WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness
Description official descriptions
WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness is a fantasy themed real-time strategy game and sequel to WarCraft: Orcs & Humans set on the world of Azeroth. With the conquest of the kingdom of Azeroth in the first war, the orcs are now preparing for an invasion of Lordaeron and conquer the remaining human, dwarven and elvisch realms. In an effort to counter this invasion the humans, elves and dwarves formed an alliance in the hope to avert the same fate the kingdom of Azeroth met.
The game comes with many new features such as fighting not only over land but also over sea and air, SVGA 640x480 resolution graphics with many newly-rendered buildings and units, multiplayer-support with up to eight players, as well as a Red Book audio soundtrack, and a scenario editor that allows players to design and create their own scenarios. The editor requires Windows 3.1 or greater, even though WarCraft II is a DOS-based game.
Groups +
- Fantasy creatures: Dragons
- Fantasy creatures: Dwarves
- Fantasy creatures: Elves
- Fantasy creatures: Gnomes
- Fantasy creatures: Goblins
- Fantasy creatures: Orcs
- Fantasy creatures: Trolls
- Game feature: In-game screenshot capture
- Gameplay feature: Fog of war
- Games that include map/level editor
- Middleware: Smacker Video
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
- WarCraft universe
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Credits (DOS version)
143 People (68 developers, 75 thanks) · View all
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Executive Producer | |
Lead Design | |
Design | |
Story | |
Scenario Design | |
Scenario Layout | |
Programming | |
Scenario Editor Programming | |
Installer Programming | |
Autoplay Programming | |
3D Artwork | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 90% (based on 32 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 179 ratings with 11 reviews)
An excellent RTS game, marred by repetitive AI
The Good
Warcraft 2, along with Command & Conquer and This Means War, was part of the second wave of RTS games to assault PC gamers senses.
The graphics are quite cartoony, and nicely detailed, without ever looking brilliant. Each character has a nice little face picture on the side panel, where you can issue commands like move, attack and unit specific commands like cast spell or harvest timber.
The storyline is quite nice, involving the humans running from their home nation after the story in Warcraft 1, and sailing across the seas. Unfortunately for them, the Orcs follow. War ensues, and it is your job to pick one of the sides and try to win.
The action is all in real time, with resource gathering, structure and unit building and attacking all needing to be taken care of. The units are a wide range, with most having melee weapons only, but the magicians and axe throwers/archers having range attacks. There are also a few token air units for each side which don't do a hell of a lot, and some sea units which help make the game more varied. While the two sides have different units, they are all fairly equal, like the axe thrower vs. the archer, or the ogre vs. the knight.
The Bad
In terms of gameplay, Warcraft 2 is a little flatter than Command & Conquer, while still being good. Whereas in C&C the strategies seem to be quite varied, in Warcraft 2 it is mostly a case of learning how the computer acts which can be done within the first 5 or so missions, and then repeating the same strategy to counter it.
All in all, the game is definately worth getting, but if you can get C&C instead you'll probably find yourself playing that more.
The Bottom Line
Warcraft 2 is one of the most influential RTS titles of all time and has won numerous awards. The learning curve is excellent, but the slightly dodgy AI can put more experienced gamers off.
DOS · by Asher (4) · 2002
The Good
A definite up in the graphics since the previous. The storyline in WC2 is allot more in-depth than the one in WC1. The new units such as Elven archers and Troll axe throwers give the game allot more variety. This is the only Warcraft to have ships and oil which was not that bad of an idea but for some reason they didn't carry the idea on to WC3. It has allot of different maps that were not available in the first one such as maps with snow etc.
The Bad
Even though the story line is a little more in-depth in this game the missions are still mostly just: build a base, make lots of units and then go and defeat the enemy. The fact that the population limit is quite low gets annoying nut it is not that much of a problem.
The Bottom Line
A definite must for any RTS fan or any fan of the Warcraft series.
DOS · by Horny-Bullant (49) · 2003
Exploding sheep! (see below on details, details, details)
The Good
Just about everything.
To start with, it looks great. There was some 3D rendering done that makes the top-down view look better than games 3 and 4 years older than it (like Age of Empires II). Other graphical enhancements make the game flow very smoothly.
There's always background music - which was picked perfectly - and sound effects are classic. You will laugh out-loud the first time you hear "They're destroying our city!" until you realize your city is in deep $#!^.
The story line is on-par with great RPGs - something often overlooked in many RTS games to begin with.
You get to play both Orcs and Humans, and while each has similar units, they're different enough. Example: Orcs have peons, Humans have peasants. Both pretty much do the same things, but peons sound like peons, and peasants sound like peasants. Each has their own individual sayings. Same for grunts/knights, trolls/archers, all the way up to death knights/mages. Extreme thought went into making it balanced AND different. Death knights can raise dead (when bodies are around) and cast destruction spells (death and decay, anyone?), mages can cast invisibility and fireballs. Paladins can turn undead (which hurts and scares death knights) and heal. Ogre mages can cast floating eye-balls.
Details, details, details. While waiting for your peons to collect gold, you start clicking on them over and over again, and you find out that they start to get pissed off at you! Turns out every character in the game will get pissed off at you, and each category of character gets pissed in different ways ("Don't you have a Kingdom to rule?")
Map editor to share with your friends.
One CD can play four people at the same time, up to eight can play one game! Full-fledged ability to play any of the multi-player maps - no cheap spawn copies that only let you play a little bit.
The Bad
On my 1.2 Ghz, I can't figure out how to slow down the mouse scrolling (I've tried the options menu, it doesn't work).
Some of the battles got a little long, some were more difficult than I cared for (I LIKE taking in an army of Death Knights...what do you mean that's all the gold I get?!?)
The Bottom Line
Don't let the Real-Time Strategy portion get you down. It may be that, but it's so much more. It's just a fully-enjoyable game that will keep you laughing and playing for a long time. Even my wife knows what happens after I say "My tummy feels funny... ."
Blizzard was so financially set after this game, they could have just created WC3, 4, and 5 all based on the same basic game and retired. They didn't. I can only imagine that they didn't want to detract from the game in some way by screwing it up with cheap or cheesey add-ons or sequels. There was only one real add-on, and there were similar games like StarCraft, but even that was quite different.
DOS · by Cyric (50) · 2001
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Still up ? | GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) | Jul 31, 2008 |
Permission ? | GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) | Feb 26, 2008 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Book
In the mission objectives screen, the text written in the book on the background is actually English with letters substituted with similar sounding (or, in some cases, not) Cyrillic ones. For example, "орцисч чордес" is definitely "orcish hordes".
Credits
At the end of the credits section of the game there is a note:
No pixels were harmed during the making of this game.
Cheats
You can type in "gilttering prizes" instead of the cheat "glittering prizes" and still have it work. Joke? Glitch? Coincidence? We will never know...
Development
- Blizzard originally wanted to include more than two races with the game. However, memory constrictions forced them to stay with two. As a compromise, they included Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Ogres, Goblins, and Gnomes as part of the two official races, Orcs and Humans.
- At one point in development, Blizzard planed to have Catapults and Balistas manned. This means that you would need a unit to move and fire the catapult. If this unit was killed, the enemy could then capture your catapult. For whatever reason, this idea was taken out of the final version, however evidence of its existence can still be seen in the cutscene of a footman stealing an Orcish Catapult.
Gags
- If you repetitively click on any of the critters in the game, they'll eventually explode.
- As is typical of all of Blizzard's RTS games, repeatedly clicking on any unit will trigger humorous dialogue.
Graphics
All of the buildings and units for Warcraft II were originally created from 3d models. Then, after the frames of animation were set, these were given to artists to draw over, giving the game an animated look rather than a 3-D look.
Lumber bug
In games that began with only one peon (no townhall), you could click on a tree and then build your townhall. This would result in 100 extra lumber even though the tree was never completely chopped down. This was known as the "lumber bug" and came in very handy in low resource multiplayer games. However, this only worked in the DOS version of the game and was fixed in the BattleNet version.
Reception
- A common nickname for Warcraft II is "Warcrack", a reference to how addictive -- like crack cocaine -- this game can be.
- Rumor has it that Civilization designer Sid Meier remained skeptical of multiplayer gaming until he saw how much fun his daughter had beating him at Warcraft II.
References
If you select a sheep four times (keep clicking it with the left mouse button), the sheep will say: bo-ram-u (that's what it sounds like). This is the sheep password from the 1995 movie Babe.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- June 1996 (Issue #143) – Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #28 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
- June 1998 (Issue #278) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
- GameSpy
- 2001 – #3 Top Game of All Time
- GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 12/1999 - #9 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
- PC Gamer
- April 2000 - #4 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
- April 2005 - #5 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
- Power Play
- Issue 02/1997 – Best Game in 1996
Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Chentzilla, KSlayer, Maw, PCGamer77, Roedie, Toadstool; Trixter and Warlock
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Related Sites +
-
Ccrew's Warcraft II Page
Has been online since May 1996. Contains a collection of custom maps available for download, a section on gameplay tactics, and some cheats. -
Chris's Warcraft Resource Page
An interesting site with some puds made by the creator, basic strategies and other things. Created Dec 1997. -
Hints for Warcraft II
The hints on the Universal Hint System will help you complete the game. -
WarCraft: Scrolls of Lore
Information on all WarCraft games, including information on the storylines and characters in them. -
Warcraft 2 Preservation Page
A site dedicated to War2 nostalgia. -
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
official game page from 1996, preserved by the Wayback Machine -
Warcraft Town Hall
Warcraft News and Information
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Accatone.
Macintosh added by Terok Nor.
Additional contributors: Warlock, Andrew Hartnett, Jeanne, Maw, Patrick Bregger, MrFlibble, FatherJack, Flapco, GenesisBR.
Game added April 13, 2000. Last modified April 20, 2024.