Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is a cancelled graphic adventure game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Animation Magic from 1996 until 1998. Set in the Warcraft universe after the events of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, it followed the orc character Thrall in his quest to reunite his race, then living on reservations and in slavery following its defeat by the human Alliance. Assuming the role of Thrall, the player would have used a point-and-click interface to explore the world, solve puzzles and interact with characters from the wider Warcraft series.
Warcraft Adventures was conceived in late 1996, when Blizzard's sister company Capitol Multimedia suggested that the Warcraft license might be suited to an adventure game. Blizzard co-developed the project with Animation Magic, a subdivision of Capitol responsible for the CD-i games from The Legend of Zelda series. The team opted for a conservative design approach influenced by LucasArts adventure games such as The Dig and Full Throttle. Blizzard struggled to adapt to the adventure genre, and delayed Warcraft Adventures past its original release date of late 1997. Game designer Steve Meretzky was hired to revise the project in February 1998, resulting in a plan to edit and improve the nearly-completed game with minimal changes to its art. Meretzky's plan went largely unused, as Blizzard determined that its implementation would lead to excessive delays. Instead, the project was canceled in May 1998, after roughly 18 months of work.
Warcraft Adventures received significant pre-release attention from the gaming public and press, and the decision to cancel it was met with fan backlash and critical disappointment. Despite the game's cancellation, its story was adapted into the novel Warcraft: Lord of the Clans (2001) by Christie Golden, and was the basis for Blizzard's real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Elements of the game later influenced World of Warcraft and the 2016 film Warcraft. A nearly-finished version of the game was leaked online in September 2016. Reviewing the leaked version, critics generally praised its visuals, but several found its design uninspired.
Gameplay and plot
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was a graphic adventure game with a point-and-click interface, which the player would have used to navigate the world, collect items, solve puzzles and interact with non-player characters. It was set in the Warcraft universe two years after the events of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. In that game, the human Alliance defeats the orc Horde, which is then split between Azeroth—the human plane—and the orc homeworld of Draenor. In Warcraft Adventures, the defeated orcs left on Azeroth were confined to reservations and reduced to slavery. Alcoholism and passivity spread among them. The player assumed the role of Thrall, an orc raised from infancy as a slave by the human Lieutenant Blackmoore, who had found Thrall on a battleground during the events of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Blackmoore kept Thrall from encountering other orcs throughout his early life, and sought to raise him as a pawn to rally the orcs as his personal military and conquer Azeroth.
In response to Thrall's failure to execute another orc, Blackmoore would have sent him to a dungeon cell, wherein the game began. As Thrall, the player was planned to have escaped Blackmoore's castle by impersonating a human. The player subsequently explored the wartorn Azeroth to learn about the orcs' plight and history, which would have led to the discovery that Thrall's race had abandoned its traditional shamanism and way of life in favor of black magic and demonic power. This shift had caused the orcs' evil actions in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. To rebuild the Horde around its original traditions, Thrall sought to reunite its disparate factions by gaining the trust of the surviving chiefs, including Orgrim Doomhammer, Kilrogg Deadeye and Grom Hellscream. Thrall was eventually to be revealed as the son of Durotan, who had led the orcs' Frost Wolf Clan until his murder by the orc brothers Rend and Maim Blackhand. In the end, Thrall would have rallied the Horde as its leader, and led an attack against its human captors that defeated Blackmoore and the orc brothers Rend and Maim.
Development Conception
In the second half of 1996, Blizzard Entertainment's Allen Adham stated that his company was "looking into the possibilities of doing more with the orcs and humans, which includes non-game types of enterprises, but there's nothing in the works at the moment." Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was ultimately conceived at Blizzard late that year, around "four or five months" after the release of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal in May 1996, according to producer Bill Roper. The team's inspiration for the project was a proposal by Capitol Multimedia, a subsidiary of Blizzard parent Davidson & Associates, to use the Warcraft license for a graphic adventure game. Blizzard was introduced to the game development and animation studio Animation Magic, purchased by Capitol in 1995, and was impressed by its art department. The studio had previously produced titles including the Magic Tales series for Davidson, as well as the Legend of Zelda games for the CD-i game console. Roper noted that the company's work "totally reminded us of all of those adventure games we loved playing", and Blizzard chose to co-develop the game with the team.
Blizzard had considered a graphic adventure for several years, but lacked the capacity to create the art assets for such a game. The promise of working with a team experienced in the genre clinched the project. At the time, Roper compared Capitol's pitch to seeing Condor's original proposal for Diablo, and called it a "very natural course" for Blizzard and "a perfect fit for who we are." Chris Metzen, writer of Warcraft Adventures, said that Blizzard was also growing tired of the real-time strategy genre during that period. Roper similarly remarked that the company was hoping to branch out beyond strategy games, and to become a developer of varied titles that matched the "eclectic" taste of its staff. The Warcraft Adventures concept appealed to the team in part because it allowed greater room than a strategy title to explore Warcrafts setting, much of which was contained in an internal series bible. It was intended to create the story foundation upon which the series' next strategy entry, Warcraft III, would build. Blizzard's Rob Pardo later said that the project was the first time that the developer "started seeing [its franchises] as intellectual properties", without concrete ties to genre. The team envisioned Warcraft Adventures as the first game in a possible series of story-based Warcraft spin-offs in the adventure genre.
After agreeing to the project, Blizzard began to generate concept art for Animation Magic, and to develop the game design. The team opted for a purposely conservative approach to the design of Warcraft Adventures. During development, Roper said that the adventure genre had "very defined standards" and expectations, and that Blizzard was "not necessarily looking to make the next great innovation in adventure game interfaces or rewrite the book on how adventure games are done". To this end, the team focused on high-quality storytelling and comic writing, which it perceived as the genre's core traits. Roper later said that Blizzard hoped to copy the features of its favorite adventure games, in contrast to newer entries in the genre, which the team felt lacked an emphasis on plot, puzzles that emerged naturally from the world and strong voice-over work. The team's primary reference points were LucasArts adventure games, particularly the 1995 titles The Dig and Full Throttle, although without the latter's use of arcade-action sequences. Certain Sierra On-Line adventures inspired the team as well. In 2009, IGN's Travis Fahs summarized that the team designed the game "as fans", and sought to borrow from the period's best adventure titles in the way that Warcraft: Orcs & Humans had borrowed from Dune II.
Production Production of Warcraft Adventures was split between multiple locations. Although the project direction and design occurred in Irvine, California at Blizzard Entertainment, the code and art were developed by divisions of Animation Magic: the former in Boston, and the latter in Saint Petersburg, Russia. By early 1997, the animation team at the Russian office numbered around 50 members, but this figure rose to roughly 100 by the following year. In addition, Blizzard coordinated with Capitol Multimedia during the project, and by 1998 the South Korean animation studio Toon-Us-In was involved in producing the full motion video animated cutscenes. The direction of the art was a collaborative effort. At the beginning, Bill Roper explained that Blizzard "gave [Animation Magic] a world sheet, which was basically 'Here is the world. This is what the characters are like. Here are sketches of some, some of the descriptions.' " The art team built from this framework, and periodically delivered the results to Blizzard for approval. Animation Magic also offered input on certain game design decisions, although Roper noted that "the vast majority" of Warcraft Adventures design derived from Blizzard. As with all Blizzard projects of the time, the game was internally overseen by a small "Strike Team" within the company.
In writing the script, Blizzard sought to humanize and deepen the portrayal of the Orc race, whose situation in Warcraft Adventures Chris Metzen compared to that of real-world American Indians. The team hoped to make the story accessible and interesting to both Warcraft fans and newcomers, while including numerous characters from the strategy titles. Metzen likened the game's plot to the films Spartacus, Braveheart and Dances with Wolves, and described Warcraft Adventures as a hero's journey, in reference to the theories of Joseph Campbell. The choice to make the game a comedy derived in part from a desire to counterbalance its dark themes. According to Cindy Yans of Computer Games Strategy Plus, Blizzard fleshed out the cast via "tongue-in-cheek projection" of what it thought each character would do during peacetime.
Warcraft Adventures script was not written for particular actors, and its initial voice-recording sessions in Boston did not include major names, although all roles were portrayed by professional union members. According to Metzen, Blizzard decided that "a few characters [...] needed an extra boost" after reviewing these tapes, and chose to seek more recognizable actors for certain key roles. The team began to recall its favorite voices from other properties, including that of Optimus Prime from The Transformers; and that character's actor, Peter Cullen, was hired as a result. Other hires during this period included Tony Jay, who appeared in 1996's The Hunchback of Notre Dame; and the voice of Thrall, Clancy Brown. While Roper had voiced characters in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, he was unable to contribute new lines to Warcraft Adventures because of union restrictions, as he was not a member. To circumvent this issue, lines that Roper had voiced in previous Warcraft games were inserted into certain scenes.