W3C Season 12 - Proudemoore's Legacy Updates
Rankings reset
There will be no MMR reset in any melee mode.
Ratings take a long time to spread (even after soft resets) and therefore aren’t comparable for a long time after soft or hard resets, which is why we intend to reset MMR only very rarely if ever in the future. This also keeps matchmaking quality high.Rankings and RP will be fully reset in all modes so the leaderboards should still look fresh after the reset since the activity is rewarded more at the start of each season!
Season end tournament
The W3Champions Finals - Season 11 is a tournament organized by Back2Warcraft and crowdfunded by the community.
It concludes a 12-week-long ladder season, giving a chance to the top 16 players to fight for the top spot. It will be played on the W3Champions FLO servers.
The current reigning Champion is Happy, defeating LawLiet in the finals.
Schedule:
July 16+17: Round of 16 - Single Elimination
July 22-24: Round of 8 - Double Elimination
Confirmed Players:
Colorful - FoCuS - Foggy - Fortitude - HawK - Kaho - LuChaeL - Soin.
Matcherino: http://w3cfinals.back2warcraft.com/
FloTV in-game integration (coming soon)
Your streaming experience might be encumbered with ads but the developers of W3Champions brought FloTV to you last season where you can view games by generating tokens and catching the action with delay. Now FloTV is going to get better later on in the season.
In the new FloTV, you’ll no longer require a separate client, you can watch games of your favorite players and leagues within the W3Champions client. Click on the TV icon next to the CHAT button to see live games, connect directly, and observe the best of the best battle it out in a brand new client interface.
About FloTV
FloTV is a tool that allows you to join live W3Champions matches as an observer (180s delay) using the Warcraft 3 LAN client. We brought it to you live last season and we are now working on bringing a brand new update in-game which will come later.
FloTV Guide
Guide in Discord: https://discord.com/channels/688377338576109643/937638586340229131/938281675731923064
You can also use the .flotv command.
Bug reports
If you experience any bugs or desyncs using FloTV please report the ID of the match it happened in from https://w3flo.com/live in the Discord channel #flo-tv
New UI theme
Marin Bladewing chained the Horde in the last Season of Azshara. While the depths of Nazjatar were in slumber, the whispers of the forefathers of Lordaeron awakened in the wind. Infighting amongst former alliances and the strife caused by the Black Tooth Grin Clan at Crestfall demanded a new leader. Seeing his people flee and no one offering a hand, Admiral Proudmoore bore the burden of enforcing defenses. At the behest of Anduin Lothar, his old friend, Proudmoore asserts his influence on our new merchant-themed background for Season 12 that we call Proudmoore’s Legacy.
New achievement icons (coming soon)
Every achievement must be rewarded adequately in their effort. Gaining wins is by no means a simple task. All those battles fought with tactical and strategical choices have now a reward. The new portraits designed for races, tournaments, and more have been upgraded by Kenshin to provide your portrait that important flex before the match begins. Click on the image to see all the new icons coming soon!
New and Updated Commands
The -draw command will now decrease the required amount of voters for every person that leaves. (This makes it possible to draw on games no matter how many people have left)
A new command only for 4v4 games, allowing the team to coordinate voting to surrender so no one on the team can later be reported for leaving early.
The command requires 3/4 votes to pass.
We recommend to use it every game to avoid misunderstandings about when a game is truly over. Using this command might even become mandatory in the future.
Here is the current list of all map-related commands currently available:
Map pool changes
A shoutout to the map makers
A lot of the work you see on the maps that are tirelessly updated every season is thanks to the MMC (Melee Mapping Central) community. You might see names like Mafe, Kaer, rhythmt, Tenshi, Zucth, SaveOrcas, Lovestruck, and more mentioned often but they are all a group of volunteers who love the game as much as we do and have spent a lot of cycles building these maps to be up-to-date for us to play and watch games on. Updating existing ones (like LR, EI, SV, and TM) and improving them is also a significant effort that we want to show them gratitude for. You can always say high and also post suggestions on their Discord server:
1v1: Revisiting familiar maps and updating the existing map pool
The Solo Map Pool Status
Last season when we introduced Springtime and Rusty Creek we added two new maps to an already diverse map pool. These new maps are still being explored by our players on W3Champions. From our research, it takes a few seasons for maps to be fully understood by each race to bring about foundational strategies and build orders. So in that spirit, we decided to wait one more season before adding yet another completely new map.
Legacy Map Rotations
In order to keep the competition fresh, our plan is to now incorporate legacy map rotations every now and then. With legacy maps, we mean well-known maps that have either been in the W3C pool before or maps already known by many, because they were played in the earlier days of WC3.
For a game that’s been around this long with a tight-knit community, we ran a public Discord poll that everyone could vote on to get an impression of how much the community likes the options we proposed.
These were the results:
We will take this result as a baseline for upcoming season rotations and try to modify and improve the most problematic aspects of such maps over time and add quality of life changes to make them more playable while still preserving the feel of the original versions. This has already been done for one of the two maps added this season (see next section).
New(ish) Maps
The following maps have been added to the 1v1 pool of W3C
Secret Valley 2.0 (updated by Tenshi + MMC)
Fountain camps reworked: now with two assassin gnolls and a war golem, that doesn’t sleep at night
Gnoll camps reworked: now with a gnoll brute and gnoll warden each, instead of two assassin gnolls
Natural expansions now point towards main bases and are now slightly easier to creep; treelines now play a role as natural defenses for the locations. Shops are rotated accordingly, too.
New creep camps between natural expansions and fountains to provide a fallback option upon being forced to give up on the fountain.
Enhanced visuals: more green and Ashenvale-y doodads.
Lost Temple LV
The most iconic map ever since the Reign of Chaos era. Establish your supremacy by taking control over the fountain of health, or build up a thriving economy to overwhelm your enemy.
Removed Maps
These maps have been removed from the 1v1 pool and will now be part of the pool for upcoming legacy map rotations:
Shattered Exile
Even though we’ve seen several highly entertaining matches on this map, it apparently wasn’t very enjoyable for the players, since it was by far the most vetoed map in all past seasons. This is partially justified by the fact that this is the rather big four-player map, but even then the play rates were just too low to justify keeping it in the pool in favor of other maps, which is why Shattered Exile will now be part of the legacy map pool.
Turtle Rock
TR is an old map that is barely played in tournaments right now and was also the third least played map in season 11, which is why it got chosen as the second removal this season. However, it’s very likely that this map will come back in future seasons as part of our legacy rotations.
Updated Maps
The following maps have been updated with the described changes
Echo Isles updated to v2.2 (by SaveOrcas and rhythmt)
Although this map is a classic and still liked by many, players often found themselves in stalemate situations where both natural expansions were taken and the whole map was crept, with nobody willing to attack the opponent.
Therefore, the map was improved (e.g. new gold mine, more creep camps) based on pro-players feedback to solve some of these aspects while aiming to keep the map's spirit.Changelog:
A new gold mine has been added above the marketplace to break stalemate scenarios.
Two green camps have been added next to the tavern to help with middle control and make the map less bottom-heavy early on.
Paths are now more streamlined and locations easier to access across the whole map (e.g. Murloc camps are more exposed, and the sea turtle camps are no longer at the end of bottlenecks).
The map is now more symmetric.
Last Refuge updated to v1.5
The recent update of LR was received very well and increased its relative play rate compared to previous seasons. The new changes aim to add some further improvements to the map.
Changelog:
Removed wisp spots around main bases that were unintentionally introduced with v1.4.
NE players can now do a more forward wall-off.
The bottom mercenary camp is no longer unintentionally aggroed by passing units.
Placing wisps at the goblin laboratory no longer pulls Murlocs.
Rusty Creek updated to v1.2
Changelog:
Different units can now be hired at the mercenary camp: dark troll shadow priest and quilboar hunter now replace level 3 kobold and assassin.
Creeps composition reworked at shops (more medium armor, less move speed).
Different creeps in the middle to enable further creep routes.
Springtime updated to v1.2
Changelog
Removed the acolyte green camp guarding the central gold mine.
Several other minor edits.
2v2 maps
Updated map changes
The following maps have been updated with the described changes
Rusty Creek updated to v1.2
see the 1v1 section for the changelog
Twisted Meadows updated to v1.1
TM is the top candidate for the next legacy map rotation and several of the mapmakers from the MMC (melee mapping central) already updated it to improve some of the most important aspects to make it more playable. These changes will already be live for 2v2 now and will be ported to 1v1 if this map gets added again.
Changelog
Redesigned the layout of the areas next to main bases, in order to provide more streamlined early game creeping options: the more rewarding camp is now the closest to the base (5-3-1), meanwhile the more exposed one is now weaker to compensate (3-3-1).
Natural expansions are now slightly easier to creep and critter clusters around them have been more symmetrically spread across creep camps
Main base creep camps are now beefier.
Cross positions for 1vs1 games have now been enforced.
Base layouts are now more symmetric.
4v4 maps
New Maps
The following maps have been added to the pool
Monopoly (by rhythmt)
Climb up towards the middle of the map and claim control over the treasure fountain of mana, in a landscape very reminiscent to Market Square!
Vanguard Point (by Zucth)
The Stonemaul Warchief is currently sitting on top of the world, but little did he know about two expeditions ready to claim the bounty on his head. Resources are scarce here and vanguards have already been sent out, so there’s no turning back now!
Removed Maps
Market Square
Golems in the Mist
Both of these maps have been among the most vetoed maps for several seasons now and we decided now is the time to finally remove them to make space for some new options. Additionally, we have found a fitting replacement for Market Place with Monopoly which supports that rotation.
Updated Maps
Ekrezem’s Maze updated to v1.1
Removed cross position spawns.
Even though it was interesting to see a new spawn composition from time to time, this was originally not intended and also lead to abusive rush strats which were hard to counter.
Northern Felwood updated to v1.2
Berserker trolls now replace giant wolves at natural expansions.
New creep camp composition at goblin laboratories (warlord troll instead of elder shaman furbolg).
Increased gold amount at the four central expansions.
Build W3Champions together!
W3Champions is looking for .NET, TypeScript, and jQuery developers
While we appreciate PR submissions, we are mainly interested in developers that are willing to commit time and take ownership of their projects. We have few formal hierarchies and our approach is very free for all. We are always open for a talk if you want to inquire more about how you can help!