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Incline Warcraft Adventures Unreleased Beta - Actually got released!

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
Patron
Joined
Nov 30, 2003
Messages
34,403
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Clogging the Multiverse with a Crowbar
Played a bit, and just made it into the Orc Reservation (full of drunk Sioux Orcs, naturally). It's quite playable, puzzles are okay-ish (and a bit on the easy side) and characters are your typical stereotypes. You got pissed off Goblins, your restless Gnomes, sardistic guards, flying pigs, strange contraptions trying to kill you in many ways.... It's like Monkey Island set in Warcraft. Okay game, but nothing outstanding.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
17,274
Location
Terra da Garoa
Finished it. Quality is all over the place... Some cutscenes do look like that Zelda crap:

EXJkUOw.png

02fd832c-0485-4b76-a18c-dfc79a1d52b7
DJzFCHT.png


Others are pretty cool, and remind me of Gargoyles / Batman: The Animated Series:

ms65luD.png

aoMyga4.png


But really, look at this:

h18clNq.png


This looks fantastic, and it's pure WarCraft II nostalgia. Shame the other areas look much worse...
 
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jfrisby

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Mar 21, 2013
Messages
491
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Really liked the first few areas, definitely on the easy side.. but might have been a hit in `94. Surprised to see the typical WoW humor defined this early.

Some screenshots:
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
The Warcraft brand name might've saved it. I mean King's Quest 8 sold around a million copies that year, despite the negative press and the fact that everyone knew it wasn't going to be a typical adventure game. I imagine anything with the name Warcraft attached would've sold like hot cakes in 1998.

And are we sure there's no backdoor or spyware attached to the files?

The earliest game files are from early 1996. So when they began working on this game, the adventure market was much different than it was in 1998. I mean 1996 was Broken Sword. So, I guess, they judged the future of the market wrong.
 

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
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Messages
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Your wallet.
Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
They probably finished StarCraft, entered into War3 pre-production and saw that releasing Lord of the Clans would severely limit what they could do with the setting.

I'm not saying you're wrong, you might actually be right. Still, when was "It fucks up the lore" a valable explanation in this industry for canning a game ? (let alone a nearly finished one)
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
They probably finished StarCraft, entered into War3 pre-production and saw that releasing Lord of the Clans would severely limit what they could do with the setting.

I'm not saying you're wrong, you might actually be right. Still, when was "It fucks up the lore" a valable explanation in this industry for canning a game ? (let alone a nearly finished one)

Also timeline doesn't add up.

Warcraft II came out in 1996. Warcraft Adventures entered production sometime before or in February 1996. It was cancelled in May 1998. Warcraft III didn't come out until 2002. It had been in production since late 1998, but it was redesigned multiple times and was very different in 1998 from what was finally released.

I think what happened was:

They weren't happy with the product, and from what I have read, the rewrites they required would've pushed the game back until 1999. The game had already missed it's shipdate - it was supposed to be released Christmas 1997. It was pushed back until Q4 1998.

They looked at the competition, such as Grim Fandango and KQ8, and decided that by the time it came out, it'd be totally outdated and canned it.

"I think that one of the big problems with Warcraft Adventures was that we were actually creating a traditional adventure game, and what people expected from an adventure game, and very honestly what we expected from an adventure game, changed over the course of the project," Roper said. "And when we got to the point where we canceled it, it was just because we looked at where we were and said, you know, this would have been great three years ago. But we have to go someplace new and someplace different. And we just didn't set ourselves up to do that."

Warcraft Adventures would've fit in extremely well in 1994-1997 with games like The Dig, Torin's Passage, King's Quest VII, Space Quest 6, Monkey Island 3, and Full Throttle.

But by the time they were done with the game, (it seemed) people wanted more Grim Fandango, Blade Runner and KQ8, and less cartoony hand-drawn adventure games.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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Terra da Garoa
Might be a mix of both... then again, Zul'jin and DeathWing both dissapeared from WarCraft lore and only came back way later, and Thrall being a slave, feeling from Blackmore and becoming clan leader is 100% canon - and was never properly explained in WarCraft 3 - so I might be entirely wrong.

BTW, since the earliest documents show a 1996 date, could it be possible this is coming out now due to a 20 year contract expiring? Reidor seemed in a hurry, and then suddenly released it everywhere else... seems like he was just trying to make a dumb cash before it went public.
 

v1rus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 14, 2008
Messages
2,253
While I'm unbelievably happy for finally getting the chance to play this (mostly cause of personal, sentimental reasons (Blizzie the Lizzie <3)) I must say, I'm terribly disappointed by how fast the price went down.

Here, I was all ready to go full
02e.jpg


and white knight the shit out of internetz. I saw liek, 3 epizodez, I'm gewd at this@

Bwah, I'm gonna kill me sum dethwingz.

EDIT - on a side note, big :salute: for da bro leaking this. You contributed to the :incline: today bro.
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,558
Location
Denmark
MY colours look all wrong when I launch the game. Any fixes? I'm playing at 1900x1200.

Colours are screwy. Halp
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
MY colours look all wrong when I launch the game. Any fixes? I'm playing at 1900x1200.

Colours are screwy. Halp

  1. Go to Notepad or any other text editor.
  2. Type (or copy and paste) the below lines exactly:
    taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe

    PlayWin.exe

    start explorer.exe

  3. Click “File –> Save as”
  4. Name it “PlayWin.bat” (you will need to select “All Files” in the save as type drop down menu, so it won’t become a .txt file).
  5. Save the file in the game directory, or just move it there.
  6. Double Click ‘PlayWin.bat’ to run the game.
  7. If it launched in a window, use Alt + Enter to change it to full screen.
  8. It should be working perfectly. Voilà.
 

BR4ZIL

Novice
Joined
Jan 10, 2014
Messages
32
After 18 years of waiting, project Warcraft Adventures cancelled Blizzard in 1998 year, finally released!

This is full pre-released version witn in-game cinematics + interest txt docs.

This is my gift for all Blizzard fans, old and new.

DOWNLOAD: http://bit.ly/2cpwa7r

If you want say thanks, PayPal - Reidorr@mail.ru

P.S. Hope sometime appears Starcraft: Ghost :)

Mate, if ever want a game on Steam, just hit me up! I cant use paypal, but i can give you something on Steam!

A thousand thanks!
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
I haven't played this, but since felipepepe says it can be played all the way to the end and is merely missing a few sounds/animations, to met the absolute craziest thing here is that Blizzard couldn't figure out until the whole game was made that it was not a good game. (It seems like something similar happened with Ghost.) How does that happen? I mean, it's not like these are in some kind of novel framework like, say, KoDP where you can't tell if it's good until the thing can be played. For those who have played it, do you have any sense what the explanation would be?
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
I haven't played this, but since felipepepe says it can be played all the way to the end and is merely missing a few sounds/animations, to met the absolute craziest thing here is that Blizzard couldn't figure out until the whole game was made that it was not a good game. (It seems like something similar happened with Ghost.) How does that happen? I mean, it's not like these are in some kind of novel framework like, say, KoDP where you can't tell if it's good until the thing can be played. For those who have played it, do you have any sense what the explanation would be?

So far, what I can tell is the following:
1) It's a game that would've fit in more in 1994, 1995, 1996....Not 1998 or 1999.
2) It needed to be beefed up in some areas in terms of level of interactions/refining some puzzles

That's basically, IMO, why it was cancelled. Warcraft Adventures entered development in early 1996, and was probably in pre-production in 1995. At the time you had games like Space Quest 6, Torin's Passage, Broken Sword, and Curse of Monkey Island all come out and have a similar style. Warcraft took elements of these and refined the interface into what I feel is the best adventure game interface ever. But by the time the game was finished, Grim Fandango and KQ8 were on the horizon. The world had moved on from 2D, cartoony adventures, and seemed to want a more "open" 3D experience.

Blizzard didn't want to put out an outdated product in 1999, and retooling the interactions/puzzle elements along with an overhaul of the game from 2D to 3D would've been way too much work for a game that had already missed its completion deadline by almost a year. Warcraft Adventures had been due for release for Christmas 1997, missed that deadline due to work on puzzles with the designer of A Mind Forever Voyaging, and they weren't happy with the product even as of May 1998; they were insecure about it. It would've been pushed back to Christmas 1998 or even early '99 and been utterly noncompetitive with KQ8 and Grim Fandango.

That's why they cancelled it.

Quality wise, I would say for a studio that had never made an adventure game before, I think it's a B. If they continued making games in this vein and refined their skills, they could've easily been on par with Sierra or LucasArts in the adventure game field. It's nothing revolutionary. But, if it HAD been released, it might've been popular enough to convince other studios that Traditional 2D Adventures weren't quite dead, and thus might've kept traditional adventures on the market for a few more years. We might've had Space Quest 7 instead of it being cancelled a few months after Warcraft was, for example.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Could you explain what made the interface so good, since that's a matter of professional curiosity for me?
 

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