Sandbox / Warcraft: Orcs and Humans

"Welcome to the World of Warcraft."

— Warcraft: Orcs and Humans intro

Warcraft Orcs and humans was the first Real Time Strategy game by Blizzard Entertainment and a pioneer in the genre.

The game's premise involves the evil Orcish Hordes

The game is currently available on GOG.com.

---

• 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.
• 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. We say attempt because the computer will often
  • 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.
• Axe Before Entering
• 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
• 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).
• Breaking The Fourthwall:
  • The demo
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Whilst the Orc Player Character would go on to
• Circle of Standing Stones: The orc "church" that produces Necrolytes
• 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:
• 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.

• In Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and World of Warcraft, the reason behind the Forest Troll's

• Cosmetically Different Sides
• Cruelty Is the Only Option
• Damsel in Distress: An Odd villainous example happens in mission 8 of the Orc campaign, where the player has to
• Desperation Attack
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Human Mission 7. 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.
  • 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", "Arch Angels" 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.
    • 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 on Azeroth with all the others being either from Draenor (Orcs, Ogres) or artificially created 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.
  • Gameplay-wise
    • Both [[Worker Unit worker units have to build near Roads and their buildings have to be built near another building. You are also allowed to buidl walls
  • Once an unit is selected every action it will perform has to be chosen from a menu, including walking.
  • 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.
• Everything Fades
• 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 from 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 defeated 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 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 person whom created the 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 battl 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, they cannot be rebuilt and the game is won.
  • 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: Several cases.
  • The the description of the Summon Daemon. Summoning a daemon is described as only being a dream of warlocks and the spell to summon one is only described as only being 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 Ghost:
• 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: Its 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.
• 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 by the time you reach him.
• The Horde: The orcs are part of a large 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, its 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, its said the orc commander ran King Llane through with their war blade, after Castle Stormwind is destroyed in the gameplay.
• Mounted Mook:
• 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 Name Given: Both the Orc and Human commander has 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 imagrey 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 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.
• 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 [[Hellgate 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 abby. 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.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: If a particular unit or central building of the AI is destroyed by the player, every single non worker unit of theirs,
  • In an unusual example with the AI, if Griselda in Orc mi or buildings of theirs are destroyed in the campaign, all their units w
• Scissors Cut Rock:
  • Archers/Spearmen are seemingly supposed to be weak to melee units like Footmen/Grunts
• The Starscream: The orc player himself is this. In the sixth orc mission, they decide
• 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!?
• Social Dawinist: 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.
• 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.
• Swamps Are Evil:
• 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 Ass Kicking.
  • 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 eight 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
• Villainous Demotivator: Subverted Trope in the Orc campaign
• Vocal Dissonance: All Orc units use the same male voice, including the clearly female, Garona.
• Water Is Womanly: Water Elementals in this game resembled women made out of water, this contrasts with Fire Elementals which resemble a muscular man.. 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 had a more gorilla-like shape with massive forearms and a less humanlike head which leaned far forward from their torso.
• 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

YMMV tropes

• Character Tiers: Though there is very little competive scene for the game, given its age, there are general agreements on which units and sides are best.
• Demonic spiders:
  • Archers are extremely annoying
• Game-Breaker: Orcs and humans isn't perfectly balanced. Though the two factions are at least considered better balanced than in the sequel.
  • Archers and Spearman are both extremely powerful, both mo
• Goddamned Bats: In the Dungeon stages, Slimes are this.

Trivia tropes

• Urban Legend of Zelda: It is commonly stated that Orcs and humans was going to be a Tabletop Game/Warhammer licensed but Games Workshop dropped the license. Official word from the programmers and developers reveal whilst Warhammer was a big inspiration and whilst they consider adapting the property, Blizzard decided against it before ever entering talks with Games Workshop. The main reasons were Blizzard's programmers not enjoying working on their past licensed games like Justice League Task Force and The Death Of Superman'', as well as a desire to create a setting for themselves.