Warcraft, A Wonderful Start Blizzard’s RTS and MMO series

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is one of the first Real Time Strategy (RTS) games I remember hearing about. It came out around the same time as Dune 2 and Command & Conquer, both from Westwood Studios. Warcraft was Blizzard’s entry into the genre.

The first game in the series I played was Warcraft 2, but the first game was the most memorable for me. Because it was released on DOS, I could share it with my friends who only had Apple computers, and I could install it on the computers in my school’s computer labs. Aside from that, it has a very dated design, and I don’t recommend revisiting it.

The game has several issues that only became apparent as more RTS games were made. It was very cool then, and the flaws didn’t matter. They added to the strategy and made the game more fun and challenging.

TLDR: It was Great in the early 90s but is very Flawed Today.

Narrative

This is going to be centered around the Human campaign. I didn’t play much of the Orc campaign this time, but I know the story.

The canonical ending is that the Humans lose. The Orcs overran the kingdom and continued to invade the northern kingdoms. In the second game, you see them building ships and crossing the sea to attack another Human kingdom.

You start off with the war at a stalemate. Your character slowly works their way up the ranks by completing missions like building farms and destroying the enemy base. There is a backstory to the game that is told in the manual.

The Orcs come from another world, and the humans repelled their initial invasion. A chieftain then unites the orc clans and organizes another invasion. This is where the game picks up.

In the Orc campaign, the castle of Stormwind is sacked. There is also a bit of a civil war, which sees a new chieftain take charge. It is revealed in the second game that you were playing as Orgim Doomhammer. This isn’t all that important for the game, but it is for the series lore.

There is a bit more to the human campaign from a story standpoint. You have to kill an insane mage who is threatening to unleash demons on the world, and you have to save Lothar, who is Azeroth’s greatest champion. His name is mentioned several times and is one of the things your units say after giving them orders.

The king is killed at the end of the Human campaign, and the player character is made the new king. The portal still exists, so another invasion is possible. This isn’t the cannon ending, so it can be ignored in the second game.

This is a fun story. It got my imagination going when I was a kid. Many times, I would go off into the woods and pretend to be a character in the game. It is a fantastic setting for stories and is one of the reasons it made for a great MMO.

Gameplay

The gameplay is pretty good. It has some flaws that were acceptable back in the day. Issuing commands on the fly can be hard, and you can’t recruit naval units. It is an early RTS game, and it is fun to go back and see how far the genre has come.

In retrospect, there aren’t a lot of units you can recruit in this game. When you compare it to Command & Conquer, it is shockingly small. The other races (elves, dwarfs, trolls, ogres, etc.) are not in this game. Here is a breakdown of the units:

• Peasant (Peon) – Gathers resources, repairs, and builds buildings
• Footman (Grunt) – Basic Melee Unit
• Archer (Spearman) – Ranged attacker
• Knight (Raider) – Cavalry
• Catapult (Same for both races)
• Priest (Necrolyte)
• Conjurer (Warlock)

You might have noticed a lack of sea and air units. Well, there aren’t any in the first game. This would get corrected in the second game.

There are a few “hero” units in the game. They don’t show up for long. These units are introduced to give you a reason to go into the cave levels of the game. These are my least favorite levels in the game.

The Mage, Warlock, and Necrolyte can summon some units.

• Skeleton – Reanimated corpses (Necrolyte ability)
• Scorpion (Conjurer)
• Spider (Warlock)
• Water Elemental (Conjurer
• Daemon (Warlock)

On top of summoning creatures, the magic users have some spells. It would be kind of dumb if they didn’t. Here is the list:

• Healing (Priest)
• Invisibility (Priest)
• Far Seeing (Priest)
• Rain of Fire (Conjurer)
• Dark Vision (Necrolyte)
• Unholy Armor (Necrolyte) – I hate this spell. Mostly because I play as the Humans.
• Cloud of Poison (Warlock)

Both sides have the same buildings. These are separated into Basic and Advanced construction.

• Farm – Increases your unit cap
• Town Hall – Trains Peasants and Peons. Builds Roads and Walls
• Barracks – Trains all non-magic military units
• Lumber Mill – Allows training of Archers and Spearmen. Upgrades ranged attacks.
• Blacksmith – Allows training of Catapults. Upgrades Weapons and Armor.
• Stables (Kennel) – Allows training of Knights and Raiders. Upgrades movement speed for them.
• Church (Temple) – Trains Clerics and Necrolytes. Research spells for them.
• Tower- Trains Conjurers and Warlocks. Research spells for them.

I mentioned roads in the previous section. It is one of those things that I’m glad isn’t used anymore. The buildings had to be built next to roads. It is more annoying than anything else.

The roads in this game remind me of the concrete slabs in Dune 2. In that game, you could only build on rock; if you didn’t build a foundation of concrete slabs, you would have to repair the buildings immediately after building them. I’m not sure why this stuff was used.

Having roads does make this feel a little like Simcity, to a minor extent. It is the only thing that makes this feel like you’re planning a city. The roads cost 50 gold per square, and they’re more of an annoyance to build. I’m glad they were dropped for the sequel.

One of my biggest issues with this game is how you control your units. Warcraft falls in between Dune 2 and Command & Conquer on this. In Warcraft, you can only select four units at a time. This would become a trademark of the Blizard RTS games.

This system makes giving commands on the fly very frustrating. You must also hold the Control or Shift button when selecting more than one unit. These two commands would, thankfully, get dropped in future games.

I guess I should bring up the cheat codes. The 90s was an exciting time for video games. Several of them had cheat codes, which would get passed around on the playground and at lunchtime.

I’m not sure how I learned about the cheat codes in Warcraft. While looking up how many and what they did, I found more I didn’t know about. Here is a list of the codes I found:

• Crown of Amber – Unlocks other cheat codes. This was the most bizarre one I found.
• Orc x or Human x – Allows you to skip to a specific level (1-12). This was cool and one I didn’t know about.
• Ides of March – Takes you to the victory sequence. I have no idea why this is one of the cheat codes. It feels a little cheap.
• Yours Truly – Instantly wins a mission. This is nice if you want to get to the end or if you want to get to a specific mission. Remember, not everyone knew about all of the cheat codes in the 90s.
• Pot of Gold – Gives you 10k gold and 5k lumber.
• Eye of Newt – Researches all spells.
• Iron Forge – Upgrades all weapons and armor.
• Sally Shears – Reveals the Map.
• Hurry Up Guys – Increases research and building speed.
• There can be only one – Near invincibility for your units.
• Crushing Defeat – Instantly lose the current mission. I have no idea why you would use this. Unless you were the annoying sibling in your house and wanted to screw over your brother or sister.

There are only two resources to worry about in this game. It feels a little strange to not mention them until now, but there is a ton of information to talk about in this game. Anyway, you have to worry about Gold and Wood.

Gold is taken from the mines to train units, research upgrades, and build buildings. Wood is similar, but you have to chop down trees. It is used to train units and build structures.

These resources are finite. When you mine a Gold Mine to zero, it explodes. Trees act as a barrier to the movement of units and the construction of buildings. When you chop down trees, you clear them from the map. It is possible to chop down all the trees and mine all the gold on a map.

You can also do what a friend did and try to destroy the Gold Mines. His thought was to deprive the enemy of resources. It isn’t a bad idea until you realize it will take forever, and it would be easier to defeat the enemy.

Overall, I like the gameplay quite a bit. It isn’t as good as Command & Conquer, and there are several problems that didn’t stand the test of time, but it is a fun game. Warcraft is a solid RTS that Blizzard would improve upon as the series continued.

Visuals

Warcraft looks good. The buildings look unique to the two races, even though they do the same thing. I could say the same thing about the units.

There are three types of terrain in this game. You’ll see all of them no matter which side you play as. There is the grassland, wasteland/swamp, and caves. The environments look fine, but I don’t think the game needed the mine and cave sections.

The game does an excellent job of making the player explore the map. When a mission starts, you’ll have to explore to find Gold Mines and the enemy base. There is no Fog of War in the game, so when you explore a section, you can still see what is going on.

The fire and explosion animations still look great! This is one of the ways that you can tell how much damage has been done to buildings. It looked good in the 90s, and I think it looks great now.

The spells aren’t great from a visual standpoint. Most are summoning spells. The two attack spells are cool to look at but can be more annoying than everything to use.

The graphics do look pixelated. This is more of a product of when the game was made. I do prefer the graphics of the second game as they look smoother.

Overall, Warcraft looks good, but it is still dated when compared to other RTS. At the time, it was cool to see something like this. The explosions and fire effects stand out to me as being particularly good for a game made in the 90s.

7.5/10. As much as I like this game, it has some glaring flaws that keep it from being great. Controlling your troops can be frustrating. The AI for your units is bad at times. The story and setting are great, and the gameplay is good enough. However, this makes me wish I was playing Warcraft 2.

Pros

• Good Story
• Balanced Gameplay
• Great Graphics

Cons

• Dated Control Scheme
• Lack of Naval and Air Combat

Conclusion

This was a fun game to revisit. I’d forgotten about the cheat codes and even learned about a few others. I’m glad that I couldn’t go into the game’s data and change my units’ stats anymore.

The game’s data was all in a text file, and you could mess with the units’ stats. Doing so would let you have the Footman attack across the map and destroy buildings with one hit. You could seriously break the game by doing so. It was a sneaky way of changing the game to give yourself an advantage.

I have a lot of memories of playing this game in my school’s computer lab. We used to get yelled at a lot for playing games in there. We also installed Marathon on a few of the computers. It was the only time I’ve ever used a Mac since my family always had a PC.

The Warcraft series holds a special place in my heart, for both good and bad. I loved the first two RTS games, didn’t care for the third game, and got too involved with the MMO. I played a lot of World of Warcraft while in the Navy, but I got sick of it after the people I played with started switching servers.

The first game isn’t the best. It has several flaws and can be a little annoying at times. However, I have many memories of it, and it was fun until the sequel came out.