Sunday Musings - Warcrafthammer

As always, the idea behind a Sunday Musings is that Adam takes a concept and times an hour and a half to write it in. This week, we get …erm….zugzugged

Since the the early days of the internet, when we as forum dwellers would gather to a small flames of tabletop hobbying, a singular cry would be heard. From that day forward, it returns day after day, week after week. A haunting ghostly sound akin to the final gasp of a banshee.

"Warcraft was meant to be a Warhammer game".

I, of course, am being somewhat facetious. It wasn't that early, and didn't really start until World of Warcraft was in full swing in the mid 2000s*. And sometimes it's rephrased as "Starcraft was meant to be 40K game". However, there's a few layers of truth and nonsense to this particular myth, and one that's worth exploring.

Lets travel back to 1994**. It's a time in tabletop where Warhammer Fantasy 4th Ed is going from strength to strength, we are a year away from an actual GW website, two years after the buyout of Citadel Miniatures and Titan Legions is brand spanking new. It's to the backdrop of this success that PC gamers are treated to a fantasy RTS game with bright, characterful graphics by the name of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The Orcs are green and...that's really where the comparisons end when it comes to Warhammer / Warcraft. Warcraft takes far more from Dungeons and Dragons for a background and archetypes, more so when the games begins to show you the demons and ogres of the setting. All that it really takes from Warhammer as whole is the look of the greenskin Orc and Goblins, and that begins to depart very quickly.

Blizzard producer Patrick Wyatt went on record as saying that there was a plan to obtain a licence to Warhammer as a way to improve the Blizzard brand recognition. He said that “Warhammer was a huge inspiration for the art-style of Warcraft, but a combination of factors, including a lack of traction on business terms and a fervent desire on the part of virtually everyone else on the development team to control our own universe nixed any potential for a deal. We had already had terrible experiences working with DC Comics on Death and Return of Superman and Justice League Task Force, and wanted no similar issues for our new game.”

He continues to say " Had Blizzard not controlled the intellectual property rights for the Warcraft universe, It’s highly unlikely Blizzard would be such a dominant player in the game industry today.”***

On top of that, Félix Paniagua (ex-Citadel sculptor and owner of Avatars of War) mentioned that there had been a short time in which such a concept existed in a Spanish magazine named CARGAD!

Felix: [...] Did you knew that Warcraft was going to be Warhammer?

Interviewer: What?

Felix: The guys at Blizzard proposed Games Workshop to do a computer game based on Warhammer. Games Workshop said no, so Blizzard still continued with it and called it Warcraft. Games Workshop didn't took long to start being sorry [for the decision they took].

So, in a nutshell. Yes. Warcraft, well before anything was put to code, was floated as possible videogame adaption of Warhammer. It appears that the time in which this possibility existed was so short as to be nothing more than a footnote.

A lot of what became Warcraft as a game system came from Dune 2000, and as mentioned earlier, large amounts of D&D themed background and lore formed the bones of what Warcraft became, which was fleshed out out and added to with the frankly still stunning Warcraft 3. 

From that came the novels, (Lord of the Clans has been reviewed on this very site) and eventually the juggernaut MMO World of Warcraft. By the time WC2 and WC3 had arrived, a lot of the style and look of Warcraft was cemented, bringing with it fresh takes and tales, building the blocks of a world (and beyond*****) and creating something that had absolutely no ties to Warhammer whatsoever.

Starcraft is a much easier theory to disprove, simply because Bob Fitch, programmer and technical director at Blizzard, has gone on record as saying the Terrans are based on Starship Troopers and Aliens, the Zerg inspired by the Bugs of Starship Troopers with some Ender's Game thrown in and the Protoss were Alien Greys, just made taller and more muscular. The truth is out there and all that.

As always, I remain

Adam


*Does it hurt anyone else saying that as a time in the past? 

**That hurts more. Jeeez.

*** This more than a few years old at this point, and the less said about current Blizzard the better I feel.

**** There is every chance I'll cover Warcraft 3 at some point. It's still to this day a genuinely incredible creation.

*****the dark portal