unless you count that one book where she was a serial killer in Darnassus (and Legion sure doesn't, Maiev's brother broaches the subject only to brush it off as nah forget it). Maiev is one of the most popular characters among the fanbase for possibly being queer, but there's nothing in canon to suggest or dismiss the possibility. You should have seen the uproar on the official forums when one of the new sub-races with Battle for Azeroth has, as an in-character joke emote, the female nightborne saying Tyrande is still a gorgeous woman after ten thousand years and wondering if she's still available. achtungnight posted:I have some fan hopes about the future of your Beyond the Dark Portal LP myself (Vilefeast & Alleria 4Ever!), Dude, you're just getting creepy now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 22:09
|
|
|
There's also the fact that she has a talent in Heroes of the Storm called Memento of Naisha, but that could be interpreted either way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 22:13
|
|
|
SirSamVimes posted:There's also the fact that she has a talent in Heroes of the Storm called Memento of Naisha, but that could be interpreted either way. True, that's part of why she's popularly assumed to have been romantically involved with Naisha, but much as I long for more and better LGBT representation in Warcraft (and in AAA video games in general), there's no canon evidence either way for Maiev. Related trivia: we just barely avoided Naisha as a raid boss in WoW this current expansion, she was swapped out for a made-up character at the last second in the Tomb of Sargeras raid. She would have been part of the Sisters of the Moon battle.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 22:29
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Dude, you're just getting creepy now. Nah, he got creepy earlier.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 23:23
|
|
|
Now that I think about it, she's more Nigel's type anyway. Or Bloodgut's. I'll shut up now, I've said enough.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 23:36
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:True, that's part of why she's popularly assumed to have been romantically involved with Naisha, but much as I long for more and better LGBT representation in Warcraft (and in AAA video games in general), there's no canon evidence either way for Maiev. She was turned into a Raid World Quest boss instead.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2018 23:37
|
|
|
SirSamVimes posted:There's also the fact that she has a talent in Heroes of the Storm called Memento of Naisha, but that could be interpreted either way. That's part of what I was thinking of, but I guess even if I might not personally carry around a memento of my dead friend, that might not be the case for everyone. I am starting to suspect Maiev might well just be the obsessive type.  Cythereal posted:
Please, do tell. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 19:21
|
|
|
Cuntellectual posted:Please, do tell. Just generic "SJWS ARE RUINING WOW!" "GAY PEOPLE DON'T BELONG IN WARCRAFT!" "THIS ISN'T THE REAL WORLD GAY PEOPLE DON'T NEED TO EXIST!" "WHY ARE YOU FORCING ME TO PLAY A DYKE?!?!" "THEY'RE ONLY GAY BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T HAD MY DICK YET!" "I would totally be down for a threesome with my nightborne chick and Tyrande!" ranting. For reference, specifically one of the /silly lines a female nightborne PC can say is "Tyrande's still looking good after all these years... Know if she's seeing anyone?" Alas, Tyrande is officially married to Malfurion as of the end of Cataclysm.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 19:27
|
|
|
Someone needs to remind the anti-gay WoW lobby that the people they oppose have money to spend and can be fantasy MMOG enthusiasts as much as anyone else. Thus their inclusion is probably inevitable. Welcome to the world.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 21:33
|
|
|
Yeah they don't care.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 22:50
|
|
|
As my wife would say, that's their own stupidity. Gay people are a fact of existence. There's historical evidence they've been around since the dawn of human civilization in just about every society. They exist in the natural world too per scientific evidence- witness things like lesbian seagulls and pansexual chimpanzees. You can ignore or deny this all you want, but it doesn't erase the evidence. And I think this evidence invalidates clearly any argument that non-hetero sexuality is unnatural or not tolerated by a benevolent God- at least not tolerated any more or less than any other evil in the world. Thus denying or working against its existence in any way clearly becomes counter-productive and frankly stupid. You can argue this is just my opinion... right back at you concerning yours. Be surprised by my marital state and words all you want. I'm not going to say much more on this to avoid a thread derail. Hope to see another LP update soon. Siegkrow- I know. More's the pity. achtungnight fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Feb 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 23:08
|
|
|
Your wife sounds wise. Honestly, homophobes don't work on logic, explaining things like that won't work. They are visceral, hateful. Sometimes ignorant, because American sexual education has been throttled by zealots.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 23:11
|
|
|
And in this case some of it is probably nerd misogyny as well. Some boys never grow past the cooties phase.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 23:14
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:Wouldn’t surprise me if the Slaver was originally intended to be a hero (or at least an elite troop) from a cut faction. I know this is from a few pages back, but it was indeed supposed to be a hero. Hero units in Warcraft III have two very distinct features: a glowing aura and a glowing weapon. The Slaver has both.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 04:14
|
|
|
Kith posted:I know this is from a few pages back, but it was indeed supposed to be a hero. Hero units in Warcraft III have two very distinct features: a glowing aura and a glowing weapon. The Slaver has both. Someone else mentioned that a few pages back, but this prompted me to check the files and apparently it got as fast as having listed abilities; Command Aura, Death Scream and Raging Scream. The file is "ChaosWarlord" and there's an "OrcWarchief" file, so presumably the hero was either called the Warlord or Warchief. Here's his quotes, incidentally (I can remove them if DoubleNegative wants me to save them for the orc campaign or something but you never see this guy again or use him). Nothing special, but I did like his joke. Built Death to all who oppose the Horde! Selected For victory! What is your will? Command to me. Pissed You want to hear a joke? Sorry, I've got nothing. Moving Ready for battle. Yeah! Perfect. Good one. Attacking The ground shall run red with blood. Yeeeeaaaah. For the Horde! We ride! Let's ride! At any rate, of the enormous amount of changes War3 went through in it's development, the Footman and Paladin were actually basically unchanged, as far as anyone at Blizzard has let on, so that's about all the trivia I have for what we've seen. Tenebrais posted:Pretty sure this is true. This game would have had a demon faction that was cut early on, and the expansion got half way toward introducing a naga one but didn't follow through. The latter were never intended to be a full-fledged multiplayer race, from what I gather. The other race was supposed to be Goblins.* *There's a book called Stay Awhile and Listen about the creation of modern Blizzard, and in the book (plus interviews and such) there's a fair bit about Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft and general Blizzard history. It's a great book, and where I'm getting most of this beta information from, along with just bits I have remembered from the old days.  The beta info was pretty fascinating with what they had described, and these early levels of the campaign without a base are actually the closest there is left to it. The game was more like Sacrifice; You'd need to track enemies with your scouts, net them with your hunters, charge them with your knights and then send in your footmen to do the real damage. Not too many of each, though - Your hero's leadership stat would determine your unit cap. Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 04:53
|
|
|
Cuntellectual posted:
Interestingly, Orc Grunts have a cast animation, implying they might have had a spell at one point, it has a red ghosty thing coming out of them. Is there any information on what that would have been?
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 08:06
|
|
|
lobster22221 posted:Interestingly, Orc Grunts have a cast animation, implying they might have had a spell at one point, it has a red ghosty thing coming out of them. Is there any information on what that would have been? I'm guessing some minor bloodlust/rage thing?
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 10:07
|
|
|
Chapter VI: Blackrock and Roll Hello everyone and welcome back to Warcraft III. Today's map musings are regarding the Blackrock orcs found in northern Lordaeron. Traditionally, the Blackrock clan has considered their home to be Blackrock mountain, and incomprehensibly long distance to the south from here, about midway down the continent. In WoW, with its condensed distances for the sake of gameplay, it takes somewhere between 5 and 8 minutes to fly from Tarren Mill (the nearest outpost to where we are on the map) to the war camp right outside of Blackrock Mountain. Once realistic distances enter the picture, this is a journey that takes weeks and weeks to make on foot. It's like finding Colombian guerrilla fighters staging raids in Alberta... it's possible, but the chance is so far out of the realm of likelihood as to not even be worth considering. So I'm wondering why they're set up so far from home. There are plenty of humans down near where they're based out of. Some things will forever be a mystery, I suppose. Anyway, we're here today to break up their camp and kill them all. So let's get started!     I'm surprised Uther extended this courtesy to the orcs. He had to have known what would have happened.  : drat. These orcs will never surrender. : Then let's get in there and destroy the beasts! : Yes, Uther.: Now, if you're feeling up to it. I want you to lead the attack.: Me? Well, of course!: I'll remain here and ensure that none of the loathsome beasts threaten the camp.: I won't fail you...: I know you won't, lad. : I know you've never had much of a head for administrative affairs. So just leave the camp to me. In addition to leading the attack, your job will also be to raise our army.: Understood!: That was Arthas, lad. You'll be serving under him once you complete your training. I'll introduce you to him later. For now, you need to pay attention. : Yes, sir.All that's a long way of saying that this unnamed black and white comic book boy will be the player stand-in for this particular level. We'll learn more about him later, so don't worry too much about his identity yet. Uther is a friendly, AI driven level 10 Paladin whose only job is to patrol between both entrances of the base. He can handle defense pretty much on his own, but it's still a good idea to help out where we can. Also the objectives have to assume we completely skipped over the orc tutorial, and this is the first time we're doing a base building level. So for the last time we're told what buildings to construct. Unlike the previous level, there's no change once we get everything up and trained.  : Let's get to work! That gold isn't going to mine itself. : Yes milord. This picture isn't in the wrong aspect ratio, the pictured building is just at an incredibly awkward angle. : This is the lumber mill. Our peasants bring chopped lumber here for processing. With time we can develop more efficient methods of carrying the lumber, and even reinforce the very bricks our buildings are constructed from. Unlike the orcs, our lumber mill does not double as a smithery. We're not savages. : This building in the middle here is a Town Hall. It provides a stockpile of food for our troops, and lets us train the local peasantry to perform menial labor. Not every war camp in a battle necessarily needs one, but this is the command center from which you will issue orders in the future. So be sure that you always have one somewhere. Every army needs a base of operations, after all! : In times of crisis, you can also ring this bell to tell all of the local peasants to pick up their arms and form a militia. This should only be done under the most dire of circumstances, when the need for every available hand is at its greatest. The peasants can potentially overwhelm a few attackers, but ideally you'll always have someone staying behind to defend the camp. The militia will disband on its own after a few minutes, but you can also order them back yourself if the danger has passed.I don't believe I've ever used that button properly, and I probably never will. This educational video will tell you all you need to know about militia, though. Remember, every time you hear bells ringing in that video, it means the AI is trying to convert all of its peasants to militia. It should also go without saying that the peasants converted in this way will fall like dominoes under a coordinated assault.  : These towers provide us line of sight to nearby areas. It should be noted that these are scout towers, and not guard towers. They only provide us with line of sight. With some resources and time, we can convert them to guard towers that fire arrows at attackers. : Guard towers would be much more useful defensively. These need to be upgraded when we have spare resources. A handful of guard towers can deter all but the most determined of attacks. : This is an Altar of Kings. Sometimes the worst happens, and a great hero like Arthas or myself falls in battle. For a small fee, the priests at this altar can invoke the power of resurrection to bring us back. These altars can also be used to call great heroes into service if need be.I'm not sure there's a good way to write the "HEY IT RESURRECTS OUR DUDES" thing, so I'm just playing it straight. It's Warcraft anyway, the rules of life and death have always been about as loose as comic books. : That's all you need to know about the fundamentals of building a camp, lad. There's more buildings, of course, but you'll quickly be able to figure out what those do. So, do you feel up to taking over managing the camp for me?: Sure! Though hopefull you'll be keeping a watchful eye on me all the same.: You'll do fine. Base management and strategy is something that gets easier the more you do it.: Alright. To start off, let's get two more workers into that mine! We need gold and lots of it. : You! You're going to be floating around doing special projects. : We need a barracks first and foremost.: Off I go, then. : Arthas, an orc raiding party has been sighted at the northern edge of the camp!: I'm on my way! Be sure to save one for me. That glowy shield around Uther means he's activated divine shield. AI controlled paladins always do that as their very first action in any encounter. Doing so with Arthas is a terrible idea, because the engine treats it as a threat dump. So if Arthas goes invulnerable, all the computer controlled units will focus on someone far squishier instead. It has its uses, but I prefer to treat Arthas as a mobile healbot/tank combo. He also makes a fantastic base defender until you can go on the offensive.  Uther is pretty much the training wheels for the mission. He's max level with all of his abilities maxed out. This screenshot here has him healing Arthas to full after the minor skirmish ended.   : Two workers on lumber duty is not nearly enough for our needs. Let's get some more out here to help them. We need more wood!: Sir? The barracks is finished.: Excellent timing. : We need several farms down on the border of the southern forest.: All right. : Excellent, the barracks is finished.  : A few footmen will help relieve Uther's burden with camp defenses.Footmen require less food, and are cheaper to train than an orc grunt. I'm not 100% sure on the build time, as all the information on the Internet refers to changes made with The Frozen Throne expansion, and not many of those were backported to the Reign of Chaos campaign.  The game will let you queue up as many units as you like, as long as you can afford them. The cost for each unit is deducted from your treasury when you queue it up, but they don't take food until you start producing them. So in this case, we had enough leftover food to support a single footman, and then progress stalled because the next one capped us out. The barracks will remain stalled on unit production until we either cancel the queued footmen or build a farm to feed more troops. The farms we queued up a bit ago are actually visible behind the text, and it looks like the first one is almost finished. So this is a problem that will sort itself out momentarily. The game also gives us a hint here that we can have multiple peasants working on a building simultaneously to get them up faster. In other titles, doing this always uses more resources. This particular game is tightlipped about whether or not it does, but it would be worth the price regardless.  While we're dicking around with buildings, another orc warband comes by. These skirmishes aren't really meant to be an invasion force, just the AI sending by its dudes to occasionally hound us. By the time the next one rolls by, they'll be utterly trivial to stop.  Already the footmen are rolling off the assembly line to come help. Future missions typically aren't as "difficult" as this one, as most of them will be starting us with a small force that's big enough to discourage nosy neighbors while we set up infrastructure. Many missions even start us off with a prebuilt base!   : Ready for action! I came as quickly as I could, sir.: At ease, soldier. You just missed the party.: My apologies, sir.: Don't worry, you'll have plenty of opportunity to fight some orcs. We're on defense until we've got enough men to form an assault force.: Yes sir!: Let's get a few more men on the field. Anyone who bags an orc will receive a bounty!: A bounty? Is that wise, Arthas?: A purse of gold is a small price to pay for keeping our lands safe. Besides, it's the least we can do for them. Many of these men are survivors from Strahnbrad. : Uther, sir! You'll be pleased to hear that our men have started retrofitting the border towers with crossbow emplacements.: That's great! I'll pass word along to Arthas that once they finish, he can take his men out and start scouting for the orc base. With the sixth footman out, we finish the first main quest.   : Yes, I've heard this rhetoric before. You orcs will never learn!Uther attacks the Blademaster.  : It was only a mirror image. drat it, what are these curs up to?  : The hour of doom approaches! Let this paltry sacrifice appease our demon masters! The orc interrupts the footman while he's talking.  And then sacrifices the rest of the unlucky captives. : Slay the orcs! SLAY THEM ALL! We've got a sidequest out there to find, and it's one we definitely want to do. Unlike the previous sidequests, this one actually gives a worthwhile reward.  With the guard towers done, let's take the footmen out scouting. We don't have to go very far to find what we're looking for.  This is literally just outside our base. You can even see the edges of this makeshift camp from the previous screenshot. We should have come here a lot earlier, truth be told.  : Well met, good human! Have you come to join the hunt?: What are you dwarves hunting in this region?: We're hunting black drakes. It's said that drakes' blood can bestow fiery enchantments upon weapons.: The fiery enchantment you seek could prove useful.: The name of the beast we're hunting is Searinox. With your aid, the monster won't stand a chance! After the briefing, the blacksmith and all the dwarves except the questgiver turn over to our side. So now we just got a free blacksmith and several powerful ranged units! Not too bad. : Uther, I found some dwarves camped nearby.: Is that so?: Yes. They're hunting dragons.: That's nice.: Is everything alright?: Oh nothing much. Just fighting off some orcs. By myself. Because you took all our troops with you into the wilderness.: I'll be right over!  The help popup there tells us about riflemen. They're expensive to produce, but we'll be using them as much as we use footmen to be honest. No army is properly built until it has some ranged units providing support from behind. Like the tooltip says, they're very effective against airborne enemies. They're produced from the barracks, and require the presence of a blacksmith to even make in the first place. Presumably because their guns can only be produced by the engineers employed there.  Riflemen deal piercing damage. There's this whole pseudo weapon triangle thing going on with certain weapon types dealing more or less damage against certain types of armor. But, this is the normal mode campaign, so the murderball trumps most conventional strategies. To be fair, when I build a murderball, I build a balanced one. Typically I like to have every type of damage present in some form or another. Also as you can imagine, this raid ends poorly for the orcs. They're caught in something of a pincer with Uther and the guard towers on one side, and Arthas' troops on the other. In the combat, Arthas gains another level and I take level 2 Devotion Aura. That's an extra 3 defense per unit near Arthas!  : Sir, we have a second barracks starting construction.: Excellent forethought, son. When it's finished, I would like you to have the drill sergeants start training some riflemen to help Arthas. There's also a dwarven smithy not too far away from the camp. Arthas has established a relationship with them, and I would like you to contract them to improve our troops' equipment.: I'll send a runner right away.    This second barracks breaks Uther's incredibly strict pathfinding AI. Normally units would just move around the barracks, but Uther apparently has a series of waypoints he uses, and that barracks was under one of them. So for the rest of the mission, he patrols around the outside perimeter of the base instead of through it.  Also, in the future I won't bother showing the same unit upgrades until the next tier of them is unlocked.   : This is the beast's lair. We'll need to tread carefully. : We're not likely to see anything on the ground.: You men, return to the camp and help Uther defend it.: Yes sir! The orcs are nothing if not predictable. But they're surrounded again, and Uther is already on his way.   While queuing up riflemen, we finally enter Low Upkeep for the first time. So now 30% of all the gold we earn vanishes completely to "upkeep costs."  Even better, it comes while we're strapped for cash from upgrades and new units. On the upside, our army has never been stronger!  Another assault comes while building some riflemen. Yawn. The orcs aren't even remotely a threat anymore. The raiding party all dies before any of the dwarves see action. : Arthas has need of your rifles in the nearby dragon's lair, good dwarves.: We're on our way! : Welcome to the hunt! There's plenty of dragons to go around.Ten dwarven riflemen, as it turns out, was massively overkill. Arthas is largely there to give the dragons a big juicy target to hit while the dwarves shoot them out of the sky.    : You dare challenge me? You mortals become more reckless with every generation! I'm not sure what the black dragon here is spitting at the dwarves. It's not green fire, as that is an incredibly specific thing, and black dragons in warcraft traditionally have just breathed regular fire.  : Let's bring this heart back to the dwarves. : Now, I will reforge your weapons to strike with searing heat!  Yessss! As long as Arthas carries this orb with him, he'll always deal a bunch of bonus damage. In expansion maps, carrying this item also means the hero can attack airborne enemies. I don't believe that change was backported, but even so it's something we'll be carrying around for the rest of the campaign. The splash damage alone makes Arthas that much more powerful.  : I'm tired of these constant attacks from the orcs. They need to be stopped. The forces we have now are more than enough.: Agreed.: I'm going to split up our forces into two groups, and we're going to find and destroy the orcs' camp.  : You men, you're with me. All of the riflemen are in the second group. Follow us at a distance and lay down a field of fire on anything that moves.: Understood, lad. Massive overkill, but it's satisfying all the same.  : You four, find Arthas in the wilderness and reinforce his group. He should be due north. Just follow the sound of gunfire if you get lost. : Let's get four more towers up just in case. We could have surprise guests at any moment, and we don't have any defenders. Just randomly out in the wilderness we find a couple of orcs hanging out. We're actually not very far from their war camp.  : If there was an entrance to the orcs' camp, this is it. Y'see those signs? That's the insigina of the Blackrock clan. Surprising to see them so far north.: If we destroy that camp, we'll alleviate a lot of pressure on Uther. This camp is the most function over form thing imaginable. It only has unit producing structures and pig farms to facilitate the creation of new ones. I'm pretty sure I could shut down their ability to do anything by just destroying the farms, but that's not something Arthas would do. : Slay them all, and burn the camp! There are a surprising number of defenders, but not nearly enough to repel the invasion force we've built.  Once the defenders are dead, it's just the long process of destroying every building.  This lone farm is all that remains of the war camp. So we've completely shut down the raids against our base permanently. So now that we're free to do as we please with zero repercussions, let's explore. There's actually hidden stuff all over this map, but most of it is tedious as hell to get to.  : M-murlocs? Here? They must have an encampment nearby...  Claws of Attack +3 do exactly what you might imagine. They're yet another thing we're gonna be carrying on Arthas for a while to come.  Do you see all this? This is a path to one of the hidden items.  Let me show you what I mean. First I need to save, because I'm going to do a naughty thing.  If you press Enter you bring up the message box. Here you can type a specific string of characters, like iseedeadpeople, to get a specific effect. In this case...  Well, take a wild guess. Neutral units and structures are a very dark blue color that blends in well with the black of the fog of war. But directly north of the little box on the minimap is one such neutral group. There's another group on the far right side of the map, but their prize is worthless to us. So we won't be pursuing it.    Do you see what I mean about them being tedious as hell to get to? We have to clear through all of those trees, and this is before the campaign deigns to give us a siege weapon. So we have to send some peasants up here to clear each tree individually. I should mention that my recording for this level is 48 minutes long. We're just now at the 24 minute mark. Most of the rest of the level is very tediously clearing to these ogres to get their prize. But first...  Let's load to before I cheated. Any idiot can cheat in this game and win. There's no fun if you do it that way. So please understand that was just to 1) verify that there was actually a hidden item where I thought there was, and 2) to show off the path we have to clear.  And now we're back to before. So let's start clearing a path...  To start off, the two builder peasants need to come up to where the murlocs used to live.  This path over north of Searinox's lair leads to the other hidden treasure on the map, the one we're not going to get. It's an item that negates magic in an area, but it only has a couple charges, so it's not as useful as a stat boost.  I mentioned in the previous base building update that workers can attack trees. Doing so completely wastes the resource, but it clears it out of the way. It also takes just as long as chopping it down and using the resource. There is almost never a reason or need to do it. This map is pretty much the lone exception to that rule. In, I'm pretty sure, most other cases where you need to clear trees, you can just use siege weaponry to destroy a bunch at once. It takes a fraction of the time. With these two peasants attacking the trees, we now just... wait. For a very. Long. Time.  Jumping ahead four minutes, the peasants have made some headway, but the majority of the work is still ahead.  Four more minutes later, we can finally start doing this efficiently. Gonna drop a lumber mill here and then send the four peasants chopping wood in the base to come help. Between the six of them they'll have it sorted out The lumber mill at least lets them move automatically without me having to babysit them.  This is almost nine minutes after first setting down this dumbass path.  Fourteen minutes after starting, the path is largely clear. Just need to clear out a few more trees.  Finally, almost twenty minutes after starting this tedious process, the last tree is felled and I can move the troops in.  It is a narrow path, so it takes a few minutes. Also at some point the gold mine in the base ran dry and collapsed. But we're so flush with cash now, and so hilariously overprepared for the end of the mission, that it doesn't matter. For some reason I had the bright idea to have all my troops lay a trap for the ogres. Arthas is gonna run in and smack one with his hammer, and then everyone is gonna jump in as he runs back.  It... more or less works.  Midway through the melee, one of the ogres decides he needs a nap and runs back to go to sleep. It goes as well as you'd expect. So what's our reward for doing all this?  An item that boosts Arthas' primary attack stat by 3 points. Was it worth it? Hell no! That's nearly half an hour of my life that I'm never getting back dedicated to chopping down those trees. This update has run super lengthy, so let's just cut to the chase.  The warlock camp entrance is right beside the orc war camp entrance. There's a token amount of guards here, but nothing that we need to worry with.  All these magical obelisks look impressive, I'll give them that.  But in the end, it's 20 units against Jubei'thos the Orc Blademaster.   Fun fact, when a hero dies you can watch their spirit ascend to the afterlife.  : I don't know Uther. The orcs were sacrificing townsfolk. I think they were trying to summon demons.: Have faith, lad. These orcs are trying to hold on to dying tradition. We defeated their demons a long time ago. Let's head home. It's been a long day.: There's someone I'd like to introduce you to. I've been training an assistant for you. Someone to handle administrative duties for you, to allow you to focus on your battle plan. Arthas, I'd like you to meet Thassarian...     I might have to start cutting these update in half in the future. This entire thing was 108 screenshots, not counting portraits. It took me like 11 hours to get this typed up and screenshotted. NEXT TIME: Jaina's Meeting & Ravages of the Plague
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 10:50
|
|
|
Line time! Ready lines are used by units when they're produced. What lines are used when they're initially selected. Yes lines are used when they're given a move order. Attack lines are used when they're given an attack order. Warcry is used randomly for Attack when attacking hero characters. (Thanks to Drakenel for the correction) Pissed is what you get when you keep clicking a unit and it exhausts the What lines. Special is for builder units, and for certain special units, e.g. Uther, who is an AI-controlled character. Global lines are spoken aloud during gameplay. I waited until we had a base to set these down. These are voiced by the Knight.
Peasants: Ready
What
Yes
Attack
Warcry
Pissed
Special
Uther the Lightbringer: What
Yes
Attack
Warcry
Pissed
Special
Rifleman: Ready
What
Yes
Attack
Warcry
Pissed
painedforever fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Apr 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 11:54
|
|
|
Hi, Thassarian. It's a fun callback that these orcs still use pig farms while Thrall's Horde have moved on to using the burrows. Though the spearthrowers are woefully out of place. I don't think it's actually possible for Uther to die from the orc attacks. They come too infrequently and too lightly to handle him. If you do something stupid like spend hours doing nothing the orcs will eventually level your base behind him though. Uther's overly numerous patrol triggers are probably in place so you can't do something silly like force him to patrol into the orc base. Or maybe it's a weird insistence on over complication that props up a lot in the triggers. McTimmy fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 12:42
|
|
|
Even stranger about the Blackrocks being here, Blackrock Mountain as of WoW is on the other side of dwarf lands, so these guys somehow made it past the entirety of the dwarf and gnome kingdoms. Eh, they've got warlocks, I'll write them off as having teleported over.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 14:36
|
|
|
Something I think is worth noting is unlike a fair chunk of the voice actors in Warcraft III, Uther is voiced by someone who's been in the business for a good while! His voice actor is one Michael McConnohie, who has voiced Uther since he was anything more than the generic knight voice from Warcraft II, from this game all the way to Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm in the present time. He also plays a few bit roles here and there in other Blizzard games, and for my money is always one of the standout performers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 14:54
|
|
|
Searinox is spitting acid attacks. You'll see that on a few other units, but that's what it's supposed to be, not some kind of fire.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 15:10
|
|
|
I would assume these Blackrock orcs are left over from the second war, either didn't join Thrall after escaping internment or never got rounded up in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 15:45
|
|
|
It should be noted that each race has unique building mechanics. For humans, multiple units can work on the same building, speeding development time but costing gold/lumber per second. For orcs(I don't think it is really a spoiler to say that we will be playing as orcs is it? I can edit this part out if needed) The peon is hidden from the game, preventing enemies from killing it while a building is under construction.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 16:47
|
|
|
Tenebrais posted:I would assume these Blackrock orcs are left over from the second war, either didn't join Thrall after escaping internment or never got rounded up in the first place. Correctamundo. The Alliance was not perfect in handling all that business.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 18:49
|
|
|
That's certainly one way to hide a secret.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 18:50
|
|
|
Militia are basically useless in the campaign, since you always have a high level hero if nothing else, but they`re amazing in melee. They run faster so you can work on far away expansions faster, they help you start farming neutral creeps faster than any of the other races, and of course, can turn the tide of an attack, especially (and appropriately) with the help of a Paladin. How good are Militia? The highest armor any orc unit can achieve is 9, which approximately reduces the damage they take by a little under a third. Militia can reach 15. They'll never be an army unto themselves, but don't underestimate them. On a peasent related note, I don't recall of RoC has this, but in TFT you can just have Peasents, Peons, and [REDACTED] melee attack trees to clear them, but they won't gather any lumber. e: Oh you mentioned that. oops. lobster22221 posted:Interestingly, Orc Grunts have a cast animation, implying they might have had a spell at one point, it has a red ghosty thing coming out of them. Is there any information on what that would have been? Yup! They had a berserk spell that made them HUGE (concept art showed them like 4x in size) with a big damage/attack speed buff but they took a lot more damage. A similar effect - Increased damage, though not size - was added as one of the Orc's racial abilities in World of Warcraft. I figured I'd hold off on Orc trivia until the Orc campaign, but since we saw Headhunters and Grunts during the prologue, I guess I'll also add that apparently the plot element of the trolls being island trolls was added late in development; Even the manual still states they're "disenfranchised trolls from Northren Lordaeron". On that note, there's also no reason for the Blackrock orcs to have island trolls with them. Blizzard!  The orcs here use pig farms, because this stage was presumably done before the prologue; Originally Orcs used pig farms, which were like human farms that gave more food with higher cost and HP. However, Blizzard decided they wanted each race to have a unique defence mechanic along the lines of human Militia, so orcs got burrows instead. You'd think the Blackrock clan was named after Blackrock mountain, which is odd, because Blackrock Mountain is in Azeroth, not on Draenor, where the orcs are from, right? Well no. Actually the Orcs just happen to come from another Blackrock mountain, in Draenor. Blizzard. Lastly, on the note of the dragon, black dragons in this game spit acid. They never do so in any other Warcraft game. Blizzard? 
Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 18:52
|
|
Tenebrais posted:I would assume these Blackrock orcs are left over from the second war, either didn't join Thrall after escaping internment or never got rounded up in the first place. Yup, this is the most likely explanation. Back during the Second War, Doomhammer managed to advance far enough that he was actually laying siege to Lordaeron’s capital city. Just as he was preparing for that final battle, he received news that Gul’dan had turned traitor, and had taken the majority of the Horde’s spellcasters with him. Doomhammer chose to finally take justice on Gul’dan for all of the poo poo he’d pulled over the years by sending a solid chunk of his remaining army to chase after him... which wound up being the biggest tactical blunder of the war for several reasons: 1) He sent out some of his most elite forces, many of whom were killed on the island Gul’dan had raised from the ocean floor. 2) Gul’dan turned out to be a self-disposing threat, as he got himself and most of his followers killed by the defenses of a particular structure on the island. 3) On their return voyage, their ships were intercepted and routed by the Alliance’s navy, which decimated Doomhammer’s forces. When the defenders of the capital proved too resilient, and realizing that his reinforcements weren’t coming, Doomhammer made the call for a total retreat of all of his forces towards their stronghold of Blackrock Mountain... which was over half a continent away. Presumably, the orcs Arthas & co. just faced either never got the memo, or just didn’t care, considering their overt demon-worshipping.
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 19:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:46 |
|
|
Cuntellectual posted:You'd think the Blackrock clan was named after Blackrock mountain, which is odd, because Blackrock Mountain is in Azeroth, not on Draenor, where the orcs are from, right? Well no. Actually the Orcs just happen to come from another Blackrock mountain, in Draenor. Blizzard.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 20:05
|
|
