What can I say here? This game did play an important role in gaming and for this genre, and (as Blizzard claims themselves) set new standard for multi-player games. Not only that. It lead to an entire franchize of fantasy themed strategy games with a very solid lore behind it, not to mention to one of the most played MMO games "World of Warcraft", and I've been a WoW-Player too, and recently there's even a movie based on the WarCraft universe, and it's seen as one of the few movies based on a game that actually is good (although I speak of what other reviewers say on that one, as I never saw that movie).

I am not really into strategy games, so for me stuff is hard to judge, so I'll be a bit more "neutral" in this particular game than I normally am. You should never criticize stuff you are not well-versed in, is basically my reviewing policy. However being an ex-WoW player I did have to review this title, even it was just for historical sake.

This game already supports aside from single play a way to play with friends. Back in those days the internet was not very common, so you either had to use a modem (which was very pricey back then), or bring multiple computers together and play with a LAN. I played this game over DOSBox when reviewing this, and since the network support uses heavily outdated technologies I really don't know if the network features of this game are still operative, as I never really studied if DOSBox has some alternate simulation for this or not.

The Alliance vs. The Horde

Right, when I was a WoW-player I played the game on the Horde side, and my main character was a Goblin Mage. In the original WarCraft we do not speak of the Alliance and the Horde, as that is stuff that would come into play into this game's successors. Therefore the only alliance race you can play in this game are the humans and the only Horde race you can play are the Orcs.

Well, being an ex-Horde player, let's for this review go to the Orc side :P

LOK'TAR OGAR!

Now the object of the game is simple enough to understand. Although I now only show shots from the Horde side, the Alliance missions are overal similar to the Horde missions. In each mission you have a task to perform. The first mission is "just" to build 6 farms. Easier said than done as you need lumber and gold for that, and of course, the enemy might attack, so be sure you have fighters (who also cost money) ready to defend your farms. However gold mines will exhaust, forcing you to endanger your servants to go to mines further away, and of course, you can only get lumber if there are trees, and it goes without saying that you will need to go further away for that too. In other words, think ahead.

The controls feel a bit awkward to me, and I feel much has been improved in this genre on that part. I sometimes need to do pretty much mouse clicks just to move a character and moving multiple characters in one go also does not seem possible yet. It's the age of this game, most likely.
The controls are easy enough to understand and as the first missions are fairly easy you have the time to get used to them and master the logic in which the game is written. Later missions will actively involve bothering your opponents and then more strategic thinking will be required.

Playing this game in modern times

The single player mode is perfectly supported by DOSBox, so no problem there. Like I said, I don't know if multiplayer mode is possibly in anyway, since networking works entire different with the technology used today. Obtaining the game (LEGALLY) appears to be a different story. The game is featured on Blizzard's own website, but no sales take place on that particular page, and on COG the game is on the wishlist. (Note: This info may be outdated as this is a repost of an older review). Maybe we should all sign that petition too. Blizzard is known as one of the few AAA companies who actually LISTEN to their fans, so maybe....

If you have played World of Warcraft or any of the other Warcraft strategy games or if you've seen the movie, you should give this game a try if you can, as this is the game that started it all for Azeroth. DeathWing? Arthas? They may not play a role in this game, but without this game we would never have heard of them.