Blizzard Working On Warcraft 1, 2 Rerelease

[Stryc9]

I have complete faith that Blizzard will completely and totally fuck this up in ways we can only begin to imagine. Warcrap 3 was the precursory fart to the massive turd that is WoW.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

This would be a good way for Blizzard to market the Battle.net Launcher they've been working on (I think it's in beta right now; basically it's like Steam, only for Blizzard's games). Once the B.net Launcher (BnL?) is ready for primetime, just put the promo out there that anyone with a valid B.net account (aka: you own any of the current Blizzard games) can download and play the classic Warcraft games via the launcher.

 

[porous_shield]

I can't say I ever enjoyed playing WarCraft 1 or 2's campaign -though I liked the campaign in WarCraft 3- but I enjoyed the multiplayer immensely. I'm sure I spent hundreds of hours playing with friends over Lan and modem and I still play WarCraft 3 occasionally with some buddies.

Hard to believe at some point I was actually looking forward to WoW.

 

[Aeshi]

Huh, well that might be worth a look at, if nothing else

Outside of Ebay and DOSBOX, there's no legal way to obtain these classics.

I could swear Battle.net still sells Warcraft 2, though you're probably right about the first game.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I wonder if it would ruin the game's balance if they added the ability to select more than 4 characters at a time. I remember it being much harder than the sequel partially due to selection size and pathfinding in cluttered areas.

Argh, yes, that was my first thought too.

I still frickin' love Warcraft I. Except for Human Mission 7, the one where all your peasants are stuck in a stockade. That one was a pain in the arse.

Heh, yeah. Or, that one where you rescue the knight and the archers from the ogre caves...there's a room where if you tell your units to go to the bottom of the map, the go to the bottom of the room, follow the wall to the left, go up the left wall, across the top wall, and back down again into an endless loop.

(Also, you can heal an archer the other side of a cave wall to your starting position, and not have to send people to fight their way to them)

 

[AldUK]

I love Tides of Darkness and have put countless hours into it over the years. This news excites me a lot, especially if they make the first one actually playable.

 

[Eleuthera]

I still have the original game on floppy-disks somewhere deep down in my closet. I haven't owned a PC with a diskdrive for over 10 years though...

Probably would give it a try if only for nostalgia's sake.

 

[Jandau]

I made a post in a Heroes of the Storm news thread how most of Blizz's projects seem to be focused on how awesome their games USED to be (Harthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Warlords of Draenor). And now Blizz pretty much confirms that by revealing that their next project is precisely that - their old games.

If you love all the stuff you used to do, why not start doing stuff like that again? Or why not do a new IP of some kind, you could use it for Heroes of the Storm then, since you're really reaching (seriously, the Gryphon Rider Dude is an iconic character now?)...

 

[Nomad]

Blizzard Working On Warcraft 1, 2 Rerelease

Blizzard's working on unearthing the classic RTS games from their MS-DOS prison.

In this modern age of gaming, World of Warcraft has taken the modest plotlines of the original strategy series and successively worked on each over the past decade. Crusades burned, Lich Kings wrathed, and then the entire world blew up. Players who want to explore the full backstory can play the fantastic Warcraft 3 and its Frozen Throne expansion pack, but the older games are sealed away under an arcane sigil known as MS-DOS. Blizzard has a team of arcane scholars working to get the classic games [a href=http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/10/5087768/blizzard-warcraft-and-warcraft-2-working-on-modern-pcs]ready for a future rerelease[/a] on modern PCs.

The news was revealed at Blizzcon 2013, when WoW production director J. Allen Brack was asked if Blizzard planned to rerelease any of the older Warcraft titles. "So, we actually have a guy on our team - actually several guys on our team - who are actually working on a side project to do something like that in some form or fashion," Brack answered. "We're fans of Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, and we'd love to replay those games for sure."

Warcraft: Humans and Orcs was released back in 1994 for MS-DOS. The next year brought Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness and the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion soon after. Outside of Ebay and DOSBOX, there's no legal way to obtain these classics. While Blizzard hasn't talked about the nature of these rereleases, it just released the Warcraft contemporary [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/129264-Blizzard-Brings-Blackthorne-Bonanza-to-Battle-net]Blackthrone[/a] for free via Battle.net. However you can, it would be good to brush up on the past before [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/129467-Warlords-of-Draenor-Expansion-Announced-for-World-of-Warcraft]Warlords of Draenor[/a] drops!

Source: [a href=http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/10/5087768/blizzard-warcraft-and-warcraft-2-working-on-modern-pcs]Polygon[/a]

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While the original Warcraft II release does indeed not work on a modern system, the battle.net edition works absolutely fine on windows 7. In fact, I played through the whole game only a month ago, and I haven't touched MS-DOS in a decade (or DOSBOX at all, for that matter).

 

[Aeshi]

I made a post in a Heroes of the Storm news thread how most of Blizz's projects seem to be focused on how awesome their games USED to be (Harthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Warlords of Draenor). And now Blizz pretty much confirms that by revealing that their next project is precisely that - their old games.

If you love all the stuff you used to do, why not start doing stuff like that again?

Prehaps they're just using this to test whether doing "stuff like that again" would actually be worth doing or whether it'll just get them a load of people whining "omg they're just copy-pasting their old stuff now[footnote]Sure we've been asking you to do this for ages, but bashing you is "in" so we'll ***** at you regardless of what you actually do.[/footnote]"

Or why not do a new IP of some kind, you could use it for Heroes of the Storm then

What about Project Titan? That's a new IP, though admittedly I think it's kinda "in limbo" now (not that I think a new Blizzard IP would do well at all)

(seriously, the Gryphon Rider Dude is an iconic character now?)

I'd say he's fairly iconic, since most of the Vanilla WoW art (and some of the various covers) featured him quite heavily.

 

[Riff Moonraker]

Man, oh man.... what good memories I have of WarCraft 1 and 2!!! I would be tickled as punch if they would bring these out for the consoles, and I could do it all over again.

 

[Tiamat666]

Remember how you had to build buildings on a road in the original? That was crazy.

Next to a road.

When I played Warcraft as a kid I remember that I moved all the units individually, lining them up into battle formations with the crossbowmen/spearorcs behind a line of warriors. You could only select a maximum of 4 units at a time and movement was awkward, so grouping them was usually not worth it.

The orc battleline was at a disadvantage to humans though, because the range of spearorcs was one tile lower than the crossbowmen. So human crossbowmen would hit your warriors without the spearorcs hitting them back.

And the endgame was all about creating wizards and warlocks, spamming demons and water elementals.

Fun times. But I don't see myself going back to Warcraft... I don't mind old graphics, but primitive controls are a real blocker for me. Warcraft 2 I would probably replay.