Lost games? Last-minute cancellations? Classic franchises exploring genres they know nothing about? Where do we sign? Hardware isn't the only thing lost to time, with forgotten prototypes in boxes and strange advertisements. Software suffers a similar fate, and a great example is Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, a graphic adventure that Blizzard planned to release in 1998. Many videos about the game have leaked to the Web, but now the boldest can download a copy and see what it's about.
The year was 1997. Blizzard was still reaping success with Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and its expansion Beyond the Dark Portal. Almost at the same time, it was taking its first steps with Battle.net, a service that debuted in November 1996. Naturally, Blizzard had every intention of expanding the Warcraft universe, but what surprised many at the time was its decision to choose the graphic adventure genre to do so. That's how the project Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was born, which aimed to tell the story of none other than Thrall, a character of great importance in Warcraft canon. Blizzard had announced the new adventure would be ready in the last quarter of 1997, and enlisted the help of Animation Magic, which had extensive experience in 2D animation. However...
... the problems began, and the game was delayed until late 1998. At first, technical issues were cited, then "communication issues" between Blizzard and Animation Magic (which, although an American company, had primarily Russian animators) added to the mix. Lord of the Clans had almost a year of development under its belt, with voices recorded, puzzles ready, and animation nearly complete, but Blizzard decided to bring in Steve Meretzky (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, etc.), leading to more modifications and extra recordings. With this burden, Blizzard admitted it couldn't meet its release date. E3 1998 was about to begin: LucasArts had swept with The Curse of Monkey Island, and also revealed Grim Fandango, which boasted a 3D graphics engine. Blizzard concluded that Lord of the Clans would be a "1995 game" in 1999. A few days before E3, it pulled the plug on Warcraft Adventures, and even fan petitions couldn't bring it back... at least not officially.
For years, material about the game has leaked, especially through Russian YouTubers, which makes sense given that the animators were from that country. Thrall's story was so important that Blizzard decided to turn it into a novel and canonize its content, but now a user known as Reidor on the Scrolls of Lore forum has posted a complete copy of the game, ready to use (operating systems after XP need a little help at this point). The download is nearly 600 megabytes, available on Mediafire, and honestly we don't know how long it will stay there, though I imagine someone has already put a copy on the BitTorrent network. Who's ready for a bit of archaeology in the Warcraft saga?
