Warcraft Adventures (old old stuff)

[hermes]

http://www.gamespot.com/features/pcgraveyard/

A very long article/interview about the cancelled game Warcraft Adventures. I never heard about this, and found it quite interesting. Is it because I had my head in a bucket? I mean it is blizzard and all ...

[elmuerte]

I remember it very well. Was actually excited about it.

But didn't see it as a major loss, just a shame.

[Roderick]

At the time I was still really a fan of adventures (like, diehard) and I was quite crushed to see my two favourite things in gaming get cancelled. I quickly understood that it must have been for the best, though. I've learned to trust Blizzard in their judgement.

However, I still cherish the one animated trailer that was released as a teaser with the (I believe) original Starcraft.

[Udvarnoky]

Aggg, terrible memories and pain revisited. The game looked very promising, and it was no doubt the biggest blow to the adventure community until Sam & Max got axed. The Gamespot feature is really good and detailed and makes for an interesting read.

EDIT: When was this feature written?

[Roderick]

OMG! Orgrim Doomhammer would have been voiced by OPTIMUS PRIME.

OPTIMUS. PRIME.

[Roderick]

How can you all be so DEAD INSIDE!!

[MrChlorophyll]

I wanted that game very badly.

Especially after the PCGamer cover story.

[Roderick]

But at the same time I'm thinking: meh. The characters looked very stocky and non-dynamic, and Deathwing smoking from a huge waterpipe/bong kind of construction? Nahh. In the end I think it would have been weird. Killer voice acting though. You just can't go wrong with Tony Jay, rest his soul.

[steak-flavored gum]

blizzard's heavy-handed, melodramatic storytelling peppered with zany quips and pop culture references has never been at the heart of why i enjoy some of the games they make, so the cancellation of a game in a genre in which this element is brought to the forefront didn't really upset me, if i recall correctly.

[salty-horse]

Has anyone read the Lord of the Clans novel?

It fills the plot gap between Warcraft II and III that the game should have filled. It's not a translation of the game to a novel like Jane Jensen did with Gabriel Knight, so it may interesting.

If you're willing to risk it, tell if if it's any good

Oh, and the Lord of the Clans trailer is on the original Starcraft CD

[BigJKO]

I remember me, and all of my friends, being super excited about this one after seeing the preview on the StarCraft CD.

Just the simple fact that it was a high-resolution 2D adventure was enough to get me excited at that time.

[Roderick]

I've read Lord of the Clans. It was an OK book, but most of the Warcraft novels are pretty generic pulp. The story's a bit disappointing, epic-wise.

[schepton]

Bumping a very old thread, but there are some gameplay videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccqJ9W_E3jI#t=1m

[Roderick]

Oh, that's pretty cool. Looking at it, it seems like it would have been quite an atmospheric adventure.

[Drath]

Back then it hurt me almost as much as seeing advertisements for Duke Nukem Forever in PC Accelerator (uuuhhh, nostalgia!) and asking my parents to get it for me for Christmas - it was that Christmas that I learned about the concept of a game being canceled or delayed. :\

[Chris]

Back then it hurt me almost as much as seeing advertisements for Duke Nukem Forever in PC Accelerator (uuuhhh, nostalgia!) and asking my parents to get it for me for Christmas - it was that Christmas that I learned about the concept of a game being canceled or delayed. :\

Haha, I was equally distressed by the nonexistence of both games. Also, I think I still have every issue from PC Accelerator's relatively short run in a box somewhere.

[Udvarnoky]

What always fascinates me about Warcraft Adventures is that, to hear the stories, Blizzard didn't necessarily feel that they'd crafted a bad adventure game, but merely a dated one. (And one, it would seem, that was nearly complete.) It's also kind of amazing that the excellence and state-of-the-artness of The Curse of Monkey Island was apparently a very real factor in the decision to shelve Lord of the Clans. If it had seen release in '95 and The Dig had been the game's contemporary instead, Blizzard's creation might have very well blown the LucasArts competition out of the water. Just kind of incredible to think that an entire and likely decent game was scrapped specifically so it wouldn't have to exist as "second best," but that is the Blizzard way I suppose.

Anyone placing bets on when this alpha will wind up leaked to the orgasmic delight of genre enthusiasts?

[Drath]

Even as a 11-13 year old, with some of the humor escaping my nubile mind, I still believe PC Accelerator to be some of the best gaming editorial that ever existed in a print product. Or at least, some of the "best" in a gimmicky, humorous, alternate media sense.

I think i'm going to find my stash and take a trip down nostalgia road soon, and maybe understand some of the jokes better.

[Murdoc]

I was pretty Warcraft obsessed in these days and there used to be a really awesome fan site with great information, sound clips, and trailers.

Boy, did I read that stuff over and over again it was awesome.

I remember years later seeing the awful Heavy Metal 2000(or whatever) and I swear the art was done by the same people that were making Warcraft adventures, the characters had similar styling and the backgrounds were fantastic, just like Warcraft Adventures!

I even remember Clancy Brown popping up in voices, which was cool at the time.... still would be.

Even within the Warcraft universe it still was in that Warcraft 2 territory where it was a pretty interested story and had the original hard edge to it... unlike where I feel it's gone with WoW wheres it's just pure goofiness now.*

*I mean it was always goofy nerd crap, but it just seemed Warcraft 1-Lord of the Clans was a little darker and grounded but still had humor; where as I dont get any of that nowadays from whatever WoW is doing.

[Chris]

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.

[Raff]

Warcraft 2 was my favourite game when I was about 9 years old. My brother and I would repeatedly borrow it from my sister's friend's older brother who must have been a big PC game guy (parents would never buy us games, we just borrowed them and played shareware that would occasionally run on my Dad's PC). Never played it online, only ever campaign. The tone, music and voices and art were just so spot on.

The warcraft games since then just don't appeal to me in the same way. I'm really indifferent to the 3D WC3/WoW graphics that most people seem to love and the atmosphere just doesn't seem to be there. I played a fair bit of WC3 tower defence with a friend but couldn't get on with the rest of it.

Adventures doesn't really fill me with nostalgia either, which is odd. I suppose what I like so much about WC2 is extremely specific even though I can't quite nail it down.

The only game that came close to WC2 for me was Warwind, another RTS from the same era the apparently only I played. There were loads of really cool little things that made it different from WC2, like how units could go inside buildings, and you could build roads and bridges. I found it incredibly spooky and dark at the time, even though there were loads of wacky touches. One of the races had 3 legs and 3 boobs, their workers would build stuff by punching their suddenly pneumatic fists against the walls, and they had units that rode motor tricycles in an otherwise ethereal fantasy setting.

[Roderick]

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!

Ever since World of Warcraft, the series has gone to a different place. I guess that was only logical, things do change. But I remember I was already upset when they changed the music from War2's brooding, sweaty, epic soundtrack to War3's rather generic fantasy one. Wonderfully done, but still rather predictable and less identifiable.

[Forbin]

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.

I think the worgen and goblin may be opposite ends of the spectrum in that regard.

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh wow, for some reason I always pictured Warcraft Adventures as being in 3D, the style with the prerendered backgrounds.

It's a shame this didn't come out. I'm really liking that rat in the video. That rat is a good reason to buy this game.

[Xeneth]

I wasn't a PC gamer back then, due to lack of PC...

I like the backgrounds, flavor, and details presented in those Alpha vids, but does anyone else find the character animation sort of floopy and unappealling?

It's not nearly so bad, but I'm sort of reminded of the Zelda CD-i stuff.