WarCraft: Orcs & Humans

aka: WC1, WarCraft I
Moby ID: 371
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

The Kingdom of Azeroth was relatively peaceful and ruled by King Llane. That was until a powerful mage named Medivh commanded forces that opened up a portal in the Swamp of Sorrow, leading to another world. This ushered in the Age of Chaos, as Orcs were summoned to this world and attempted to establish an empire. As the Orcish hordes swarmed from the portal, they met with the Humans of Azeroth and battles ensured. Peaceful co-existence is not an option. Only one race will attain dominance over the land.

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is the first real-time fantasy strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment Inc. By playing either the Humans or the Orcs in this saga, two separate story lines evolve with 12 scenarios per side telling the tale of the battle for Azeroth. Players must mine gold and chop wood in order to construct buildings and create new units. From swords to sorcery, all the elements of classic fantasy are here to explore: rich forests, dark dungeons and bubbling swamps await the stalwart troops amassed to fight for dominance. Command many unique armies and creatures including Knights, Archers, Clerics, Warlocks, Daemons, Elementals, and Necromancers who are able to raise the dead.

The multiplayer aspects of the game allow 2 players to challenge one another on over 20 custom maps and determine who is the supreme warlord. Head to head play is supported over modem, serial link, and IPX networks, and works cross-platform between the IBM-PC and Macintosh versions.

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72 People (32 developers, 40 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 26 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 129 ratings with 6 reviews)

Play for the story

The Good
The game is great for the story. The story is told through the game is very entertaining and has enough in it to keep it interesting. The original game of course can not be compared to the new ones of today (2008), but it is great in terms of gameplay and units and overall creativity shown in it. Upgrades that are reflected in the game in units is a very nice touch for an early game such as this. The overall music and the sounds are also nicely done. Commenting on graphics is useless as one could not compare, however as I said the sound part of the game could be comparable to the modern games. The game manual is also a well done piece of work. It tells the interesting story from both sides and has good descriptions of the units and buildings. Too bad the upgrades for the units are not described here. The intro and end animation sequences are also interesting in terms of design. However, I can not comment on graphics. Also the amount of units and buildings and resource development for the game of such age is worth admiration and the struggle it take to play the game through despite the modern RTS that are available.

The Bad
There are of course the negative parts to any game. The first is cumbersome user interface that is present in the game. The movement of units overall is hard and the game proceeds to slow. This of course could be the observations of the person who is used to modern RTS games. Another problem is computer AI. It does throw an interesting move on you once a in a while but it ends at that. After a while it is possible to counteract the computer and I found that there a one strategy that works for all maps (except where it is limited force) in both campaigns . This is of course a let down of the game. However, back than nobody could boast about a really smart AI. For this reason a lot of complaints might not be applicable to the game since they come from a person used to modern RTS.

The Bottom Line
If you are a WarCraft fan and want to play the whole story you should play both campaigns of this game. If you are able to play this game continuously after that in skirmish mode and etc. Well you are a hero and I will shake your hand. Myself, I was never able to bring myself to replay the game, yet due to the interface issue, slowness and dull AI. If you are however coming to see what WarCraft is all about well then I would suggest starting with the second one or even the third one and working the way back.

DOS · by Tatar_Khan (676) · 2008

A classic, albeit a flawed one

The Good
Warcraft was to Dune II as Doom was to Wolfenstein 3D...a step up for the whole genre. As the second real-time strategy game natively released for the PC, it improved upon its predecessor in almost every way, and began the long-running rivalry between Blizzard and Westwood as strategy developers.

Warcraft takes place in a fantasy setting. You can choose to play as either the humans or the orcs, with over a dozen unit, building and spell types for each side...each of which are equivalent. The human footman is the same as the orcish grunt. The human conjuror does the same tasks as the orcish warlock. While this might seem like a step backwards compared to Dune (and it is) it does make the game easy to play. And there are small differences between the humans and the orcs which serve to add strategic depth: for instance, the human archer can shoot one tile further than its orcish counterpart.

Warcraft was an extremely innovative RTS game on many levels. It was the first to have a random map generator, multiplayer support and a level editor, vastly extending the game's replay value. All three of which are taken for granted these days. But even without these Warcraft would have been a good game, as the campaign mode alone is superb. Each of the 12 missions per side are connected by an excellent story, and the level design is top notch. In Dune, each mission was basically the same as the one before it: build up a base and destroy the enemy. But in Warcraft you've got a lot more variety in your missions. Some of them start you with a fixed army and require you to conduct raids on orc encampments, or rescue peasants. Others have side quests that allow more powerful technologies to become available. They are a bit on the hard side and drop you off in the deep end of the pool relatively soon, but you certainly won't be bored playing the campaign mode. Warcraft also supports internet play via Kali, although it never became a hit multiplayer game like its sequel.

In Dune, you could pump out just one unit type and win. But Warcraft forces you to use combined arms, as making just one unit type will most likely lose you the game. Infantry are your primary unit type in the early game, but they can be killed easily by knights. Knights in turn are susceptible to massed archers. Archers get countered by catapults, and so on. It's a really subtle balance, every unit and building plays an important part. Even in the late game you'll still be making use of your most basic unit types, as the weak units make up for it by being quick training and cheap.

The game's AI is mediocre today, but back in Warcraft's time it was the best there was. Rather than just blindly attacking, a computer-controlled opponant would scout the perimeter of your base, searching for weak spots. If you piled all your troops near one entrance, the enemy would not attack there unless it was numerically superior. Decoy tactics wouldn't work against it, and it even singled out expensive/valuable units in battle to weaken you as much as possible. The AI had an annoying trick of slipping troops past your defenses and into your peasants. This was especially bad since peasants had no way of protecting themselves...you'd often lose half of your economy just because you left an entrance unguarded. :(

The game's graphics, though unremarkable, carry the point across well. I actually prefer them to those of its sequel. Warcraft II's graphics look too neat and organised, like a game board instead of a battlefield. Warcraft, on the other hand, manages to capture the rugged feel of real terrain. Audio is also a winner. Glen Stafford's music fits perfectly, and in the typical Blizzard style your units give you several different responses when you click on them. "Zug zug!"

The Bad
The game isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Warcraft has a number of flaws that can't be justified just because it's old, and which probably prevented it from attaining the super-seller status of its sequel.

Saying that the controls are annoying would be an understatement. In Dune II, if you wanted to move a unit you'd click it and then click where you wanted it to go. Easy. But in Warcraft, you must click the unit, click the "Move" button on the left-hand side of the screen, and then click where you want it to go. Even when using the keyboard shortcuts this is time consuming, and it's amazing that Blizzard got away with such a user-hostile system, especially since a much better way of doing things had been implemented in a game two years older. Being able to move up to four units at a time is nice, but considering you have to group them manually by holding down Shift and then clicking units one at a time to add them to your group, it was actually quicker moving masses of units in Dune.

I won't belabor the standard complaints: the pathfinding is awful, the AI is retentive, etc. But there are many annoying design decisions that you'd never be able to get away with these days. The only building you can drop off gold at is the town hall, and you can only have one of those the entire game, so once you've exhausted the gold near your base you have to send your peasants on really long trips back and forth between the nearest available gold and the town hall, making it maddenlingly easy for your enemy to raid your gold-gathering lines. And the town hall is the only building you can create peasants at, so if you lose even ten peasants it takes a long, long time to replace them.

Like its sequel, Warcraft is orc-biased. The orcs have the most powerful unit in the game (the demon) which not only eats the human's elemental for lunch but can be spawned for free once you've got a Warlock. Demons can demolish a town with impunity, and the orcs also have a spell which grants invincibility to any unit for ten seconds. Did it ever occur to Blizzard that invincible demons might not be so good for the game's balance?

The Bottom Line
Today, there is absolutely no reason why you should own this game (except for collecting or nostalgia purposes), as its archaic controls and dated gameplay mechanics make it a rather unenjoyable for today's RTS gamer. but Warcraft was one of the most influential games the strategy genre has ever seen. It furthened the concept of RTS games by leaps and bounds. Its flaws are made up for by its innovation.

DOS · by Maw (832) · 2004

The first installment in this series is clearly shadowed by the second.

The Good
Well, it's a decent game but nothing more. It was refreshing change from Dune II (simply because no other adequate RTS was released during that time) and the music/sound effects are OK.

The Bad
The game is slow - either badly programmed or simply meant to be slow. The enemy is stupid and the entire experience is lacking.

The Bottom Line
You should probably play this just to get an idea how much better the second game is.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 1999

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
map generator? Rola (8485) Sep 4, 2013
Title Spelling PCGamer77 (3158) Apr 10, 2012
More Macintosh madness Dae (7182) May 29, 2008
Demo's Third Level? Robert Classified (2) May 31, 2007

Trivia

Hybrid PC/MAC Version

When the game was ported to the Macintosh, it was released on a so-called "Hybrid Disc". A Hybrid Disc can be read by both a PC and a Mac, containing those respective computer's CD-ROM file systems. This disc contains audio tracks with the game's music, and can be played on any device which will play CD Audio. The music will only be heard in-game with the Macintosh version. PC-Only discs lack the CD Audio tracks.

Innovations

Warcraft was a game of many "firsts" in the RTS world. It was the first RTS game to support multiplayer capability, and the first to have multiple resource types to harvest.

Novels

In addition to a board game and Sword & Sorcery Studios' 2003 pen-and-paper RPG system, the Warcraft setting has yielded quite a number of novels. Pocket Books have published a handful of distinct titles: Day of the Dragon (2001), by Richard A. Knaak, set between Warcraft II and III * Lord of the Clans (2001), by Christie Golden * The Last Guardian (2001), by Jeff Grubb * Of Blood and Honour (2001), an e-book by Warcraft* developer Chris Metzen.

Two self-contained Warcraft trilogies have also been published. Richard A. Knaak's War of the Ancients trilogy features Azeroth's prehistory being subtly altered by visitors from its present:1. The Well of Eternity (2004) 2. The Demon Soul (2004) 3. The Sundering (2005)

He has also written the Sunwell Trilogy, graphic works in the Korean "manhwa" tradition, illustrated by Jae-Hwan Kim:1. Dragon Hunt (2005) 2. Shadows of Ice (2006) 3. Ghostlands (2007)

References

  • If you repeatedly click on any Orcish unit he will eventually say "zug zug!" A little known fact is that in the 1981 film Cavemen "zug zug" is caveman-speak for sexual intercourse.
  • The red banner visible during orc briefings is the same as banner of Sarlac in the game Blackthorne, also developed by Blizzard. You can see it in this screenshot.

Warhammer

In the beginning stages of development Blizzard did consider using the Warhammer license for Warcraft, and this was even pushed for by Ayman Adham to give the game brand recognition. However, after their terrible experiences with DC Comics during the development of Superman and Justice League games, the rest of the staff decided to instead create an original property.

Information also contributed by Chentzilla, Maw, Pseudo_Intellectual and xxxxxxxxxxx

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by MajorDad.

Windows added by Plok. PC-98, Macintosh added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Trixter, MAT, Belboz, Andrew Hartnett, Jeanne, Great Hierophant, Chris Jeremic, Patrick Bregger, Lain Crowley, MrFlibble.

Game added November 3, 1999. Last modified March 19, 2024.