warcraft iii reign of chaos the frozen throne

#Warcraft iii reign of chaos the frozen throne software#

Warcraft II was supported with an expansion by Blizzard as well as third party additions and was popular both for its story-driven campaign and for its player vs player appeal.įollowing Warcraft II was StarCraft in 1998. A sequel arrived the following year and was even bigger, in more ways than one, than the original. Heavily inspired by Westwood’s Dune II, Warcraft arrived in 1994 and was at the forefront of the RTS boom in the 90’s and the company found itself in a friendly rivalry with Westwood and its Command & Conquer series. It was the game that proved that Blizzard could make its own products in-house and make a living off of it. Warcraft was the game largely responsible for Blizzard’s success. And arriving during this height of popularity was Warcraft III. The company had also successfully branched out to dungeon crawlers with Diablo and was even eyeing the role-playing genre and stealth gameplay on home consoles, despite Blizzard largely being known as a PC developer. The company had established itself as perhaps the premier developer of real-time strategy games thanks to Warcraft, Warcraft II, and StarCraft. The year 2002 was a big one for Blizzard. That was certainly not the case twenty years ago. There was the muddled launch of the much-anticipated StarCraft II, poorly engineered remasters, and news of a mobile Diablo that caused gamers to question just what the company’s direction is these days.

#Warcraft iii reign of chaos the frozen throne software#

A buyout and a series of accusations about the company’s work environment dominate the news around the company now, but even before some of those allegations came to light, the company’s reputation regarding its actual software had already taken a hit.

The games would be announced with no release date, they’re done when they’re done, and once delivered they were met with almost universal praise.

Blizzard was once the developer known for quality. It’s hard to think of a game developer that has seen its image in the industry falter as much as Blizzard has over the past 20 years.