Archive page 3 / 4 for Warcraft Retrospective

Warcraft Retrospective 18: Reign of Chaos Manual, the Newcomers

Today we’re looking at the rest of the Reign of Chaos manual, the factions we’ll be seeing for the first time: the undead Scourge, night elf Sentinels, and demonic Burning Legion. The latter is a pure antagonist unplayable faction, though they were planned as playable at one point in Warcraft 3 development.

Warcraft Retrospective 15: Lord of the Clans

A year before the release of Warcraft 3, Blizzard faced a problem. Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, the adventure game that was supposed to bridge Warcraft 2 and 3, was canceled. Its lore, however, was too important to simply discard, as it set up the orc storyline in Warcraft 3. Therefore, Blizzard commisioned a novel adaptation of the game’s scrapped plot. After the first author failed to finish it, Christie Golden was brought in, with only six weeks to write the novel based on Chris Metzen’s plot outline.

Warcraft Retrospective 10: Nobody Expects the Alliance Expedition!

We’re almost finished with Warcraft 2. All that’s left is the human campaign of Beyond the Dark Portal. But since this is my last chance to talk about that game, first I’d like to deal with a couple of topics about Warcraft 2 in general that don’t really fit anywhere specific.

Warcraft Retrospective 9: Grand Theft Artifact

So the orcs start the Beyond the Dark Portal story in a position mostly worse than they were in back at the start of Warcraft 1. Half their clans have been lost to the Second War, Orgrim Doomhammer has been captured, and the Dark Portal destroyed, so the remaining clans are left on a dying Draenor. One silver lining is that Gul’dan is dead too, so there’s nobody to drag the Horde back to its demonic days.