14 DAY TRIAL // Almost 25 years ago a franchise was born that would forever change the gaming world. Before World of Warcraft or Warcraft III, there were 2 titles that redefined the RTS genre, laying the foundation for a trend that would captivate gamers for years to come. Now, Blizzard decided to partner up with GOG and relaunch Warcraft I and II, so that newer gamers can experience the original stories, while older players can relive some precious moments from their childhood.
THE forefather of the RTS genre
Anyone who’s played RTS games in the early 2000s probably knows the formula by heart by now: you have your central building, some workers, and you build more and more advanced buildings that give you more and more advanced troops, all while trying to maintain a constant flow of incoming resources. Some units can fly , some units can swim, some units attack from up close and some units attack from afar. This is the formula that has made the RTS genre a success for almost 20 years, and while it may not be as popular now as it once was, older gamers are still head over heels for it.
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans
We all have that one game we played a million years ago that looked incredible in our mind, but when curiosity got the best of us and we finally dug it out from the ancient archives of the Internet, we realize that it actually looks like utter trash by today’s standards. In all honesty, when I got the two games, I did it more for the sake of the second entry, since I’m not old enough to have played Warcraft: Orcs and Humans when it was in hype. However, I did want to see it for myself and I have to admit that the controls stunned me. I literally had moments when I just sat there wondering how in the world did people have the patience to play an RTS where you had to manually press “M” to make a unit go somewhere, “A” to make it attack, and the fact that there was no drag-and-drop selection available in an RTS game where you are supposed to control multiple troops seemed like absolute blasphemy.
But as I was preparing to write a paragraph where I would mop the floor with the first title, I remembered that those were simpler times, and that even this antiquity was revolutionary as far as controls went. The graphics were cute, and they gave room for my imagination to thrive, since those orcs that were probably rendered in less that 60 pixels looked a whole lot different than the savage green-skins you know from World of Warcraft. Besides, the purpose of a relaunch is to pull on your childhood heartstrings, not to impress you, and it did just that with extreme efficiency.
Warcraft II Battle.net Edition
After playing a few missions in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and reading an online wiki about how the story went, I decided to move on to the second entry in the franchise. Blizzard and GOG decided to bundle up the original Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal into Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, so I enjoyed the full story without having to pay for two games. Before talking about the gameplay, I’d like to mention how they decided to appeal to both vanilla and newer players, as you can play Warcraft II with the original graphics while having Battle.net support, or you can play a version that features enhanced resolution controls and supports LAN connections.
A game that really raised the bar
Warcraft II was a significant improvement compared to the first title as far as controls are concerned, finally allowing you to do more with your mouse and less with your keyboard, so it felt a whole lot more familiar, and the improved graphics made the game far more enjoyable. I played through the entire orcish campaign without realizing that my weekend was gone, yet I regret nothing, because the story enveloped me instantly, and I felt empty when it ended. There were even plenty of moments where I saw familiar characters and areas, and said to myself “hey, I know this from WoW”, but then I laughed it off realizing that If I had only played the RTS titles and then started WoW, I would have said the exact same thing, but in reverse.
Bringing back multiplayer matches
I even tried an online match, but of course I got my pride handed to me on a platter, since whoever was on the other team played as if he had more hours invested in Warcraft II than I had invested in actually living. Yet even in the face of defeat, I regret nothing, because I enjoyed every single moment of it.
