Warcraft IV
Warcraft IV is a theoretical sequel to Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. It was internally pitched within Blizzard Entertainment on at least one occasion.
History
In 2008, Rob Pardo mentioned that Warcraft IV was in development, and that it would be similarly split into a trilogy akin to StarCraft II.[1] However, no such game materialized, and in 2013, Cory Stockton confirmed that Warcraft IV was not in development, further stating "Where I think about it, if we ever did Warcraft IV, I would want it to somehow play off this world that's been made over the last ten years. I would love to see that if that's what [the RTS team] decided they wanted to do. Heroes of the Storm is dominating that group at this point, though. But I'd love to see Warcraft IV take shape around what we did with WoW. Because so much of WoW came from Warcraft. Like, we were able to take a single map and turn it into a whole expansion. Stuff like that. It'd be cool to see them take our stuff and convert it back down."[2]
In 2015, Tim Morten stated that after the release of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, Team 1 would look at creating a new RTS, whether it be StarCraft III, Warcraft IV, or a new game.[3] Following this, in the late 2010s, Morten and Team 1 made a number of RTS pitches/prototypes within Blizzard, including Warcraft IV. However, none of the pitches/prototypes were accepted, as there was no appetite in Blizzard's executive team for a new RTS.[4] According to Jason Schreier, at this point, there were two main points of contention within Blizzard concerning the development of a new RTS. The first was that it was believed by the executive team that real-time strategy was a dead genre, or at least, not profitable enough for Blizzard at this point in time, relative to the size of the company. The second was that Blizzard had a dearth of staff with RTS experience at this point, and despite Morten's enthusiasm, they didn't see any heir apparent to be game director for an RTS project.[5]
Team 1 later worked on Warcraft III: Reforged, and reportedly, some members of Team 1 hoped that if Reforged was successful enough, it could open the doors to Warcraft IV.[4] In a 2018 interview, Chris Sigaty stated that Reforged would allow Blizzard to gauge audience interest in Warcraft RTS titles. In theory, this included Warcraft IV, though he stressed that there were "no specific plans" for it at the time.[6] Due to the debacle of the game's release, the door was effectively shut on any Warcraft IV project.[4]
References
- ^ 2010-10-10, Warcraft 4 Confirmed, Starcraft 2 to be a Trilogy. NG4, retrieved on 2024-10-01
- ^ 2023-11-15, Blizz On World Of Warcraft's Procedural Future, Warcraft IV. Rock, Paper, Shotgun, retrieved on 2024-10-01
- ^ 2017-05-02, Gamescom 2015: Blizzard Will 'Consider Warcraft' RTS Once StarCraft 2 is Done. IGN, retrieved on 2024-10-02
- ^ a b c 2024-09-29, I'm Jason Schreier, reporter at Bloomberg and author of PLAY NICE: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, AMA. Reddit, accessed on 2024-10-01
- ^ 2024-10-01, Jason Schreier On Blizzard's Secret Games And Turbulent History. YouTube, accessed on 2024-10-05
- ^ 2018-11-07, Blizzard Is Adding World Of Warcraft References To Warcraft III: Reforged. Kotaku, retrieved on 2024-10-01
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