Video Game / WarCraft: Orcs & Humans

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Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is the first game in the Warcraft Fantasy Real-Time Strategy trilogy, released on November 15, 1994 for PC by Blizzard Entertainment.

While Dune II is considered the Trope Codifier of the genre, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans has come to popularize the genre and even demonstrate multiplayer capabilities.

While largely starting off as a war between Orcs and Humans, and pulling in a hundred thousand sales within a year, the game would set in motion one of the biggest video game Fantasy franchises known.

It was followed up a year later by Warcraft II.

The game would get a remaster with HD assets and modern controls for its 30th anniversary as Warcraft: Remastered.

STOP TROPING ME:

• The All-Seeing A.I.: The computer always knows where your base and units are, and has no need to scout or use the vision spells.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: After you have roughly 159 units, you cannot produce anymore units with the game simply saying "cannot create more unit or "unable to create unit", this is followed by refunding your resources in full. Similar applies to buildings.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If left to their own devices, player-controlled Catapults will not fire if their attack would hit a friendly unit.
• Artificial Stupidity: Whilst the AI was impressive for its time, it still makes mistakes.
  • After a while, enemies in the dungeon levels will attempt to seek out the player's army after enough time passes.
  • In the Campaign, the computer is actually smart enough to use all the spells at its disposal. In the Custom Game mode, on the other hand, the computer will make its squishy wizards solely use the attack command, thus defeating the whole purpose of those units.
  • The computer will gather parties to attack your base just fine, but is unable the replenish lost units of defenders.
  • In Custom Games, the computer will always send out units to attack your base alone or in pairs. As noted, it will also never research any spells.
  • The computer never researches weapon or armor upgrades, with the sole exception of Mission 8 in both Campaigns, where both sides start with full upgrades.
• Baseless Mission:
  • This game has "Dungeon" maps, in which no units can build anything; any peons or peasants you get can only walk and move around with no build or repair commands. Dungeon maps also feel feature "neutral units", which consists of creatures aligned to the Orcish Hordes or the Kingdom of Azeroth like Brigands, Slimes, Ogres
    • The human campaign has the rescue of Sir Lothar and an expedition to kill Medivh as dungeon missions.
    • The orc campaign has the death of Griselda at The Dead Mines and the rescue of Garona from Northshire Abbey as dungeon missions.
  • Prior to the 1.21 version (remember that the concept of "patching" was not even known by most users in 1995, let alone readily available), the mission at Sunnyglade (Human Mission 7) was for all effects baseless due to a bug with the rescue of the peasants; when you acivate one, all the enemy units attack the player before anything can be done with the base. If you survive that onslaught, the orcs should be defenseless and the mission basically over.
  • In Mission 10 of each campaign, the player starts with a large force but no buildings or peasants, and the goal is to destroy the enemy base on the far side of the map.
• Big Bad: Warchief Blackhand is the leader of the orcish Hordes threatening the Kingdom of Azeroth. Interestingly he is fought by the player and dies in both human and orc campaigns.
• Big Good: King Llane is the King of the heroic Kingdom of Azeroth. Just like Blackhand, he dies no matter which campaign you play.
• Beware the Skull Base: The Orc Tower, which produces the deadly warlock unit, is a a giant stone skull with runic markings on it.
• Blood Knight: The Orcs crave and lust for battle. Some of the mission briefings apply the same about the Orc commander (Doomhammer).
• Circle of Standing Stones: The Orc Temple where Necrolytes is built in this manner, surrounding a central circular altar.
• Civil WarCraft: Both campaign missions have one. It is also the only time, you will see Blue Orcs and Red Humans.
  • Orc Mission 7 has the player commander, later identified as Orgrim Doomhammer, decide they have proven themselves a better commander and thus should rule the Orcish Hordes. To accomplish this, the commander attacks the main base of Blackhand's loyalists (colored Blue).
  • Human mission 6 has a group of unidentified Warriors (colored Red), lead a revolt against King Llane's rule after being convinced by enemies of the crown. It is never explained if the "Enemies of the crown" were the Orcs or a previously unmentioned enemy of the Kingdom. This plot point is also never mentioned again in the Warcraft franchise.
• Color-Coded Armies: Generally the Orcs are red and the Humans are blue, but in their respective campaigns they have to face counterparts of their race wearing the opposite color.
• Construct Additional Pylons: Several requirements exist for creating Buildings and Units.
  • In this game, you will need to construct roads, which can only be created in a line starting from your town hall. Roads are necessary to create buildings, which must be created near roads. Additionally buildings must be created near each-other.
  • Just like the other Warcraft games, units require foods from farms to be created. The only exception is your first unit.
• Cosmetically Different Sides: The two factions are identical, save for the range and damage of their archers/spearmen (archers have greater range, spearmen do more damage), their spellcasters, and some upgrades. Otherwise their differences mostly comes down to color.
• Damsel in Distress: An Odd villainous example happens in mission 8 of the Orc campaign, where the player has to rescue the hero Garona, who was being imprisoned in Northshire Abbey.
• Double-Sided Book: The manual was printed with the Human perspective on one side and the Orc perspective on the other.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Human Mission 7, Sunnyglade. The mission is in two parts where you have to rescue a group of peasants before being able to properly build up your main base. However, your starting army (4 Knights, 4 Archers, 2 Clerics and a Catapult) is already quite powerful that with decent enough micro, you can instead just destroy the enemy's main base, and then again, the "easy" part depends much on the player's quickness and dexterity.
  • Human Mission 8. Due to the level's final room being right next to the player's starting location, it's possible to kill Medivh right away. After using a Cleric's sight-seeing ability to reveal Medivh's location, there's one square for an Archer to stand on at the starting area that can reach over the cave wall to hit Medivh. He can hit back and hard, so the classic way can be faster because the fragile archers need healing and you still need to clear the rest of the enemies to win the mission.
  • Orc Mission 8. After you have dispatched the enemies that attack you at the beginning of the mission, instead of making your way through the dungeon, you can just sit in the narrow corridor you start in. The enemies will eventually come to you one by one, allowing your units to easily kill them.
• Earth Drift: The Manual mentions "God", "Archangels" and "Heaven" among other terms, implying the humans worship Christianity from the real world. This is also supported by a crucifix being on the human Church. Similarly the orcs mention the "Hell"/"The Underworld", indicating they are satanists. Later games would drop this and replace them with terms like "The Light" and "the Twisting Nether."
• Early-Installment Weirdness: As the very first Warcraft game and early in the RTS genre, its very different in both gameplay and story.
  • Story-wise
    • Azeroth is just the name of the Kingdom. Starting from Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, it'd be name of the planet, although the kingdom does not get renamed to Stormwind until World of Warcraft.
    • The Horde is almost wholly referred to as the "Orcish Hordes" and the Alliance hasn't been introduced at all.
    • Humans are the only sapient/humanoid beings from Azeroth mentioned in this game, with all the others being either from Draenor (Orcs, Ogres) or artificially created or magically summoned beings (Skeletons, Fire and Water Elementals).
    • Orgrim Doomhammer takes control of the Horde from Blackhand with the support of the Shadow Council and Garona, whom switch to sides to him out of appreciation for his strength. The Shadow Council also assassinates Blackhand instead of Doomhammer killing him personally.
    • Orcs and Humans mention places like Heaven and Hell, indicating a religion similar to our own. This would change due to Earth Drift.
    • Both in this and in II magic is referred to as magik, this would later be dropped in III. Similarly, "demon" is spelled "daemon".
    • According to the timeline given in this game and the sequel, the First War ended fifteen years after the opening of the Dark Portal. Later installments would remove the first ten years after the opening of the portal, making the First War start immediately after the orcs' arrival.
    • Blackhand did not take control of the Orcish Hordes until ten years after the opening of the Dark Portal. World of Warcraft-era lore (at least from The Burning Crusade onward) established Blackhand as having taken control of the Horde even before the opening of the portal, during the war against the draenei.
  • Gameplay-wise
    • Both worker units have to build near roads and their buildings have to be built near another building. You are also allowed to build walls.
    • Once a unit is selected, every action it will perform has to be chosen from a menu, including walking. Thankfully, all actions can also be chosen using hotkeys.
    • Clicking on your own unit while a soldier is selected leads to Friendly Fire, while clicking "Heal" on an enemy unit does just that.
    • No unit can build Great Halls and at most, a worker unit can rebuild their destroyed base in the exact same spot their original Great Hall was destroyed. Great Halls also cannot be upgraded, with the closest equivalents, the Black Rock Spire and Stormwind Keep, being Campaign buildings in the final mission.
    • Worker units also cannot create guard towers of any sort as the concept hadn't been introduced yet..
    • You can only direct four units at a time and no more than that.
    • There is only one voice for human units and one for orc units.
    • The Lumber Mill can't process lumber and Peasants/Peons will have to drop lumber off exclusively at the town hall.
• Enemy Civil War: The struggle for power between Orc Warchief Blackhand and Doomhammer. This is not addressed in the Human campaign.
• Everything Fades: The corpses in the game will be reduced to skeletons before vanishing, though the Orc Necrolyte can raise them from the dead.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Black Rock spire is a crystal black orcish castle built upon a tall black mountain in which Blackhand and his forces reside. Starting in the sequel, it would be called Blackrock Spire, with Blackrock being one word.
• Faction Calculus: Humans (Powerhouse — they can heal units and make them invisible, ergo preserving existing units over creating new ones) and Orcs (Subversive — they can use The Undead as Cannon Fodder and halve a unit's health to make them temporarily invincible, which suggests they should always have units to spare). This is a weak example because Cosmetically Different Sides was at its strongest in this game.
• Faction-Specific Endings: Both factions have a text based ending that ends with a clear view of the player's commander, whom has taken control of their faction.
  • The kingdom of Azeroth's campaign ends with the Player general, having succeeded the assassinated King Llane, defeating the Orcish Horde, and making the remaining orcs "bow to their might". As celebrations occur, the new King wonders if he can fill Llane's shoes and find out exactly where the Orcish Hordes came from.
  • The Orcish Horde's ending has the Player general (later identified as Orgrim Doomhammer) taking over the Orcish Horde after killing Blackhand and killing King Llane in the Final Battle. With their King dead, the humans quickly surrender to orcish conquest. As your forces celebrate, the new Warchief hears news from the Shadow Council about the lands across the great sea and the experiments with the great portal, wondering if they'll conquer new lands or even new worlds.
• Excuse Plot: Downplayed Trope, Wilst the manual explains quite a bit, the ingame story, relayed in the mission briefings is incredibly brief and rarely describes more other than your direct objective. For example, Medivh is central to the story in the manual as the man who created the Dark Portal that the orcs came from, but in the game text, Medivh is just a random warlock trying to take over the land. Also compare the Civil WarCraft mission for humans in this game to the one in the sequel; the former just describes some unidentified warriors compelled by spies to battle the crown, whilst the latter is a major plot point with a ton of story reprecussions.
• Final Boss: In an odd case, the final mission of both orc and human campaigns involves destroying the enemy capital, which is a unique building with more health than anything else in the game and also has all the functionality of a Town Hall. Once these structures are destroyed, they cannot be rebuilt.
  • The orc campaign's final mission has the player sieging Stormwind Keep, the Castle that King Llane is in.
  • The Human campaign's Final Battle has the human army advancing on Black Rock Spire and implicitly killing Warchief Blackhand by destroying it.
• Fishing for Mooks: In this game, computer-controlled units defending their base will pursue you all the way to your base, allowing you to draw them away one by one and kill them easily. Alternatively, hitting an enemy building would draw away the all base defenders, who would usually clump together and make easy targets for your catapults. Because the computer was not smart enough to replace dead defenders, this became the standard tactic for eliminating strongly-defended bases.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The manual description of the Summon Daemon spell. Summoning a daemon is described as only being a dream of warlocks and the spell to summon one is only described as only a legend. In actual gameplay the spell is just unlocked via research like anything else, although in the campaign you can only learn it in the last two missions. The manual also claims that the caster must sacrifice his body to summon the daemon, and if the daemon is destroyed, the caster's spirit is lost. This doesn't happen in the actual game, where an orc warlock can summon a daemon with no ill effects to himself.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Generally the humans are blue and the orcs are red. In the human campaign, there are red-colored human mercenaries attacking Northshire Abbey, which maintains the good vs. evil conflict. Curiously in the orc campaign, you have to fight the forces of Blackhand, which are portrayed as blue orcs.
• Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: Mostly played straight; Good humans use Swords and crossbows, Evil orcs use axes and scimitars. The knights are a rare aversion of this trope: they wield nasty-looking flails even though they're the good guys.
• Hellgate: It's mentioned the orcs come from a portal/dimensional rift, but at this point, the portal is neither seen nor named. Interestingly, the manual describes Medivh as accidentally opening it, which would be retconned in the immediate sequel. As it turns out, this portal, the Dark Portal, leads not to hell but to the orcs' home planet of Draenor (later Outland).
• Hero Unit: Downplayed, a very basic hero system exists here with the Lothar and Garona units in the campaign. Only Lothar can fight and even then, he's weaker than a Knight. Garona is effectively a weaker peon that cannot do anything but move. Medivh and Griselda also exist as "boss" characters, though Griselda cannot fight.
• Hero Must Survive: Both Human and Orc campaigns have a mission where you have to rescue a hero unit (Lothar for the Humans, Garona for the Orcs). In Lothar's case, most of the enemy units should be taken care of by the time you reach him.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Garona mentions that human females and children were like "taking grok to the slaughter".
• The Horde: The orcs are part of a large and savage, but surprisingly advanced, barbarian army. Interestingly they are almost exclusively referred to as the "Orcish Hordes", with a singular Horde almost never being used.
• Killed Offscreen: Happens to both human and orcs leaders in both campaigns.
  • In the orcish story, Blackhand is simply mentioned as having been assassinated by the Shadow Council in a mission briefing after you defeat his forces. ^note From ''WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness onward, it's established Orgrim killed him in a fight. In the human campaign, Blackhand is offhandedly said to have been killed after you destroy Blackrock Spire.
  • King Llane is mentioned as to have been killed by Garona late in the human campaign, leading to the player succeeding him. In the orc campaign ending, it's said the orc commander ran King Llane through with their war blade, after Castle Stormwind is destroyed in the gameplay.
• Left-Justified Fantasy Map: Orcs and Humans is the only Warcraft game to present its map like this, with the human lands and the Great Sea in the west, and the orc lands in the east.
• Mid-Season Twist:
  • Orc campaign ("The Black Morass"): Doomhammer usurps Blackhand as Warchief.
  • Human campaign ("Medivh"): Medivh dies but his legacy will continue to haunt the World of Warcraft.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The computer plays by a different set of rules, with the economic system entirely different, based on preset values rather than game accomplishments. The computer does not actually use gold or lumber, the peasants harvesting wood and mining gold are just for show, and they take away from your potential resources. In the later Campaign missions, the computer has two or three settlements, each with their own Town Hall, while you only ever get one (you can't build a new Town Hall, only rebuild it if it gets destroyed).
• Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: The game contains a rudimentary version of this, as Dungeon missions contain hostile units that cannot be built or summoned by either faction: Ogres, Slimes, Brigands, Dungeon Skeletons, and Fire Elementals. Critters wouldn't appear until the sequel.
• No Cure for Evil: The Orcish equivalent to the Human Cleric is the Necrolyte, which forgoes healing in favor of necromancy.
• No Name Given: Both the Orc and Human commanders have no given name in the game. The orc player would be named Orgrim Doomhammer in the sequel, but the human player would remain unnamed and disappear.
• Non-Entity General: The player character is normally represented by a human gauntlet or an orcish hand. That said, the player character is identified in the campaign and is finally shown in a full shot during the ending.
  • In the orc campaign, the orc commander decides given his competence, he should rule the orcs and successfully overthrows Warchief Blackhand, taking over the Horde. The new orc Warchief is a brawny orc in full plate armor with skull imagery that covers all but his arms. His head is topped with a ram-horned helmet that covers everything but the lower half of the face and he holds a scimitar in his hand.
  • In the Human campaign, the human commander is chosen to succeed by the dying King Llane to succeed his throne, after he was suddenly killed by the traitorous Garona in the tenth mission. The commander, now the new King, is shown during the ending to be a brunette man with long hair, a long mustache (possibly a horseshoe mustache) and a Lantern Jaw of Justice wearing leather and a winged helmet. Unlike the orc commander, this character was never identified or even mentioned in later media and his victory isn't canon.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Human Archers actually wield Crossbows, not Bows.
  • The Lumber Mill cannot actually process lumber.
• One-Hit Kill: A direct hit from a Catapult will kill any unit except a Daemon.
• Palette Swap: The Necrolyte, Warlock, and Medivh all used the same recoloured sprite.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Orcs are the evil version; they crave conflict and political disputes are handled in battle.
  Garona: All matters of politics or dispute are settled in open debate. This can lead to hostilities in many cases, but it is the fastest and simplest way to come to a conclusion on most matters. Each Orc has the right to make heard his arguments, as long as he can back them up with fact - or steel. To gain the upper hand is a sign of strength, and strength is counted highly among the hordes.
• Puny Earthlings: The orc narrator occasionally make disparaging comments about the weakness of the human oppositions. Making them fit this trope even better, the orcs are aliens in a way as they come from a another planet connected to the human world by a portal.
• Prison Level: Mission 8 of the orc campaign, Northshire Abbey, which takes place in the surprisingly hellish prison underneath the monk's abbey. You must lead a small detachment of the orc army to break out Garona.
• Rain of Arrows: If you are playing as humans, a common strategy is just to mass archers and just have them all pelt a single unit with their arrows at once. The orcs do the same thing with javelins.
• Revive Kills Zombie: Human Clerics can damage daemons by casting the Healing spell on them. This, however, is not even hinted at in the game, manual, or even the Insider's Guide.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: Human Conjurers wear comically tall pointy hats that bob as they walk.
• The Smurfette Principle: Only two females appear in the game, a half-orc, half-human hero named Garona (she's retconned to be half-orc and half-draenei in later installments) and Blackhand's daughter Griselda.
• Social Darwinist: The orcs are this according to Garona's section of the manual.
  Garona: Our order of ascension is a simple one - only the strongest survive.
• The Starscream: The orc player himself is this. In the sixth orc mission, they decide to overthrow Blackhand, the current War Chief of the Orcish Hordes.
• Stop Poking Me!: The Trope Namer, both orc and human units will get annoyed if you keep clicking them without doing anything
  Human Unit: Why do you keep touching me!?
  Orc Unit: Stooop Poookkking meee!?
• Summon Magic: Basic units you can produce can summon extremely powerful creatures. The Human conjurer and the Orcish Warlock both have a minor summoning spells that summons up to four Fragile Speedster Scorpions (for Humans) or Spiders (for Orcs). Their big feature is the "Major Summon" spell, which is the most powerful and expensive spell for each side, summonig for a limited time ranged water elementals and huge blade-wielding daemons for the humans and orcs respectively.
• The Unfought: Due to being an early RTS, the human and orc leaders never appear onscreen within the actual game, only being mentioned in mission briefings and only command the enemy forces offscreen. Notably this is defied with Medivh, whom is actually a unit within the game that gets a proper Boss Fight.
  • Warchief Blackhand never appears within the gameplay and thus is never fought, even though he is established in the story as a case of Rank Scales with Asskicking.
  • The same applies to King Llane, though nothing in the story indicates he is a warrior, making this a Justified Trope.
• Video Game Caring Potential: There are seven peons imprisoned in the Northshire Prison during the eighth orc mission. If you want, it is possible to save them all, though it is not necessary.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: On the other-hand, the seven peons have only 3 health points left. And while they are no use to you alive, thanks to your necrolytes they might be some use to you dead...
• Vocal Dissonance: All Orc units use the same male voice, including the clearly female, Garona.
• Water Is Womanly: Water Elementals in this game resemble women made out of water, unlike Fire Elementals which resemble muscular men. This turned out to be Early Installment Character-Design Difference since in WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos and other appearances in the universe thereafter, both Water and Fire Elementals have a more gorilla-like shape with massive forearms and a less humanlike head which leans far forward from their torso.
• Wings Do Nothing: Daemons have batlike wings, but seeing as the game is seen from a top-down perspective, it's purely for aesthetic reasons.
• Worker Unit: Orc peons and Human Peasants make their debut here. Unlike later games, they have no method of attacking.
• You Are in Command Now: In the Human campaign, King Llane is suddenly killed by Garona in the beginning of the tenth mission, with his last wish being that the player commander take his throne.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Griselda is presented as the boss of the fourth Orc level, since the objective involves killing her. She does not fight back and will attempt to flee upon being attacked.