Contents:
The Intro
Title: Warcraft: Orcs and Humans
Release year: 1994
Developed by: Blizzard Entertainment
Genre: real-time strategy (RTS)
Platform replayed on: PC
I played a lot of real-time strategy in the late 90s, mostly across the Warcraft, Command & Conquer, and Age of Empire series. What still makes me smile after all these years from the Warcraft series is the humour.
Take this example from Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, when repeatedly clicking on a unit:
“My liege?”
…
“Yes?”
…
“What?”
…
“What do you want??”
…
“Why do you keep touching me?!”
I’m sure anyone familiar with Warcraft: Orcs & Humans will remember these lines well.
The fourth wall breaking moments got a lot funnier and more varied in the sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995). But as you can see, the series’ famously quirky fantasy humour started here in the original Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
I’m not sure exactly when I first played Warcraft: Orcs & Humans; I can only narrow it down to the late 90s/early 2000s, and that was only after I had already played a tonne of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.
Coming to the series a few years after its initial releases, I didn’t have copies of my own to play. I remember borrowing a copy of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness from family friends.
That all changed when I managed to get my hands on the Warcraft Battle Chest!
I must admit, I do miss physical releases of PC games, and especially sets like the Warcraft Battle Chest which combined sequels and/or expansions. Many years later, I would pick up the Starcraft Battle Chest, which even included strategy guides.
While I bought the Warcraft Battle Chest primarily to continue to play Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, it also allowed me to try Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and see how the series all began.
Let’s crack open that chest and take a look.
The Game
The title says it all, really: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. It’s that classic fantasy battle between orcs and humans.
As the story goes, the orcs opened a portal between their world and the human world, Azeroth. Raiding on human lands became bolder and bolder, but somehow the humans managed to drive the orcs back. Realising that the humans were united, tactically superior, and aided by powerful magic, a war chief seeks to organise the orcish hordes into a war machine and devour the humans once and for all…
This is where you join the game, and of course, you have a choice to make: whose side are you on?
While on the surface the premise is standard fantasy fare, there is a surprising amount of background lore provided in the Warcraft: Orcs & Humans manual. There are multiple pages dedicated to the orcish and human histories, illustrating how we got to where we are at the start of the game.
A whole setting is established. Characters are introduced. Timelines are laid out. Backstories provide context for the struggle. It’s impressive, and it provided the basis for the ongoing series, including the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game juggernaut that is World of Warcraft (2004).
Heading out onto the battlefield, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans has a more skirmish than epic siege feeling compared with Command & Conquer and Age of Empires. The maps are small, and each skirmish usually only involves a handful of units on each side.
In Warcraft: Orcs & Humans you are limited to selecting a maximum of four units at a time, which inevitably requires a lot of micromanagement.
Micromanaging usually has a negative connotation, but here it’s about being more zoomed in: you’re commanding small squads, and you need to lead them.
Resource generation to build your armies is simple, and involves recruiting peasants (humans) or peons (orcs) to mine for gold and chop trees for wood. It’s a well-known real-time strategy formula now: harvest resources and build up units faster than your opponent.
It’s an interesting balance in the early game though, as these peasant and peon units are quite expensive relative to battle units. Do you recruit that extra peasant to speed up your resource generation, or do you recruit that footman or archer to bolster your base defences? A poorly defended base can quickly become overrun, but if you’re not getting that gold and wood in quickly enough, your forces will fall behind.
Base building involves building enough farms to feed your troops (in other words, allows you to recruit units) and building unit generating or unit enhancing structures.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is an offensive game. Once you have your economy established and enough units to defend against any base incursion, it’s time to think about attacking. There’s little in terms of structures you can build to defend your base, so the best defence is really a good offence.
The two sides don’t differ much in terms of units. The human footman, archer, and knight units have their equivalents in the orcish grunt, spearman, and raider units respectively.
Both sides can build catapults for powerful long-ranged attacks.
But when it comes to magic, the two sides have slightly different units and spells available. Both sides have two spell-casting units, and mastering how you manage these units and their spells is critical to success in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
The humans can recruit clerics, who can cast healing spells. If managed well, saving units from dying is a huge advantage, increasing their longevity and removing the need to replace them.
The orcish equivalent is the necrolyte, and while they can’t heal, they can cast the frustrating unholy armour spell. This spell makes a unit temporarily invulnerable to attack.
The other two spell-casting units, the human conjurer and the orcish warlock, have access to summoning spells, producing the most powerful and fear-inducing units in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans: water elementals and daemons.
Essentially, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is an arms race. It follows the familiar real-time strategy unit and technology tree model, where building prerequisite structures allows access to new structures, units, and upgrades (spells, for example). The faster you branch out, the better your chance of success.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans features two campaigns, allowing you to play through a series of connected missions. The now-familiar real-time strategy approach sees early campaign missions effectively acting as tutorials, introducing new units and structures as you go along.
But let’s not just talk about the campaign—let’s choose a side and raise/raze some armies!
The Replay
As I was with Command & Conquer, I was hesitant to cover another real-time strategy game here on Present Perfect Gaming, despite the genre holding a special place in my gaming history. I wasn’t sure I would be able to get over the learning curve and complete a campaign in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. I knew I had done it before, but having to master the micromanagement required by being quick on the hotkeys was not an exciting prospect.
But one step at a time, I thought. Let’s just get through some of those early tutorial-like missions and see how I go. Besides, as with Command & Conquer, I was interested in more than just the real-time battles. I wanted to explore the campaign story and experience any mission variety on offer besides the classic base race and elimination objectives.
I wanted to know if Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a worthwhile gaming experience, now almost thirty years since its original release.
Siding with the humans, the first mission sees you being given the incredible responsibility of building some farms and a barracks.
First problem though—I couldn’t even select, let alone move, my units. Trying to drag a box around units with the mouse didn’t work. When I selected a single unit by clicking on it, right clicking to move didn’t work.
I had to look up the manual, to understand that you can select multiple units (up to that maximum of four) by dragging a box around them, but that you also need to hold down a hotkey. And moving units or getting them to perform an action? Hotkeys. Or else you have to actually select the action from an action window (to the left of the main window) and then select your target on the map.
I had to learn the hotkeys!
It’s actually possible to complete this mission without combat—you can quite happily gather your gold and lumber in peace until you have enough to build your farms and barracks.
But call it curiosity, bloodlust, or just impatience, I just had to get my hands at least a little dirty. It is Warcraft, after all.
It turns out I could have just waited until the second mission to get my hands dirty, as all that is required is to wipe out orcish forces in the vicinity of your base.
Another simple task, though it does see your base getting approached early. You have to be ready to defend before getting adventurous beyond your borders.
The following mission is a progression from destroying orcish forces, to destroying a base. This time, you’re leaving the lush-green pastures of the human lands and venturing into the more barren swamplands of the orcish settlements.
The graphics haven’t aged well in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, but it was nice to see some variety in the map design.
This mission also saw the introduction of magic, with clerics being available.
Of course, that also meant the orcs were bringing their necrolytes…
Protecting against attacks from the north and the west, I managed to start building up an attack force.
Once ready, I advanced my forces into position and took on the orc base.
After completing these “tutorial” missions, the campaign story gets going with an important rescue mission.
This is the first mission which doesn’t follow the traditional base-building model. Here, you have a finite number of units, and must survive a journey underground to find and rescue Sir Lothar, loyal servant to King Llane, Lord of Azeroth.
This maze-like mission is a slow grind, navigating your forces through tight tunnels, and wiping out anything standing in your way.
The presence of clerics means there’s no real danger if you manage your units well and keep them healed.
Usually, this involves the classic real-time strategy of “kiting”. Lead a single unit into the fog of war hiding enemy territory until you encounter something aggressive, and then lure them back into an awaiting ambush.
In Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, the fog of war is permanently removed from the map once you uncover it, so you can always see enemy approaches from any part of the uncovered map from that point forward.
Finding Lothar was easy, though it was a bit annoying having to then march him all the way to the underground exit, right back where you started the mission.
The next mission sees a return to base building, and really serves only to introduce you to the horse-mounted knight units—and their orc raider counterparts.
Secure your base, build up, wipe out the orc base. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again.
The halfway point in the Warcraft: Orcs & Humans human campaign is a slight variation to that familiar mission formula, which sees you having to put down a mutiny within the lands. First you must rescue and secure a town that has been attacked by these renegade human forces.
But once you’ve secured the town (which becomes your base), it’s another build up and wipe out mission.
Another slight variation to the formula finds a group of peasants being captured as slaves by the orcs.
Rescue these peasants and put them back to work. And then wipe out the orcs.
Check out some gameplay video from the final ten minutes of this mission on my YouTube channel:
Thankfully, the next mission furthers the story in the Warcraft: Orcs & Humans human campaign, and is another one with finite forces. Though the mission preamble requires you to deal with a powerful warlock named Medivh, who has been draining the soul of the land to increase his dark powers, there’s more to the story if you read the backstory in the manual.
There’s also the legend that Medivh can command the daemons of hell.
As it turns out, it’s not just legend. It’s reality.
The effective kiting strategy worked well again, and with the clerics able to heal your units after each skirmish, this mission provided no real danger of failure.
Removing Medivh as a threat takes you into the endgame in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. The final four missions see you delving deeper into orcish lands in search of Black Rock Spire, home of the war chief Blackhand.
The challenge provided in these later missions comes from having to take on multiple orc bases at once. The first of these provided a nice strategic vantage point, however.
Securing and protecting the bridge meant I was able to build up my base and forces in relative peace.
It wasn’t without its challenges though.
The following mission starts on a sad note, with news that King Llane has been assassinated!
If you needed additional motivation to eradicate the orc presence from human lands, this was certainly it. Pushing on, your next task is to take out one of Blackhand’s darkest seats of power: the Temple of the Damned. It’s really just another base demolition job, but this time you have no base of your own.
Fortunately, as in the previous mission, there were bridges I could funnel orcs into.
But there were also challenges with this approach.
A steady approach involving protecting your catapults meant enough firepower at the end to destroy the temple.
The final two Warcraft: Orcs & Humans missions in the human campaign played out very similarly, as the conjurers now had new toys to play with: water elementals.
These water elementals were game changers, as a small group of them can wipe out an orc base on their own. The only challenge then, is keeping your base defended long enough to build up to the point where the water elemental spell can be researched (it’s not cheap!).
Daemons came early too, so you have to be attentive, and prepared.
The penultimate mission required two bases to be destroyed, and the human base is quite exposed with no natural choke points to defend.
I managed to hold out until I could build a tower and research the water elemental spell.
It didn’t take long to flood the orc bases.
It was time for the final assault on Black Rock Spire, and this time there were three orc bases to contend with. Thankfully, the human base is more easily defended with a forest along the western border.
You also don’t need to research the water elemental spell in this mission (thematically, it makes sense—you had already researched it in the previous mission). As such, it was a lot quicker to get to the point where I could recruit conjurers and start summoning.
Daemons were again an early threat, so I needed to counter them with water elementals.
The first two orc bases were easily taken out by small squads of water elementals.
Black Rock Spire proved to be more difficult to breach, as there was a large contingent of defenders, including a lot of catapults.
I managed to lure the catapults out of the southern entrance, where my knights rushed in and finished them off.
Simultaneously, I attacked the eastern entrance with water elementals.
Victory was near, and Black Rock Spire finally fell. The human campaign in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was over.
Cue the fireworks…
…and a hint of the sequel to come.
The Verdict
Replaying and reviewing Warcraft: Orcs & Humans has been challenging, mainly due to its age and the technical limitations at the time of release (the four-unit selection limit and lack of right-click functionality).
The gameplay is repetitive. Most campaign missions I replayed through had the same end goal: destroy all enemy forces and bases. As such, the same tactics could be employed to ensure victory. The final two missions are examples of that, with the use of water elementals to destroy bases.
The lack of asymmetry between the two sides reinforces this repetitive gameplay. A lot of the skirmishes end up being between similar units on both sides.
The abundance of resources also ensures that you can build up your base and your forces the same way each mission without pressure.
This lack of overall complexity in gameplay was improved in future real-time strategy titles with more asymmetry between sides, the rock/paper/scissor approach to unit balance, and variation in the scarcity/access to resources leading to the need to prioritise.
But these limitations shouldn’t cloud the ambitions of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. There are some impressive positives, not least the fact the game was majorly improved upon in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (perhaps a story for another day…).
Mission design in the campaign featured variations now common in the genre: early missions serving as tutorials, missions not involving base building, and missions with unique start positions (for example, the missions requiring you to initially rescue peasants or rescue and take over a base). While all base-building missions devolve into the same tactics and endgame, the mission starts at least provide some variation.
Enemy AI is quite predictable, and therefore easily manipulated (for example, using kiting, and creating chokepoints). But there are examples of counter tactics that ensured I had to keep a watchful eye on enemy advances. Catapults and area-effect spells can wipe out your small squads instantly, as well as your base.
While I initially struggled to understand and learn the controls and micromanagement required to play Warcraft: Orcs & Humans effectively, there is one setting that I was grateful for: game speed. You can adjust it, and while I didn’t have to, it was reassuring to know it was there. I didn’t want my lack of speed with hotkeys and dragging and selecting small squads of units to be a determining factor in my lack of advancement.
Despite its limitations, and the hint of the greatness to come, what made replaying Warcraft: Orcs & Humans an overall enjoyable experience was the story and the lore this first instalment was establishing.
I compare this to my replay of Command & Conquer, which also features repetitive missions, where what I enjoyed the most was the campy cutscenes in between missions.
I’m really looking to enjoy the unfolding story in a real-time strategy game, and as I do in most games I play. I don’t play multiplayer, and if I was only interested in the gameplay, I would play randomly generated one-off battles and not bother with the Warcraft: Orcs & Humans campaigns.
But I want characters. I want settings. I want stories. And I don’t even mind if I have to do some reading to get it.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is showing its age, and playing it really is like stepping back in time. But like any epic saga with humble beginnings, it had to start somewhere.
It may not be great, but Warcraft: Orcs & Humans foreshadowed greatness. And for that, I am grateful.
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