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.
Created by Hironobu Sakaguchi in 1987, Final Fantasy is one of the longest running, most popular and acclaimed video games ever made.
All combined, about 100 million copies of Final Fantasy games have been sold. The games are mainly RPG’s (role playing games) and have a distinct Japanese style, reminiscent of Anime movies and television series, but also outside Japan they are very popular.
The games have great story lines in which groups of good characters usually go on a quest (collecting crystals) and have to fight all sorts of evil. Both fantasy and science fiction elements play a large part in Final Fantasy with characters often relying on magic or on technology and players have to choose which elements to use to reach their goals.
Each new version of Final Fantasy has raised the bar for gameplay and graphics for the entire industry. Also, the use of music is always very impressive and adds a lot to the gaming experience. The games have been mainly released for Nintendo and Playstation consoles.
A total of 13 separate Final Fantasy games and several spin-offs have been made so far. All are considered to be very good games, but especially Final Fantasy VII, X and XII are seen as masterpieces.
Final Fantasy XIV is in development and is expected to be released in September 2010. A preview/ review of the game will follow as soon as possible.
How self-explanatory can a title be? Bioware has announced that it will release Dragon Age 2 on March 8 in the United States and on March 11 in Europe.
Dragon Age 2 is the successor of the very popular game Dragon Age: Origins, which is seen by many as one of the best fantasy games ever.
Based on the new Dragon Age 2 Destiny cinematic trailer I would say that Dragon Age 2 may very well live up to the promise!
We have established that the genre of fantasy originated long ago, has done well in the past and has thrived in the last decennium but what about its future?
Books, (TV) Series, Movies and Games
As stated in my post about the current state of fantasy, there are lots of good fantasy authors around, both old legends who are still writing and promising newcomers. For example, on the short run, I am really looking forward to the final part of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. But also oldtimers like Martin, Pratchet and Feist are still alive and kicking, meaning that we can expected many more novels and series from them.
When talking about TV series and Movies two major events are expected for the foreseeable future. The first is the upcoming television series Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, which will start airing in 2011. The second is the movie The Hobbit, based on the classic novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is still unclear if the movie will really be made but there definitely plans for making it.
Lastly there are the fantasy computer games. More and better looking fantasy games can be expected in the future. Also, the influence of games will keep increasing as gaming has become more and more accepted.
World of Warcraft will remain huge, Final Fantasy and Zelda having new games coming out and the genre of fantasy will always be a very popular source of inspiration for game producers.
Conclusion
So it looks like we fantasy fans do not have to worry for the near future. Plenty of great fantasy books, TV series, movies and games can be expected for the years to come.
An alltogether different point to make is hoe technological developments will change our way of reading fantasy novels. Of course movies and games will become even more impressive with better visuals and graphics but what about books? Ebooks are already around and selling well but personally I really like to hold a real book in my hands. In the near future I will look into this.
A new page has been added to this site, discussing the best computer/ console games related to the genre of fantasy. It is an overview of what I believe to be the best and most influential fantasy games ever made.
While not all games have a strict link with fantasy as we know it from books and movies, several clearly are based on the classical form of fantasy with elves, goblins and the lot. Game characters are likely to have special abilities, like being able to fly, superstrenght and other powers. Also, games are often set in imaginary worlds with creatures such zombies, orcs, elves and vampires that either are playable characters or enemies.
The list of course contains games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy but also several games you may not have thought of.
