Warcraft

30 years have passed since the Dark Portal opened and swarms of Orcs came flooding to Azeroth from the dying world of Draenor. Of course, 30 years ago we had yet to learn where they came from and what their backstory was. To be fair, we didn’t even know who Blizzard Entertainment was either. Let’s explore that time

Before the storm

Let’s go back to the ancient times. To years that the youngest generations call “1900s” or “time of the ancestors”. The year was 1991 and three UCLA graduates founded a company called Silicon & Synapse. And if you think about all the stories of how people who later do great things meet, this one takes the cake. You see, Both Allen Adham and Mike Morhaime took classes together, but they didn’t actually know each other that well.

It was truly a moment of incredible coincidence that led to the two forming a bond that would eventually result in the company’s formation. One time while in a coding lab at the university, Allen and Mike sat side by side and Allen went out to grab a cup of coffee, obviously locking the computer with his password. After grabbing the drink and chatting up some friends he bumped into, he came back to his locked computer, sat down and unlocked it. This feat sparked a great shock in Mike Morhaime. What Allen didn’t know was that in the meantime the computer timed out and Mike locked it using his own password. As it happens, both guys were using the same password without knowing about it. Now, assuming the password wasn’t “1234” or something like that, imagine how big of a coincidence that was. And what would be the history of gaming today, if those two just used a different password.

Armed with that new friendship, a simple business plan of “let’s make video games and if it doesn’t work we’ll be 22 and go find regular jobs”, Allen, Mike and a third friend from UCLA – Frank Pearce, formed Silicon & Synapse. They gathered 22,000 dollars (with 11,000 taken from Allen’s college fund and another 11,000 being borrowed from Mike’s grandmother) and with that starting capital they began looking for people. They posted ads in the local paper and soon added concept artists and designers to their roster. They established an office in Irvine, California and got to work. And boy, did they go fast.

Ready to work

It was November of 1991 and the first title from Silicon & Synapse saw the light of day. It was RPM Racing for NES. A game unique at that time due to semi-3d playstyle that required building custom solutions to make it work. In the time when games were usually totally 2D, this was something new. And maybe the game wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was a stepping stone that allowed Silicon & Synapse to show what they can do. There were many more titles coming from Silicon & Synapse, that included The Lost Vikings, Rock’n’roll Racing, Blackthorne or even Death and Return of Superman. All those came inbetween 1991 and 1994, so as you can see – the guys were busy.

And in the meantime they also rebranded. Apparently the name “Silicon & Synapse” was problematic for a few reasons including constant misspells, so they decided to rename to…. Chaos Studios. If you never heard that name before it might be because it only lasted for 6 months without any games being published under that name. This time the rebrand had to be done because the name was taken by another company. After trying to rename to Ogre Studios and being talked out of it, the gang started to go through the dictionary. So “Blizzard” stuck because it was the first cool sounding entry in the dictionary that they found.

Armed with new name and a few games published under it came the time to unveil one of the biggest titles to date from Blizzard – Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. But originally it wasn’t about Orcs at all. There was an idea by Allen Adham to create a series of Warcraft games focused on different eras – Warcraft: Roman Empire, Warcraft: Vietnam etc. They supposedly all were supposed to have white game boxes with the idea of monopolizing shelf space with a unified box style. Fortunately that idea never came to fruition and we can all enjoy our adventures in Azeroth, Outland and Draenor. 

Zug Zug

On the 15th of November 1994, the world saw the first game in Blizzard’s new IP – Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. A title very much inspired by previously released Dune 2, which is dubbed the first modern RTS game. 

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans took a lot of things that Dune 2 already introduced, but improved on them.

One of the most important features of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans that Blizzard improved compared to Dune 2 was multi-unit selection. In Dune you could control only a single unit, which led to a very intense, high-APM gameplay in big battles. But in Warcraft, you could select a whopping 4 units at a time. And that was limited not due to technical limitations, but as a gameplay choice. At first there were issues with pathfinding technology for bigger groups, but the team worked on that and basically improved it so that there was no upper limit on a group you could control. The decision was made to limit it to 4 units so the player could focus on tactics, not just send a ton of units to dominate the battlefield.  Just don’t tell it to Zerglings.

Of course there were many other features that Wacraft implemented from earlier games, such as Fog of war. Some of the ideas never came to be, like the unit production based on  Populous, where farms were supposed to spawn peasants and peons periodically to gather lumber and ore, and if they didn’t have any other job they would go to barracks for military training.  This obviously never got implemented and was changed during “Warcraft design coup” when the higher-ups went to CES and the team left to work on Warcraft decided to alter the course of the unit production. 

Design style

One of the most discerning factors of Warcraft RTS series is of course the graphical style. It’s bright, colorful, vibrant. Compared to many other titles from that era, it stands out. And there are two most important factors that led to this decision, and none of them are what you would think.

First factor was the experience of the design team. Think about the games that Blizzard (either as them or Silicon & Synapse) made beforehand – all were colorful games for NES. Those were made with TV monitors in mind, which at that time required more vibrant colors to look good. 

But the second factor was coming from the very top – it was Allen Adham going through the office, turning on the lights and lifting up the blinds. The reasoning of this decision was that usually, people play in well-lit rooms. In those conditions, the picture on the monitor has to compete with the lighting and it makes it look different than what was designed in dark rooms by the designers. So Allen’s idea was to create the same conditions for the design team so they could create art that looks great while playing like that. I think Allen would be disappointed if he saw me playing Warcraft games in basement-like conditions taken straight from “What we do in the shadows”.

War(hammer)craft

There is no doubt that Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was one of the most influential titles in gaming, and especially in RTS history. But I was always wondering about two things – why orcs and why did “Warcraft” sound so similar to “Warhammer”. And the answers are connected.

Apparently, Allen Adham had a goal of obtaining a Warhammer license which would increase brand recognition and by proxy – sales. But unfortunately, a myriad of factors prevented that from happening, including issues with business talks. After issues with the development of Justice League Task Force and Death and Return of Superman, the company didn’t want a repeat of issues and decided to create their own universe instead of hitching a ride with Warhammer. Still, the inspiration stayed, and Orcs were forever a staple of Warcraft universe, with many orcs, like Thrall, Grom and Garrosh being the most recognizable characters in Warcraft Lore.

Tides of Darkness

Just over a year after the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Blizzard Entertainment presented their second installment in this IP – Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. This game was an improvement on almost every front. The year that separated the two titles was a time for Blizzard to gather feedback and improve on the pain points of players, while still adding new features to the game.

One of the improvements was obviously the increase of the unit selection limit. This time the player was allowed to control a massive army of 9 units at one time. Talk about an invasion force! Other improvements focused on graphics, unit control, speed of gameplay and of course – flying and swimming units. You didn’t only have ground troops now, but ships, gryphon riders, and many other units that let you strategize better and find different approaches to each mission, and of course to multiplayer battles.

We also got some new voicelines for units, which obviously is the most important change for everyone tired with hearing “YES?” each time they click an orc peon.

However you look at it, Warcraft II was everything that Warcraft I was supposed to be. The story was a continuation of the first game, with W1 focusing on The First War and W2 focusing on Second War, with refugees from Stormwind moving to Loarderon, making allies and eventually – creating the Alliance of Loarderon. Now when you take a break while flying a Zeppelin from Orgrimmar to Grom’gol or riding a Deeprun Tram from Stormwind to Ironforge, keep in mind that the fact that you can do that was started thanks to the story established in those first two games.

Warcraft II was the first game in the series to feature an expansion called Beyond the Dark Portal. While not many improvements were made, this expansion allowed the story to continue onwards, introducing the player to many new characters and locations, including Draenor that would later become the shattered world of Outland. 

Legacy

As we established, Warcraft was a massive stepping stone to the RTS genre that sparked a rivalry between Blizzard and Westwood for years to come. For a long time those two companies were trying to one-up each other, offering players new features, new mechanics, new unit types, improvements to gameplay and a lot more. 

And thanks to this rivalry the world of gaming gained many different game titles not only from those two companies, but from many others. Of course on one hand we have other installments of Warcraft, including Warcraft III which was one of the first hero-led RTS/RPG mixes, we have Command & Conquer and consequent Red Alert games, Starcraft and many more, but that’s not all.

Thanks to the Warcraft series we got Warcraft III. I know I said that, but bear with me. WIII not only added a lot to the game and the story, but also introduced people to modding support in the form of custom games. And one of those user-created games was a mode called “Defense Of The Ancients”, or as you may better know it – DOTA. This obviously was later adapted by other companies and sparked titles like League of Legends and even prompted Valve to create DOTA2 – a move that was for sure hard to swallow for Blizzard, especially because there was no licensing restriction on custom games created in Warcraft III. But the main point is – without Orcs invading Azeroth 30 years ago, we wouldn’t now have a completely separate genre of MOBA that is to this day one of the most played types of games in the world. 

The World…. Of Warcraft

But another part of the legacy is the story. Not many games can boast the amount of lore that Warcraft has produced, with Chris Metzen leading the charge of story creation. Apart from all the RTS games we obviously have the biggest MMORPG game in history – World of Warcraft, which is celebrating it’s 20th anniversary this year. But we also have an unreleased product called “Lord of the Clans” that tackles the story of young Thrall. It was supposed to be a point and click, drawn adventure game that unfortunately never got finished. But there are gameplay videos still available on YouTube for it. Fortunately that whole story was instead adapted to a book in the Warcraft universe, so at least that part was not lost. 

And yes, Warcraft went beyond the computer screen, spawning many different books written by dedicated authors that were contracted and guided by the Blizzard lore team, with Christie Golden leading the charge for many years and creating many amazing stories and expanding on plot points. 

And of course the story of Warcraft I can also be seen on the TV screen with the live-action movie depicting most of the First War and orc’s invasion of Azeroth. And yes, I know, many game-based movies are not great, and this is no masterpiece aswell, but as a long time Warcraft fan, I kind of like it, even though it changed a lot of the story. I think it’s a great starting point to get more people interested in Warcraft. 

Beyond (the Dark Portal)

The Warcraft series is one of the most influential game series not only for the RTS genre, but for gaming overall. Spanning 30 years, it created a full, vibrant world, great story and many memories for us all, whether we played it back then, or later. 

Because of the influence of the game on not only RTS but other gaming genres, books and movies, this is the title that is worth remembering and preserving, so that Warcraft can live forever.