Design a Spell Contest Winner Announced!

By Island Dog on January 4, 2011 8:55:11 AM from

Island Dog

Stardock

Join Date 06/2003

+509

For the past month or so we have been running an Elemental “Design a Spell” contest where you the players had the opportunity to submit spells that might end up in a future update in Elemental: War of Magic. We received hundreds of submissions and the top five finalists were chosen and the public voted for their favorite.

The winner was: unacomn!

HIs spell “Shadow World” was chosen as the favorite in public voting.

“This spell opens up a rift to a shadow plane from which creatures of shadow will randomly spawn on the map for the duration of the spell's upkeep. These shadow creatures ill attack anything in their way except for the units and cities of the caster. If the upkeep is broken, the rift closes but the shadows remain and will attack anything with no exception.”

Unacomn’s spell will make it in a future build of Elemental, and will also receive some great prizes as well. Congrats!

not very happy with the spell

but still congratz

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I like it. I hope you guys make it appropriately available to modders as well. Could be sweet as hell. Most importantly, I wouldn't mind being able to choose what unit gets spawned (as a modder, not a player).

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Sounds cool to me.

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So... shadow world, huh? Can I go there? Build outposts? Conquer it?

Not on the top of my list but all the spells selected were interesting in a way or the other. Congrats to the winner and those who almost win (hey, you got a gift card!) and those who didn't almost win but made it to the final list.

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So does that mean none of the other awesome spells will make it in?

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This just means this is the winner of this spell contest and his spell will for sure be going in. Like we said before a ton of these submissions were either great spells in their own right or had parts of them that were innovative and interesting that we could potentially work into different new spells.

I wouldn't expect probably to see any of these spells with the EXACT name and features (wouldn't say for sure it wont happen though) but know that we do like a lot of them and expect to see similar mechanics and effects in future spells.

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A big thank you to Stardock and to everyone who voted for Shadow World. I'm looking forward to plunging the land into darkness

I really liked some of the other spell suggestions and I hope they get into the game, at least in spirit if not in name. You can never go wrong with more spells.

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Quoting unacomn,

reply 7

You can never go wrong with more spells.

Careful with what you say...

Fireball, Iceball, Airball, Earthball, Lifeball, Deathball, Fireball II, Iceball II, Airball II,.......

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Good point, then you can never go wrong with more diverse spells

Deathball actually sounds very nice.

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Congratulations

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I didn't even know you could of voted. Sounds like a fun spell to have in the game.

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Congrats! More spells is good!

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I'm not a fan of this spell. The last thing I need is more monsters running around my land.

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So this now implies that there is indeed an other plane in the Elemental cosmology. I thought that was something that wasn't going to happen? And honestly, I don't really approve.

I do very much approve of the gameplay aspect of this, though. Dropping this in the back side of enemy territory is sure to raise some very convenient hell.

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Bitch, bitch, bitch. I think this is a neat spell, or maybe as a random world event, either way, its neat. Good job unacomn.

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I really like the spell. Does casting it in an enemy territory count as an act of war I wonder.

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Congratulations to everyone who won, and to everyone who had fun in the competition, and to everyone who will enjoy the new spell and the potentially new spells based on aspects of spell submissions!

Thanks to Stardock for setting up this competition, and for listening and interacting with the community.

Now, when's the next contest?

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Quoting Cruxador,

reply 14

So this now implies that there is indeed an other plane in the Elemental cosmology. I thought that was something that wasn't going to happen? And honestly, I don't really approve.

I do very much approve of the gameplay aspect of this, though. Dropping this in the back side of enemy territory is sure to raise some very convenient hell.

What's wrong with Planes? Planes rock. More to explore. More to conquer. Efficient way to require enemies to team up to defeat a more powerful enemy, etc.

The spell idea rocks. And I'm with Heavenfall. Make these tags available to modders. I already even see a brilliant use for this for the Returner, in ExpandedFactions. Raise an entire, mindless undead army across the world to harry everyone and anyone (except for the other undead, of course).

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I really like the spell. Does casting it in an enemy territory count as an act of war I wonder.

i think its a global enchantment so no need to cast it anywhere

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Quoting illmunkeys,

reply 18

What's wrong with Planes? Planes rock. More to explore. More to conquer. Efficient way to require enemies to team up to defeat a more powerful enemy, etc.

I dislike them from a cosmology/worldbuilding perspective, rather than from a gameplay perspective. In terms of gameplay, they're fine. We don't need them for the sake of more content, however, since the potential size of an Elemental map is unbounded.

Quoting Pantasd,

reply 19

I really like the spell. Does casting it in an enemy territory count as an act of war I wonder.
i think its a global enchantment so no need to cast it anywhere

I am pretty sure the idea is that it creates a tile on a targeted square, and enemies spawn from there. While you could get a different working with creative interpretation, that would merely detract from the thing.

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Wow this thread made me find my old post where I suggested a similar spell.. been looking for it, thanks heh.

Nether Gate (Ruin, Conjuration, Global) - creates a permanent gate with undead pouring through every turn

I like the idea of such a spell as a high end global death magic, but perhaps Shadow World is not the best name? Not suggesting Nether Gate is necessarily better. Shadow Rift?

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I like the spell, I just wonder how it's going to tie in with the lore of the game. (Shadow world?). Seems to me someone has some writing to do.

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Just to clarify, the name Shadow World refers to what happens to the world of Elemental after the spell is cast, rather than the place where the shadows come from. It would be cool if the light levels in the game were lowered while the spell is active, but I don't know if that's possible.

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Congratulations and all that unacomn.

Would be interesting to know the number of votes the winner(and everyone else for that matter) got. What was my own place? Maybe it'll be revealed.

To brag a bit, this is actually the second Stardock contest where I have been part of the winners in. I was one of the winners in the Dark Avatar contest too, quite a while back.

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Neato, congrats Unacomn!

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