Is there a plan to let consumers design maps?

i dont think so, cuz each map is made in 3dmax

ummm so? Still be nice if they let consumers design maps. I imagine we would see some stunning custom maps from the community.

And? A lot of mod makers use 3dmax as well, look at oblivion. Hell, I know how to use 3dmax. All we'd really need is an effective way to import them, I suppose, and a big enough fan base.

Also, making an editor is not out of the water, perhaps it's something than can whip up in that year of free support. I'd really wish they'd at least offer a donation system to help bolster support, I wouldn't mind tossing a few bucks a week and with enough people it would add up. Free support is grand, but let people that play the game often help support it! I'm sure all those people still playing starcraft and Diablo would of loved to help pay for it's continued support and improvement. Made moot by SCII & Diablo III now, but you get my point.

Comminuty is what makes or breaks a game, modding is a -very- large part of that community. For any sort of longevity i think they would need too.

EDIT: The only problem is going to be the auto-matching/panth/custom games issue. Trying to ensure everyone has everything could be a nightmare.

Simple case of checking a cache of available maps. I doubt a quick scan of a text file would slowdown joining.

This is totally plausible.  The problem as stated is the maps require using 3DMax.  Since there will always be people adventurous enough to do this, the hang up we have is a map editor.

You will be happy to know that a map editor that allowed the placement of the citadel, towers, portals, flags, fortresses, and other objects already exists.  It was actually available during the beta and a number of us played around with it.  The ld editor was backed up by a number of folks, but no longer appears to work with game version past the 2nd beta phase.  However, they stated they wanted to add mod support and if demand was high enough and they had a reasonable amount of purchases, it was totally foreseeable that they would release an updated map importer/editor.

Again this requires existing 3dmax fields as a base, but they certainly have a map importer/editor already.

They really HAVE to add this as a long term feature if they want people still playign this game in 5 years... WC3 would be pretty much dead without custom maps like DOTA and the 1000s of tower defense maps.

I thought the editor is already included?  But maybe not the 3dsmax importer.

If they want to easily increase the longevity of this game they ought to make a map maker.

3dmax is not that hard to learn.

This should be a must!!!! They developers should allow players to design maps!

yay! you reach the thing i tried to say.. xP

100mb for a map?  Well UT3 and CoD4 maps are 25-75mb so that's not a stretch..

A map maker + mod tools would have given this game awesome depth.  Easy mod tooling like was included in WC-3 is part of the reason Demigod is around today to begin with; DOTA, ToB, Tower Defense style games give rise to the expansion of ideas and creativity.  Shame.

FYI there is a folder called EDITOR>TOOLS in the game directory.

So im sure at some point it will be available, it would be silly to think not

Good point

I'm with you guys... there needs to be a map editor/maker. Though I thought they used Granny to make their maps, but I could be wrong. Either way 3dmax could be used so long as there was an import/export function. I by no means am any kind of modder, so I hope that they would make this very user friendly. I'd love to make some maps for everyone to play on.

Peace,

Cor