Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans

This article is about the unreleased computer game. For the book based on the same story, see Warcraft: Lord of the Clans.
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans

Official box art design.

Developer(s) Blizzard Entertainment
Designer(s) Bill Roper, Chris Metzen
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows, Mac OS
Release date(s) Cancelled
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was a black comedy point-and-click adventure video game under development by Blizzard Entertainment, set in the Warcraft universe, and cancelled before its release. American company Animation Magic[1] was out-sourced due to their experience in classical two-dimensional animation to produce the twenty-two minutes of fully animated sequences, the game's artwork, the coding of the engine and the implementation of the sound effects. Blizzard provided all the designs, the world backgrounds, sound recording and ensured storyline continuity. Four or five months after Blizzard had released Battle.net and Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal had shipped, Blizzard began development on Lord of the Clans, that would be cancelled just over a year later.

Development and cancellation

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was originally slated for a fourth-quarter 1997 release; however it was pushed back until the end of 1998. This was a result of unforeseen technical problems coupled with communication limitations between Blizzard and the Russian animators at Animation Magic. The game had been in development for over a year: nearly all features, puzzles, and areas were in place, the voice acting had been recorded, and much of the animation was complete, yet Blizzard was not confident with their title. Blizzard hired Steve Meretzky, creator of A Mind Forever Voyaging and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy video games, as a design specialist to help refine the puzzles and make them further cohesive with the narrative. Meretzky spent two weeks with the developers looking over the game for up to fourteen hours a day and it was decided that sequences of the game had to be rewritten which would involve more animation and more dubbing.

However, as the 1998 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Atlanta was approaching, Blizzard became increasingly aware that implementing the proposed changes would result in them being unable to meet their already extended 1998 deadline. LucasArts had released their title The Curse of Monkey Island in the fall of 1997, and had announced their next adventure game title Grim Fandango sporting a 3D engine. In comparison, producer Bill Roper felt WarCraft Adventures looked dated;

I think that one of the big problems with Warcraft Adventures was that we were actually creating a traditional adventure game, and what people expected from an adventure game, and very honestly what we expected from an adventure game, changed over the course of the project. And when we got to the point where we cancelled it, it was just because we looked at where we were and said, you know, this would have been great three years ago.
— 

After over a year of hard work, press tours, magazine covers, and fan fervor Blizzard announced that Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was cancelled days before E3. Within hours of the announcement fans of the series formed an online petition, demanding the project be resurrected. On May 22, 1998, Blizzard responded via their website;

Blizzard Announcement — 22 May 1998
Press Desk: Blizzard Cancels Warcraft Adventures

Blizzard wants to take a minute to respond to the Warcraft Adventures petition that is circulating on the Internet. First, we want to express our gratitude to the Warcraft fans that took the time to organize such an effort. We recognize that the cancellation of Warcraft Adventures has disappointed some of our customers, and we appreciate that they have shared their opinions with us.

Secondly, we want let you know that stopping development was not a decision that was taken lightly. It was a hard call to make, but each of us knows that it was the right choice. The cancellation was not a business or marketing decision or even a statement about the adventure genre. The decision centered around the level of value that we want to give our customers. In essence, it was a case of stepping up and really proving to ourselves and gamers that we will not sell out on the quality of our games.

And finally, we hope that Warcraft fans will consider our track record and trust our judgement on ending the project. The cancellation of Warcraft Adventures does not signal the demise of Azeroth. We have every intention of returning to the Warcraft world because there are still chapters to be told. We will keep you informed as we announce future Warcraft plans.

Despite their press release, rumours still persist the game was cancelled due to projected low sales from the deteriorating market of the adventure game genre. Even though the game was cancelled, Blizzard felt the story itself too important to ignore and hired an author to adapt it into a novel. The author contracted to scribe it was unable to complete the book on time, so Star Trek novelist Christie Golden was hired to write the novelization based on scripts and outlines provided by Warcraft universe co-creator, Chris Metzen, and had to be completed within six weeks. The book was released under the title Warcraft: Lord of the Clans by Pocket Books and is considered canonical. Warcraft: Lord of the Clans is the second novel based in the Warcraft universe.

Blizzard returned to the Azeroth setting in 2002, with the release of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Even though the game exploring his storyline had been cancelled, Thrall played a major role in Warcraft III and the subsequent massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft and his story as outlined in the novel is considered canon, according to the Warcraft III manual's backstory.

In March 2010, a video of 20 minutes of gameplay was uploaded to a Russian gaming website, proving that someone outside of Blizzard Entertainment possesses a version of the game.[2] The video is also available on YouTube (where it is labeled as from an alpha version of the game).[3] In February 2011 a series of 11 gameplay videos (labeled as from a beta version of the game) were uploaded to YouTube (in December 2014 and January 2015 the 12th and 13th videos respectively have been added) walking through entire available gameplay.[4]

In August 2016, a version of the game's intro cutscene was uploaded to YouTube, being followed by 16 other cinematics from the game, uploaded over the following two weeks. These cutscenes were previously thought to be lost, as they weren't present in the original gameplay videos.[5]

Leak

On September 9, 2016, a near feature-complete version of the game leaked online through the Russian user "Reidor" on the Scrolls of Lore forums.[6] Though it is unclear as to where the leak originated, it has been speculated that the source of the leak may be a Russian subsidiary of Animation Magic, which was contracted to work on the game.[7] The leaked version has since become disseminated through torrent sites such as: The Pirate Bay.

Characters

Thrall was voiced by Clancy Brown. Orgrim Doomhammer was voiced by Peter Cullen and Drek'thar (the shaman) was voiced by Tony Jay. Additional voices were done by Bill Roper and Zul'jin (Troll leader), Nazgrel (the shaman), Gazlowe, Durotan, Rend, Maim, Kargath Bladefist, Deathwing were voiced by unknown voice actors.

Notes

^ Bill Roper produced the voices for all the characters in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and many of the voices in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, however as primarily a producer he is not a union actor so was not allowed to be used for Warcraft Adventures. However they could legally use his previously recorded work sparingly throughout the game.

See also

References

Footnotes
Notations

External links

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