How Warcraft III birthed a genre, changed a franchise, and earned a Reforge-ing
The early 2000s were a much different visual time, but trust me-Warcraft III was a banger that has cast a bit of an industry legacy.
Few game worlds have made a mark as big as that of Warcraft. It has birthed three best-selling strategy games, a blockbuster Hollywood movie, a bunch of novels and comics, a mega-popular (digital) collectible card game (Hearthstone), and an epic, genre-defining MMO that, 15 years on from launch, is soon to get its eighth expansion. And while most of its cultural impact and fame (and infamy) stems from that MMO, World of Warcraft, there's something to be said for the quiet legacy of Blizzard's 2002 real-time strategy game Warcraft III.
Despite a long and troubled development-a development that included a name change and major shift in direction along the way-Warcraft III cemented the world of Azeroth in gaming culture. It paved the way for WoW's success, kicked off the trend of bringing RPG elements into non-RPG genres, triggered a revival in tower defense games, and spawned the uber-popular MOBA genre, which was invented out of its modding tools. (Warcraft III also happened to be a great game, too.)
With Blizzard's official remaster of the game, Warcraft III: Reforged, out tomorrow, it's high time to take a look back at Warcraft III's history. I spoke to eight of the roughly three dozen core development staff from the original Warcraft III team about how it was made and how it helped shape the future (which is now the present) of the games industry. This is a compressed retelling of their many stories and anecdotes.
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