The FINISHED game that was CANCELED - Warcraft: Lord of the Clans (PC) - Games You Never Played
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I'm Gaming Jay and welcome to GAMES YOU NEVER PLAYED, the gaming series where we play unreleased alphas, incomplete betas, rediscovered prototypes, and other games that are otherwise obscure, rare, or unheard of. And with that, today's game is...
Warcraft: Lord of the Clans
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_Adventures:_Lord_of_the_Clans
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is a canceled graphic adventure game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Animation Magic from 1996 until 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 Adventures was conceived in late 1996, when Blizzard's sister company Capitol Multimedia suggested that the Warcraft license might be suited to an adventure game. As a result, the Blizzard team chose to co-develop the project with Animation Magic, a subdivision of Capitol responsible for the CD-i games from The Legend of Zelda series. While the game design and direction occurred at Blizzard's Irvine, California headquarters, Animation Magic handled the programming and art respectively in Boston and Saint Petersburg, and the studio Toon-Us-In helped to create the cutscenes in South Korea. The team opted for a conservative design approach on Warcraft Adventures, influenced by LucasArts adventure games such as The Dig and Full Throttle.
Blizzard struggled to adapt to the adventure genre during development, and the slowness of the international production pipeline became a major problem for the team. Unhappy with the game's progress, Blizzard delayed Warcraft Adventures past its original release date of late 1997 and hired game designer Steve Meretzky to revise the project in February 1998. This resulted in a plan to edit and improve the game with minimal changes to its art: Warcraft Adventures was already near completion, and deadline and budget restrictions prevented a major redesign. Meretzky's plan went largely unused, as an internal review at Blizzard determined that its implementation would lead to excessive delays. Instead, the developer chose to cancel the project in May 1998, after roughly 18 months of work.
Warcraft Adventures received significant pre-release attention from the gaming public and press, and the decision to cancel it was met with fan backlash and critical disappointment. Despite the game's cancellation, its story was adapted into the novel Warcraft: Lord of the Clans (2001) by Christie Golden, and was the basis for Blizzard's real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Elements of the game later influenced World of Warcraft and the 2016 film Warcraft. During the 2010s, leaked gameplay videos of Warcraft Adventures were posted on the Internet by Russian fans. A nearly-finished version of the game was released illegally online in September 2016. Reviewing the leaked version, critics generally praised its visuals, but several found its conservative design uninspired.
Following the conclusion of Steve Meretzky's work, Blizzard continued to develop Warcraft Adventures for roughly three months.[26] By mid-March 1998, its release date had been pushed back to fall;[27] it soon slipped to winter.[28] However, most of Meretzky's redesign ultimately was not used in the game.[1] As the team prepared a software build for the 1998 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the "Strike Team" overseeing Warcraft Adventures convened to assess the project.[1][20] By this time, the game was in direct competition with the visually superior The Curse of Monkey Island, and LucasArts had begun to show off its upcoming 3D adventure Grim Fandango. As a result, Warcraft Adventures appeared technologically dated.[1] In addition, the team estimated that implementing Meretzky's plan would require another half-year of work.[29] Roper believed that improving the game to Blizzard's expected level of quality meant "starting over",[1] and that a delay into 1999 was possible.[20] In 2001, Blizzard's Mike Morhaime placed internal estimates at 9–12 months of added development time before Warcraft Adventures would have been brought to standard.