15 years ago, in 2002, Warcraft 3 was released. Aside from being a great RTS game, it had lived for years past its release mostly due its World Editor – a fully-functional industrial-grade Map Editor that gave players all the tools the devs had during the development process. It has lead to creation of millions of custom maps, cinematics, campaigns, and first MobAs.
Very few companies have released their own Editors with their games since then. Even Blizzard didn’t do it again with the new Starcraft release (the version which was eventually released wasn’t nearly as powerful as the Warcraft’s one). As we see from the history, something as seemingly trivial as this may tremendously prolong the game’s lifetime. So why wouldn’t developers release World Editors they used alongside with their games?
