WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

aka: War2, WarCraft 2, WarCraft II: Blood Seas, WarCraft II: Ondas de Terror
Moby ID: 1339
DOS Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/29 4:56 AM )

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 +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (DOS version)

143 People (68 developers, 75 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 32 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 179 ratings with 11 reviews)

Warcraft II has aged well

The Good
I'm not the first person to write a review for this game, other reviewers have pointed out the quality of the music, interface & graphics and I agree with them. Even today the cartoonish graphics are a joy to watch; notice the Christmas lights on Orc buildings during winter missions. Also, compare a Grunt from Warcraft II with a rifle infantry soldier from Red Alert (which appeared one year after Warcraft II) and you'll realize how well Warcraft's graphics have aged. Moreover the voices of the units (especially the Orcs) are great, Zog Zog & Swobuh!

Warcraft keeps things basic; there are only three types of resources and a limited number of units, but you'll really know their different strengths and weaknesses. No unit will ever become obsolete or replaced by another unit. Units do get upgraded. The units are balanced, there is no super unit with which you can easily win a mission. Footmen can easily destroy a Catapult, Catapults take out Guard Towers, Guard Towers are a great defense against Dragons and Dragons kill Footmen. So your army will need to consist of almost all available units in order to win. By the way some of the units have great magical spells like raise dead and the spell that turns an enemy soldier into a sheep or pig.

And oh yeah, the mission editor is easy to use (but why did it require Win 3.1 when the game ran in DOS).

The Bad

  • Both sides are almost identical, so once you've completed the Orc campaign, the human campaign isn't that much fun to play (playing with the Orcs is more fun anyway).
  • Units do not always respond to your commands and there are some pathfinding problems. Especially getting your naval units somewhere involves a lot of mouse-clicking.
  • In the campaigns, your computer opponents always seems to start with a lot of gold and a well fortified base. In the final missions this enables the computer to send wave after wave of dragons / gryphons when your just getting started, frustrating.
  • Mouse scrolling goes to fast.
  • Bad A.I. An easy way to win the game is to wait until your computer opponent has mined all the gold from the mines near his base. It then keeps sending unprotected peony (easy kills) to mines near your base until it runs out of gold. Also your units perform a lot better on the battlefield when you control manually.


**The Bottom Line**
An RTS game from the dawn of the genre that's still fun the play despite the approximately 3.5 million RTS games released after it. Really addictive. Although I've often told myself "I've had it up to here with this game", I always enjoyed playing it when I came back to it after a couple of weeks.

DOS · by Roedie (5239) · 2001

A classic.

The Good
Warcraft II is a classic in its own right. Relying on the yet unrealized potential of the real-time strategy genre, Warcraft II set the rules of the game with an amazing game which superceeded it's predecessor in every way.

The first thing you notice in Warcraft II is the amazing graphics, starting with the great menu interface, which is extremely well-drawn and well-thought out. Then there's the credits, with probably the smoothest SVGA scroller seen to date on an Intel machine (I had a 486 DX2/66 at the time) and the amazingly smooth game engine: Great graphics, along with smooth screen scrolling and sprites, everything in Warcraft II screams speed and beauty. Then there's the music, in which Warcraft II certainly does not lack: some of the best music in any game, let alone RTS, to date and fits the gameplay perfectly. The MIDI soundtrack is simply mind-boggling and rarely gets the appreciation it genuinely deserves. Warcraft II certainly does not lack in gameplay either.

On top of it all, Warcraft II offers network play! Here's a concept! Even though same year's Command & Conquer did offer network support, Warcraft II came out earlier and beat C&C in that too as it featured very smooth network/modem gameplay. Even I, though not being a big RTS fan, found Warcraft II's network support to be greatly underappreciated.

The Bad
For one, I could never be bothered to complete it; for some reason, the built-in scenarios get just plain boring after a while. Another complaint is the ridiculously stupid computer AI - the computer is not being smart, he just cheats with the ability to control units much faster than a human player. Unless you're very well-trained, this leads to very short lived human-computer mélees. Shame.

The Bottom Line
A classic game which brought RTS to the spotlight again. Until Warcraft II saw the light of day, there hasn't been a single game other than the magnificent Dune 2 to play.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

A genre inside of itself

The Good
I like to refer to Warcraft as the rough draft of this game. It has nice playability, and it don't take no genius to play it. You can assault your enemies by land, sea and air with missile or melee weapons. It even comes with a map editor so you can build your own scenarios! Warcraft II is definitely the second best strategy game ever made (the first best being Starcraft).

The Bad
Nothing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this game.

The Bottom Line
If you've never heard of this game, you must be SSSSSSLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW. PC gamer rated it the fourth best game ever. You can't lose with this game. By that of course, I mean you can't lose by BUYING it, not that you'll win every single scenario. (sorry to disappoint you on that one)

DOS · by Sam Tinianow (113) · 2001

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

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

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness (Demo Version)
Released 1996 on DOS, Macintosh
WarCraft II: Battle Chest
Released 1999 on Windows, Macintosh
WarCraft II: Battle Chest
Released 1996 on DOS
WarCraft Rumble
Released 2023 on iPhone, Android, iPad
WarCraft III: Gold Edition
Released 2005 on Windows, Macintosh
WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal
Released 1996 on DOS, Macintosh
WarCraft: Orcs & Humans
Released 1994 on DOS, 1995 on Macintosh, Windows
Hearthstone: Heroes of WarCraft
Released 2014 on Windows, Macintosh, 2015 on iPhone...

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1339
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

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 March 22, 2024.