Garden of Terror (original)

The original version of Garden of Terror was a battleground featuring a unique day/night cycle and seeds which could be collected to summon a powerful vehicle called Garden Terrors. On September 25, 2018, the original version of Garden of Terror was removed and re-releasing with heavy changes. The in-game information in this article is kept purely for historical purposes.

Background
Once the royal gardens were a splendor to behold. But lately a shadow has fallen over them... Writhing tendrils creep across the grounds at night, and a number of servants have disappeared while walking its twisting paths. Queen Nightshade claims to be unaware of these incidents, but some are beginning to suspect she has gone mad.

Map layout
Garden of Terror is a huge map that consists of three lanes with relatively windy jungle areas and quite a lot of bushes to hide in.

Areas of interest

 * Mercenary camps - There are six camps to be recruited in this battleground. Each mercenary camp gets its own lane, so you never have to worry about double mercenary pushes like you do on Dragon Shire, and therefore all lanes can be pushed rather equally.
 * Siege giants - Two Siege giants are on each side of the map.
 * Knights - One knight bruiser camps is on both sides.


 * Shamblers
 * When the night comes, the Shamblers will appear at both the top and bottom of the map. While the position is similar, the shamblers are a little closer to the left on the top side of the map, and to the right on the bottom. This positioning makes it so that bottom is more favorable for the red team (right side) and top is more favorable for the blue team (left side), and this is very often reflected in the metagame with three-hero lanes in the top or bottom lane to either push the lane hard and comfortably gather seeds at night or to counter the opposing team’s push and attempt to steal their “easy” camp to take. Similarly, it also affects how the mid lane rotates for seeds as well.

Fight the Shamblers
The first night starts 3:00 minutes into the match, following a 30-second warning. When night falls, the Shamblers will come out in the garden area of the Battleground. The minimap displays the location of all the night horrors with purple indicators. The night sequence will not end until all the night horrors are killed.

Collect Seeds

 * One of the objectives on the map is for each team to grab seeds. This is done by killing the small, but deadly Infested Servants scattered throughout the garden, and the massive plant called the Flowering Shambler.
 * Small seed camps with Infested Servants consists of three seed monster and grant 15 seeds total. Each monster drops 1 seed per 30% HP lost. When it dies, it drops 2 seeds for a total of 5 seeds.
 * The massive Flowering Shamblers grant 60 seeds toal. They drop 5 seeds per 10% HP lost, starting at 80% HP. When he dies, it drops 20 seeds. Additionally, when the Shambler reach 70% HP and 30% HP, they drop a purple regeneration globe.
 * In total, a single night contains 180 seeds.
 * The pod image next to each team's seed count is either open or closed. If it's closed, there aren't enough seeds remaining for that team to get a terror.

Control Garden Terror


Upon collecting 100 Seeds, the Fertile Soil (located near the Core) will automatically grow into a Garden Terror after 15 seconds. Once the Garden Terror has spawned, a 1 minute countdown timer will begin. Right click the Garden Terror to take control of it before the timer expires. If no player takes control of the Garden Terror within 1 minute, it will reset to its Fertile Soil state, and the team will lose the ability to unleash the Garden Terror.

Besides a massive amount of health and power, the Garden Terror has two abilities: Overgrowth disables all enemy buildings around the casted area. Additionally, the Garden Terror does 200% extra damage to affected buildings. Be careful, as the Overgrowth can be destroyed by the opposing team. If you're sick of the enemy team clumping up and pulling off a wombo-combo on your team, Queen's Curse lets you turn them into slow, weak Plant Zombies. This is an area of effect polymorph ability that can definitely turn the tide of a fight, when used correctly.

Development
Early on in development for Garden of Terror, the night cycle actually reduced player vision range significantly – this is a mechanic that the developers felt was interesting in Warcraft 3 and wanted to explore it. Ultimately, they didn't end up doing this for a couple of reasons. First off, it tended to result in more passive play, players were scared to move around the map without their team. It also set a more dreary and dark tone for the match.The development team felt that this could psychologically take a toll on the player.

When Garden of Terrer went live on July 23, 2014, the Garden Terrors Overgrowth not only disabled all enemy structures, but also damaged all enemy buildings and minions around the casted area over time. Overgrowth essentially killed everything that is non-heroic. An unattended Overgrowth could nearly take down towers alone and took about one third of the health of a fort. This led to a common (and, usually, optimal) gameplay tactic of playing hit-and-run with the Garden Terror.

On March 29, 2016 it was changed, as chasing the Garden Terror as it ran between lanes dropping Overgrowths wasn’t enjoyable for the defending team, and didn’t fit the spirit of what the Garden Terror was intended to do. Overgrowth now longer deals damage to Structures and Minions. Instead, the Garden Terror now deals 100% bonus damage to Structures disabled by Overgrowth. The Garden Terrors Pilot is now incentivized to choose a lane, put down an Overgrowth and wail on buildings himself. This new functionality attempts to create a larger “moment” when Overgrowth is placed, as it gives a huge bonus — provided the Garden Terror can attack — and also makes killing the Overgrowth a bigger deal.

Trivia

 * Queen Nightshade's line "what a joyous night to have a curse" is an homage to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest where a text box saying "what a horrible night to have a curse" marked the transition from day to night.
 * The Dragon Knight statue from the Dragon Shire map can be seen on the north part of the map overgrown by plants.