Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Blizzard Entertainment’s second installment to their iconic fantasy real-time strategy (RTS) Warcraft franchise, the predecessor to World of Warcraft, was initially released in the United States for Disc-Operating Systems (DOS) in 1995 and for MacOS in 1996. Warcraft II expands on and delves into the staple motif of darkness versus light, or good versus evil, represented respectively by the maddened, yet honour-bound Orcs and the noble humans as seen in Warcraft I: Orcs & Humans. The game consists of two campaigns, the Human Campaign and Orc Campaign, which take place throughout numerous locations in the fictional world. Unlike in other RTS games of the time, this allows the player to see and experience both perspectives of the conflict, effectively calling into question the legitimacy of the commonly accepted notion of good versus evil, but instead gesturing towards a field of morally grey.
Warcraft II opens with a short, narrated CG cutscene six years following the end of the First War between the humans of the Kingdom of Azeroth (Stormwind) and the Orcish Horde, who invaded the world (also named Azeroth) through a portal from their dying planet of Draenor. The cinematic depicts the Orcish Horde sailing north in pursuit of the Azerothian refugees, who fled to their sister kingdom of Lordaeron following the sack and destruction of their home in Stormwind City, awaiting the Orcs and their “tide of darkness.” This sequel offered a change of aesthetic, where both sides created political factions in the form of the Alliance of Lordaeron, formed of the seven human kingdoms of Lordaeron, Azeroth, Gilneas, Dalaran, Alterac, Kul Tiras, Arathor, the high elves of Quel’Thalas, dwarves, and gnomes versus their counterpart, the Horde, which at the time consisted of the orcs, trolls, ogres, and goblins.
Similar to Warcraft I, Warcraft II is a top-down view RTS game in which the player commands a main character and is also able to enlist allied units, i.e. foot-soldiers, mages, warlocks, cavalry, peasants, peons, warriors, ships, and even dragons by highlighting them with the cursor. The player is also able to achieve objectives by means of constructing new assets, such as farms, barracks, mines, armories, lumber mills, inns, naval facilities, or town halls from resources (gold, lumber, oil) that they collect in the world or from enemies. All of this made it very apparent that the player is very much in control of the their side of the world and that they had to factor in many variables into what could easily turn into a logistical nightmare, such as the constant, desperate need for soldier units, the farms needed to feed them, the peasants required to operate the farms, the gold and oil needed to fund practically everything, and the lumber needed to build. Oftentimes, victories were less so tactical “battlefield victories” but more due to a good economic cycle that made it hard to lose, unless your base was raided and burned to the ground in the few minutes you weren’t paying attention.
I felt that Warcraft II really invited the feeling of exploration and true immersion in the world of Azeroth as the you discover new areas in the map by clicking around the screen to move both your character and your commanded units. I also spent much time exploring the interactivity from allied units, which give different dialogue and emotes, often with 90’s pop culture references, when you click on them and they progressively get “very mad” when you spam them (spamming the in-game sheep makes them explode). Of course, as expected from a mid-90s RTS, the game had some ridiculous mechanics, like when you send your forces to attack a castle and they spend a minute slashing said castle with swords or volleys of arrows until it finally explodes.
Despite being only an RTS with a straightforward objective (to win), Warcraft II and the entire Warcraft franchise by extension immerse the player in an unprecedented amount of storyline and world-building, allowing an observant player to draw parallels between fantasy and reality. The game often depicts the lengths to which either faction would go in times of desperation, such as the Alliance placing the captured orcs in internment/slave camps while several human leaders also debated their genocide since the orcs could not be sent back to their homeworld (it imploded). Congruities between fantasy and reality exist especially in regard to elements such as societal unrest, corruption, xenophobia, racism, dehumanisation, slavery, and genocide. Warcraft II manages to offer a fun, explosive RTS playstyle while concurrently addressing fundamental issues based on general morality, economics, and the worst of war-crimes from dual perspectives in a fantastical lens, truly serving to deconstruct the dichotomy of good versus evil and establishing the moral ambiguity between the seemingly-good Alliance and the seemingly-bad Horde that would come to dominate the Warcraft and World of Warcraft franchise to this day.
Works Cited:
Warcraft II Game Downloader: https://playclassic.games/games/real-time-strategy-dos-games-online/play-warcraft-ii-tides-darkness-online/
WoWWiki Warcraft II: https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Warcraft_II:_Tides_of_Darkness
Warcraft II Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU-n8UZM5Cc
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