The original Warcraft 3 released all the way back in 2003, returning us to Azeroth for the battle between orcs and humans. It was a strong game in its own right, but it can be easy to forget how massive and influential the custom game scene for Warcraft 3 was as well. That’s something we hope carries over when Warcraft 3: Reforged officially releases next week.
Dota is the obvious pick when discussing popular custom maps. It went on to spawn two of the biggest games in the world. However, we want to look outside of Dota.
With the release of Warcraft 3: Reforged, we wanted to highlight a few of our favorite custom maps from yesteryear, the ones that we’d like to see revamped when Reforged officially hits the scene. Luckily, with Reforged currently in beta testing, plenty of these maps are already starting to circulate.
Tree Tag
Tree Tag saw two sides, the Ents and the Infernals, playing a game of cat and mouse through a forest. The Infernals had to hunt through the forest and destroy the Ents before time ran out, while the Ents needed to carefully plan, setting things up to survive until the clock ran out.
Plenty of people are already hard at work recreating the magic of Tree Tag in Warcraft 3: Reforged. Hopefully, the balance and tension of this one makes its way to the remastered game.
Castle Fight
Very few custom maps had a better back and forth than Castle Fight. It is a great respite from all the micromanagement inherent to RTS games, as Castle Fight was all strategy and planning.
Instead of controlling units directly, both players simply produce buildings that create those units. The units then attack one another automatically. It’s all about trying to outstep your opponent. If they counter your units, you’ll want to have a unit on standby that will counter their units. But they’ll know that’s your plan, so they’re going to counter THOSE units.
And on and on. Castle Fight is great. Full stop.
Legion TD
It’s rare that a custom map for a preexisting game can be better than 95% of games in the same genre, but then we have Legion TD. There are already several attempts in the process of bringing this tower defense classic to Warcraft 3: Reforged, so it seems likely that one will stand as king of the mountain.
Legion TD is pretty standard tower defense, just refined and well balanced to the point that every game was an adventure.
Island Troll Tribes
Competitive Don’t Starve set in the world of Warcraft? Yes, please. There were many survival maps in classic Warcraft 3, but Island Troll Tribes is one of the most memorable. You and your team had to do whatever you could to keep your stats high and knock the other tribes out of contention. The fun came from how you did that.
Would your tribe keep to themselves and hope to build an unstoppable juggernaut? Would you actively seek out other tribes to claim their resources for your own? Would you use sneaky tactics? All out war? There were so many ways to play and make sure your tribe was the last standing. Warcraft 3: Reforged needs this map.
Uther Party
It’s Mario Party but in Warcraft 3. We could just stop there.
Just like Mario Party, half the fun of Uther Party was when you were still figuring everything out. What is this minigame? What is my goal, and how do I accomplish it?
It wasn’t quite the sheer madness of something like the WarioWare titles, but struggling to understand the basics of each new minigame in Uther Party was great. After that, mastering them all became the priority.
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Many of these custom maps are already circulating on the Warcraft 3: Reforged Reddit and other forums. Hopefully, the minds behind their development keep tweaking them and manage to help them stay fresh for the new release.
What custom maps do you want to see in Warcraft 3: Reforged? Let us know in the comments below!
