It didn’t take long for the three of them to read the redesign concepts.
The design document gave an overview of the game, including what would make it fun and its basic composition. The three of them had a basic understanding of Warcraft after reading the design document.
However, Chen Mo was surprised that the three of them didn’t like the name of the game.
“Monsters? I think that’s a weird name, why not call it the war of Azeroth?[1]” Zheng Hongxi said, confused.
“I like the use of war, and I think it suits RTS games. However, doesn’t the game sound similar to Legion Conquest?” asked Qian Kun.
“But what are demons… There are orcs and undead, but there aren’t any demons…” Zheng Hongxi struggled to come to terms with that point.
Su Jinyu however was worried about the future of the game, “Manager, I’ve realised during my research that RTS is still dominated by Legion Conquest. There are a few other companies that have tried doing it and have failed. Are you sure we can make it to Legion Conquest’s level?”
Chen Mo was speechless, why were they worried about such weird things?
But to be fair, the Warcraft was known as Warcraft in english, which doesn’t have anything to do with demons. But this translation represented the game really well as well as sounding epic. That was why it became the official translation, turning demon into a proper noun.”
“Relax, you guys don’t have to worry about my abilities to come up with names, nor do you guys have to worry about predicting how well the game does, ” said Chen Mo.
Su Jinyu said, “Wow, manager the great and almighty. So when are we starting?”
“Hold up, we’ll need to split the work first.”
“First, Hongxi. You’ll work on the story. I’ll give you a quick overview of the story, and it’ll revolve around the relationship of Arthas and Illadin. You’ll need to keep it in mind.
“You should know what to do with the descriptions of quests, dialogue, units, and buildings, I shouldn’t need to remind you of that.
“And from that will be the different buildings the various races will have as well as the settings for the units. So far we have four different races, humans, orcs, elves, and undead. The found different races will have completely different buildings. You’ll need to consider how well it’s going to fit to the story, which you’ll need to discuss with Qian Kun.
“It’s not enough for the story this time to be at the same level as Lifeline, so you better mentally prepare yourself. The story for the game will need to end up as a classic.”
Zheng Hongxi wiped the sweat off his forehead, “I’ll try my best.”
Chen Mo continued, “Qian Kun, you’ll be responsible for level design and the balancing. The balancing of the different units, difficulty of the levels, and the growth of the attributes of heroes. You’ll need to discuss with Hongxi.
“You’ll need to make a model for the balancing first, you should already know how to do these things. This is going to take some time, so don’t worry about getting it first try.”
Before Chen Mo could finish, Su Jinyu added, “Yep, because the manager will tell you: Not bad, but redo it.”
Zheng Hongxi confirmed, “Yep, that’s true.”
Chen Mo and Qian Kun were both speechless.
Chen Mo continued, “Jin Yu will help me by making art work and concept art for characters and backgrounds. You’ll also need to work on some of the specifications of the game.”
“I understand, “Su Jinyu confirmed with a nod.
“Look up World of Azeroth when you have the time, as there are many things that could be directly used there. Other than that, you could probably use content from other Western Fantasy representations as reference such as Heavenly Ring.”
After having their assigned jobs, everyone started working.
Of course, it was unrealistic for Chen Mo to expect that Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun to completely recreate the Warcraft, which was why Chen Mo had to build a foundation for them to work off of.
Back at his office, Chen Mo used another Memory Playback Potion and started recalling his lost memories.
Back to many years ago where he would spend entire afternoons at internet cafes.
First were the units.
There weren’t too many units in the game as there were four races, and around twelve different types of units for each race.
Chen Mo started a column chart, with columns for attributes of units, including their cost (Gold, Wood and Food), attack speed, attack range, move speed, attack type, defence type, health, mana, weapon and armor type, special abilities, etc.
Afterwards, Chen Mo filled them in for all the units, starting from Night Elves: wisps, archer, glaive thrower, hippogryph…
The attributes of every single unit will need to be filled out according to the column chart he set out.
Moreover, Chen Mo could probably remake all the numbers for the units without the use of Memory Playback Potions based on his current abilities.
However, in order to get Qian Kun some training, Chen Mo decided to make the foundation to allow Qian Kun to get some practice.
Next up were the buildings.
The building system was quite complicated in Warcraft, unlike Red Alert where they only served one purpose and were all extremely squishy.
It only took a dozen machine gun wielding conscripts to destroy a military camp. This wasn’t logical no matter how you thought about it.
The buildings in Warcraft were more like a layer of armour for the base. Only a few specialised units were able to quickly destroy buildings, low tier units would merely tickle the buildings, nothing a few hammers from the peasants wouldn’t fix.
Moreover, players could block off areas using buildings to make their base more secure.
After including the buildings into the balancing system, sneak attacks that were common in Red Alert were nowhere to be seen.
Moreover, Warcraft did a good job on upgrading buildings and training units. A building would be able to be upgraded from level one to level three. Should the player work on building buildings to make higher tier troops or spam low tier units and rush early? The addition of an upgrade tree greatly expands the amount of strategies the players could use.
In addition, the players would also need to consider what units each building produced, what techs each unit had, as well as the positioning of buildings.
For example, Ancient of War from the night elves. Other than being able to train lower tier units such as archers and huntresses, it also had one thousand HP and strong attack. It could even consume trees to regenerate health.
And it’s also because of this that many players choose to use the Ancient of War to help kill neutral creeps, which was a common strategy among night elves.
These points made it clear that it was worth Chen Mo’s time to plan it properly as units and buildings were all integral to Warcraft.
TL note: [1] In Chinese, the game is directly translated to something along the lines of warring demons.