I grew up on Warcraft 2 and 3, and a lot of what people remember about Warcraft III came out of its World Editor. Tower defence maps and DotA both started as people messing about with triggers.
The Forge, our map editor, runs in the browser at /map-editor, and it has triggers too. You won't be writing code like Warcraft III's JASS, though. You build triggers from a fixed set of blocks that read as plain sentences, like "every 200 ticks" or "create 5 goblin brawlers at spawn".
That's a deliberate trade:
- Custom maps work in multiplayer. Real code can give slightly different answers in Chrome, Firefox and Safari, which would split a match in two.
- Maps don't break halfway through. A trigger pointing at a unit that's already dead just carries on, and runaway loops get stopped.
- No slow creep of lag in long games, the way badly written Warcraft III maps used to get.
- AI assistants can draft maps for you, and the editor checks what you paste in before adding it.
The cost is real too. If the block you need doesn't exist, you can't write it yourself. Tell me when you hit that wall, because that's how the list of blocks grows.
The custom games and mods page has showcase maps you can play straight away, and published community maps are in custom games. The full write-up is From JASS to JSON.
Adam