A world editor (or level or map editor) is a software used to design the virtual world of a video game. Blizzard use different world editors for their games, such as StarEdit for StarCraft games, and various ones for Warcraft games as listed below.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans[]
There was no official Warcraft: Orcs & Humans Map Editor ever released by Blizzard, but a couple of open source third parties. The only official editor ever released was a unit editor that came with patch 1.20 of the game.
Warcraft II[]
The Warcraft II Map Editor allows users to create their own scenarios by editing the map, units, and even sound effects. Custom scenarios are called PUDs, and can be exchanged from system to system.
The player is able to alter all unit stats, except for speed, including range. The mana stat is able to be increased from the default of 200 mana all the way up to a unit having 500 mana. "Hero units" count separately from their base unit of origin and can have entirely separate stats. The editor is able to place nearly all units in the game and put enemy-exclusive units under player control.
Restrictions[]
As map editors were still an early concept at this point, the editor in Warcraft II is not as advanced as its successors.
Mission objectives cannot be altered and all mission objectives are "destroy all enemies" to complete. Voices and graphics cannot be changed. The editor cannot change unit upgrades or what units are produced by buildings/spells. Similarly, spells cannot be re-arranged, for example, an Ogre Mage will always have the same three spells to learn and a Paladin can never cast bloodlust. Similarly, non-magical units cannot be given spells of any kind, even though they can be assigned the mana stat, this doesn't do anything because they learn no spells.
Defenseless units like the Gnomish Flying Machine can be given damage stats, but they will still not be able to make usage of this stat due to their lack of the ability to attack.
Though most units are able to be placed, there are a few campaign and summonable units that cannot be placed by the editor.
Warcraft III[]
- Main article: Warcraft III World Editor
The Warcraft III World Editor is a powerful tool that allows manipulating almost every aspect of the game. It can be used to edit existing maps or to create custom maps and campaigns.
An alternative to the official editor would be a third-party software such as HiveWE.
World of Warcraft[]
- Main article: WowEdit
Blizzard uses a in-house editor called Wowedit for World of Warcraft. Though inaccessible to the public, Blizzard has discussed it and shown screenshots of its user interface at BlizzCon.
See also[]
- StarEdit – official StarCraft editor, although no longer provided since StarCraft: Remastered and instead Blizzard recommends using a third-party editor.
- Galaxy Map Editor – official StarCraft II editor