| Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans | |
|---|---|
 Official box art | |
| Developer(s) | Blizzard Entertainment Animation Magic |
| Publisher(s) | Davidson & Associates, Cendant |
| Designer(s) | Bill Roper, Chris Metzen |
| Platform(s) | Windows 95, Mac OS |
| Release | Cancelled |
| Genre(s) | Graphic adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is a cancelled 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.