I am worried no one will like my map...

Hi there...
Basicly, I am making a Dungeon sort of map, you play 10 people and fight vs creeps and scripted bosses. The design is based of the Zul'Aman raid instance in WoW.

However I just read a thread bashing some poor guy to pieces for making a WoW map. I don't make a WoW map because I am to lazy to think up something original, actually I was like totally excited when I came up with the idea, I would make he bosses scripted exactly like they was in real WoW etc. and all the spells. Wow! It's gonna be awesome I thought. And I thought it would be really challenging to make also.

However I am really worried noone will be interested because of
1) It is a WoW map (GO PLAY THE REAL GAEM COS RIPPOFFS ARE UNORIGINAL PPL DONT WANNA PLAY RIPPOFFS THEY CAN PLAY THE REAL WOW GAEM)
2) It requires 10 players that stays all the way. (if more than 1 people leaves the rest is doomed)
3) it might be hard to learn to play a wow class when handed to you with 7 spells and no more instructions than "you heal" or "you deal damage" or "you tank the creeps" (though I nerfed the difficulty of all encounters A LOT, all bosses should go down on first or second attempt)

However I've worked avout 4 months with it and I dont want all that work to be for nothing. I sat with reference images and everything to get the enviroment and texturing to be to scale and accurate with how the zone looks in WoW.

I put a lot of effort and work into it (and I am not even done yet) but now I just feel everyone will bash it to pieces for being a "WoW rippoff" and no-one will be interested...

Should I complete it or just leave it?? I dont know what to do in this situation...

your number one priority should be making a map that you can enjoy, be it alone or with friends. Dont worry so much about what other people think.

The main reason i could think of why i atleast would "burn" someone for making a wow map is if they would use lots of exports from world of warcraft, wich is usually kind of unnescesary, and the wc3 engine wasnt build to handle the increased detail in wow models, making the map prone to latacy issues.

No matter what map you make, there should ALWAYS be one person who likes it -- you. The important thing is to have faith in your own map. If you don't like it, chances are nobody will.

Try not to let other people's opinions affect you. Just because some say they don't like a certain type of map, does not mean they will not like yours. The power is in your hands. Here's your chance to make a good one.

When basing the map on an original material, you should think of questions like "what exactly makes the original material fun?", "will that fun transfer well into war3?" and "what changes/innovations do I need to make in order to capture that fun in war3's gameplay?"

Here are some of my suggestions:
-Do not import everything. War3 resource should be adequate in making a Zul'Aman themed map. Import resource where it matters, such as for spell icon, boss ecnounters, things players take a direct notice.

-It does not have to have a 10-player requirement. Use some sort of dynamic difficulty setting to make it as epic, intensive and fun for 4 players as it is for 10, and if a player leaves, the computer can take over, etc. Be flexible.

-The WoW class dynamic may not work well in this case. Try to make each class more independent of each other, but still retain the thrill and satisfaction of co-op in WoW. Emphasize on teamwork by clever Hero/level/Encounter design, instead of the ill-flavored "Tank-Healer-DPS" model.

-Do not directly copy WoW class skills. Many of them feel dry and are just plain boring in a war3 setting. Do some changes (heavy if needed) to make each spell simple yet interesting, people should just get an idea of how to play, by looking at the spell tooltips, and let them learn from there.

-Make it fast paced. Not many people like to sit through 3 - 4 hours in a multiplayer map even it has the most awesome terrains and the most addictive gameplay.

-Polishing. You really wanna put effort in this one.

I think war3 has it unique charm in its gameplay which you should not ditch when making a WoW themed map. Good luck with your map and I hope you really finish it! (That is the first/most important step :)

It doesn't need to be a copy of the original thing in WoW. Make it how you want - in a way that would be more enjoyable in they war3 engine (as previous posters have said)

Mainly these two points. As you said, one player leaves = everyone is screwed? I mean seriously, you already know people are going to try leaving just to have fun fucking everybody else over. Try to make the enemies easier if less people or whatever. GL on your map though.

try making a system that scales mob strength based on number of players.

Ever heard of Schrödinger's Cat?

Hmm problem with changing strength after number of players is that enemy spells will still deal same damage etc (they are tuned to the "real" values of WoW) and some of them are very complex and it will make a HUGE trigger to make one if there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 players-in-the-map versions of the spell.

However since I really enjoy and love Zul'Aman in WoW I wanted to make a version for WC3 that is as faithful as possible when it comes to encounter design (i sat 2 weeks experimenting with electrical storm before doing a simplified [graphically] version and I am still not satisfied) and terrain (I extracted the minimap from wow and terrained with that as a measuremeant so everything is almost exactly to scale).

However I will make player spells more intuitive by writing my own tooltops and add some "quickglance" easy-to-read information to each spell so you basicly know what you are doing from the beginning.

No what is that? I hope you are not trolling...

It means that you won't know the response to your map until you actually release it to the public.

Do yourself a favour and wiki it.

You could store a coefficient for spell damage, such as (Current Players / 10.00) and then multiply this by the enemies' spell damage in the trigger. I don't know. Just an idea.

create 10 spell levels.

Change creep max hp %?

Change creep spawn count?

Global Aura reducing damage?

have unused heroes controlled by AI maybe? could allow for singleplayer stuff as well as compensate for leavers.

As far as judging how people will respond to your map, why not post a few screenshots in the gallery? A little advertising never hurt ;)

If you enjoy it so much, why don't you play it there? That's the main question that you should ask yourself, because anyone who might like playing a map like this is also going to be asking themselves that.

As people have pointed out, if you try to make it as faithful as possible you have already failed. There's no way you can top the original within the limits of wc3; you can however try to make a good wc3 experience, but that almost always requires some adaptation of the original material.

Because no one wants an undergeared Elemental SHaman in the instance, and PuGs always fail, so I have played Nalorakk millions of times, Akilzon thousands of times, halazzi and janalai a dozen times together. Wiped once on hexlord and killed Zuljin on another acc.

It is not enough, I love the place and decided to make a faithful WC3 version instead.

There are a lot of people who never will progress beyond Karazhan, Gruul and Magtheridon. They will wipe a lot in ZA, but never clear the place.