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Warcraft
Adventures
By Elliott Chin
design by Ethan O'Brien
The story always seems
to be the same: We read about a game that starts off as a simple
idea, which then blossoms into a working design, and usually two
years (or so) later, a successful game is born. If developers dream
something that captures our collective imagination, such successes
become franchises and universes that spawn even more hit titles.
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Thrall,
the orc on the left, was to be the star of Blizzard's first
adventure game, Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. |
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But what happens to those
ideas and dreams that never quite get off the ground? What about
the games we glimpsed briefly in the past and then never saw again?
What of the games that history forgot? Sometimes, we can't even
remember these games with their lofty promises, and they disappear
with barely a whisper. Other times, we're bombarded with hype, previews,
and information, and when these highly anticipated games vanish,
they leave a void that begs to be filled and questions that go unanswered.
There's a long list of
games that burst with potential at one point in time but somehow
couldn't make it through development: Warcraft Adventures, Champions,
Secret of Vulcan Fury, Indestructibles, Agents of Justice, A-10,
among others. There are many more, and for each one, there is a
sizable fan base that wants to know what happened. Was it the excesses
of developers? The misinformed decisions of publishers? Or the perils
of the market?
In our ongoing series, the PC Gaming Graveyard, we'll look back at these games and find out why they never made it to the store shelves. In many cases, the stories are full of drama, loss, frustration, and sometimes hope.
Our first Gaming Graveyard
installment is the story of Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans,
an adventure game that was set in Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft
strategy-game universe.
Early Days
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