Thoughts on "race mods" and WC3 campaign dynamics.

So, relatively new to the boards..

I've noticed more than a few posts on "race mods"; specifically, people interested in expanding the Pandaren and/or Naga races into their own faction.

Seems to me, though, that's kind of the wrong way to go about it...

Unlike StarCraft or most other RTS games, WarCraft doesn't really have "races" in the sense of,

Q: What do you play?
A: Humans/Protoss/Killer Robots/Wombats/et cetera

..what it has, are Affiliations or Factions.

You're not just playing the Humans, you're playing the Alliance, which is made up of humans, of course.. but also elves (priests, spell breakers, the Blood Elf hero) and dwarves.

The horde has its orcs.. and ogres, trolls, tauren, goblins..

Night Elves are pretty much self-contained, I'll grant you that... but they have added Mountain Giants and Faery Dragons with the expansion, now.

Undead has both typical undead corpse things, but it also has the Nerubians, and they have the Demon hero. Even a few humans in the guise of the Acolytes.


So.. rather than try and expand the pandaren or naga into full-fledged factions all on their own, it seems like it'd make more sense to either attach them to a pre-existing faction, or create a new one.

The Pandaren Empire seems like it could mesh fairly well with the Horde or the Night Elves, but would obviously be opposed to the Alliance (too much reliance on arcane magic) and the Scourge (duh!).

Or, instead of just choosing the Horde or the Sentinels to stick the PE with.. instead, create a few 'Pandaren Embassy' buildings that those two factions can build. Not full-fledged members, but you can still call on their soldiers.

Naga could find themselves allied with the Alliance, or as part of a new faction composed of the Alliance, the Blood Elves who weren't defeated at Icecrown, and maybe some of Sylvie's free-undead in the Plaguelands.

Anyway, food for thought. It would allow people a much more managable task of creating a handful of units and buildings that work well with existing factions, rather than trying to create something from scratch. Nothing wrong with that, but I think we can agree that such projects rarely finish, or even show noticable progress.

And it'd make -great- campaign material. the Horde sets out from Durotan for the island of Hiji, home to the Pandaren Empire, seeking to gain aid in their battle to reclaim parts of southern Lorderaron..

I agree. Go figures emote_sweat

Anyway, as I was setting out to create my campaign, I wanted to do a High Elf only campaign. Right now I'm standing with Blood Elf, High Elf and Wood Elf fractions of High Elves, Stratholme and Lordaeron Humans,... each with more or less human building design, but each with its own units, buildings, spells,... The only stand-alone faction are Forest Trolls (and possibly Dwarves, if I'll put Khaz Modan in the story), based on what we can learn from their houses, other Troll factions, etc.

EDIT: A good campaign is based on a good story anyway :)

"A good campaign is based on a good story anyway."

True. Very true. In our project, we have a FULL race mod... although ours is a faction mod even more than warcraft. One of the races (The Shadow) is mostly monsters but has humans in it, and the other three are different factions of humans. (This meets with the Wheel of Time storyline, for those who are familiar with it.) Anyway, if you want a designing challenge, go design four races from scratch, that's all I've got to say. It makes you respect Warcraft II a bit more, because despite the fact that both races were almost exactly the same, we have discovered that it can be HARD to differentiate two races that are a lot alike.

For instance, the Shadow and the White Tower (The White Tower is a human faction made up of female casters and male soldiers that they've magically bonded with) are VERY different from all other races. Manetheren and the Borderlands, though (just two human factions made from some of the more military countries of the Trolloc Wars) are a LOT alike, when you think about it. Little-to-no magic, a strong military, etc. So it was QUITE difficult to make the two of them be very different from each other. The answer came in giving them a wide variety of defensive buildings, and making the majority of their units different forms of light, very quick calvary. *shrugs* Anyway. I've kind of hijacked this thread by going off on a tangent, so I'm going to give it back by wishing the both of you good luck in your race mods.

Heh. I don't think I'm planning on any kind of mod, or even some maps right now. Might load up 3DS and toy with some model-making.. but from what I understand, there isn't a working exporter, so I wouldn't be able to even use the new models.

Main thrust of the thread was just to suggest that those who might be working on these huge "totally new race" things to maybe look at it from another angle. =) Go for new/integrated factions rather than an entire race and culture.

The naga and living nerubians might ally with Kael's blood elves, for instance, fighting a guerilla war with the Scourge for awhile before trying to regain land in Lorderaron. Maybe they'd try and re-energise the Sunwell? Or create a new Well? Ponder, ponder..

Hey! Don't give my campaign's story public! Heh, it's not really the story, but my campaign does have to do with purification of Sunwell and liberation of Silvermoon. Well, at least that's one possible ending (nonlinear campaign :)), but I don't want to tell you too much. Let a couple of surprises stay for you to discover :)

I disagree with your faction assessment. Their are subraces, like the Trolls, Elves, Dwarves and Nerubians, but keep in mind that they are a small part of the races they serve. The naga are not a subrace, but their own independent side, granted, smaller than Orc, Human, Night Elf or Undead, but I found I actually liked playing the Naga more than any of the other sides. All they are missing is a few buildings(Item Shop is an example). Heros, and a few additional units. They could also use their own music score.

As for the Panderan, I have never heard of Panderan having their own buildings or units, other than the Brewmaster and a couple of creep units.