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Blizzard Entertainment's famous Real Time Strategy trilogy ( yes, the franchise did exist before World of Warcraft).
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans tells the story of the kingdom of Azeroth, which is attacked by a Horde of green-skinned marauders that are hell-bent on exterminating the human population. The player is either a valiant human lord who beats back the orcs and gets crowned the monarch of Azeroth after King Llane dies, or an orc general who crushes the noble capital of Stormwind and betrays his warchief, becoming the new leader of the orcs.
In Warcraft II: the Tides of Darkness, we discover that while elements of both campaigns happened, the orc campaign victory was canon. The new orc warchief (Orgrim Doomhammer, who slew Big Bad Blackhand after the conclusion of the previous game) is creating a Horde more dangerous than ever by enlisting creatures such as trolls, ogres, dragons, and golbins into its ranks, while the surviving humans of Azeroth (led by the human commander from the previous game, probably Lord Anduin Lothar) have fled across the seas to the countries of Lordaeron and created an Alliance consisting of humans, elves, dwarves and gnomes. Soon, the two juggernauts face each other over global domination. Again, while missions from both sides occur, the Alliance victory is canonical, but Lothar, their greatest hero, falls; Doomhammer flees into exile. In the Expansion Pack Warcraft II: Beyond The Dark Portal, the Alliance pursues the beaten Orcs to their dying homeworld of Draenor to stop them from gathering reinforcements...and discover a far darker plot. Ner'zhul, a powerful Orc, decides to use several powerful artifacts to open doorways from Draenor to other worlds for the Orcs to conquer. The foiling of his plot finally seems to spell an end to the red planet. The Orcs remaining on Azeroth are rounded up and placed in internment camps. The other creatures of the Horde go their own ways.
An Adventure Game was planned, called Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, which would detail the Horde shaking loose their demonic influences and make a Heel Face Turn under the leadership of a human-raised Orc named Thrall, but the game was canceled due to low quality. The story was used for one of the tie-in novels, Lord Of The Clans.
Lord of the Clans' plot was worked into the backstory of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which added the Night Elves and Undead as playable factions. In the game, the Horde, now under Thrall, flees Lordaeron on advice from a human prophet. Shortly after, the Scourge—an undead army created by the demons who had corrupted the orcs in the first place, and lead by Ner'zhul, trapped in an almost formless existence—assaults the Alliance, which was already beginning to fracture politically. The Elves of Lordaeron are decimated; Lordaeron's prince, Arthas, becomes the Scourge's most powerful minion due to his lust for vengeance; and his former lover and princess of the nation of Kul Tiras, Jaina Proudmoore, takes any survivors she can over the sea—again, on advice from the prophet. Across the sea, on Kalimdor, the Horde has allied with a native race, the Tauren, and found a new tribe of Trolls that can join them. The Alliance arrives soon after, and again following the words of the Prophet, unite against their greater foe—the Scourge and their burning masters. But their settlement does not go unnoticed—the Night Elves, lead by Tyrande Whisperwind, see the outlanders as despoiling Kalimdor...until faced with the horrible reality of the Scourge, and facing again the Burning Legion after ten thousand years. The truce between the Horde and Alliance expands to include the Night Elves, and their combined forces are enough to break the Burning Legion's advance and slay its leader. Despite the victory, Lordaeron is left ravaged, and the Scourge is feasting on the bones.
The expansion pack, Warcraft III: the Frozen Throne, focuses on the secondary night elf Anti Hero Illidan Stormrage, who is hired by the Burning Leader's new lord to kill the Lich King, the ruler of the Scourge, who through his machinations and indeed his dealings with Illdan had ensured the demons' loss, despite ostensibly serving the Legion. Illidan hires the serpentine Naga, night elves corrupted by ancient magic, to help himself achieve the task, but is stopped by his people, who think he was trying something more villainous. Desperate now, he flees in search of new allies and a place to hide. In Lordaeron, the Blood Elves (the scraps of of the Elven civilization the Scourge had destroyed) are cast aside by Alliance's bigoted commander...and are aided by Illidan and his Naga, who go into hiding in the shattered remnant of Draenor. Illidan cannot hide from his master, however, and turns his focus back to the Scourge, settling on all-out assault with his new allies. Arthas, now calling himself King of Lordaeron, finds himself dealing with a rebellion lead by minor lords of the Legion and some of the enemies he had killed and brought back as undead allies, who have regained their minds with the Lich King so harried. One of them, an Elven general named Sylvanas Windrunner, takes commanad of the rebellious undead and carves out a new nation for them. Arthas has no time to deal with her, however, and hurries to save his Master. He and Illidan battle in Northrend, and the death knight defeats Illidan, sending him and his allies packing. Arthas then goes to his master and enacts the Lich King's masterstroke—their bodies and minds fusing permanently into the single most powerful being on the face of Azeroth.
Meanwhile, Thrall and the Horde settle down and the orcs begin work on their new capital city, Orgrimmar. The traveling beast master Rexxar becomes involved in the orcs' work to forge a new homeland, but trouble rears its ugly head when Admiral Daelin Proudmoore, Jaina Proudmoore's father and an Alliance hero from Warcraft II: the Tides of Darkness shows up. Jaina has built a city for her refugees called Theramore Isle, and has been able to maintain peace with the nearby Horde. However, her father still hates the orcs for their demon-fueled war crimes, and, unwilling to see that they have changed, takes control of Theramore from his daughter and begins to attack the Horde. After helping the trolls evacuate to Orgrimmar, saving the tauren leader Cairne Bloodhoof's son, and taking over a clan of ogres, Rexxar is declared the Champion of the Horde and the Horde attacks Theramore. In return for Jaina's aid in stopping her father, Thrall agrees to spare her soldiers, so Rexxar and his posse of Cairne, the troll scout Rokhan and the pandaren brewmaster Chen Stormstout go and kill Daelin while the forces of the Horde and the Admiral fight. Daelin is slain, Jaina is sad, and the Horde leaves the city of Theramore to rebuild.
Warcraft's success eventually gave birth to the MMORPG monster World Of Warcraft, which retconned a lot some of the backstory developed by the previous games. It also created the Warcraft Expanded Universe.
Some of the tropes do exist according to the storylines (feel free to add the pre-Reign of Chaos guy):
- Action Girl (Tyrande Whisperwind, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, Maiev Shadowsong... and there's even Mook style action girls.)
- All Trolls Are Different (In this case, a savage yet spiritual people with ties to the elves who happen to have Cuban and Jamaican accents)
- Alternate Character Interpretation (Plenty of them among the Lore Fans)
- Ancient Tomb (The Tomb of Sargeras)
- And I Must Scream (What Kil'jaeden did to Ner'zhul to transform him into the Lich King)
- Animate Dead - Scourge Necromancers can make skeletons from corpses. The Graveyard provides infinite corpses. Thus the only limiter is mana.
- The Night Elf Avatar of Vengeance spams a variant of Animate Dead (on top of being huge).
- The Death Knight hero unit has for his ultimate move Animate Dead, which revives six nearby corpses to fight for him for 40 seconds.
- Necrolytes in WC1 and Death Knights in WC2 could also create skeletons from corpses.
- Author Appeal (Character Designer Samwise Didier's love of pandas led to the creation of the Pandaren, though it was the fan's affection for the notion that finally made them canon)
- Badass Bookworm (Jaina: "All I wanted is to study.")
- The Berserker (Grom Hellscream)
- Berserk Button (Screwing with the land, and Illidan in general, tend to stress Malfurion out, but he usually keeps his cool in most any situation, unlike his partner Tyrande. Mess with her though...)
- Black Magician Girl (Jaina)
- Call A Rabbit A Smeerp (Zebras are called Zehvras, for instance. Oddly enough, they don't have horns...)
- Call A Smeerp A Rabbit (Giraffes, orcas, and raptors, though, apparently all have horns)
- Canon Sue - There's a very simple, one-question test to determine whether a character is a Canon Sue: "was this character created or popularized by Richard Knaak?" You'll only ever be wrong for the few characters that reached Canon Sue status without Knaak's help.
- Captain Ersatz (Between his albinism, his soul-drinking runeblade, and his being monarch of a kingdom he eventually turns against and destroys, Arthas has a lot in common with Elric Of Melnibone. He is also so close to a point-by-point "subversion" of King Arthur that I suspect someone at Blizzard actually used a checklist to make sure they had remembered to have him pull a sword out of a stone and get advice from a bearded old wizard.)
- Chew Toy (Malygos...but then...in Wrath of the Lich King ....)
- Civil Warcraft - the trope namer.
- Classic Cheat Code (AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs gives instant win, and SomebodySetUpUsTheBomb gives instant failure.)
- The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard (It sees the full map, needs no resources, and can control more units at once than you can.)
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome (Almost all the cinematics in WC3.)
- Crowning Music Of Awesome (The entire soundtrack of WC2, to start.)
- Damage Is Fire
- Dark Action Girl (Sylvanas Windrunner)
- Dark Is Not Evil (The Night Elf race)
- Devour The Dragon (Or the Mook, anyway - Death Knights can eat minions for a health boost.)
- Does This Remind You Of Anything
Shade: "I'm invisible...gaseous...and deadly."
- Dying As Yourself
- Enemy Civil War (Forsaken against the Dreadlords' enslaved undead forces (starts out as a three way war with undeads still loyal to Arthas, but he took off to Northrend); Thrall's orcs against fallen orcs under a corrupted Grom.)
- Enemy Mine
- The Horde team up the remnants of The Alliance to defeat Mannoroth. They then team up with the Night Elves at the Battle of Mount Hyjal.
- The Night Elves and The Naga team up to rescue Tyrande from the Undead.
- The Forsaken strike an unholy alliance with Alliance forces to defeat the Undead force holding Lordaeron.
- Everything Trying To Kill You (In WC3, you can bet your ass any non-domesticated animal more threatening than a sheep will become completely enraged whenever you come too close to it, wildly scratching and biting until one of you is dead.)
- Evil Is Deathly Cold (The Scourge)
- Evil Prince (Arthas Menethil)
- Evil Versus Evil (The battles between the Scourge and the Burning Legion in The Frozen Throne)
- Face Heel Turn (Arthas, (sort of) Sylvanas in the expansion)
- Fallen Hero (Arthas and Kael'Thas Sunstrider)
- Well, Kael'thas appears to be a Ret Con in World Of Warcraft. Came from slightly evil to drown in your own blood evil.)
- No, World Of Warcraft never actually outright says that Kael'thas was originally evil. He's simply corrupted over the years between the two games out of desperation.
- Expanded Universe: Specifically, the Warcraft Expanded Universe.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture (Lordaeron is quite obviously European. The Jungle Trolls are Jamaican-like. The Taurens seem to be the native peoples of America's Great Plains, but with their cultural ties to buffalo herds brought to extremes—they actually are Buffalo Men.
- The Tauren are Cow-men; their cousins, the Taunka, are the actual Buffalo-men, but they're Inuit.
- Fantastic Racism: Grand Marshal Garithos.
- Firewood Resources
- Fish People (The Naga and the murlocs)
- Forged By The Gods (Frostmourne... well it was forged by something pretty powerful, anyway.)
- Fungus Humongous (Some areas had giant mushrooms that could apparently be substituted for lumber.)
- God Save Us From The Queen (the only Queen known by name in the series is Aszhara, a egoistic Nightelf Highborne largely responsible for bringing the Burning Legion to Azeroth the first time. After the plan was foiled and the Well of Eternity consumed itself, she was lost in the deep sea along with her servants... only to remerge as the Naga).
- General Ripper (The bigoted Garithos, and Jaina's father Daelin Proudmoore)
- Gentle Giant (The Tauren race)
- Gladiator Revolt (Thrall, the warchief of the Horde, was raised as a gladiator by humans. Also, after the king of Stormwind washed up on the shores of Durotar after escaping his imprisionment, some orcs found him and made him fight as a gladiator.)
- Happily Married (Malfurion Stormrage and Tyrande.)
- Heel Face Turn (Again, sort of Sylvanas at the end of the Frozen Throne expansion, though she remains quite ruthlessly hostile to any possible threats against her new people.)
- Hero Unit (In Warcraft 3. You can level them up from level one to about ten. Of course, since all the heroes in this game are unstoppable faction leaders in World Of Warcraft, you could say that even level one is the equivalent in WoW terms of level ten, which would make your fully levelled hero units around level hundred in WoW terms. If you wish to scale it that way.)
- Hey Its That Voice (Uther the Lightbringer is Deckard Cain! Maiev Shadowsong is Meryl from Metal Gear Solid! And many, many more!)
- Hilarious In Hindsight (Remember when Arthas said "Doesn't anyone stay dead anymore?" after seeing Muradin's dwarves? It's funnier to think about it after some characters are Back From The Dead in World Of Warcraft :Muradin himself, but also Mal'Ganis, Kael'Thas...)
- Humans Are Bastards (Unless you originate from pre-Terenas reign (which are mostly dead), or your name is Jaina, not Daelin, Proudmoore)
- Warcraft's version of this trope is Everyone Is A Bastard. Choose a character, any character. They will invariably make an idiotic, selfish decision that causes war/further bloodshed.
- Not quite. Thrall, Cairne Bloodhoof, Jaina Proudmoore, and Malfurion Stormrage are all exceptions.
- Interestingly, In Warcraft the entire Human race is the result of the Bastardization of the Magics of Sufficently Advanced Aliens and a Group of Cosmic Horrors.
- Make that pretty much all the races save those that didn't originate on Azeroth and possibly Trolls and Elves.
- Trolls are implied to be the Ancestors of the Elven/Elf-derived races. the Harpies, Centaurs, Pandaren, Furbolg, Cenarions and Centaurs all have Divine ancestry.
- Ignored Epiphany (Before becoming the Lich King, Arthas imagines the voices of his friends and teachers telling him what a bad idea it is. This doesn't stop him)
- Just Eat Him (Kodo beasts)
- Klingon Promotion
King Terenas: What are you doing, my son?
Arthas: Succeeding you, father.
- Knight Templar (Lots and lots of people and organisations)
- Knight Templar Parent (Daelin Proudmoore)
- Large Ham (Bill Roper, THE narr-A-tor for Warcraft II is a bombbastic joy, especially when proNOUNcing names like Orgrim Doomhammer and Lord Lothar.)
- He also does the voice for the Orc mission briefings. One word: DRAGONS!
- He actually does nearly all the voice work in the game.
- Only the narrators, footman, grunt, peon, elven archer, Danath and Grom Hellscream.
- For a taste click here
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- Lady Of War (Tyrande)
- Leeroy Jenkins (Grom pulls this off in the 3rd Orc Mission; when Thrall was about to move on past the humans, Grom goes along to attack some human bases)
- Light Is Not Good (The Scarlet Crusade and Blood Elves)
- Love Triangle (We had the old Malfurion-Tyrande-Illidan triangle in Reign of Chaos. In Frozen Throne, we got hints that there was a triangle between Arthas-Jaina-Kael, which was confirmed in Rise of the Lich King.)
- Mayincatec (The Trolls have ziggurats and have been known to practice human(oid) sacrifice.
- The Messiah (Thrall)
- Mirrored Confrontation Shot (Box art for the first two games)
- Moral Event Horizon (Arthas massacres Stratholme so the city does not fall to the Undead.)
- More Popular Spinoff (World Of Warcraft)
- To the point where Blizzard once released "WOW: Heroes of Azeroth" as a prequel to World Of Warcraft, on April Fool's Day. The game in question was better known as War Craft III.
- They also changed the novels accordingly by giving them the World Of Warcraft icon even if the stories take place during the RTS games.
- My Death Is Just The Beginning: Kel'thuzad.
- No Arc In Archery
- Non Entity General
- The Obi Wan (As far as the sources go, Grom is like this towards Thrall)
- Uther may be a better example, as his relationship to Arthas was almost identical to Obiwan's relationship to Anakin.
- That's completely coincidental; WC3 came out two months after Star Wars episode 2, so their characters were already fully developed before we saw Anakin and Obi-Wan interact as master and apprentice.
- Ominous Floating Castle - The Undead necropolis.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragons of Azeroth take a lot of cues from other fantasy stories, though there are some differences. There are 5 main "Dragonflights", each headed by an "Aspect" of a particular part of Azeroth.
- Red: Life. Led by Alexstraza the Life-Binder, who also happens to be the queen of all the dragons. (Except for Black, and more recently Blue)
- Blue: Magic, led by Malygos the Spellweaver. These guys used to be friendly, until Malygos had a Heroic BSOD for a few millenia. When he snapped out of it, he decided that Magic was being over used, and that he should get rid of it... by killing all Mortal Magic users and their allies, i.e. pretty much everyone. Now they're common enemies in Northrend.
- Green: Nature, led by Ysera the Dreamer. This Flight mostly resides in the Emerald Dream, protecting nature. They're also responsible for the introduction of Druidism to the mortal races, through Centarius. Recently, the Emerald Dream has been corrupted by a strange force called Nightmare, and there are rumors of powerful Green Dragons being corrupted by it, including (possibly) Ysera herself.
- Bronze: Time, led by Nozdormu The Timeless One. These dragons have the power to travel through time, ensuring history isn't altered. Recently, a strange flight known as the Infinite Dragonflight has been attempting to derail history, keeping the Bronze Dragons very busy. There are rumors that the Infinite Dragonflight is actually a future version of the Bronze Flight, as indicated by quests in Dragonblight and a timed event in the Caverns of Time)
- Black: Earth. This Flight is lead by Neltharion the Earth-Warder, now known as Deathwing. Once charged with shaping the earth, this Dragonflight now seeks to subvert all of Azeroth to it's masters will.
- There are also lesser dragonflights, such as the Infinte, Chromatic, and Twilight Dragonflights. You can also find the ancestors of the Dragons, known as Proto-Drakes, throughout Northrend.
- Our Orcs Are Different (DUH)
- Plaguemaster: The Lich King spends much of Warcraft III spreading his Plague of Undeath across Lordaeron, and the Scourge's units have a few disease-related abilities on the battlefield.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy (The Orcs)
- Remixed Level - "The Siege of Dalaran" in Reign of Chaos becomes "The Ruins of Dalaran" in The Frozen Throne.
- Roar Before Beating (Infernals in teaser trailer)
- And Grom, in his battle with Mannoroth.
- Shout Out (It's Blizzard's tradition to put lots of Shout Outs in the form of the annoyed quotes).
- Slippy Slidey Ice World - Northrend
- The Spartan Way (Many Death Knight Initiates are found wanting, and do not live long enough to become real Death Knights. Those who do reach Death Knight status are not only allowed, but actively encouraged to fight each other and see who is stronger.)
- Standard Fantasy Setting: Averted as most races, including humans, have 20th or 21st century technology (with some space-age sci-fi thrown in) but have for the most part been blown back into the dark ages by infrastructure loss resulting from cataclysm and war.
- Stop Poking Me (Trope Namer)
- Storming The Castle (The Blood Elf/Naga/Draenei coalition stormed the Black
Citadel Temple)
- Sturgeons Law (The enclosed "World Editor" allows a creative player to create their own scenarios and maps for the game with a great deal of customization options. Unfortunately, many of them suck.)
- Super Empowering
- Tactful Translation: In Frozen Throne, Uther tells Arthas that he has just sent two of his best knights in to parley with the orcs. Cue two riderless horses riding up to them. Uther translates this as: "These orcs will never surrender."
- Talking To Himself (Chris Metzen voice acts both Thrall and Rexxar, who get a lot of dialogue in the orc campaign of tFT.)
- Tank Goodness (Dwarven steam tanks in Warcraft III)
- When Trees Attack (Treants and Ancients)
- White Haired Pretty Boy (Arthas. Possibly averted in that he is not white-haired and a pretty boy at the same time, though...)
- Wizard Beard
- Wizards Live Longer
- You Have Failed Me: Reign of Chaos. At the start of the 2nd Night Elf mission, Archimonde and 2 doomguards corner Tyrande but she uses her invisibility to make them think she got away. Archimonde was so pissed, he killed one of the doomguards.
- You Have Researched Breathing (Ghouls actually have to research the ability to eat the dead. Night Elves have to learn Ultravision, the ability to see well at night. Crypt Fiends don't know they can burrow into the ground, and Chimeras haven't figured out that their second head spits acid.)
- You Have To Believe Me (The Prophet might have had more success in getting people to go to Kalimdor if he warned them in a calmer tone.)
- You Require More Vespene Gas (Gold and Lumber are your resources here.)
- Warcraft II additionally had oil, which was mostly used for naval forces
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