A set of articles that I stumbled across some time ago (while searching for screenshots of terrifying DOS4GW errors!) – there’s some interesting stuff here about what could have been.
https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-making-of-warcraft-part-1
https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-making-of-warcraft-part-2
The thing that I find most interesting is just how completely different the aim of the project was compared to the fantasy series that it turned out to be. The second part of the article describes the initial idea had been to release an entire series of war games based on different historical conflicts.
However, they decided that a high fantasy version was the most exciting option to do first – hence the curiously bland first game’s title of “Warcraft: Orcs and Humans”. The others in the series, had it gone ahead as planned, would have been things like “Warcraft: The Roman Empire” or “Warcraft: Vietnam” – what a weird idea to even type out now.
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