World of Warcraft and the official Shrek origin story (aka the Warcraft movie) are separate. Mostly. However, the movie has gotten Blizzard thinking about older Warcraft games — and how they could bring them back.
After a BlizzCon Warcraft movie panel in which, among other things, Blizzard lore maestro Chris Metzen described the film as kind of an ideal realisation of stories told in/around Warcraft I (the strategy game from ye olde 1990s), I caught up with him to find out if the movie’s feeding back into World of Warcraft at all. His response? Sorta, but not as overtly or cloyingly as you might think.
“The interesting thing is, we were building [previous WoW expansion] Warlords of Draenor while they were developing the film,” Metzen told me, “so a lot of that Draenor history — the orcs and the development we did on those characters — all came into play relative to the film. Now that we’re looking at Legion, yeah [there’s some overlap]. Gul’Dan’s back. Khadgar’s back. The characters that are still alive from the filmic era, if you will, are coming back into play. Some of the themes are coming full circle. So they definitely inform each other. Legion is obviously a different time, different place, different scale, but they inform each other.”
So probably don’t expect any big synergistic events or quests that suddenly rope in big screen heroes who have no business mucking about in current conflicts. I asked WoW: Legion production director John Hight if the team was ever tempted to go full tie-in, if only for a quest line or something like that. He told me the idea just didn’t feel right.
“If we had any conversation specific to the movie, it was usually about, ‘How does that reinforce things for our players?’” he said during an interview. “Not the other way around. We never felt like capitalising on that or doing something that felt weird or contrived was the right thing.”
That said, the movie has made Blizzard interested in revisiting earlier periods in Warcraft history — especially ones whose stories were told in fairly, er, rudimentary fashion back in the day. I asked Metzen if Blizzard had considered creating new, non-WoW Warcraft games rooted in those eras or reinventing old-school Warcraft RTSes with modern mechanics and graphics. Metzen said there have definitely been discussions.
“We’ve talked about it,” he explained. “We would love to play with those early games, but when you think about it, it’s like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of work we’d have to do to go back, and reinvent basic game mechanics to get them playable.’ Even just, like, right-click. We’ve talked a lot, and we may continue to think that way. But nothing’s [officially in the works right now]. It’d be pretty rad, though.”
A modern revamp of Warcraft I or II? Now if they’d just un-cancel Warcraft Adventures already, we’d have ourselves a party.
Comments
15 responses to “The Warcraft Movie Could Revive Classic Warcraft Games”
How about starcraft ghost?
*wipes a tear*
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/06/23
Hahahahahaha that was good. Cheers for that lol
Good luck trying to play Warcraft 3 on US West. They fucked up something and now heaps of people are having lot’s of trouble playing on it. Although it hasn’t been much of a problem for me as I usually play something like Twilgiht’s Eve or The Black Road and because ENT allows me to host in Asia I use them so I can add in a FakePlayer so the game doesn’t crash mainly because no one plays on Asia.
I also found one of my old maps I started on in 2010 on Epicwar.com….so old school a total of 349 people downloaded it 😛
Warcraft II was one of my favourite games as a kid. I’d love to revisit it someday soon.
This.
Lok’tar ogar!
“See the world, they said…”
Given blizzard are advertising for developers to help their old games run on x86 architecture I think your assumption is a safe bet.
Imagine the Warcraft trilogy remade on the current Starcraft engine, that would be amazing!
If they’re revisiting Warcraft II stuff they better make damn sure they bring back the voice actor that did the narration.
“Due to your position as a regional commander, Lord Lothar has given you the orders to build a barracks and four farms”
Hahaha!
I didn’t even have to click on the link. I just read that sentence and can remember his voice perfectly 😀
its not the voice just the music 😀
Even just releasing a dosbox compatible release of Warcraft 1 and 2 to download via the Blizzard Client i’d be happy, otherwise ebay/abandonware is the way to go =/
“We would love to play with those early games, but when you think about it, it’s like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of work we’d have to do to go back, and reinvent basic game mechanics to get them playable.’ Even just, like, right-click.”
What a troll. Starcraft 2 is the same RTS everything as Warcraft RTS. SC2 is successful and using most of the same core mechanics as Starcraft 1(just like Capcom with Streetfighter). The reluctance if anything would come from the volume of ppl subscribing to WoW, and the popularity of SC in Korea I’d imagine. People would want to play one or the other? And they don’t want to risk losing WoW subscribers as it’s their main b&b?
Also… I’m so sick of orcs.