How to make your map popular?

I am working on a Fellowship of the Rings RPG for awhile now and am almost finished. This is my first WC3 Map, but it isn't some newb map. :\ Most people that play it think it is pretty fun. I was wondering if anyone could tell me some tips to make my map popular. :(

Sell your soul to the Guinsoo? :P Srry but really theres no definete way, you got 2 options

A) Bend your map to the twisted whims of the greater population of bnet, which will prob end up destroying everything you intended the map to be.

B) Make sure its a fun and well made map, maybe you'll get lucky

Custom things like
items
heroes
units
skills
special effects

There is always people that like that

Never give up, and form a council that decides what changes are needed. That's how I edit my map, and it works great.

Put it up for download on all War3 sites you can find.
Make a seperate site for it yourself, to which you place the link in your map's credits/starting info.
Host it 7 days of the week, 24 hours a day.

- Don't put a cinematic longer than 10 seconds after the map loads.

- Small map size. Around 1mb MAX.

If people think your map is fun, it'll eventually get around. There are lots of people who are willing to host a good map. The problems is most of these people are stuck behind a firewall/router and they don't know or can't open up the appropriate ports.

What you can do though is host DL ONLY games so that people can just dl them. If they really want to, they can host it themselves and other people can join. All you need for this is the appropriate ports opened and your own comp that you can walk away from, or do other stuff while hosting. Just remember that this method only distributes a map. They might just dl it and never even touch it, or play it and not like it.

If they do like the map, it will distribute through "word of mouth", which is basically people telling other people about your map and showing them how awesome it is. Just keep at it and a lot of people will know about your map and like it! :)

I have a cinematic at start, but you can skip it by pressing escape. I used to have a lot more cinematics, but I found most people left because of them so I used transmissions instead.

Unfortunatly this one is the most successful...since good maps get filled with idiots/bitches screwing it up (mostly on purpose)....

if you have anything groundbreaking or unique in your map, that others would love to input in their own map / change your...

let me put it differently... if yours is a potential DOTA.

PROTECT IT... it doesnt matter if you are completely dead set against it and that you would rather rot in hell... save the gaming/mapping community a massive hemorage.

if you want your content to be open for all, make a distrobution map that features what ever unique content your map features so that it is usable for other peoples maps / future maps but will protect try-hard and wanna-be copies being thrown all over the net like confetti.



basically, protect it so there arent a crap load of altered versions... if you want to distribute any unique content for mappers/mapping noobs etc. make a distro map with them on it.

Yeah, most people just like to get right into the action.


The only reason to protect a map I find, is because it makes the map size smaller.

If you do end up putting a lengthy cinematic make sure the player can skip it, its only kool like 1 time.

Edit: Don't Flame me... I just now saw sumone already mentioned this...

that helps to.

OOC: Wow, thats one of the fastest replies I've ever seen....