36 PCWorld MARCH 2020NEWS HOW WARCRAFT III BECAME A GREAT LORD OF THE RINGS GAME
might sound weird now. “Mapmaking tools?”
But once upon a time it was normal. In the
‘90s and early ‘00s, most multiplayer games
shipped with official tools for creating custom
maps or scenarios. I imagine a number of
today’s developers grew up making maps for
Unreal Tournament, Quake, Counter-Strike,
Age of Empires II, and yes, Warcraft III.
People tend to remember Warcraft III’s
custom scene because of Defense of the
Ancients, which makes sense. There’s a “student
becomes the master” aspect to it, with the fairly
rough Defense of the Ancients mod eventually
spawning two of the biggest games in the
world, Dota 2, and League of Legends.
For me it’s always Lord of the Rings,
though. Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of theRing released in December of 2001, a mere
six months before Warcraft III. The Two Towers
released six months after, in December of- Then you get Warcraft III: The Frozen
Throne in the summer of 2003, and The Return
of the King in December 2003.
Both took place in fantasy realms
populated by humans, elves, dwarves, and
orcs. Better yet, Warcraft III introduced
“Hero” characters, bigger and more powerful
units that gave modders a perfect way to
separate rank-and-file armies from named
characters like Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn.
The timing was perfect. You had these
enormously popular films, a cultural zeitgeist
that raked in awards, completely changed the
“acceptable” length of a movie for over a
decade, sold
goblets at Burger
King, etcetera.
Then on the
gaming side you
had a hit strategy
game that drew
from the same
ur-fantasy source
material, primed
for custom content.
The two became
weirdly
intertwined.
Not officially, of
course. EA made
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. the “real” Lord of