Warcraft II
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| Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness {{#if:{{{image|}}}|<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">{{{image|}}} | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Blizzard Entertainment {{#if:{{{publisher|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)<td>{{{publisher|}}} |
| Release date(s) | December 1995 |
| Genre(s) | Strategy game |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer {{#if:{{{ratings|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)<td>{{{ratings|}}} |
| Platform(s) | DOS, Windows, Macintosh {{#if:{{{media|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media<td>{{{media|}}} |
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (usually simply called Warcraft II; sometimes abbreviated to WCII, WC2 or War2) is a sequel to the popular real-time strategy game Warcraft, published by Blizzard Entertainment in December 1995. Users play as either orcs or humans in a fantasy medieval world full of magic and swords. It was originally written for the DOS operating system, though it had a MS Windows launch screen and played well under Windows 95. In addition, there was a Macintosh version of the game. Blizzard also released an expansion pack for Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness known as Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal on April 30, 1996. Blizzard made a new version of WarCraft II in 1999, called WarCraft II: Battle.net Edition. Changes made for this release included porting the game's code to Microsoft Windows, fixing a few minor bugs, and enabling multiplayer support via Blizzard's online matchmaking service, Battle.net.
Users may play each other online (via LAN or the Internet) using existing maps or ones they create. Users may also play the game solo, taking them through a story in which orcs and humans are at war. The events that take place in this game are known in Warcraft lore as the Second Great War.
The game is set seven years after the fall of Azeroth. The Orcs have decided to conquer the lands to the north and add Lordaeron to their empire.
Contents |
Units and structures
Once again, like the first Warcraft and most RTS games, Warcraft II also makes use of two opposing sides and with immediately clear counterparts among the races’ units. For example, the basic fighting unit of the Humans is the Footman whose immediate Orc counterpart is the Grunt. Like the first Warcraft, the mouse-clickable controls for the units is located to the left side of the screen. The number of units have also been increased and have more elaborate abilities.
Units
| Humans | Orcs | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ground Units | ||
| Peasant | Peon | The basic resource gathering/structure repairing unit is called the peasant (Human) or peon (Orc). They are capable of gathering the basic resources wood and gold, as well as building and repairing strucures. They also have a very weak capability to fight. |
| Footman | Grunt | The most basic fighting melee units of either side. |
| Elven Archer | Troll Axethrower | Ranged units capable of attacking enemies at a distance and attacking flying units |
| Elven Ranger | Troll Berserker | Upgraded versions of the Elven Archer and Troll Axethrower, who replace them once the upgrade is researched. |
| Knight | Ogre | Heavily armored and fast-moving units. They are the units of choice for melees. |
| Paladin | Ogre Mage | Upgraded versions of the Knight and Ogre, who cease to exist once the upgrade is used. These units can cast spells. |
| Ballista | Catapult | Slow-moving, slow-firing siege machines that are capable of dealing devastating damage to stationary targets, such as buildings or unmoving units. In the first Warcraft game, both sides used catapults. |
| Dwarven Demolition Squad | Goblin Sappers | Fast-moving units, vulnerable to projectile weapons. Suicidal, they cause major damage to their targets upon impact. |
| Mage | Death Knight | Units capable of casting powerful spells. |
| Skeleton | The skeleton warriors are the only summonable units to come back in this game. Similar to before, there is a time limit to how long they can exist. | |
| Air Units | ||
| Gnomish Flying Machine | Goblin Zeppelin | Unarmed reconnaissance aircrafts. |
| Gryphon Rider | Dragon | Flying, fast-moving, hard-to-kill units, capable of causing heavy destruction on ground. |
| Naval Units | ||
| Oil Tanker | Oil Tanker | Used to build oil rigs and gather oil from them. |
| Elven Destroyer | Troll Destroyer | Primary naval combat vessels. |
| Transport | Transport | Boats used to transport up to 6 land units across a body of water. Unarmed and unarmored. |
| Gnomish Submarine | Giant Turtle | Underwater units that can often attack their targets without being seen. Can be spotted by aerial units, towers, and by other submarines/turtles. |
| Battleship | Ogre Juggernaut | Heavily-armored ships capable of dealing greater damage but move rather slower than Destroyers. They cannot attack air units and has some splash damage when attacking. |
Playable characters in the Tides of Darkness campaigns include Uther the Lightbringer, Zul’jin and Cho’gall. There is nothing about them that sets them apart from the other units of their classes except that they have an identity of their own and sets up the introduction of the next unit type. Uther is a Paladin, Zul’jin is a Troll Axethrower and Cho’gall is an Ogre Mage. In one level, you have Cho’gall on your side and in another one, you have to kill Cho’gall. Lothar also appears in the campaign but he is not playable and merely serves to be killed off. However, he may be played in the custom maps.
In the expansion game, Beyond the Dark Portal, the role of hero units is increased. Previously in Tides of Darkness, hero units are sparse and merely serve to introduce a new type of unit. In Dark Portal, hero units take greater part in several missions and their survival is critical in completing each mission. Hero units are basically stronger and more powerful versions of the regular units.
The hero units of Beyond the Dark Portal are:
- Humans – Danath (Footman), Alleria (Elven Ranger), Turalyon (Paladin), Khadgar (Mage) and Kurdran and Sky'ree (Gryphon Rider)
- Orcs – Kargath Bladefist (Grunt), Grom Hellscream (Grunt), Dentarg (Ogre Mage), Teron Gorefiend (Death Knight) and Deathwing (Dragon)(800 health)
The units are essentially quite balanced, the only real differences can be found in the spells used by Paladins/Ogre-Mages and Mages/Death Knights. It is often argued that the Ogre-Mages have better spells than Paladins (the Bloodlust spell used on a large number of Ogre-Mages is very devastating, and makes people easily favor orcs, especially if they favor rush tactics) while Mages are better than Death Knights (Slow and Polymorph spells are extremely devastating if used correctly), though some disagree on one count or both. The other non-cosmetic difference is that Elven Rangers can learn the Marksmanship ability (so that they deal more damage) whereas their counterparts, Troll Berserkers, can acquire Regeneration (which slowly heals their wounds). The last difference is that the melee damage upgrades in the Blacksmith of Humans cost more gold than that of Orcs, though lumber is required in the latter.
Buildings
| Humans | Orcs | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Town Hall | Great Hall | The basic main structure without which, all other buildings may not be built. |
| Keep | Stronghold | Upgrades of the town halls that the presence of which would allow the player to build more advanced units. |
| Castle | Fortress | The next and final upgrade after the Keep and Stronghold. |
| Farm | Pig Farm | Basic structures necessary to provide food for each race. In order to train more units, more farms must be built. |
| Barracks | Barracks | The building necessary to create more Footmen, Archers, Knights and Ballistas for Humans; Grunts, Axethrowers, Ogres and Catapults for Orcs. |
| Elven Lumber Mill | Troll Lumber Mill | The elves and trolls have monopolized the lumber industry. These buildings store the lumber harvested by each race. They also allows upgrades for the Archers and Axethrowers’ weapons. |
| Blacksmith | Blacksmith | This building allows the player to upgrade the armor and weapons |
| Scout Tower | Watch Tower | Towers that watch out for incoming enemies. Also, building them in an area far away from town keeps that area exposed for the player to see. |
| Guard Tower | Guard Tower | Scout and Watch Towers may be upgraded to shoot arrows. |
| Cannon Tower | Cannon Tower | Scout and Watch towers may also be upgraded to fire cannonballs, which deal greater damage to the enemy but with a longer cooldown and unable of engaging air targets. |
| Shipyard | Shipyard | The structure necessary to build naval vessels. |
| Oil Rig | Oil Rig | Oil plays a significant part in the game as it is necessary in the creation of several units such as the naval vessels. |
| Foundry | Foundry | The foundries serve the same purpose for ships as the blacksmith does for the land units, that is to upgrade armor and damage capability of weapons. |
| Oil Refinery | Oil Refinery | The oil tankers can harvest more oil from oil rigs. |
| Stable | Ogre Mound | The buildings necessary to create the Knights and Ogres. |
| Gnomish Inventor | Goblin Alchemist | Structures necessary to build the flying machines and demolition units. |
| Gryphon Aviary | Dragon Roost | The game also makes use of air units. The aviary and roost are built to create the Gryphon Riders and Dragons. |
| Mage Tower | Temple of the Damned | The buildings necessary to create the Mages and Death Knights and research the spells they conjure. |
| Church | Altar of Storms | These two buildings enable the player to upgrade the Knights and Ogres to Paladins and Ogre Mages, respectively. And also research the spells they use. |
Utilities, modifications and conversions
Image:Warcraftii-beyond-the-dark-portal-cover-art.jpg Warcraft II was an unusual game for the time because a large number of third-party utilities were written for it. Among the first things, Daniel Lemberg reverse-engineered the Warcraft II map file (*.pud) format and created the first third-party map editor, War2xEd, which could do numerous things the bundled map editor could not do, such as editing unit attributes. Although Daniel Lemberg did not make the source code for War2xEd public, he did publish the complete Warcraft II map file format, which led to a wealth of new tools. More importantly, Blizzard began to use War2xEd internally, and it influenced them to bundle a feature-rich editor with their immensely popular game StarCraft.
The next important breakthrough came when Alexander Cech and Daniel Lemberg broke the encryption used in the base game data files. Alexander Cech went on to create a program called Wardraft, which allowed users to browse and modify the contents of the game data files, allowing comprehensive modifications. The spawn of extensive alterations became known as "Total Conversions", and a great many projects were in motion for a good long while. Some of the more prominent were "DeathCraft: Twilight of Demons" by Dirk "The Guardian" by Richartz, "War of the Ring" by Gurthaur, "Editor's Total Conversion" by Fronzel Neekburn and the whole of the Warclan, and the noteworthy "Rituals of Rebirth" spearheaded by Kalindor, Kosmous, and Commoner.
There was also a free software game inspired by Warcraft II called Freecraft, which, while allowing users to import actual game data from Warcraft II, also contained their own artwork and scenarios. Although it used no art or code from Warcraft II, the project received a threatening cease-and-desist letter from Blizzard, apparently due to similarity to the Warcraft trademarks. Not willing to fight Blizzard, the maintainers cancelled the whole project, later rekindlig it under the name of Stratagus.
Many of the utilities and conversions have faded into the depths of obscurity, but the appeal of feature-rich editors and total conversions has lived on.
Quotations
Template:Wikiquote One of the features of Warcraft II are the unit quotes. If a single unit was clicked several times in a row, the unit's voice samples would change. The unit would start getting angry at the player, or start quoting lines in reference to movies, games, or other things. For example, a footman might say, "Don't you have a kingdom to run?". These phrases differed for the Footman and Grunt units in the game's demo, and mostly included exhortations to purchase the full version. Clicking on a sheep long enough will cause it to blow up, yet another exploding sheep reference.
Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition
Image:Warcraft2Screenshot.jpg Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition is an online-enabled version of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, with the expansion Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal built in. This is essentially the same as Warcraft II, but it allows for usage on Battle.net, and, unlike its offline counterparts, does require a CD Key to install.
Currently, Warcraft II enjoys little attention from Blizzard's management, shown by the fact that there are serious unaddressed issues with the Battle.net interface and Windows XP compatibility. The average number of users playing Warcraft II online at any point is between 600 and 1200.
The bulk of the remaining war2 players are found on us.east server and reside in the War2 Ladder Challenges channel.
Online Play
Although the Battle.net Edition wasn't released until 1999, online play was widespread from the game's release using IPX Emulators such as Kali. Warcraft II (along with Command & Conquer) was one of the first Real-time strategy games to be played widely online, and spawned several leagues, including the International Warcraft League (IWL) and singles and teams ladders on Case's Ladder.
The Mac release allowed multiplayer games over TCP/IP. The IRC channel MacWarCraft served as a gathering place for online play, before Battle.net was created.
The depth of strategy of the game was found to be immense and evolved over time. Many of the newly invented tactics were considered unorthodox and "cheap", meaning the tactic reduced the enjoyability of the game. New players (newbies, newbs, or noobs) were able to defeat well established players by using cheap tatics. But for every cheap tactic, subsequent countermeasures were developed and matches eventually played out like complicated games of rock, paper, scissors. What was once considered cheap, eventually became routine, and established players were forced to adapt. Examples of cheap tactics include grunt rushing (rushing), barracks first (rax first), offensive barracksing (raxing), offensive towering (ot), peon rushing, and rushing to bloodlust.
Unlike the later game, StarCraft, there were few Warcraft II competitions played for money or prizes. However, the level of competition was fierce, with many players devoting most of their spare time to learning the dynamics of the game.
While a small base of competitive Warcraft II players still exists, most moved on to newer games, such as StarCraft and its sequel Warcraft III. As the game grew older, the population of active players diminished, as did the viability of the leagues. Eventually all of the leagues closed or became inactive but the players remained extremely competitive by flaming each other in chat and maintaining their own unofficial tally of wins and loses.
See also
- Warcraft: Orcs and Humans
- World of Warcraft
- Wargus, an open-source clone of Warcraft II available for Linux, Mac and Windows
- Warcraft Universe
External links
- Official Warcraft II Battle.net edition site
- German Warcraft II Battle.net edition fansite
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- Warcraft II Occult fan site
- Warcraft II preservation site
- Warcraft II Custom Tournament Site
Template:Blizzard Entertainment Template:WarcraftBGameda:WarCraft II es:Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness fr:Warcraft II nl:Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness no:Warcraft II pl:Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness