First released in 1994 by Blizzard Entertainment, Warcraft has become a landmark in the game industry. Several of the fantasy strategy games were made since then with World of Warcraft as the pinnacle so far.
Together, the Warcraft games are easily one of the best and most influential fantasy game series ever.
The story and the setting
The main theme of the Warcraft games is the struggle between mainly humans, orcs, dwarves and elves on several continents of the planet Azeroth. In the RPG games you often play with one or more heroes who go on quest to save their people, fighting against the other races.
The world of Azeroth, based on the Dungeons & Dragons world and Tolkiens Middle-earth, turned out to be a fascinating setting for these computer games, providing races that are interesting to play with and have been made well-balanced.
Concluding, Warcraft is set in a clear high fantasy world with story lines that have heroic fantasy elements.
Warcraft I, II & III
Warcraft I, II en III were real-time strategy games on the PC. They were all very popular and critically acclaimed.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans came out in 1994 and was well received. It was a real time strategy game that was fairly easy to master. Gamers could playing either as Humans or as…. Orcs and build a village and expand their military might.
In 1995/ 1996 Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness game along. It was better and more popular than the first which was boosted even more by the expansion pack: Beyond the Dark Portal.
It took some time but Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos was published in 2002. This game introduced more races and included more unique differences between races. Heroes were also introduced giving the game besides RTS also RPG elements.
World of Warcraft
The biggest hit has been and still is World of Warcraft (often referred to as WoW), the most popular and most succesful MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) around. It was launched in 2004 and with millions of players and regular expansion packs it is the pinnacle of online gaming and a goldmine for Blizzard. There is competition, e.g. from The Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest and Age of Conan, but WoW is easily the game to beat in this genre and will be for a long time to come.
Late 201, the next expansion pack of World of Warcraft, called Cataclysm, was released. It was a huge hit, giving yet another stimulus to the game. It is to be expected that player numbers will keep on rising the coming years.
The Future
Several Warcraft books have been written and a movie adaptation of Warcraft, directed by Sam Raimi (director of Army of Darkness and Hercules & Xena), has been in the pipeline for some time but when it will be made and what the story will be like is still unclear.
Tags: Fantasy Games, Warcraft, World of Warcraft
