warcraft-2 posts

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

Back in the pioneering days of PC gaming, there were two giants in the real-time strategy business. The first, which we have already discussed before, is Westwood Studios, creators of the incredibly influential and arguably first modern real-time strategy game. The other was a lesser known studio that burst onto the scene with incredible vigor that has gone almost completely unmatched, barring possibly Relic. I am referring to Blizzard, of course, and the game that put them on the RTS map was not Starcraft, but Warcraft 2. Now that the MMO is the largest persistent world in the history of gaming and the series has stalled out with the third game, it's time to take a look back at the second game and how it would come to define Blizzard in ways nobody expected.

We've all been told that Blizzard wasn't -- and continues to not be -- affected by Activision. But is that really the truth? I hadn't questioned the claim until recently, when changes began to trickle out of BlizzCon 08.

At first, there was an announcement of a new StarCraft II singleplayer addition each year, for the next three years. Blizzard says: We wanted to make so much StarCraft II, that we needed to split it into three separate games that each need around a full year of development -- huzzah! I was ecstatic, it was Blizzard-nerd nirvana. Then these pesky questions began creeping into the forefront of my mind, buzzing about like infuriating flies that refuse to leave your room on a particularly hot summer day.