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- Feb 17, 2006
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- 131
[MEGA Edit (June 1st 2011):]
While writing my essay, I found out, that it may be more appropriate (and interesting) to write an essay about Blizzard from it's founding to (maybe) the release of WoW.
So the new structure will be
1990: Pre Silicon & Synapse (Bill Roper said in 1995, Blizzard was founded 1990)
1991: The official S&S
-1994: a bunch of games and Chaos Studios, Bill Roper appears
1995: Condor(Blizzard North), Diablo, Starcraft, Pax Imperia, Shattered Nations, the Bob Fitch Myth
1997: Warcraft Adventures and Starcraft
1998: Diablo 2, Warcraft Adventures,
1999: Warcraft 3
2000: Diablo 2 Release
2001: WoW
2002: Warcraft III
2003: Starcraft Ghost, Frozen Throne
2004: WoW
and much more stuff.
To write this I'll have to do more research, but I already have got very much information, so I can write, but not in chronological order, which means, there will be some jumps between the paragraphs that I will mark, so they won't be very confusing.
This will be a very special thread. Many of you know my work from the Warcraft 3 pre-release Material Thread and my contributions to the Welcome to Warcraft thread. This thread will complete my work (as far as possible). I'm currently bringing order into my Warcraft 3 collection and I'm sending the material to Elzabbul who's the owner of WarcraftEvolution.xt.pl. I'm planning to write a book, but before I do this, I'll write a little essay about the development of Warcraft III.
Now your job is to read it, make suggestions for improvement (language, content, etc.) and may post additional stuff if I forgot to include some information.
The rough structure will be:
-Warcraft III before the Announcement
-ECTS 1999
-Korea 2000
-Pre E3 2000
-E3 2000
-ECTS 2000
-The four Night Elves Versions
-E3 2001
-A bunch of PreBetas
-ECTS 2001
-Even more PreBetas
-Beta
-Retail Versions and other Oddities
---Below this line the essay starts---
In the 80s, Allen Adham noticed that you could have fun with video games and earn money with them, but at this time he had not enough money and technical knowledge. A friend of him, Brian Fargo, was one of the founders of Interplay and employed him as beta tester. Later he learned more about the development of Interplay's games and was even integrated into the design process and could write his first lines of code. These were very valuable years for him. (PcGames, April 2001).
Nearly all sources before 2001 claim Blizzard was founded in 1990. The company was actually founded February 8, 1991. This implies that there allready had been a company, before it was officially founded. On February 4, 1991, Mike Morhaime, a schoolmate of Allen Adham, borrowed $15,000 "to be paid back $100 a month, interest free" from his grandmother Mildred M. Miller. Allen Adham and Mike Morhaime each invested $10,000 to found their company and hire their first employee, Frank Pearce. The company's name was Silicon & Synapse, which should reflect the unity of computer and brain. Morhaime banked the remaining $5000.
Sources:
Blizzard Anniversary Official (Blizzard 2001)
Happy Birthday Blizzard (PcGames 2001)
Company History Special: Blizzard (PcPlayer 2000)
Blizzard Entertainment (Official Presentation 1995)
History of Blizzard Entertainment (Press Kit 2002)
15 Years of Warcraft (Blizzard 2009)
20th Anniversary (Blizzard 2011)
Note: New magazines can't be used as sources, since they simply write some stuff from Wikipedia and Blizzard's website...
"We don't have a release date - we don't even have a year - but Warcraft III will happen."
- Bill Roper, 1997
When Bill Roper said these words back in 1997, Blizzard was currently developing Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. It should be Blizzard's first Adventure game. "Warcraft Adventures allows us to set the stage for Warcraft III", but that never happened: In early 1998 the development of the engine for Warcraft III started and Blizzard cancled Warcraft Adventures. The code name for the project, or at least for the main characters(Heroes) was "Legends" and it was developed by Blizzard's "Team One".
To understand, why Warcraft Adventures was canceled, it's important to know more about it's development and the Adventure game market around that time. Warcraft Adventures was developed by Blizzard, but the graphics were hand drawn by a studio in St. Petersburg, Russia. One of the major problems was the communication between the third-party company and Blizzard. The second problem was that every tiny change they made, that required a new animation or an old animation to be edited, took very much time. When Warcraft Adventures was nearly finished, it looked old compared to the adventure games of that time. Grim Fandango and The Curse Of Monkey Island were simply too modern and popular, to be beaten by the old school looking adventure by Blizzard.
In early 1999 Blizzard started to design the maps and characters and the next big part would be the AI. The balancing of the races was planned for the year 2000 and at the time of ECTS '99 about 25 of the circa 90 people working at Blizzard were programming and designing Warcraft III. One of the main goals was to make Warcraft 3 playable on a Pentium 133, so the game could reach people with slow PCs (and Macs) and sell more copies.
Now we are on September 5th 1999. It's time for ECTS, the European Computer Trade Show in London. It's about 1:00 pm. More than a hundred reporters are waiting inside the Henley-Suite at the Olympia Hall when Rob Pardo is about to announce Blizzards secret project. In 2009, Pardo described the scene as "a packed room of reporters, who wanted to see" what Blizzard was "doing next". He even said, this moment was when he realized, Warcraft was special. "They were not only blown away by what" the presentation was "showing, but they were also impressed at the depth of the universe and that" they'll "going to be able to tell a story". The crowd of reporters was so loud that Pardo (and Roper, just listening from the side) had to repeat the conference and show the presentation twice. Since Blizzard does not answer when asked for any information from back then, it's hard to find out what the presentation actually showed. There are three photos showing the screen: one with the logo used for presentation and the first "preview material" CD, and two with the Wyvern concept art as background and some text written on it. One of these texts read "Striving to redefine the strategy genre, Blizzard is creating Warcraft III as a 3D Role-Playing Strategy game ... ". The press conference is documented quite well by magazines from that time and the first 3 minutes of the 10 minutes long audio recording of the conference are still available via the internet archive, together with a transcript of the entire recording.
[Update 5.24.2011:]
One of the first things, Rob Pardo said at the press conference was, that normally a game consists of 70% building up your base and 30% combat. In Warcraft III it's the other way round. In 1998 Bill Roper stated, that Warcraft Adventures wasn't lost forever, instead, there would be a new, not yet announced, adventure game by Blizzard, that will use much of the story elements and characters designed for the canceled game. When Rob Pardo revealed that Warcraft III will use exactly this content, it's clear, which secret project Bill Roper mentioned one year before. The Incite Magazine report, which was also used by the german PcAction magazine, describes the story for Warcraft III: "Thrall, offspring of Orcs was raised as a slave of humans. When he manages to escape his tormenters, he swears revenge." Pardo also revealed the playable races for the game, at this time six. These races were Humans in alliance with dwarfs and elves, Orcs, Demons and three other races, that were to be announced later. The PcGames magazine wrote expiclitly, that Blizzard did not yet answer the question if there will be ships, but flying units will definetly be a part of the game. In your base you can recruit units and Heroes. To control your common units, you have to assign them to a Hero that leads them. Every Hero has a leadership ability that defines, how many units can be assigned to that Hero. The best camera angle should be chosen by the game and not by the player and it mostly follows the selected Hero. In the video by Incite (that I believe was filmed a few hours after the press conference, when "Rob Pardo showed a playable demo to some selected reporters", as the GameStar magazine wrote in 1999) actually two versions are shown: the one shown on all screenshots from 1999 and a version that had more interface elements, like a pseudo-3D minimap, unit icons and resource display (and a freely rotatable camera). The screenshots from that time show only the first version with a very rudimentary interface: only hero portaits at the bottum left corner of the screen (on the screenshots you only see those for the Blademaster and the Orc Warlord that later only appears as Chaos Orc Warlord/Slave Master). The PcGames magazine wrote in November 1999 that a right click on a Hero opens up a icon collar, from which you can pick the spells you want to cast and the items you want to use. Blizzard also announced the World Editor back then and confirmed that the game will be playable in multiplayer via Battle.net.
While writing my essay, I found out, that it may be more appropriate (and interesting) to write an essay about Blizzard from it's founding to (maybe) the release of WoW.
So the new structure will be
1990: Pre Silicon & Synapse (Bill Roper said in 1995, Blizzard was founded 1990)
1991: The official S&S
-1994: a bunch of games and Chaos Studios, Bill Roper appears
1995: Condor(Blizzard North), Diablo, Starcraft, Pax Imperia, Shattered Nations, the Bob Fitch Myth
1997: Warcraft Adventures and Starcraft
1998: Diablo 2, Warcraft Adventures,
1999: Warcraft 3
2000: Diablo 2 Release
2001: WoW
2002: Warcraft III
2003: Starcraft Ghost, Frozen Throne
2004: WoW
and much more stuff.
To write this I'll have to do more research, but I already have got very much information, so I can write, but not in chronological order, which means, there will be some jumps between the paragraphs that I will mark, so they won't be very confusing.
Now your job is to read it, make suggestions for improvement (language, content, etc.) and may post additional stuff if I forgot to include some information.
The rough structure will be:
-ECTS 1999
-Korea 2000
-Pre E3 2000
-E3 2000
-ECTS 2000
-The four Night Elves Versions
-E3 2001
-A bunch of PreBetas
-ECTS 2001
-Even more PreBetas
-Beta
-Retail Versions and other Oddities
---Below this line the essay starts---
In the 80s, Allen Adham noticed that you could have fun with video games and earn money with them, but at this time he had not enough money and technical knowledge. A friend of him, Brian Fargo, was one of the founders of Interplay and employed him as beta tester. Later he learned more about the development of Interplay's games and was even integrated into the design process and could write his first lines of code. These were very valuable years for him. (PcGames, April 2001).
Nearly all sources before 2001 claim Blizzard was founded in 1990. The company was actually founded February 8, 1991. This implies that there allready had been a company, before it was officially founded. On February 4, 1991, Mike Morhaime, a schoolmate of Allen Adham, borrowed $15,000 "to be paid back $100 a month, interest free" from his grandmother Mildred M. Miller. Allen Adham and Mike Morhaime each invested $10,000 to found their company and hire their first employee, Frank Pearce. The company's name was Silicon & Synapse, which should reflect the unity of computer and brain. Morhaime banked the remaining $5000.
Sources:
Blizzard Anniversary Official (Blizzard 2001)
Happy Birthday Blizzard (PcGames 2001)
Company History Special: Blizzard (PcPlayer 2000)
Blizzard Entertainment (Official Presentation 1995)
History of Blizzard Entertainment (Press Kit 2002)
15 Years of Warcraft (Blizzard 2009)
20th Anniversary (Blizzard 2011)
Note: New magazines can't be used as sources, since they simply write some stuff from Wikipedia and Blizzard's website...
"We don't have a release date - we don't even have a year - but Warcraft III will happen."
- Bill Roper, 1997
When Bill Roper said these words back in 1997, Blizzard was currently developing Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. It should be Blizzard's first Adventure game. "Warcraft Adventures allows us to set the stage for Warcraft III", but that never happened: In early 1998 the development of the engine for Warcraft III started and Blizzard cancled Warcraft Adventures. The code name for the project, or at least for the main characters(Heroes) was "Legends" and it was developed by Blizzard's "Team One".
To understand, why Warcraft Adventures was canceled, it's important to know more about it's development and the Adventure game market around that time. Warcraft Adventures was developed by Blizzard, but the graphics were hand drawn by a studio in St. Petersburg, Russia. One of the major problems was the communication between the third-party company and Blizzard. The second problem was that every tiny change they made, that required a new animation or an old animation to be edited, took very much time. When Warcraft Adventures was nearly finished, it looked old compared to the adventure games of that time. Grim Fandango and The Curse Of Monkey Island were simply too modern and popular, to be beaten by the old school looking adventure by Blizzard.
In early 1999 Blizzard started to design the maps and characters and the next big part would be the AI. The balancing of the races was planned for the year 2000 and at the time of ECTS '99 about 25 of the circa 90 people working at Blizzard were programming and designing Warcraft III. One of the main goals was to make Warcraft 3 playable on a Pentium 133, so the game could reach people with slow PCs (and Macs) and sell more copies.
Now we are on September 5th 1999. It's time for ECTS, the European Computer Trade Show in London. It's about 1:00 pm. More than a hundred reporters are waiting inside the Henley-Suite at the Olympia Hall when Rob Pardo is about to announce Blizzards secret project. In 2009, Pardo described the scene as "a packed room of reporters, who wanted to see" what Blizzard was "doing next". He even said, this moment was when he realized, Warcraft was special. "They were not only blown away by what" the presentation was "showing, but they were also impressed at the depth of the universe and that" they'll "going to be able to tell a story". The crowd of reporters was so loud that Pardo (and Roper, just listening from the side) had to repeat the conference and show the presentation twice. Since Blizzard does not answer when asked for any information from back then, it's hard to find out what the presentation actually showed. There are three photos showing the screen: one with the logo used for presentation and the first "preview material" CD, and two with the Wyvern concept art as background and some text written on it. One of these texts read "Striving to redefine the strategy genre, Blizzard is creating Warcraft III as a 3D Role-Playing Strategy game ... ". The press conference is documented quite well by magazines from that time and the first 3 minutes of the 10 minutes long audio recording of the conference are still available via the internet archive, together with a transcript of the entire recording.
[Update 5.24.2011:]
One of the first things, Rob Pardo said at the press conference was, that normally a game consists of 70% building up your base and 30% combat. In Warcraft III it's the other way round. In 1998 Bill Roper stated, that Warcraft Adventures wasn't lost forever, instead, there would be a new, not yet announced, adventure game by Blizzard, that will use much of the story elements and characters designed for the canceled game. When Rob Pardo revealed that Warcraft III will use exactly this content, it's clear, which secret project Bill Roper mentioned one year before. The Incite Magazine report, which was also used by the german PcAction magazine, describes the story for Warcraft III: "Thrall, offspring of Orcs was raised as a slave of humans. When he manages to escape his tormenters, he swears revenge." Pardo also revealed the playable races for the game, at this time six. These races were Humans in alliance with dwarfs and elves, Orcs, Demons and three other races, that were to be announced later. The PcGames magazine wrote expiclitly, that Blizzard did not yet answer the question if there will be ships, but flying units will definetly be a part of the game. In your base you can recruit units and Heroes. To control your common units, you have to assign them to a Hero that leads them. Every Hero has a leadership ability that defines, how many units can be assigned to that Hero. The best camera angle should be chosen by the game and not by the player and it mostly follows the selected Hero. In the video by Incite (that I believe was filmed a few hours after the press conference, when "Rob Pardo showed a playable demo to some selected reporters", as the GameStar magazine wrote in 1999) actually two versions are shown: the one shown on all screenshots from 1999 and a version that had more interface elements, like a pseudo-3D minimap, unit icons and resource display (and a freely rotatable camera). The screenshots from that time show only the first version with a very rudimentary interface: only hero portaits at the bottum left corner of the screen (on the screenshots you only see those for the Blademaster and the Orc Warlord that later only appears as Chaos Orc Warlord/Slave Master). The PcGames magazine wrote in November 1999 that a right click on a Hero opens up a icon collar, from which you can pick the spells you want to cast and the items you want to use. Blizzard also announced the World Editor back then and confirmed that the game will be playable in multiplayer via Battle.net.
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