Games - Tolkien-based Warcraft III games

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	Games - Tolkien-based Warcraft III games

As one of Blizzard Entertainment's most successful real-time strategy games, Warcraft III enabled the development of many popular custom games based on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Starting as a relatively small group of map makers on Reign of Chaos, the community later expanded into the Frozen Throne expansion and has now developped many different games. Thanks to the Warcraft III World Editor, many custom unit skins and effects have allowed the makers to recreate the ambiance of the world of Arda. It is today considered that thousands of players regularly play these games. Although they are commonly referred to as Lord of the Rings games, they may focus on other parts of Tolkien’s works, such as The Silmarillion.

The Ring Wars

One of the older and most popular Tolkien games on Battle.net, The Ring Wars or RWs simulates Middle-earth as it is described in The Lord of the Rings, at the end of the Third Age. The players are equally divided according to the forces of good and evil (6 vs. 6 players), with Gondor, Rohan, the Elves, the Fellowship of the Ring, the Shire, and the Dwarves in the first team, whereas Mordor, Isengard, Minas Morgul, Harad, the Easterlings, and Moria form the latter. These teams must fight each other and win the War of the Ring. The game heavily relies on teamwork as well as proper coordination and combination of allied forces in order to outnumber opponent forces and destroy their bases and spawns. Considering that there is also a large number of heroes involved, expert players tend to develop micromanagement skills in order to kill enemy units more efficiently. Units spawn automatically at the player's bases, and the players need to build castles at the spawns in order to increase the number of units spawned.

The strategies employed by each team may greatly vary. Tactics and strategies commonly known as towering (Building a large number of towers in one spot to defend it more easily, often used by Gondor), waving (repeated use of multiple-damage spells) and rushing (early coordinated team attack on an enemy base, often used on Dale) are often used by most players.

The Ring-bearer (Hero who carries the One Ring, initially Frodo) has a specially important role: if the Ring falls into the hands of Mordor or Isengard, a powerful Dark Lord returns, thus securing a win for evil. However, if the Ring-bearer manages to take the Ring to Mount Doom where it can be destroyed (a strategy known as Ring Drop), many evil players would face instant defeat. The Ring therefore occupies a central role in the game.

Ring Wars tournaments have often been organized between different LotR clans.

War of the Jewels

A map which debuted in the summer of 2003, the War of the Jewels or WotJ relates to Tolkien's Silmarillion and the war fought to recover the Silmarils or Silmarilli, the three great gems that were forged by Fëanor and stolen by the Dark Lord Morgoth. The war takes place in the First Age, on the westernmost part of Middle-Earth otherwise known as Beleriand. Unlike Ring Wars, it has a total of four teams with unproportional numbers of players:

The Noldor including Hithlum (Red), Gondolin (Blue) and Nargothrond (Teal)
The alliance of the Sons of Fëanor (Purple) and the Dwarves (Yellow)
The Sindar including Doriath (Orange), Ossiriand (Green) and Falas (Pink)
The Forces of Evil including the Easterlings (Light Blue), Tol-in-Gaurhoth (Dark Green) and Angband (Brown)

Each team must fight for its survival and the eventual dominion of its people. The game relies on micromanagement but depends much more on regular units than heroes. Like most major LotR games, it uses the same spawning system as Ring Wars but has a population limit of 150 units. The makers have also developped a diplomacy mode which allows players to vote and change teams during the game in order to avoid stacking and unbalanced teams. Like RingWars, players must build castles to upgrade their spawns so that they aren't heavily outdone by the more experienced players.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Tolkien-based Warcraft III games ]

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