The game was released in four versions with each of the game’s factions getting its own box art.
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I was certainly wary when it looked like it was going to be a radical departure for the series initially, but when it finally arrived that summer I was more than a little impressed. While I thought StarCraft was fine, it was the medieval fantasy setting of Warcraft that appealed to me more and I followed the development of Warcraft III as best I could.
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In my younger days, I didn’t play a lot of PC games, but I did play Warcraft and Warcraft II was one of my personal favorites. The only downside to Warcraft III having four playable factions is we lost the head-to-head packaging of the first two games.
Either due to problems with the gameplay or fan backlash, that version of Warcraft III would be scrapped, but the engine and assets created for it could be applied to what would eventually be called Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which arrived on PC in July 2002. Instead, Blizzard envisioned it as closer to a true RPG where players would control a hero character and a small, supporting, cast. Warcraft III was officially announced in 1999, but it wasn’t going to be a real-time strategy game. It wasn’t to be as the game was cancelled before launch. It was to tell the story of Thrall, a young orc seeking to unify his people and restore the orcs to their former glory following their defeat in Warcraft II. Blizzard had announced a sequel in the form of a point-and-click game called Warcraft Adventures. Following StarCraft’s success, it was no longer a foregone conclusion that a Warcraft III was on the way. Warcraft II had been re-released with Battle.Net support, but the shine had worn off by then. It also had the advantage of arriving after the launch of Blizzard’s own Battle.Net service which made it easy for players to find opponents over the internet, a fairly new concept for RTS gameplay. StarCraft, which took the basic gameplay of Warcraft and turned into a space opera, was seen as bigger and better than its predecessor by many. Warcraft II was supported with an expansion by Blizzard as well as third party additions and was popular both for its story-driven campaign and for its player vs player appeal.įollowing Warcraft II was StarCraft in 1998. A sequel arrived the following year and was even bigger, in more ways than one, than the original. Heavily inspired by Westwood’s Dune II, Warcraft arrived in 1994 and was at the forefront of the RTS boom in the 90’s and the company found itself in a friendly rivalry with Westwood and its Command & Conquer series. It was the game that proved that Blizzard could make its own products in-house and make a living off of it. Warcraft was the game largely responsible for Blizzard’s success. And arriving during this height of popularity was Warcraft III. The company had also successfully branched out to dungeon crawlers with Diablo and was even eyeing the role-playing genre and stealth gameplay on home consoles, despite Blizzard largely being known as a PC developer. The company had established itself as perhaps the premier developer of real-time strategy games thanks to Warcraft, Warcraft II, and StarCraft. The year 2002 was a big one for Blizzard. That was certainly not the case twenty years ago. There was the muddled launch of the much-anticipated StarCraft II, poorly engineered remasters, and news of a mobile Diablo that caused gamers to question just what the company’s direction is these days.
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A buyout and a series of accusations about the company’s work environment dominate the news around the company now, but even before some of those allegations came to light, the company’s reputation regarding its actual software had already taken a hit. The games would be announced with no release date, they’re done when they’re done, and once delivered they were met with almost universal praise. Blizzard was once the developer known for quality. It’s hard to think of a game developer that has seen its image in the industry falter as much as Blizzard has over the past 20 years.
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