Warcraft 1 and 2 Coming To Modern PCs

If you missed out on the first two games in the Warcraft series, you'll soon get a chance to play them. Blizzard's J. Allen Brack revealed at BlizzCon that the studio is updating the real-time strategies for contemporary PCs.

"So, we actually have a guy on our team — actually several guys on our team — who are actually working on a side project to do something like that in some form or fashion," Brack said (via Polygon) when asked if the company would ever remake WC1 and WC2. "We're fans of Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, and we'd love to replay those games for sure."

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness were released in 1994 and 1995. The two games depict invasions of Azeroth by orcs, a warlike race from the planet Draenor. In the first game, the orc and human units were mostly identical. Warcraft 2 differentiated the two factions with distinct sets of air, land and naval units. WC2 also put players in control of powerful named characters known as Heroes.

While the two games might seem a bit outdated compared to Warcraft 3, they're extremely important in the series' story. WC3 and World of Warcraft directly continue the events of those two games. Those aging strategy games explain why the Alliance and Horde are never going to be completely comfortable with each other. They also explain how the orcs became marooned on Azeroth in the first place.

Updating WC1 and WC2 is a savvy move because there's bound to be renewed interest in those games soon. The next World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, allows players to travel to an alternate history of Draenor. In this version of events, the orcs never invaded Azeroth and instead united as an Iron Horde under Grom Hellscream. Seeing this alternate timeline should give players the urge to check out the early Warcraft games and experience the established history. The upcoming WoW movie might also spur interest in the series' beginnings.

Brack didn't mention whether Blizzard is actually going to update these games at all. It's possible that they'll simply make them compatible with modern operating systems and call it a day. I'd love it if they went a step further and revised them in some way. For example, maybe they could use the WarCraft 3 toolset to build the campaigns from scratch? That might make modern audiences more likely to dive into those older games.