Many people believe that a game designer is solely responsible for all idea conception and actually “creates the game design”, and this may be true for some development teams.
#WARCRAFT 2 IN WARCRAFT 3 SERIES#
The idea took hold, with the first game in the series becoming Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. So at a later meeting they proposed the idea that the first game should be set in a high-fantasy world of Orcs and humans, where they’d have more opportunity to create innovative game artwork instead of being required to conform to the tenets of historical accuracy. One glance at Sam’s artwork is enough to demonstrate his passion for the fantasy milieu. Ron Millar and Sam Didier, two of the early artists to work at the company, weren’t excited about the idea of working on historical simulations, they enjoyed fantasy games like Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons. I know retail: so archaic compared to app stores and Amazon, right?!? New players would be drawn to the section of games by its dominating shelf-presence, and veteran players who enjoyed one game they would know where to find the next. The goal with the identical boxes was to control a large section of shelf-space that would be easy for players to spot in a crowded retail environment, similar to the Gold Box series of Dungeons & Dragons games from SSI, which enjoyed great success during the late 1980’s. He wanted to build a series of war games that would be released in near identical white boxes under the banner “Warcraft”, with subheadings announcing the historical context for each game: The Roman Empire, The Vietnam War, and so forth. The other impetus for the game started with a proposal that Allen Adham - president and company co-founder - made during one of our brainstorming sessions. I already discussed our motivation to create a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game modeled after Dune II in a previous article, but one other key idea propelled us forward. It wasn’t uncommon for artists, programmers and designers to be working on two or sometimes three projects at a time, and of course our sole musician/sound-engineer, Glenn Stafford, worked on everything.īut we regularly found time to meet in large groups to brainstorm and discuss company strategy, so much that we called our efforts the “business plan du jour“.
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Initial proposalīlizzard was working on at least four other games when I started on the Warcraft project, and as the company numbered only 20 everyone was mega-busy keeping those projects on track. We worked together, played together, partied together, slept 10 to a hotel room for trade shows together, and in cases even lived together: I shared a house with three other Blizzard-folks which was the first of many similar dorm rooms scattered throughout Orange County, California. While sometimes they devolved into ad hominem attacks, hard feelings and apologies, the debates ensured that ideas were likely to be well forged.Īnd even through the disagreements, there was a sense of camaraderie that pervaded our efforts.
![warcraft 2 in warcraft 3 warcraft 2 in warcraft 3](https://kastorskorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SW-Imperial-Patrol-Trooper-005.jpg)
You probably gathered that there was a lot of arguing along the way, but that’s not always a bad thing. As with many games the design evolved over time, with ideas being argued, tested, argued, changed, argued, retested and some eventually killed. For those missions, see Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness missions (demo).In my previous article about Warcraft I talked about the beginnings of a series that would come to define Blizzard Entertainment and lead it to being one of the best-known and most-loved game companies in the world.īut how did Warcraft go from an idea to a full-fledged game? Let me tell you, it was not a straight-line path from conception to launch. While the two stories interweave for the most part there is some divergence towards the end of each campaign.Ī game demo also exists.
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For a discussion on which aspects of each storyline ultimately became part of the lore of the Warcraft universe, see the discussion of retcons. The game featured two separate storylines, one ending with victory for the orcs, while the other ended with victory for the humans.
![warcraft 2 in warcraft 3 warcraft 2 in warcraft 3](https://www.epicwar.com/assets/p/1187/296730.jpg)
Note: While the kingdom of Stormwind was later retconned to have always been named as such, at the time of Warcraft II it was still known as the kingdom of Azeroth. This text was featured in the in-game narration for the Horde and Alliance campaign missions in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.