Warcraft Retrospective 21: A Boy, a Girl, and a Grandpa

While the orcs and their new troll allies are sailing to Kalimdor, we turn to the human campaign. It’s titled “The Scourge of Lordaeron”. Ominous.

Introducing Central Archives: Cross-Region Character Profiles and Single Sign-On

With the recent launch of Crystal Archives, FFXIV roleplayers in the North America region can enjoy the same roleplay features as European roleplayers could via Chaos Archives. Both websites use the same user accounts, and it’s possible to register characters from both regions on the same account and switch between them.

Warcraft Retrospective 20: Exodus of the Horde, Part Two

So the orcish Horde has embarked on stolen human ships and is now making its way westward to Kalimdor. Finally we’re going to learn what’s on the other side of the Great Sea… but not right now.

Warcraft Retrospective 19: Exodus of the Horde, Part One

All right! Let’s start Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, and play through all the campaigns, in order. If you want to see a video review of the campaigns, I recommend this one by GiantCrabGames, which covers both the base game and the Frozen Throne expansion in amazing detail, while also focusing on what makes the Warcraft 3 gameplay captivating.

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 17: Reign of Chaos Manual, Red and Blue

Warcraft Retrospective 16: The Last Guardian

Today we’re looking at The Last Guardian by Jeff Grubb¹, the last of the four novels meant to set up the stage for Warcraft 3.

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.

Chaos and Crystal Archives: Frigging Regions, How Do They Work?

This is a more technical post for people who are interested in the inner workings of systems they use. For the kind of people who, upon buying a laser printer, go to Wikipedia for a popular explanation of how it actually works. (Spoiler: similar to a photocopier, which is why the two are often combined into one device.)

Chaos Archives Goes Multi-Region: Introducing Crystal Archives!

Today I pushed a really important update to Chaos Archives. It’s almost invisible to users of Chaos Archives themselves. The only clue that something has changed is the character selection dialog.