PC · 1998 · Blizzard Entertainment / Animation Magic · Blizzard Entertainment · Cancelled (May 1998)
A fully-voiced 2D point-and-click adventure starring a young Thrall, cancelled by Blizzard weeks before E3 1998 despite being nearly finished — because they judged the gameplay already out of date.
Riding high on the success of its strategy games, Blizzard tried its hand at the LucasArts-style adventure genre with Warcraft Adventures, following the orc Thrall as he escapes captivity and reunites his enslaved people. The hand-drawn animation and cutscenes were outsourced to Animation Magic in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and roughly twenty-two minutes of fully animated sequences were produced. Blizzard even hired adventure-genre legend Steve Meretzky in early 1998 to salvage the pacing. But the traditional 2D adventure was being eclipsed in real time: LucasArts’ 3D Grim Fandango loomed, and Blizzard concluded the game "would have been great three years ago." They cancelled it shortly before E3 1998 rather than ship something mediocre. The story did not die — it was adapted into Christie Golden’s 2001 novel Lord of the Clans and became the narrative backbone of Warcraft III and, ultimately, World of Warcraft’s lore.
Former Blizzard VP Bill Roper summarised the decision bluntly: by the time the team looked honestly at the project, "this would have been great three years ago." The gameplay — inventory puzzles and dialogue trees in the classic mould — worked, but the genre had moved on, and Blizzard had built its reputation on releasing only polished, competitive products. Shipping a game that reviewers would call dated on arrival ran against everything the studio stood for.
Its cancellation stung fans who had followed the extensive pre-release coverage, but it proved formative. Rather than waste the story, Blizzard folded Thrall’s arc into its wider universe, where it became one of the most important narratives in the franchise. A near-complete build later leaked and was even fan-restored, letting players finally experience the adventure Blizzard decided the world was not going to see.