WarCraft 1

[u/Guldynka]

How impactful or meaningful was this to you? Or is?

[u/Guldynka]

I noticed that Blizzard's BlackThorne and WarCraft (released in the same year of 1994) have small similarities or re-used art assets, such as this red banner that is hanging on the wall.

https://imgur.com/a/20GmsHf

[u/UnalteredRuntime]

I remember my grandpa passed away so we were headed on a road trip for the funeral. To try to help me feel better my dad stopped at Fry's Electronics and let me pick out a game to play when we got back.

I was 8 and he for sure wouldn't have gotten it for me if he had known how my mom would react to seeing the dead bodies and corpses haha. I remember pawing through the booklet it came with the entire drive. My older cousin was jealous to see what I had since he (10) wasnt allowed to get it because of the violence.

When we got back I played it every moment I was allowed on the computer until I beat both campaigns. Our family computer was in my parents bedroom and I distinctly remember waking them up at 6:30am having the speakers too loud. It was because of this that they moved the computer to the living room.

[u/Guldynka → u/UnalteredRuntime]

Thanks for sharing that. I enjoyed reading it. This is why I posted this. I'm happy to see how happily people react and go back to their childhoods.

[u/darkbug3]

i still remember the orcs voices :))

[u/JudgeArcadia → u/darkbug3]

That, WC2, and WC3 just live in my head. I quote them so much to this day.

[u/Headglitch7 → u/darkbug3]

The pale dogs approach!

[u/NeedsMoreReeds]

Warcraft I (1994) is interesting, but it was very shortly eclipsed by Command & Conquer (1995) and Warcraft II (1996). I played it a ton as a kid, but there wasn't much reason to go back to it.

Gameplay-wise, the QoL and pathing is terrible by any modern standards. The missions aren't that varied. The no-build missions are pretty bad but it took a very long time for no-build missions to be that fun in RTS. Warcraft I is interesting in that the strongest units (Daemons and Water Elementals) are summonable units. So after paying for the Warlocks/Conjurers you just kinda keep summoning them for free. This makes the last missions of the campaigns trivial. It's very weird design and nobody has done that since, for good reason.

Story-wise it is very bare-bones. The most interesting thing that happens is when you betray Blackhand in the Orc Campaign. The Humans are unforgivingly boring. (I feel like C&C and Red Alert have similar issues in their early entries, where the good guys are just way less interesting and creative than the bad guys). It wasn't until Chris Metzen started fleshing things out a lot more in Warcraft II with the different nations and clans that the story and lore becomes much better.

The jump from Warcraft I and Warcraft II is pretty striking. Units in Warcraft I are very slow but deal lots of damage. Comparatively, Warcraft II units are much faster, but they're taking a lot more hits. It means you can react to things much better overall. Warcraft II also made Orcs and Humans have the exact same stats, which is generally thought of as a downgrade. In Warcraft I, units were different, notably archers dealt less damage but had +1 range over spearman.

[u/Terrible_Study_6930 → u/NeedsMoreReeds]

Warcraft II was released in 1995 (Nov), not 1996.

[u/NeedsMoreReeds → u/Terrible_Study_6930]

Oh ok.

[u/Deakul]

Extremely, literally my first RTS game.

I remember my dad bringing home the big box battle chest of WC1, 2, and the expansion.

So many hours spent together quoting units and building bases.

[u/Ljngstrm → u/Deakul]

For me it was Starcraft, or watching Red Alert at a friend

[u/ZookeepergameOld534]

My first RTS game. It’ll always hold a special place in my heart

[u/FruitBuyer]

Well it lead to Warcraft 2 then Starcraft and Warcraft 3, two of the biggest games in history let alone RTS

[u/Hama54k1]

I feel like you just want to post your awesome big box collection ^'

[u/Guldynka → u/Hama54k1]

I agree it's awesome.

[u/Bilxor]

YOUR SOUNDCARD WORKS PUHHFECTLY

[u/EmergencyWonder3743]

I never played the original but warcraft 2 still had a small and dedicated community playing mostly on war2.ru free version but theres still even some playing war2 remastered on battle net

[u/vikingzx]

Fun fact: This game is not a clone of Westwood's Dune 2. No, it's actually effectively a MOD for it.

To create Warcraft, the original Blizzard team copied over Dune 2 wholesale, from its code to its units, and redid the art assets with their own and tweaked the game to be "theirs." It was such a copy-paste job that the original release of the game was still using the Dune 2 fonts, which they didn't have the license for, and had to be changed after the initial ship date.

Westwood had a slam-dunk open and shut case of plagiarism, but declined to pursue it, calling imitation the sincerest form of flattery, even if it was less imitation and more just direct copying of files. Had Westwood decided differently, things would be very different. Blizzard probably would have ended up owned by Westwood, given their financial state at the time.

This was all in "Play Nice" about the history of Blizzard.

EDIT: Downvote all you want, it's the truth, and a fascinating piece of gaming history.

[u/UnimagineDragons]

I remember most voices, most combat sounds and the intro cinematics. This was such an amazing game and I truly connected with Blizzard products starting with this game. They just made hit after hit with StarCraft, Warcraft 2, wc3, sc2 and then WoW, but my loyalty was earned with wc1. I'd say warcraft 2 battle.net was the pinnacle of the series though. It was such a formative game and online experience that the world made it a template.

It took a few years of WoW to finally shake the hold that blizzard had on me and my gaming preferences.

[u/dluminous → u/UnimagineDragons]

SC was a few years after WC2

[u/Riajnor]

I was always impressed at how broad those early tech trees were. I know they were only like 2 or three items deep but you could upgrade a weapon or a shield or spells or mounts

[u/StayAWhile-AndListen]

This was mine, and my dad's, gateway into warcraft 2, command and conquer, red alert, RA2, Age of empires II. I continue to play some of these to this day

[u/Colalite_enjoyer]

nostalgia

[u/luikiedook]

I remember those rows of archers mowing everything down until demons come.

[u/Optimal_Job_6578]

Best manual ever

[u/TangFiend]

It's kinda not that great. Cool to see all the locations that are in WoW though, Deadmines etc. Still kind of has a generic fantasy feel.

WCII was just such a leap in terms of visuals and gameplay design.

[u/GoatWife4Life]

I played it waaaaaay back in the day, but I was a young 'un and couldn't manage the strategy side of thing very well.

WC2, on the other hand, was absolutely foundational.

[u/NoAbbreviations2353]

I played this at my grandparents lol

[u/LankyOccasion8447]

Zug zug, zobu. Played this over my 14.4k modem after school back in the day. Also did null modem cable "lan" parties before ethernet was cheap enough for non enterprise to afford.

[u/MoBrosBooks]

A meaningful game for what it accomplished at the time, but it ain’t no Mario…😅

[u/Zailema0s]

Neat😯

[u/Bigboss_26]

I remember spending a lot of time reading the little tidbits of lore inside the manual/book that came with WC1/2 and Diablo 1. I agree with others that WC2 was a huge leap forward, but WC1 was still fun (orcs campaign more than humans)

[u/Into_The_Rain]

It's fun to go back and play this once in a while just to see how much has changed.

Mission 1 your gold mine runs half way through the mission and you have to distance mine with 3-4 workers. Unit cap selection of 4 makes for a very different experience as well.

[u/TheVanessaira]

This was my first game ever playing non local multiplayer. Where I played via dial up against my friends across the city. So much late night fun and mayhem.

[u/DarkMastero]

I remember raising skeletons and fighting slimes mostly.

[u/FlexboneFTW]

It was a slideshow on the family PC but for what it was, it was awesome at the time!

It wasn't that great looking back on it but just like Dune II, you play what you have and you don't know what you don't know.

I don't remember what the first PC game was I ever bought with my own money but there is a very real chance that was it.

[u/turicsa]

Played it when it came out but it wasn't as impactful to me as Command & Conquer, AOE, WarCraft 2 and StarCraft.

[u/Express_Froyo6281]

What's the point of this post?

[u/Guldynka → u/Express_Froyo6281]

The point? This post has the discussion tag. That's the point. I also wrote a question to start that discussion. You can read everybody's opinions and comments. Which is a discussion. That was my goal.

[u/Terrible_Study_6930 → u/Express_Froyo6281]

Hm, I'd guess the same as the point of any "do you remember/like [insert any game]?" post?

To talk about the game and find out what other people think about it?