Welcome to the Rise Of Winterchill Homepage!
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Current Version: RoW_56d.w3x / RoW_56e.w3x
Stable Version: RoW_55n.w3x / RoW_55q.w3x / RoW_55r.w3x
Changelog
DOWNLOAD: The Hive Workshop
SCREENSHOTS: 20th October 2009
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Introduction:
Rise of Winterchill (RoW) is a custom scenario for Warcraft III in the AoS genre (which includes DotA, among other popular maps). It is under casual development by Softmints. This site assumes a background in Warcraft III, so any wayward visitors may find themselves drowning in obscure and excessive jargon. This wiki is generally incomplete/inaccurate/outdated/underinformative; no-one will accept responsibility for anything misleading on it, and you are advised to refer to the map itself for any specific details.
For those who know things about Warcraft, RoW does a few new things for an AoS. The main points are grouped below:
Quick Features:
- Twenty-four completely original characters to fight with; though some are missing an ability.
- Various systems to make choosing/finding items very easy for new players.
- The 'last hitting' metagame is discouraged, allowing players to fight less tediously for resources through creep camps, coins, and killing each other.
- Minimal unavoidable stuns and instant unit-targeted abilities: instead there is a large emphasis on timing, aiming, experience, and effort.
The Playable Characters aspire to provide a variety of enjoyable and different playstyles, which reward player skill. Unavoidable, easy-to-use abilities such as Storm Bolt are kept to a minimum, as are complete disables such as stuns. Ability effects vary based on 'stats': Agility, Intelligence and Strength being the main three. If the items you buy focus on Strength, then the aspects of your abilities which depend on Strength (such as range, damage, knockback, etc.) will be improved. I consider this amount of customisation healthy.
Resources come in from a few routes:
- A trickle of gold arrives over time (somewhere around 1/second), though this is insignificant unless you're a few coins away from whatever item.
- The troops on the lanes give a modest 9-12 gold to their killer, along with a steady amount of experience to nearby players. 'Last hitting' in this way is available, but generally considered a complete waste of effort.
- The troops also have a 20% chance to drop a coin when they die, regardless of who killed them. Coins are worth 30 gold, and are picked up at melee range, but they disappear within a few seconds, so it's a race to grab them.
- Killing enemy players gives a nice bonus of 100 + 4% of the total value of all the items they're holding. This bounty will be split evenly between all participants of the killing. Also, experience is provided: more if the dead enemy was of a higher level then the killer, and less if the enemy was of a lower level.
- Creep camps, located near the centre of the terrain, are the most important source of income, if the least reliable. They have very high gold bounties which are split between the entire killer's team, while the full experience reward is bestowed on all nearby players (encouraging players to fight them in groups). However, once a creep has been damaged (or damages a player), that player is considered 'Engaged', and takes double damage from every other damage source (not creeps) in the game! This makes 'farming' the camps very risky, as ambushing and killing an 'Engaged' player is very easy and profitable. Once all the creeps in a camp have died, a new stronger batch will respawn after 40 seconds. This happens up to 4 times per camp, and the bonuses get higher with each batch.
- Towers give a massive gold bonus when killed: 2000 for outposts and 3000 for bases to be split between the killing team. Losing towers also means losing sight of the entrance to the team-controlled creep camps.
Items are of course a significant feature, as they provide the opportunity for one team to eventually win. There is a generous array of items on offer, with complete information about them included in the map: housed in a special interface. Details such as costs, recipe components, and stacking information (particularly for % based effects) are listed, to the point where this wiki (or any external site) is pretty much pointless. New players have exactly the same information available as experienced players, and will never have to rely on external sites or rote learning. If you make a mistake, (in 0.51e+), items will be refunded for their full price if they haven't left the fountain area yet.
One of the best things about item shopping is the revolutionary -i command. Just type -i <itemname> and the game will buy it for you. So -i boots of speed will buy exactly those. If you can't afford it, the game tells you how much you need. If you're not near the shop, it will be kept 'on the counter' for you, and no-one can steal it. You can even type shortcuts such as -i str for a strength item, or -i speed for a movement speed item. The shortcuts are highlighted in orange wherever the item's name appears, making this extra easy.
Recipes (when several weak items can be combined into a stronger one) are bought as 'bowls', which can be clicked to complete the item. If you don't have all the components handy, the game checks if you have enough gold, and if you do, it'll spend the gold and complete the item anyway. This works even if you only have some components, so combined with -i, you'll never have to spend 5 minutes trawling through 10 shops to get the items you were looking for. There is only one items menu, so you won't have to run halfway across the map to finish an item any more.
This is as intuitive as it gets, and as a bonus, the items are versatile enough that generally, every hero can get every item without it being a complete waste due to stacking issues. New players, you have nothing to fear.
The terrain is pretty unexciting and ugly at the moment. It's built around function: if units are knockbacked into trees, they take hefty extra damage, so that explains the abundance of trees. The lanes are currently symmetrical, and trying to make a forest look naturally that way was never going to work. There is a new asymmetrical terrain on the drawing board, but it is unlikely to be implemented due to balance/time necessary.
Background:
RoW is the successor to Softmints' old project, DotA Outland. Some content has been carried forward, but most importantly the style in which it was made. Outland was never a success in terms of bugs, balance, or efficient coding, but many people loved it all the same, and it served as a great learning experience.
Actions:
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Download from: The Hive Workshop (Recommended)
Download from: IncGamers
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If you wish to request access to this wiki, please contact me on the forums.
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Rise of Winterchill is free for anyone to play. It is not free to be redistributed commercially (that includes any website with advertising or any form of making profit), to be altered, or to have any of its content copied or used in any manner without explicit permission from Softmints. If you want to contact me, there are some forums linked to above.
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