Warcraft Adventures (old old stuff)

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah it sort of has that 70/80s Saturday Morning cartoon feel on the characters, but I think the backgrounds and voices do a lot to help it not veer into that territory. It definitely could be better, but there has been way worse in adventure land (not that that is an excuse).

[Roswell47]

Yeah, I much preferred when WarCraft was a relatively serious world with a slight humorous tint to it, as opposed to now where it's just balls-out fourth-wall-breaking pun-packed nonsense. I tried out the WoW Cataclysm beta the other day and after spending many hours downloading dozens of gigabytes of data, I couldn't stand to spend more than 30 minutes or so in there. It's awful now. Admittedly, I chose a Goblin character, which I'm sure is far more drenched in that idiocy than the others, but it's unlikely I'll try again with a different race.

You should definitely try the Worgen starting zone. It actually tells a story, not by just text but also by excellent and seemingless use of their so called phasing technology and isn't memebath. You learn the lore of the humans in Gilneas and how they became Worgens. The art of the zone is unlike anything I've ever seen in WoW especially the towns, it's like taken out of a Sherlock Holmes or a Lovecraft book.

[Chris]

You should definitely try the Worgen starting zone. It actually tells a story, not by just text but also by excellent and seemingless use of their so called phasing technology and isn't memebath. You learn the lore of the humans in Gilneas and how they became Worgens. The art of the zone is unlike anything I've ever seen in WoW especially the towns, it's like taken out of a Sherlock Holmes or a Lovecraft book.

Hmm, okay. I'll give it a shot. No real reason not to, I suppose.

[Luggage]

Warwind is probably one of the only 90s rtses I DIDN'T play. Couldn't get my hands on it. Shame, because screenshots always appealed to me!

No loss really. It was quite unique and pretty but also seriously weird and unbalanced.

On topic: The cancellation of the Warcraft adventure will always remain as the "Firefly moment" of PC gaming history in my mind. I don't mind the Duke disappearing, since I never actually saw much progress on that one. But as stated above, the adventure was pretty far along. I still don't get why they never released it. It's not like Blizzard is bad with telling stories, making the player think or implementing some humor.

[Kolzig]

I remember reading somewhere years ago that parts of the Warcraft Adventures story was used in Warcraft 3?

Was Warcraft Adventures actually developed in-house at Blizzard or was it one of those projects that was mainly developed by a 3rd party group?

[Roderick]

Warcraft Adventures was produced in some Russian house, yesno? In any case, its story (Thrall escaping Durnholde castle and Blackmoore's grasp, becoming the leader of the Horde) was later released in bookform, Warcraft: Lord of the Clans. A pretty nice recounting, even.

[miffy495]

Yeah, the whole of Warcaft Adventure's story was used as sort of a prologue to WCIII. I never read "Lord of the Clans" or whatever, but if you go through the Orc section of the instruction manual for WCIII it's all in there. Pretty detailed, too.

[Murdoc]

Yeah I was pretty fanboyish of Warcraft 2 and really wanted to know more about Warcraft. I loved how there was this displacement/native american theme going on with Orcs. It wasn't this huge love fest for Orcs that is now going on as there was still an attachment to the demonic religion and such, but being able to meet Orgrim and Hellscream seemed pretty cool.

I think there were sons of Blackhand or something involved in a plot to kill Thrall or something, and a whole quest to restore his clans name... I can't quite remember.

Thrall was kind of like a Conan type character which seemed interesting at the time. I never ended up reading the book, but maybe they really fleshed some of that stuff out, I dunno, I'd play a game, but not read a warcraft book, lol.

I said it once, I'll say it again, boy do I miss old warcraft.

edit:

I was trying to imagine how a game\narrative could work like that in this day and age, I mean its a bit campy and a bit mundane with just "knights" and "wizard" without all the elaborate flourished names and designs.

Then I was thinking of what kind of game could work and how it could be pulled off.... and all I can say is get Doublefine using Brutal Legends engine and crank out the action adventure version of Lord of the Clans.

It could work... maybe.

[Twig]

Man, I loved old Warcraft, too. WC3, even. (Never played TFT.)

I never really realized it before, but I guess all that overt goofiness in WoW is part of what makes me care significantly less about the story and world than I used to. And when I first started playing WoW, I was ridiculously into Warcraft. It was my guilty pleasure.

WoW still has that super serious, sometimes dark undertone, but on the surface (especially as you're leveling up) it is just wacky stuff, sometimes in a Saturday morning cartoon sort of way. Mrh.

I mean, there's a pretty good balance of Goofy vs. Not Goofy, but the juxtaposition hurts even more. Constantly jumping back and forth between the two can be extremely jarring.

I will say, though, that in theory I love the idea of the goblins being a race of reckless engineers and mercenaries. Their presence in WC3 was not unwelcome. Also, I can't lie and say that I don't enjoy the goofiness from time to time, but I definitely prefer old Warcraft to new. ): I played WC2 so many times as a kid.

Also, more on topic: I was very sad when this game got cancelled.

[Roderick]

I feel a little disenfranchised by Warcraft too nowadays, but I wouldn't say it's the overt goofiness. Warcraft always had some small bit of humor in it: a case could be made that percentage-wise it's still the same. World of Warcraft is just so big that the humor plays a bigger role too.

But rather than the comedy, in my case what happened was what happens with all fictional universes at some point: it just became too big to register. With the old Warcraft (as with the old Star Wars, for instance, or Dune) it was possible to know everything about it. But there's this point in which especially the expanded universe (books, comics, etc) gets so big and important that it becomes impossible to know everything. This is why Blizzard has dedicated loremasters who do nothing but check if everything is according to canon. When a job like that is created, it's no longer fun to follow it as a hobby.

So with Star Wars my reaction was to only take the core canon into account. With Warcraft (where the game itself is so huge), my instinctive reaction was unfortunately just to give up on the lore. I just can't be bothered to know everything about every unique dragon aspect and faction anymore. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy the fiction, but I don't feel the way towards it I did when I knew FUCKING EVERYTHING about it around the time of War2.

[Chris]

I will say, though, that in theory I love the idea of the goblins being a race of reckless engineers and mercenaries.

I know people on the internet harp on this too often, but that particular treatment of goblins is 100% directly taken from the Warhammer universe. Orcs & Goblins are a combined army in Warhammer but I used to play a Goblin-only army full of all their wacky contraptions and units.

One of the big things that really makes me increasingly disinterested in the WarCraft world and story is that they seem to be taking more and more and more of the superficial elements from Warhammer, but none of the interesting subtext. It's just a bunch of STUFF all piled on top of itself, with no unifying tone or theme. I suppose that makes sense for an MMO, because it allows Blizzard to create races and locations that appeal to very different people, but I feel like it should be possible to do that within a more coherent world.

[DanJW]

Warcraft always looked like an unofficial Warhammer game to me. I even heard that a bunch of the artist were ex Games Workshop employees. In fact stuff like the sympathetic orcs I took as an attempt at distancing itself from the major influence. Warcraft goblins are definitely more intelligent than Warhammer's.

FOr me the downturn in the Warcraft lore appeal is still the Burning Crusade Dranei. It was at that point that their lore became so convoluted that their own writers began tying themselves in knots and forgetting stuff. Their answer? Any retcon is justified in the name of marketing. I know I know, I'm incredibly geeky for caring about retcons. I just can't help but view it as a sign of lazy and/or careless writing.

Maybe the change in tone didn't help. I don't like planetary fantasy all that much. WotlK rectified that a lot and kept me going for quite a while longer, but still.

Ultimately though the biggest turn-off to play is the amount of content that is only available to high tier raiders. By content I don't mean the best gear - I am more than happy for hardcore raiders to pick up all the best equipment. I mean story. With each expansion I have had to skip so many conclusions to storylines. Bits of lore that I only know from hearsay. The world acts like I have completed every raid instance appropriate to my level, but I haven't and I doubt the majority of players have either.

WotLK made a big improvement with it's 10 man and 5 man versions of raids - lesser rewards but you still get the sights and the sounds and the story. I can see how they might not want to make that content solo, in order to encourage teamwork. But the teamwork is just not inherently enjoyable - it has to be overcome in order to access the content. It's an obstacle. That's why I hate raids and guilds and all the bullshit that comes with them, most of the time. I have been in guilds and gone on raids and had fun but it always made me feel marginalised in some way. The game needs softer and more baked-in incentives to team up and co-operate fully rather than factionalise and compete. Co-operation needs to be fun.

[Twig]

I feel a little disenfranchised by Warcraft too nowadays, but I wouldn't say it's the overt goofiness. Warcraft always had some small bit of humor in it: a case could be made that percentage-wise it's still the same. World of Warcraft is just so big that the humor plays a bigger role too.

But rather than the comedy, in my case what happened was what happens with all fictional universes at some point: it just became too big to register. With the old Warcraft (as with the old Star Wars, for instance, or Dune) it was possible to know everything about it. But there's this point in which especially the expanded universe (books, comics, etc) gets so big and important that it becomes impossible to know everything. This is why Blizzard has dedicated loremasters who do nothing but check if everything is according to canon. When a job like that is created, it's no longer fun to follow it as a hobby.

So with Star Wars my reaction was to only take the core canon into account. With Warcraft (where the game itself is so huge), my instinctive reaction was unfortunately just to give up on the lore. I just can't be bothered to know everything about every unique dragon aspect and faction anymore. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy the fiction, but I don't feel the way towards it I did when I knew FUCKING EVERYTHING about it around the time of War2.

Actually, I'd say that my favorite part of the Warcraft lore is the expanded universe stuff. O: But then I am a huge nerdork.

Maybe you are right re: humor, but I would disagree. I think there is a definite relative increase in the goofy crap that goes on. Before WoW, almost all the goofiness was relegated to "click on the peasant twenty times!" Now it's BAM in your face.

I know people on the internet harp on this too often, but that particular treatment of goblins is 100% directly taken from the Warhammer universe. Orcs & Goblins are a combined army in Warhammer but I used to play a Goblin-only army full of all their wacky contraptions and units.

Yeah, actually, I'm aware of this. I was never an old tabletop Warhammer player (always wanted to be - never had the money/parents willing to spend money/friends to play with/etc.), BUT I did play Warhammer Online for a few months so you could say I'm an expert.

I had two characters when I played WAR. A goblin uh... yeah I forget... shaman thing! And a chaos uh... man. What a terrible memory I have. Melee dude of sorts.

Anyway, the difference in tone between the two was even more jarring than it can be in WoW. The Orcs/Gobbos were all about "SMASHES DA HUMIES oops we blowed up" and the Chaos humans were all about "Grimdark Darkgrim has been SUCCESSFULLY CORRUPTED we are so awesome."

But it didn't really bother me in Warhammer. I dunno why. Maybe it is as you say: it has the interesting subtext.

Shame the game sucked.

One of the big things that really makes me increasingly disinterested in the WarCraft world and story is that they seem to be taking more and more and more of the superficial elements from Warhammer, but none of the interesting subtext. It's just a bunch of STUFF all piled on top of itself, with no unifying tone or theme. I suppose that makes sense for an MMO, because it allows Blizzard to create races and locations that appeal to very different people, but I feel like it should be possible to do that within a more coherent world.

Yeah, I dunno. I think the idea of just throwing in playable races for the sake of having playable races is stupid. Sometimes I'd rather they strengthen the lore/nerdstuffs of the existing content rather than shoehorn in some werewolves. And, yes, I know Gilneas has been an important part of Warcraft for a long time, and I've been wondering what was going on in there for a long time, but yeah.

Classes are another story entirely as at least they offer distinctly different play-styles, when done right. I still want my originally rumored Archdruid hero class. ):

Warcraft always looked like an unofficial Warhammer game to me. I even heard that a bunch of the artist were ex Games Workshop employees. In fact stuff like the sympathetic orcs I took as an attempt at distancing itself from the major influence. Warcraft goblins are definitely more intelligent than Warhammer's.

FOr me the downturn in the Warcraft lore appeal is still the Burning Crusade Dranei. It was at that point that their lore became so convoluted that their own writers began tying themselves in knots and forgetting stuff. Their answer? Any retcon is justified in the name of marketing. I know I know, I'm incredibly geeky for caring about retcons. I just can't help but view it as a sign of lazy and/or careless writing.

Maybe the change in tone didn't help. I don't like planetary fantasy all that much. WotlK rectified that a lot and kept me going for quite a while longer, but still.

Ultimately though the biggest turn-off to play is the amount of content that is only available to high tier raiders. By content I don't mean the best gear - I am more than happy for hardcore raiders to pick up all the best equipment. I mean story. With each expansion I have had to skip so many conclusions to storylines. Bits of lore that I only know from hearsay. The world acts like I have completed every raid instance appropriate to my level, but I haven't and I doubt the majority of players have either.

WotLK made a big improvement with it's 10 man and 5 man versions of raids - lesser rewards but you still get the sights and the sounds and the story. I can see how they might not want to make that content solo, in order to encourage teamwork. But the teamwork is just not inherently enjoyable - it has to be overcome in order to access the content. It's an obstacle. That's why I hate raids and guilds and all the bullshit that comes with them, most of the time. I have been in guilds and gone on raids and had fun but it always made me feel marginalised in some way. The game needs softer and more baked-in incentives to team up and co-operate fully rather than factionalise and compete. Co-operation needs to be fun.

I'm okay with the retcons (in that they don't drive me batsonuts) and actually really enjoyed the overall TBC story. Would I have preferred no retcon? Absolutely. But hey, whatever! I got over it quick enough. Years of watching movies based on books has conditioned me to stop being such a stickler for story consistency.

But I definitely agree about the raids and missing story content. I'll never see that stuff and it's really disappointing, because that's some of the BEST story stuff in WoW.

I would argue, however, that the problem doesn't lie with requiring teamwork. The problem lies with the fact that people who are GOOD at teamwork tend to already be in the Good Guilds or whatever and refuse to play with us lesser beings, even if we might be an asset. We're just not hardcore enough.

That's my experience, anyway. I know I'm not a bad player. I just don't have the time they do, and so I get stuck with the dungo players who have no idea what they're doing.

[Roderick]

I don't know a huge lot about Warhammer (I tried my hands at the miniatures several distinct times, but it was always too much effort and too little incentive, I think I still have a boxed Chaos army somewhere, not even unpacked), so I'm curious to know exactly how much more 'subtext' it has in comparison to Warcraft. Is it really that much deeper? I didn't really get that vibe from it at all, so I'd be interested to learn more.

[Twig]

There are surely people better equipped to explain this than me, but:

Most of it lies in the humans, I think. The "good" humans (Empire) have this fucked up religion that accepts no deviation from the norm. Witch hunters constantly persecute and discipline (i.e., straight up murder in this bitch) people on the tiniest suspicion of corruption. The "bad" humans (Chaos) spend all their time trying to corrupt the good ol' boys from their oh-so-righteous ways and into the self-serving, pleasure-seeking, freedom-granting powers of The Dark Side. It's not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but these themes show up constantly in the Warhammer MMO. Also, in general I think the Chaos dudes are always at war with each other over whose god is the best but in the MMO at least they are all teamed up, for obvious reasons.

I think the dwarves have something going on, too, but I never played one. Wanted to (dwarves rock), just never got around to it. They hate orcs, or something. And I think they're like always angry or some shit. Orcs hate everyone (and goblins are cowards).

The elves are kind of stereotypical "oh no we had this civil war and it split us forever" so the dark elves are just pure evil and the high elves are noble and proud and beautiful and oh don't you just want to marry him, etc.

And that's about all I know!

[Roderick]

So if I get this right, there's just a slightly more serious theme going on in Warhammer connecting to the human condition, as opposed to Warcraft being just zug-zug, so to speak? I do see the point emerging, but I'm not entirely convinced yet.

[Twig]

There's quite a bit of zug-zug going on in Warhammer. It's just not called zug-zug. It's also, at the same time, quite a bit more than "slightly more serious" than Warcraft. There's some dark shit in Warhammer. Meanwhile, there are some bad guys who do bad things in Warcraft. Addendum: there's some dark shit in expanded universe Warcraft. Addendum's addendum: to be fair, Warhammer Online is basically expanded universe from the table-top game which I mean who even gave two shits about the story when those little miniatures first appeared.

My above post is a point-by-point observation. Unfortunately, I am not particularly talented at eloquently expressing exactly why Warhammer feels different to me. All I can say is that it does.

To sum: They're both games first, story later. I enjoy them for their gameplay (well I didn't enjoy Warhammer Online beyond a couple months, but that's not the point here!), and sometimes the story enhances or detracts from my experience. I find that, in the past, Warcraft enhanced far more than it detracted. Now? Not so much.

Maybe it's just because I'm just older than I used to be. But Warhammer's world and story did NOT detract.

To sum the sum: Derp. Also, herp.

[Murdoc]

Did they ever define zug zug? I just thought it was "yah, yah" because thats how the peon said it.

The jokes were all confined to the clicking too many times, but there was a level of goofiness overall to the characters, dialog, voice acting, and set up, but it was kind of tongue and cheek in Warcraft 2.

Buildings with Christmas lights, candy cane patterns, and giant turtle boats, it was pretty hilarious/awesome. That's what made me think of the Brutal Legend connection (minus the fact that Metzen and Samwise seem to be big heavy metal fans) is that they are so "hardcore" in their subjects it crosses over into the comedy.

[thainatos]

I'm pulling a Kel'Thuzad to let everyone know you can go download and play Warcraft Adventures now.

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/warcraft-adventures-isnt-good-but-you-should-still-play-it/

 

Anyone tried this yet?

[Lechimp]

I downloaded it but haven't played it yet. PC Gamer said apparently it's not actually that great but still worth playing just because it's so bizarre seeing what the game is like vs what direction they ended up taking the Warcraft franchise. So they might have actually been right to cancel it but I'll still play it because how often is a new 90s adventure game discovered?

[Kolzig]

I played it a little bit from the beginning. I will continue playing after my summer vacation trip ends in October. Never would've imagined that it would see the release in some form. It's clearly not as polished and finetuned as Curse of Monkey Island was, but Clancy Brown and Peter Cullen as voice actors are just close to perfection.

[dium]

I'm excited to play this, even if it's unfinished or "bad". Good VO can carry an adventure game pretty far.

[Udvarnoky]

I'm shocked that the game was in such a state of completion when it was cancelled.  Did not indulge myself, but from what I've read it's playable to finish and all it's missing is completed cutscene audio and a final coat of polish in general.  It's a testament to how large marketing costs had risen even in the 90s that cancelling a nearly finalized product could be justified as "cutting losses."  

 

I know there's a story that the real reason the game got axed is that Blizzard had so much integrity that they couldn't bear to ship a game that was merely "good" and not bleeding edge, but even if that's true I'm happy the hard work of designers, animators and artists can at least be seen by those who would be appreciate it.

[Roderick]

I am so going to play this. Warcraft Adventures getting cancelled was such a blow back then (I was at an age when I couldn't fathom how a Blizzard game couldn't be anything but godly), I owe it to my 15 year old self to do this. Besides, even if it's a mediocre Full Throttle rip-off... I might just be in the market for that, if it's charming and strange enough.

[Udvarnoky]

Yeah, it seems like the game's major failing from Blizzard's perspective is that it came off as a solid adventure game for 1994, when they were going to put it out in 1998. But with this much distance it is much easier to judge it for it is, especially for people* characterized by an unnatural obsession with 90s era adventure games.

*us