Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
Blizzard's 1995 orcs-versus-humans strategy game: fog of war, a mini-map, and the network game that ate dorm LANs and dial-up evenings over Kali. More than 3 million sold, the design StarCraft grew from, and Blizzard's half of the rivalry with Westwood that made real-time strategy the PC genre of the late '90s.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans came out in November 1994, and the response convinced Blizzard Entertainment to start a sequel in February 1995. Ten months later, on December 5, 1995, Tides of Darkness shipped for MS-DOS through Blizzard's parent company, Davidson & Associates; Blizzard later said the small budgets of the era were what made such a short schedule possible. An early design mixed modern and fantasy elements, fighter pilots ambushed by a fire-breathing dragon, before the team decided straight fantasy had more than enough in it.
Players gather resources, raise buildings and units, and research upgrades to crush the other side, as in the first game. What Warcraft II added was fog of war that hid everything unexplored in black and showed explored ground in grey, with enemy units visible only inside your own units' sight; GameSpot praised how it forced players to keep scouting. Multiplayer ran over IPX on a local network only, not the Internet, so Kali, a program that made the Internet look like a LAN, became very popular, and Blizzard supplied a tool for setting up Warcraft II games through it.
It debuted at No. 2 on PC Data's December chart behind Myst, sold 500,000 copies within three months and 1.2 million by November 1996, when PC Data called it the best-selling computer game in the world that year. It won most of the major PC gaming awards for 1996. Computer Gaming World's 1996 all-time list said Command & Conquer, for all its multiplayer, was not "as complete a design as Warcraft II," and the reviews put Blizzard alongside Westwood, id Software and LucasArts in the PC elite; the rivalry between the two strategy series fueled the RTS boom of the late 1990s.
Beyond the Dark Portal expanded it in 1996, PlayStation and Saturn got it as The Dark Saga in 1997, and the 1999 Battle.net Edition replaced the DOS version with Windows and added Blizzard's free online service. Sales passed 2 million in 1998 and 3 million by 2001, two-thirds of them in the United States. StarCraft (1998) grew directly out of its gameplay and attention to story, Warcraft III followed in 2002, and a remaster arrived in November 2024.
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StarCraft
Blizzard's genre-defining real-time strategy game — a three-way war between the human Terrans, the insectoid Zerg, and the psionic Protoss. Beloved for its finely balanced factions and bottomless multiplayer, it consumed LAN parties and Battle.net, and in South Korea it became a televised national sport.
Warcraft III
Blizzard's fantasy strategy epic gave the world Arthas, hero units, and four armies worth arguing about — then its map editor quietly gave the world an entire new genre: DotA, the custom map that paved the way for the MOBA era, was built inside it.
Command & Conquer
Westwood's 1995 real-time strategy war between the UN's GDI and Kane's Brotherhood of Nod, told in live-action cutscenes shot in spare rooms with Westwood's own staff. The 1996 prequel Red Alert added the Soviets and Frank Klepacki's "Hell March." Three million copies, and a name that became shorthand for the whole genre.
LAN Parties
You hauled your full tower, CRT monitor, keyboard, and mouse to a friend's basement, plugged into the network, and played until sunrise. Counter-Strike, StarCraft, Unreal Tournament — the trash talk was live, the pizza was cold, and nobody believed online gaming could ever replace the room.