W3C Season 13 - Sen'jin Darkspear Updates
Rankings reset
There will be no MMR reset in any melee mode.
As in our previous seasons, we generally don’t intend to reset MMR so that we can keep 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!
Changes to Ranking Points (RP)
With the start of S13 we will adjust how Ranking Points (RP) are calculated.
Currently, there are two main things that will influence your RP:
Your current MMR and the number of wins you achieved in the current season.
With the start of Season 13, RP will be based on the maximum MMR you reached during the season instead of your current MMR. This means you can only gain RP from playing further games (because your number of wins and maybe your max MMR is increased) but never lose RP. This is done to eliminate situations where people are scared to continue playing since losing MMR would make them lose a lot of RP and therefore also a lot of ranks in the leaderboard (especially at the end of the season). From now on, there should be no scenarios anymore where camping a rank without playing will be more beneficial to achieve a certain rank than just playing more games. For the seeding of our end of season tournament, it should have very limited impact on the ranking itself, other than promoting activity. For all the regular players, we hope that this change will help combat ladder anxiety. If the only way up is to play more, and going down in the ranking is never a consequence of it, then the decision was already made for you: keep searching .
In the future, we will also make sure this maximum MMR reached is also displayed properly, so that the ranking does not look paradoxical, as only the current MMR is being displayed currently. Note that the maximum MMR reached incorporates a notion of uncertainty (also called rating deviation - RD), and the maximum MMR will be heavily underestimated for ratings achieved with very few games overall (not just in the running season). This will not impact players with a MMR established over dozens of games already.
Another change is that the magnitude of RP will be different. Currently, RP is just a number that's hard to judge and keep track of. Starting from S13 we will convert RP to a more intuitively meaningful scale that is similar to the old bnet level system, which should be familiar to many players. This means that RP will now be a number between 1 and 65 instead of ranging from 1k to about 12k.
As an example: an average W3C player with about 1400 MMR and a decent amount of games will end up with an RP value of about 26. This is a purely cosmetic change that won't change the order of the rankings, but it should make it easier to judge and track your own RP progress (e.g. "How close am I to the next division/league?") and also simplifies RP comparisons with other players.
Additionally, we will bump up the impact of activity in the first two weeks of a season even further. So playing a lot of games will make you climb a lot in this period. After that, the old (mostly skill based) calculation takes over again.
Keep in mind that RP is still only used for ranking players and not for matchmaking. MMR is still the number that describes the skill of players and low RP can both be caused by having low MMR, but also by only having played a small amount of games (just as it was before).
Season end tournament
The W3Champions Finals - Our well loved friends, Back2Warcraft are bringing Season 12 to a close with a tournament organized by them 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 as always.
The last time we had an exciting final with Lawliet putting up a fight against the current reigning Champion Happy, but the Undead emperor took the win. There was another tussle between them at RARA Land so it’ll be interesting to see who makes it to the finals this time. Will Happy’s reign continue?
Current Schedule:
November 5-6: Round of 16 - Single Elimination
November 11-13: Round of 8 - Double Elimination + Finals
Matcherino: https://matcherino.com/tournaments/82327/overview
New UI theme - Sen’jin Darkspear Theme
As the new Horde left Lordaeron at the onset of the Third War, Thrall’s fleet was pursued by admiral Proudmoore. But a dark storm scattered and damaged both fleets. The ships that remained with Thrall stranded on the shores of the Darkspear Islands. The witch doctor Sen’jin, leader of the Darkspear Tribe, had seen Thrall in a vision and while some of Proudmoore’s survivors had built camps and outposts they started warring with the natives. The fury of the Naga sea witch Zar’jira and her Murloc minions lead to Sen’jin’s untimely death and a volcanic eruption exiled the trolls from the islands. His son Vol’jin became the new leader of the Troll tribe.
The Darkspears swore allegiance to Thrall and followed him to Kalimdor. Held in contempt to this day by other troll tribes, the Darkspears have not forgotten being driven from their ancestral homes or their leader who swore allegiance to Thrall and united them with the Horde. After defeating Proudmoore’s armies in Theramore with the aid of the Horde and the Mog'nathal Rexxar, the Darkspears could settle on their old territory - The Echo Isles. Vol'jin has waged many wars with his old friend Zalazane who was driven mad by dark magics and now rules the Echo Isles. The map we know and love has been in constant conflict but we salute the leader of the original tribes, Sen’jin Darkspear, in this theme brought to you by the one and only Kenshin.
Downloading Replays
We’ve provided all players the ability to download replays from any game played via our service. New players, particularly those new to RTS or Warcraft III, face a difficult learning curve exacerbated by a lack of foundational material. The game already provides one of the best learning tools in the form of replays, but until now they have remained invisible for the most part. We hope to mitigate long periods of stale meta that are often the result of an apparent lack of gameplay options.
By providing open access to even the best players anyone can learn and grow. This will help the scene as a whole attract and retain players.
Game Visibility
In our ongoing effort to improve this game we love we thought that there were certain areas that we needed to refine to help players recognize elements like shops, laboratories and merchants more. Especially for players who are new to the game, getting them familiar with the layout by looking at the minimap is important.
Minimap Quality of Life Improvement
Creep icons on the minimap have been adjusted to be brighter in an effort to improve visibility. The camp icons are now slightly larger. We experimented with using unique geometric shapes, but after internal feedback decided against it. There are many engine limitations that prevent us from being more creative.
All neutral buildings now have unique icons. These are rendered above the units/camps since we can’t directly affect the game and make the change.
We believe this will prove a popular improvement, however it may be disabled by typing: -minimap
Item icons
Claws and rings now show a +X to help players quickly distinguish between the various versions since visually they look similar.
Moving Forward
We plan to bring in more visibility changes as well as quality of life tweaks and it is important for us to get feedback post release, since we may alter these changes based on your input. W3Champions is a community effort and is aimed at making the game we love so much easier to play and modern for an RTS in 2022.
Game Balance
There have been numerous comments suggesting that W3C dips into balance changes, particularly given intermittent official support. For the immediate future there are no plans to do this. We recognize that the issue is contested and will take note of your thoughts.
Map pool changes
Introducing New Solo Map “Eversong”
When we introduced Springtime and Rusty Creek, we found an immediate liking to the maps and this has kept us motivated to modify and update them. This season we bring a brand new map called Eversong to you by "Tenshi" and "Rhythmt".
This is a 2 spawn macro-oriented map that features destructible gates with 500 hitpoints. One is guarding the center, meanwhile two more lie directly in the path between main bases and natural expansions. It should both be possible to do a fast expansion by walking around the gate (but hereby making it harder to reinforce the expansion immediately) or by killing the gate first and then having a safe and short pathway to your mainbase.
Adorned with the Ashenville tileset, this map promises a lot of action for all races alike.
Since Terenas Stand, which was a very unique map, will be removed this season (see map rotations below) we decided to replace it with a map that’s also unique and brings something new to the mappool - this is Eversong.
If you head on over to the Liquipedia Page, you can get a preview of every camp and the creeps in them.
Map Rotations
1v1
Eversong added
As mentioned in the last update notes, our plan is to also incorporate legacy map rotations every now and then in order to keep the competition fresh. For this season, these will be:
Terenas Stand LV removed
Well loved but over played, we bid this map goodbye for this season
Lost Temple LV removed
Lots of long games but mostly lower play rates have told us to take a step back and remove this map for next season and put it back in the reserve pool for future legacy rotations.
Twisted Meadows v1.1 added
Back into the pool a well loved map with fixed cross spawns, better pathing, reworked creep camps and a modified layout. This modified TM has been part of the TP League map pool and made for some great games being played between pro players.
Change log
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.
2v2
Kal’drassil removed
We haven’t changed the map pool for 2 seasons now. Since it’s been the least played both in seasons 11 and 12 we have decided to change things up.
White Shore added - By Zucth
Inspired by the Dalaran Garden layout and having received a lot of positive feedback from the mapmaking community we have added this to keep things fresh in the 2v2 matchmaking.
4v4
Removed Friends
We introduced Friends when a passionate set of people lobbied hard for it. However, it’s been a map that’s constantly been down voted and has been the least played among all our new maps introduced so far. Yet, for those who were still appreciating the map, they may find a pleasant surprise in Indigo Keeper, as it shares some similarities in regards to how player bases are allocated and expansions are less accessible.
Removed Northern Felwood
This has been one of the longer lasting community maps, as we’ve adopted it as soon as season 1. That said, it has also seen constant ups and downs throughout its stay and with the recent trend to rotate out older maps to keep the pool fresh, we felt this would be the right time to introduce other maps to take its place.
Removed Northmarsh Ruin
Without considering our most recent additions, this map has been among the least performing in terms of playrates. This might perhaps be partially explained by the fact that it’s very unique, as it plays out very differently with respect to most other maps, and while that was interesting we thought that since it had not been picked much, we figured out it would reasonable to remove it.
Added Chimney Isles - By Zucth
Consider this as a unique map in its own regard. We’d like to keep depth of playstyles and strategies when it comes to our map pool and we feel this might be a good compensation to the departure of Northmarsh Ruins. Because of the great distance between allied and enemy bases, we expect gameplay here to be vastly different than on most other maps, bringing a refreshing feeling that hopefully players can enjoy.
Added Indigo Keeper - By Zucth
Indigo Keeper is a relatively small maps where players have to cooperate in pairs of two in order to achieve supremacy. Make use of gates to unlock otherwise unaccessible parts of the map.
Added Ordeal Ground - By Zucth
Ordeal Ground is a rather big map that promises lots of content around the middle area. The most lucky players will be able to easily secure an expansion, meanwhile everyone else will have to cope with more exposed positions.
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 hi and also post suggestions on their Discord server:
Updated Maps
Rusty Creek updated to v1.3:
We brought a large visual re-haul of this map. The flora and fauna have been revamped to be green for most of the map, so trees are similar to the rest of the maps you are familiar with.
Merc camps have been turned into mid game objectives and thus are harder to creep to create a harder dynamic around center map control.
The natural expo now has 1 centaur + 2 trolls instead of 3 centaurs (faster to creep for melee units),
Most of the Creep camps around the main bases have been tweaked to provide several smooth creep routes.
Springtime updated to v1.3:
Small tweaks to terrain and tome drops
Concealed Hill
The arches are removed to better aid casters and provide visual clarity, so the design has been changed to remove those arches and leave pillars in their stead
A specific change to raise three tiles to the ground level has been added. This lets you now build a necropolis at the bottom without waking up the camp, thing which has always been possible at the top.
Also note: CH was updated by Blizzard during patch 1.32.9, fixing some important bugs that would allow units to reach unintended places, but it later got reverted for unknown reasons (probably a mistake). Since then, there’s been a discrepancy between the Battle.net and W3Champions versions that we intend to preserve.
Monopoly (4vs4) updated to v1.5:
Rush distance increased by filling with content the closest pathway between enemy bases, and now each quarter of the map has two sets of custom merc camps.
Elves can now Ancient of War creep the expo
Each health fountain now has Nerubian Webspinners with rune of rebirth
Vanguard point (4vs4) updated to v1.4:
The central creep camps are now geared towards early to mid game (they were intended for late game in the previous map version)
Expos that used to be surrounded by trees now have destructible rocks instead
Mercs now have their customized set of units
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!