How long has Warcraft been around?

American Blizzard (Blizzard Entertainment) successfully developed the first generation in 1994

The following is an excerpt from an article revealing the three secrets of success of American Blizzard Entertainment. If you are interested, you can read the full text.

In 1992, a new game type appeared. A company called Westwood released the second installment in its Dune series, "Dune II." In this version, players are surprised to find that they can control multiple combat units to fight the enemy in real time, just like a real battlefield commander. Previously, things like fighting could only be solved in games through turn-based and checkerboard methods, which simply could not reflect the ever-changing feeling on the battlefield. Since then, the real-time strategy (RTS) game genre was officially born.

In 1994, at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, another game imitating "Dune II" was discovered. Except that the background setting has changed from science fiction to fantasy, the feeling of playing is very similar. That is "Warcraft", its producer is a little-known company called Blizzard. Players at the time probably didn’t expect that 10 years later, Westwood would have been acquired by Electronic Arts (EA) and the corporate entity had been revoked; while Blizzard’s Warcraft series continued to grow and develop, and launched the top online game “World of Warcraft” 》.

Louis Custer, one of the founders of Westwood, recalled: "When I first saw "Warcraft", I was surprised by its 'mirror' imitation of our product." Blizzard "confessed" to this. Mike Molheim, one of the founders of Blizzard, admitted that "Warcraft" was born out of "Dune II", "We loved playing "Dune II" very much. So we considered making a game in a fantasy setting. A game similar to it, and adding a battle system."

Before Thanksgiving in 1994, "Warcraft" was officially released. After "Dune II", players needed a new RTS game, and "Warcraft" became an excellent choice. This has also greatly improved Blizzard's situation of recruiting new employees - some players who have played "Warcraft" have begun to actively seek opportunities to work at Blizzard. At the same time, there are also many people who are not gamers, but have seen Blizzard's upward momentum. defect. However, Mike Molheim and Blizzard's other founder Ed Ham were not carried away by the enthusiasm of the applicants. They had a strict hiring policy: People who worked at Blizzard had to be gamers.

In December 1995, "Warcraft II" was released in the United States. It immediately caused a sensation and became Blizzard's first game to sell more than one million copies - a sales volume that was very rare in the entire PC gaming industry at the time. While developing Diablo, Blizzard was also thinking about what its next real-time strategy game would be. A natural choice was Warcraft III, but Blizzard's "player developers" seemed a little tired of it. "We wanted to take a break from Warcraft and look for something fresh," said Mike Molheim. Everyone wanted to make a game with a science fiction background, so they developed "StarCraft" and presented it to the public at the 1996 E3 exhibition.

The result was almost a disaster. Players call it "Purple Warcraft" and "Orcs in Space." They think this game is not much different from "Warcraft". Blizzard faces a choice: continue to improve "StarCraft" or give up on the game altogether? In the end, Blizzard decided to make large-scale improvements to "StarCraft", even if it was a "longest and painful" process. The development team has completely updated StarCraft's graphics engine. Finally, after a lot of work, StarCraft was a success.

While "StarCraft" is being developed and improved, another game based on the setting of "Warcraft" is also in the development process. This is "Warcraft Adventure", which is an adventure game , the story takes place after "Warcraft II". A game company based in St. Petersburg, Russia, was licensed to develop the game.

After the news came out, the media and players showed great interest. However, before the 1998 E3 exhibition, Blizzard announced the cancellation of this development plan. At this time, the development of Warcraft Adventures was almost complete. This is like telling a marathon runner when the finish line is in sight: "The race is cancelled."

Why did Blizzard do this? Bill Roper, the original development director of "Warcraft Adventure", explained that Blizzard spent too much energy on characters, puzzles and other settings, thereby ignoring the development trend of adventure games. He believes that if "Warcraft Adventure" was launched at the 1998 E3 exhibition, the reaction of players would be: "If this game was launched two or three years ago, it would become a classic." Adventure games are moving towards 3D mode Evolution, and the pure 2D style of "Warcraft Adventure" seems too "nostalgic"-this is exactly what is unacceptable in game development. In addition, "Monkey Island Hero III" just launched by LucasArt Company at that time had very outstanding visual effects and became the biggest competitor of "Warcraft Adventure". Blizzard believes that if it launches "Warcraft Adventure" at this time, it will not be able to become an "old A-level" game. Therefore, they eventually canceled this plan and instead sought to develop a larger-scale multi-user online role-playing (MMORPG) game in a 3D environment, which later became known as "World of Warcraft".

Blizzard has such strict requirements on its own brand image, even somewhat deliberately. In fact, when people talk about the "goodness" of Blizzard's products, they talk more about their complex settings and sophistication, that is, the game's powerful playability and deep connotation. Compared with Microsoft's "Age of Empires" at the same time, "StarCraft" is not much better in terms of graphics, but the game is much more playable and can attract players for a longer time. As for "Warcraft Adventures", Blizzard adopted a consistent "either the best or nothing" attitude and resolutely canceled the plan. When a strong man breaks his wrist, he will naturally suffer heavy losses, but Blizzard's purpose is to maintain its high-end brand image and obtain longer-term benefits.

Memorial events of Blizzard Entertainment

●1991: Silicon & Synapse, the predecessor of Blizzard, was established

●1993: Officially named Blizzard Entertainment

●1994: The first game "Warcraft" after the name change was launched

●1995: "Warcraft II" was launched

●1996: Acquired Condor Corporation and Renamed it Blizzard North; launched "Diablo"

●1997: Launched the online server "Battle.net"

●1998: "StarCraft" was launched

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●2000: "Diablo" is launched

●2002: "Warcraft III" is launched

●2004: "World of Warcraft" is launched

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●2005: Acquisition of Swingin'Ape Studio; Blizzard North merged into headquarters