Let's not tell Blizzard about this. Warcraft Adventures - Lord Of The Clans

Put your Let's Plays in here.
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What is this?

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is a point 'n' click adventure game that was developed in 1996 by Blizzard Entertainment and Animation Magic until its cancellation in 1998. The game takes place after the events of Warcraft II: Beyond The Dark Portal, where the Orc Horde has been defeated by the Human Alliance and have been taken as slaves or confined to reservations. We play as an Orc called Thrall, who was captured as an infant by Lieutenant Blackmoore on a battleground during the events of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Blackmoore kept Thrall as a slave and purposefully stopped him from encountering other Orcs, intending to make him a pawn to unite the Orc population into becoming Blackmoore's personal army. Blackmoore has some very high hopes for himself, he probably would have had better luck if he wasn't a sadistic maniac.

Development and cancellation

The announcement of this game came out of nowhere, Blizzard were adventure game fans and had considered making one for a number of years but they just didn't have the resources available to do it. That was until one of their sister companies, Capitol Multimedia, approached them with a proposal and with the resources to be able to do it. The animation studio brought in to work on Warcraft Adventures, Animation Magic, had previously worked on games such as Hotel Mario, Kings Quest VII and the CD-i Zelda series.

The game was conceived towards the end of 1996 with a release date set for some time in 1997. But the development started to falter as Blizzard struggled with the development process of an adventure title and with the animation company being located in Russia it made things more difficult to co-ordinate with the different time-zones. The language barrier also made communications slightly difficult at times and concerns were raised about the quality of the animations that were being produced. They weren't up to Blizzard's standards and they decided to fly a team out to the Russian office to help bring the quality up to their own standards. Ultimately though, it wasn't enough. The Curse Of Monkey Island was released in 1997 which was visually superior and became a direct competition with Warcraft Adventures. They made a decision to push the release date back by six months to redesign the game and brought in a South Korean studio, called Toon-Us-In, to produce full-motion video animated cutscenes.

At the beginning of 1998, Warcraft Adventures was in alpha stage and was almost complete. The game could be played from start to finish, most of the voice recordings were complete and most of the visuals were in place. But the team working on the game felt that the game was "good, but not great." A decision was made to hire Steve Meretzky as a consultant, Blizzard considered him to be an expert in the adventure genre due to his work with Infocom and had recently released The Space Bar. Meetings were held and it was decided that a heavy redesign was needed. Meretzky worked with Blizzard to rewrite sections of the dialogue, make changes to the gameplay and also to construct a new user-interface. With Meretzky's help, Blizzard had transformed the game into a much better state.

The team decided not to go forward with Meretzky's redesign as they felt like they would essentially have to start over again and that it would push the release date back by another year. They also didn't feel like the game, in its current state, was up to their own standards. Blizzard pulled Warcraft Adventures from E3 in 1998 as LucasArts had begun showing off their new 3D adventure title, Grim Fandango. Meetings were held and on May 22, 1998, Warcraft Adventures was publicly cancelled.

I'll link to the Wikipedia article as it gives a much longer summary, there are more sites out there that go into detail. If anyone knows of any specific articles that would be of interest then I can link them here too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_ ... _the_Clans

Leaks

Footage from a leaked version of the game was uploaded to Youtube in 2010 by a Russian fan called "MAN-Biker". It was deleted some time afterwards but he decided to upload a complete longplay of the game, from beginning to end, in 2014. He claims that a Russian games developer, not one who was affiliated with Animation Magic, had sent him this version. This version of the game lacked cutscenes

It wasn't until 2016 when another Russian fan called "reidor" leaked a different version of the game online. This version contained cutscenes and was sent by an unnamed third party. Soon after this version leaked, "MAN-Biker"s decided to circulate his version of the game too. Blizzard sent out cease and desist notices, but by then it was too late.

Let's Play details

:siren: Please do not post any download links for this game in this thread. :siren:

I will be playing the more complete version of the game which includes cutscenes. It will be a video LP and I will do commentary as I play. I plan to upload at least one video a week on Sundays, if time allows I may post a midweek video too. I believe that there is extra footage of the game that are included with this release, I will try to access and show off in a seperate video or videos.

There is a restoration project that is currently ongoing and the team has made efforts to synch the voice acting, add more of the missing cutscenes and improve some of the compression in the graphics. They've also added music and sound effects from previous Warcraft games as well as replacing some of the original artwork with their own. As much as I appreciate the efforts, for better or worse I will be intending to show off the game in it's original alpha state.

Let's Play - Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans

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Bonus videos

The first is an alternative introduction video that was included with this version. The audio suffers from horrendous desynchronisation so I've used the "Warcraft Adventures Cutscene - Remaster Project" to (kind of) fix it. The original missed a lot of dialogue, the WACRP replaces the missing audio with robotic voices.

https://youtu.be/jQXiOoqg8GU

The second video is a missing cutscene that belongs at the end of the fourth chapter. It seems like it was cut from this version because of changes to gameplay and they hadn't replaced the animation with the graphics that we have seen in previous cutscenes. It does set things up for chapter five though. This cutscene was missing from a debug menu, the WACRP restored the cutscene and made it accessible via the menu.

https://youtu.be/HmuG6q2vstY
Last edited by Rocket Baby Dolls on Wed Jul 01, 2020 3:05 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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Yesss, glad to see this continuing. It's probably my favorite warcraft-related content so far and we're only 4 updates in.

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Glad to keep following. I'm intrigued by unfinished and abandoned games and this is no exception.

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Perfect ending point on that video!

Finally we're starting to see Thrall being something more than a random orc vagrant. The scene with Drek'thar was honestly pretty cool.
I'm pretty sure that clip where Thrall snowboards back across the ravine is just a mirrored version of the first time.

Nazgrel and Drek'thar both appear in the Warcraft 3 expansion, in the bonus orc campaign, where they're assisting in constructing Thrall's new orc capital.

Well, that cutscene at the start was just barely finished enough to be understandable.
Also, I don't think I've ever seen such a pure example of Adventure Game Logic as that Wendigo puzzle.

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In this episode, Thrall continues on his path of uniting the Orc Horde by completing the dangerous task of stealing an egg. Along the way, he makes new friends, steals their stuff and finds true love!

...Do none of these Dwarves have any taste in hammers, or are the dwarven hammersmiths just that bad?

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Carpator Diei wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 12:27 pm
...Do none of these Dwarves have any taste in hammers, or are the dwarven hammersmiths just that bad?
To dwarves, size is everything.

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Is this a euphemism or do we mean actual hammers?

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I really like the design of the Aviary - in Warcraft 2 and 3, this is where you recruit griffin riders so it's nice to see they've really got everything needed for the unit - dwarves, mounts, throwing hammers, shields, saddles - at hand. Should point out the uneven distribution of accents, though: dwarves get theirs and Zul'jin doesn't?!

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I'm going to upload the final video of this LP tomorrow. I've uploaded two bonus videos that aren't part of the main game.

The first is an alternative introduction video that was included with this version. The audio suffers from horrendous desynchronisation so I've used the "Warcraft Adventures Cutscene - Remaster Project" to (kind of) fix it. The original missed a lot of dialogue, the WACRP replaces the missing audio with robotic voices.

https://youtu.be/jQXiOoqg8GU

The second video is a missing cutscene that belongs at the end of the fourth chapter. It seems like it was cut from this version because of changes to gameplay and they hadn't replaced the animation with the graphics that we have seen in previous cutscenes. It does set things up for chapter five though. This cutscene was missing from a debug menu, the WACRP restored the cutscene and made it accessible via the menu.

https://youtu.be/HmuG6q2vstY

Rocket Baby Dolls wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:24 pm
The first is an alternative introduction video that was included with this version. The audio suffers from horrendous desynchronisation so I've used the "Warcraft Adventures Cutscene - Remaster Project" to (kind of) fix it. The original missed a lot of dialogue, the WACRP replaces the missing audio with robotic voices.

https://youtu.be/jQXiOoqg8GU
...Having the whole game in that artstyle would've certainly made for a peculiar experience.

Also, I know it's a videogame logic thing, but seriously, Thrall went from isolated slave to hypercompetent clan leader in what, three days?

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Carpator Diei wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:28 pm
Also, I know it's a videogame logic thing, but seriously, Thrall went from isolated slave to hypercompetent clan leader in what, three days?
It's still more of an arc than what he got in his official introduction in Warcraft 3.

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This video is the fifth and final chapter of this game and the final video of this LP. I'm not going to spoil too much about this video, we get to see more anatomy than I'd ever have imagined in this game, we meet a suspicious cow and we get to see how all this works out in the end.

This game was on my wishlist the moment I read about it in gaming magazines all those years ago, the cancellation was very disappointing at the time and through the time I slowly forgot about it. I still remember when Abandonia "uploaded" this as an April Fool's joke seven or 8 years ago, it was after the youtube videos but before the actual leaks. The first time I heard about the leak was when Vinesauce (Vinny) uploaded the recorded stream of it to Youtube, which I watched it and enjoyed but forgot about fairly quickly as my memory of it was non-existent going into this LP. It's been interesting to play, I was surprised at just how complete it is and I'm a little saddened that the potential of this game was never reached. It's a shame that this game hit development hell in such a short space of time and they couldn't pull it around quick enough. Throughout some mundaneness, there were some genuinely enjoyable moments and it was pretty amusing throughout.

Thank you, everyone, for being a part of this LP. It's was a very enjoyable experience and I'm glad that I started it.

Chronomaster and Sanitarium have been hovering near the top of the list for a while now but I've decided that I'm going to LP the abandoned Doctor Who: The Adventure Games series next. I'm not really a fan of Doctor Who so I wouldn't expect fanboy reactions or deep discussions about the lore and such.

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Rocket Baby Dolls wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:03 pm
I've decided that I'm going to LP the abandoned Doctor Who: The Adventure Games series next. I'm not really a fan of Doctor Who so I wouldn't expect fanboy reactions or deep discussions about the lore and such.
I'm looking forward to those, especially when you're taking a more sober approach and we won't be subjected to too much fanpersoning.

That was a surprisingly climactic final chapter.

Thanks for the neat LP!

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