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''Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans'' was a black comedy point-and-click adventure video game under development by Blizzard Entertainment, set in the ''Warcraft'' universe, and cancelled before its release. American company ''Animation Magic''〔(Hardcore Gaming 101: Zelda: Wand of Gamelon / Link: Faces of Evil )〕 was out-sourced due to their experience in classical two-dimensional animation to produce the twenty-two minutes of fully animated sequences, the game's artwork, the coding of the engine and the implementation of the sound effects. Blizzard provided all the designs, the world backgrounds, sound recording and ensured storyline continuity. Four or five months after Blizzard had released Battle.net and ''Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal'' had shipped, Blizzard began development on ''Lord of the Clans'', that would be cancelled just over a year later. == Development and cancellation == ''Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans'' was originally slated for a fourth-quarter 1997 release; however it was pushed back until the end of 1998. This was a result of unforeseen technical problems coupled with communication limitations between Blizzard and the Russian animators at Animation Magic. The game had been in development for over a year: nearly all features, puzzles, and areas were in place, the voice acting had been recorded, and much of the animation was complete, yet Blizzard was not confident with their title. Blizzard hired Steve Meretzky, creator of ''A Mind Forever Voyaging'' and ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' video games, as a design specialist to help refine the puzzles and make them further cohesive with the narrative. Meretzky spent two weeks with the developers looking over the game for up to fourteen hours a day and it was decided that sequences of the game had to be rewritten which would involve more animation and more dubbing. However, as the 1998 ''Electronic Entertainment Expo'' (E3) in Atlanta was approaching, Blizzard became increasingly aware that implementing the proposed changes would result in them being unable to meet their already extended 1998 deadline. LucasArts had released their title ''The Curse of Monkey Island'' in the fall of 1997, and had announced their next adventure game title ''Grim Fandango'' sporting a 3D engine. In comparison, producer Bill Roper felt ''WarCraft Adventures'' looked dated; After over a year of hard work, press tours, magazine covers, and fan fervor Blizzard announced that ''Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans'' was cancelled days before E3. Within hours of the announcement fans of the series formed an online petition, demanding the project be resurrected. On May 22, 1998, Blizzard responded via their website; Despite their press release, rumours still persist the game was cancelled due to projected low sales from the deteriorating market of the adventure game genre. Even though the game was cancelled, Blizzard felt the story itself too important to ignore and hired an author to adapt it into a novel. The author contracted to scribe it was unable to complete the book on time, so ''Star Trek'' novelist Christie Golden was hired to write the novelization based on scripts and outlines provided by ''Warcraft'' universe co-creator, Chris Metzen, and had to be completed within six weeks. The book was released under the title ''Warcraft: Lord of the Clans'' by Pocket Books and is considered canonical. ''Warcraft: Lord of the Clans'' is the second novel based in the ''Warcraft'' universe. Blizzard returned to the Azeroth setting in 2002, with the release of ''Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos''. Even though the game exploring his storyline had been cancelled, Thrall played a major role in ''Warcraft III'' and the subsequent massively multiplayer online role-playing game ''World of Warcraft'' and his story as outlined in the novel is considered canon, according to the ''Warcraft III'' manual's backstory. In March 2010, a video of 20 minutes of gameplay was uploaded to a Russian gaming website, proving that someone outside of Blizzard Entertainment possesses a version of the game.〔http://forums.ag.ru/?board=ag_files&action=display&num=1268337910&start=0〕 The video is also available on YouTube (where it is labeled as from an alpha version of the game).〔http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccqJ9W_E3jI〕 In February 2011 a series of 11 gameplay videos (labeled as from a beta version of the game) were uploaded to YouTube (in December 2014 and January 2015 the 12th and 13th videos respectively have been added) walking through entire available gameplay.〔http://www.youtube.com/user/0manbiker0〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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