WarCraft 1 Review

Developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released in 1994 on MS DOS PCs, WarCraft: Orcs & Humans is an RTS that was influenced by Dune 2 above all [1]. With that in mind, it is natural to adopt a largely comparative format when reviewing Warcraft.

Warcraft 1 was the prequel to WarCraft 2. Needless to say, it was the first WarCraft game.

cf. Real-time Strategy Games PC.

Warcraft 1 vs Dune 2

In Warcraft the player undertakes a campaign for either the Azeroth Human forces led by King Llane or the invading Orcs of War Chief Blackhand. Thus, there are only two factions to choose from in Warcraft, but they are more developed than the three offered by Dune 2. For the Humans, the player assumes the role of regent; for the Orcs, lieutenant.

Warcraft is basically a medieval fantasy version of Dune 2, but its modifications to the Dune 2 feature-set demand some elaboration.

WarCraft 1 Campaign Narrative

Evident immediately is the increased emphasis given to narrative drive, characters and lore. In presenting its series of scenarios (mission objectives) Warcraft supplies more in the way of story, characterizations and lore than Dune 2. Each mission is preceded by a paragraph of voiced narrative, subtitled by scrolling text over a colorful pixel-art backdrop.

As well, the game manual supplies an extensive backstory through Chronicles of the War in Azeroth and The Destiny of the Orcish Hordes, replete with artwork.

In the above screencap note how the UI is uniquely skinned based on our chosen faction.

Warcraft made innovations in aesthetics and combat control as well as to user interface, mission design and campaign narrative. Along with its increased emphasis on multiplayer, such innovations would become standard in the RTS genre over the subsequent decade, and beyond.

With medieval fantasy substitutes most of the missions in Warcraft follow the Dune 2 formula:

Harvest lumber from forests and dig for gold in mines. (In Dune 2, harvest spice with the harvester vehicle.)
Use the lumber and gold to build structures in order to train military units, as well as upgrade them. (In Warcraft, we also train builders.)
Use those military forces against the opposing force and its settlements and strongholds

However, there are exceptions. To cite one example of non-standard play the fourth and eighth scenarios have us engaged in dungeon crawls that pit our force not against our campaign rival but rather a band of ogre outlaws or a warlock.

There is no building whatsoever during the missions, healing is not possible (for the Orcs), and thus efficient battle tactics become even more important than usual.

Warcraft 1 Maps

The battlescapes are many and varied. There are forests, swamps and barren wastelands punctuated by rivers, lakes and mountains. Avenue of approach is occasionally limited as well.

cf. Warcraft 2 maps.

Warcraft 1 Combat Units

Being set in a fantasy world Warcraft features clerics, mages, necromancers and undead as well as "creatures of the land" (ogres, slimes, spiders, scorpions) all of which are par for the course and well known to Dungeons & Dragons players.

In addition to melee and ranged combat units Warcraft most notably includes faction-specific divine and arcane spellcasting units such as clerics and mages.

Spell types include healing, warding and summoning as well as AoE, undead raising and scouting facilitating spells (invisibility and "far sight").

The magic bar represents the combats unit's mana pool, which regenerates over time.

The spellcasting-capable combat units add greatly to tactical nuance. However, summoned units (daemons and elementals) are extremely powerful. So much so, that catapults are more useful at taking them down than mobs of conventional units.

Moreover, summoned units can be buffed and invisibilized.

cf. WarCraft 1 Units.

Warcraft 1 Combat Control

Combat control innovations over Dune 2 include Shift-key group-selection and marquee or bandbox selection of up to four combat units. Selected combat units are also bound by boxes in order to clearly indicate their selection.

That said, the limitation [2] of only four selected combat units is puzzling, and the movement and positioning of selections could have benefited greatly from tactical formations as well. We can, and indeed we need to utilize formations in Warcraft, but they must be manually assembled by us (micromanagement) rather than automated by formation settings selected through a UI.

Over Dune 2 the pathfinding routine and enemy AI were not improved by leaps and bounds by Warcraft. For example, units often wander off in the opposite direction to the destination allocated to them, and some enemy units can be spotted standing around on the border of the fog of war, twiddling their thumbs.

Warcraft introduced a help screen as well as stat screens that appear in the minimap when the Function keys are pressed:

However, Warcraft did away with the territorial world map and Civilopedia.

As per Dune 2 Warcraft buildings unlock upgrades to combat units. One notable difference is that, in Dune 2 concrete slabs needed to be laid down as foundations for structures whereas in Warcraft buildings can be placed down straight away providing they are adjacent to other buildings and cobbled roads, which we manually lay down in discrete tiles, as per slabs.

Warcraft 1 Audiovisuals

Warcraft substitutes the spartan, sci-fi color scheme of Dune 2 for a much more colorful palette suitable to its generic fantasy theme. No doubt colorful graphics that appeal to the masses helped to popularize Warcraft, whose sprite animations are more advanced as well: our peons can be seen chopping down trees and then carrying the lumber back to base, for example.

That said, several pre-Warcraft pseudo-RTS games (and other games besides) featured many small yet detailed sprites engaging in various activities, so such an attention to animated detail was not revolutionary in 1994 (cf. Populous 1989, PowerMonger 1990 and The Settlers 1993).

As well, sound effects and music are richer and meatier than Dune 2. Some of the tunes are actually memorable, and the on-select and on-command combat unit audio confirmations are famous for their humor, influencing cRPGs such as BioWare's Baldur's Gate for example, whose Infinity Engine started out as an RTS called Battleground: Infinity.

Warcraft 1 System Requirements

Warcraft was playable on IBM Compatible PCs installed with MS-DOS 5.0, powered by 80386 processors and 4 megabytes of RAM. Its display is QVGA Mode 13h.

Warcraft 1 Legacy

Since they offer almost identical gaming experiences most of my Dune 2 RTS verdict applies to Warcraft as well. The difference is that Warcraft, with its bright colors, big characters, amusing VOs and narrative emphasis gave it more personality than Dune 2, which is what appealed to the masses.

Couple that personality with robust multiplayer features, and we can see how Warcraft caught on in a big way and became the super-franchise that it has now been for a long time.

Being multiplayer-only present-day World of Warcraft is not my cup of tea at all, but I enjoyed revisiting the seminal Warcraft almost three decades subsequent to its release.

[1]

Another big influence was the Warhammer Fantasy wargame. Also, since I won't be repeating myself readers are referred to the Dune 2 review for early 90s RTS basics, and some explanations of concepts common to that genre, such as fog of war.

[2]

The combat unit UI panel could have been modified with a scroll bar to accommodate more units, but perhaps many moving sprites would have resulted in framerate drops on PCs that lacked hardware sprites. The limitation in the number of selectable combat units may also have been a game balance decision.

Back to: Real-time Strategy Games PC.

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