warcraft-adventures
Latest
The Game Archaeologist and the What Ifs: True Fantasy Live Online
As an extremely amateur historian -- and an extremely attractive archaeologist -- I've always been fascinated with the "what ifs" of gaming's timeline. What if Blizzard had pulled the plug on World of Warcraft during development as it did for Warcraft Adventures? What if Hellgate: London had a lot more time and resources before it launched? What if North America had embraced the free-to-play model much earlier instead of the subscription model? What if Shawn came to his senses before he hired me? Life would've been a lot better. Or worse. That's the problem with counterfactual history: We can make educated guesses, but we'll never really know. While it's sad to see MMOs shut down due to underperformance, it's especially maddening to contemplate MMOs canceled before they even made it to the starting gate. In a new periodic series here at The Game Archaeologist, I'm going to look at a few of the "what ifs" of prematurely terminated MMORPGs. And to kick us off, I'm tackling probably one of the most frustrating, painful subjects that still linger amongst potential fans. I'm talking, of course, of True Fantasy Live Online, the game that could've shown the true potential of console MMOs. Or, y'know, not.
A Warcraft Retrospective from Gametrailers.com
The fine folk over at Gametrailers.com are preparing for Wrath of the Lich King in their own, fun little way. And by little, I mean totally awesome. They've posted the first part of their Warcraft Retrospective, looking back on the history of the Warcraft series of games. This first installment talks a little about Warcraft I, Warcraft II, and the adventure game Warcraft Adventures that ended up getting canned.On top of the nostalgia-riddled look at past incarnations of Warcraft, the retrospective provides insight into the origins of things such as the RTS genre itself and perhaps one of the first map editors that ended up in user hands, setting the stage for just about every RTS to start providing one baseline. Entertaining and educational! Uh, sort of. I really do recommend watching it, though. It's only a click away, so go on! Hit play![ Thanks, Ray, James and Colyn! ]
