Nostalgia Day: Warcraft Maps

Ten years ago, on June 1, 2004, the custom Warcraft III map, Footmen Frenzy v2.0 was released. Originally created by Fox^1, development eventually took on a very open-sourcey turn with multiple mapmakers, rapid releases, and community feedback. For a few months, I was heavily involved in development, although my more important role was to write documentation, battle reports, and keep track of all the random tweaks in order to write Patch Notes. My main technical contribution to the map was a trigger-based spell called "Call of the Gods", which never worked quite right and resulted in a neverending list of bugs to fix as the months went by.

I eventually did get better at mapmaking, and went on to create several maps that were more technically competent, if not widely played:

• Micro Frenzy: Build a little army, and then fight your opponents in turn in an arena, to see who has better micromanagement skills.


• Burrow Command: Based on the ancient Starcraft map, Bunker Command, conquer little bunkers all over the map to amass a bigger army.


• Caravan Assault: Competing armies battle to drive a caravan shipment back to their base.


• Onslaught: Channel a beam of light across the battlefield to your enemy's altar. It can only be destroyed when the beam of light is uninterrupted.

Onslaught was my magnum opus, replete with JASS-based programming for the complicated triggers, but it wasn't quite simple enough to teach public players on battle.net. Then, 14 days later, I purchased World of Warcraft and stopped making (and playing) Warcraft maps forever.