Warcraft Adventures

By Elliott Chin
design by Ethan O'Brien

The story always seems to be the same: We read about a game that starts off as a simple idea, which then blossoms into a working design, and usually two years (or so) later, a successful game is born. If developers dream something that captures our collective imagination, such successes become franchises and universes that spawn even more hit titles.

	Thrall, the orc on the left, was to be the star of Blizzard's first adventure game, Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans.

But what happens to those ideas and dreams that never quite get off the ground? What about the games we glimpsed briefly in the past and then never saw again? What of the games that history forgot? Sometimes, we can't even remember these games with their lofty promises, and they disappear with barely a whisper. Other times, we're bombarded with hype, previews, and information, and when these highly anticipated games vanish, they leave a void that begs to be filled and questions that go unanswered.

There's a long list of games that burst with potential at one point in time but somehow couldn't make it through development: Warcraft Adventures, Champions, Secret of Vulcan Fury, Indestructibles, Agents of Justice, A-10, among others. There are many more, and for each one, there is a sizable fan base that wants to know what happened. Was it the excesses of developers? The misinformed decisions of publishers? Or the perils of the market?

In our ongoing series, the PC Gaming Graveyard, we'll look back at these games and find out why they never made it to the store shelves. In many cases, the stories are full of drama, loss, frustration, and sometimes hope.

Our first Gaming Graveyard installment is the story of Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, an adventure game that was set in Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft strategy-game universe.

Early Days