Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a high fantasy real-time strategy computer video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment released in July 2002. It is the second sequel to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, after Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, the third game set in the Warcraft fictional universe, and the first to be rendered in three dimensions. An expansion pack, The Frozen Throne, was released in July 2003. Warcraft III is set several years after the events of Warcraft II, and tells the story of the Burning Legion's attempt to conquer the fictional world of Azeroth with the help of an army of the Undead, led by fallen paladin Arthas Menethil. It chronicles the combined efforts of the Human Alliance, Orcish Horde, and Night Elves to stop them before they can corrupt the World Tree.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy game (RTS) developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, and published by Interplay Productions in Europe. It was released for MS-DOS in North America on 23 November 1994, and for Mac OS in early 1996. The MS-DOS version was re-released by Sold-Out Software in 2002.
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is the expansion pack for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, a real-time strategy video game by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released worldwide on July 1, 2003 for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. The Frozen Throne builds upon the story of Reign of Chaos and depicts the events after the main game's conclusion. The single-player unfolds from the perspective of two new protagonists—the Night Elf warden Maiev Shadowsong and the Blood Elf prince Kael'Thas—as well as returning protagonist Arthas Menethil. Additionally, the expansion contains Act I of a separate Orc campaign that is independent from the main storyline with Blizzard releasing Acts II and III via patch in December 2003, taking in player feedback of Act I when developing these chapters.
Warcraft is a franchise of video games, novels, and other media created by Blizzard Entertainment. The series is made up of five core games: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. The first three of these core games are in the real-time strategy genre, where opposing players command virtual armies in battle against each other or a computer-controlled enemy. The fourth and best-selling title of the franchise is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), where players control their character and interact with each other in a virtual world. The most recent title is Hearthstone, a digital collectible card game. Warcraft is one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time, having grossed $11.2 billion in lifetime revenue, as of 2018.
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was a graphic adventure game under development by Blizzard Entertainment and Animation Magic from 1996 until its cancellation in 1998. Set in the Warcraft universe after the events of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, it followed the orc character Thrall in his quest to reunite his race, then living on reservations and in slavery following its defeat by the human Alliance. Assuming the role of Thrall, the player would have used a point-and-click interface to explore the world, solve puzzles and interact with characters from the wider Warcraft series.
Warcraft: Day of the Dragon is a novel by Richard A. Knaak based in Blizzard Entertainments Warcraft Universe. It was published by Pocket Books.
Warcraft: The Last Guardian is a novel by Jeff Grubb set in the Warcraft Universe. It is the fourth book and the third paper book released in the Warcraft Universe.
Warcraft: War of the Ancients Trilogy is a book trilogy written by Richard A. Knaak set in Blizzard Entertainment's popular video game universe, Warcraft.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the first expansion set for the MMORPG World of Warcraft. It was released on January 16, 2007 at local midnight in Europe and North America, selling nearly 2.4 million copies on release day alone and making it, at the time, the fastest-selling PC game released at that point. Approximately 3.53 million copies were sold in the first month of release, including 1.9 million in North America, over 100,000 copies in Australasia, and nearly 1.6 million in Europe.
The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring is a 2003 real-time strategy game (RTS) developed by Liquid Entertainment and published by Sierra Entertainment, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal Games. Set in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth, it expands upon the events of the War of the Ring as told in his fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings.
Christopher Vincent Metzen a.k.a "Thundergod" is an American game designer, artist, voice actor, and author known for his work creating the fictional universes and scripts for Blizzard Entertainment's three major award-winning media franchises: Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft. On occasion, Metzen has published his art under the alias "Thundergod". Metzen was hired by Blizzard Entertainment as an animator and an artist; his first work for the company was with the video game Justice League Task Force.
World of Warcraft: Rise of the Horde is a novel by Christie Golden set in the Warcraft Universe. It was published in December 2006. Golden also has a commitment with Blizzard Entertainment and Simon & Schuster to write a StarCraft trilogy. Originally presumed to be the sequel to her previous 2001 book, Warcraft: Lord of the Clans, it depicts the draenei's escape from Argus and the rise of the Horde, following their shift from a shamanic race to a warmongering one. The book features major Warcraft characters, such as Durotan, Ner'zhul, Gul'dan, Orgrim Doomhammer, Kil'jaeden, and Velen. The story tells of how the orc clans and the noble draenei slowly become enemies due to deception and arrogance, and shows the downward spiral into which the orcs are thrown, and explores the role that demonic forces play in the Horde. It also expands on the origin of the Burning Legion, and the events preceding the first game of the Warcraft series.
World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness is a fantasy novel written by Aaron S. Rosenberg and published by Simon & Schuster Pocket Star Books, a division of Viacom. The novel is based on Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft universe, and is a novelization of the RTS PC game: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995). It was made available on August 28, 2007.
The expansion to the computer game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, known as The Frozen Throne, had an active professional competition scene, particularly in China, Germany, and South Korea. The game was featured at eSports festivals including the World Cyber Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, the World e-Sports Games, the World Series of Video Games and the International E-Sports Festival. Outside of the professional circuit, the game had many active competitive circuits, with users at Battle.net ranging between the 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. In China, in which Warcraft III was extremely popular due to it being easily available through piracy, fans and users often used an alternative client due to the country's poor internet connections to the outside world. Around 3,000,000 copies of the game were sold in the country. 500,000 Chinese competed in the Chinese qualifiers for the 2006 World Cyber Games. The amount of prize money through the years has been significant with top players winning hundreds of thousands of dollars. As usual in competitive gaming, income for Warcraft 3 professional players flowed from various sources like team salaries from pro-gaming teams and sponsorships usually computer technology related. A famous example was Danish gaming organization known as Meet Your Makers which boasted of paying their players US$300,000 on an annual basis. Similar to older games with huge competitive scenes like Starcraft:Brood War and Counter-Strike 1.6, the popularity of Warcraft 3 steadily declined and towards the end of the previous decade almost all tournaments and players were Chinese. After 2010, with Starcraft 2, League of Legends, and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular, Warcraft 3 gave up its position as one of the prime eSports titles.
An orc is a fictional humanoid creature akin to a goblin. Orcs were brought into modern usage by the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially The Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's works, orcs are a brutish, aggressive, ugly and malevolent race, contrasting with the benevolent Elves and serving an evil power, though they share a human sense of morality. His description of them has been criticised as caricature-like, even racist by some commentators, though others have noted that he was clearly anti-racist by intention.
The fantasy setting of the Warcraft series includes many fictional races and factions. Most of the primary protagonists of the series belong to either the Horde or the Alliance. However, there are a variety of neutral races and factions, who are either friendly or hostile to both the Horde and the Alliance. In World of Warcraft, all player characters belong to either the Horde or the Alliance, with a character's faction decided by its race. One exception is the pandaren, who can choose to become members of either faction.
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness is a fantasy real-time strategy computer game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released for DOS in 1995 and Mac OS in 1996. The game was met with positive reviews and won most of the major PC gaming awards in 1996. In 1996, Blizzard released an expansion pack, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, for DOS and Mac OS, and a compilation, Warcraft II: The Dark Saga, for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The Battle.net edition, released in 1999, provided Blizzard's online gaming service, and replaced the MS-DOS version with a Windows one.
World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal is a fantasy novel written by Aaron S. Rosenberg and Christie Golden, and published by Simon & Schuster Pocket Star Books, a division of Viacom. The novel is based on Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft universe, and is a continuation of the events of the RTS PC game: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995).
Warcraft is a 2016 American action fantasy film directed by Duncan Jones and written by Charles Leavitt and Jones. Based on the video game series of the same name, the film stars Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Robert Kazinsky, Clancy Brown, and Daniel Wu. The film portrays the initial encounters between the humans and the orcs and takes place in a variety of locations established in the video game series.
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor is the fifth expansion set to the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, following Mists of Pandaria. It was announced on November 8, 2013 at BlizzCon 2013. The expansion was released on November 13, 2014.
