The Story of the ORIGINAL Warcraft Games | Warcraft 1 and Warcraft 2

This series tells the story of Warcraft as told by the original games. This first video covers the story of Warcraft 1 (Orcs and Humans) and Warcraft 2 (Tides of Darkness), as well as the expansion (Beyond the Dark Portal). These games set the story for the next games in the Warcraft series: Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft.

0:00 Introduction
0:15 Warcraft 1: The First War
1:10 Warcraft 2: The Second War
4:10 Warcraft 2: The Draenor Expedition
5:53 The Birth of the Lich King
6:31 Warcraft 3: The Third War

[BloodskullMannoroth]

You're including a lot of retcon in this video. The original story in those games had major differences with the retelling in WC3 and WoW.

For example, the orcs weren't fleeing a dying world, they just liked fighting and conquering.

[johnangelotenorio]

A lot of missing details.
The Horde was lead by Blackhand. Ogrim Doomhammer was his right-hand man. Doomhammer learned that Blackhand was being manipulated by Gul'dan so he wrestled control of the Horde via Mok'Gorah (did I spelt that correctly?), a duel to the death. After becoming Warchief he had Blackhand and Gul'dan's followers killed and kept Gul'dan alive to make use of his fel sorcery.

Taking these events to account, the Horde campaign is actually you playing as Doomhammer and is the canonical ending for Warcraft I.

When Gul'dan went searching for Sargeras' Tomb, Doomhammer sent a fleet after him. This led to the Horde thinning it's forces which allowed the Alliance to push them back.

[SoulKillerEternal]

Holy shit is this wrong...

The Trolls joined the Horde when the Horde rescued Zul'jin (orc campaign mission 2) as same, the Elves joined the alliance when their scouts were rescued by The Alliance.

Also...Alleria was the ranger general during the 2nd war...not Sylvanas.

Simplifed the 1st war (and not because Dreanor was dying) they were seeking new worlds to conquer. The world dying was thanks to Ner'zhul who opened...many portals which tore the world apart. That is the War II Xpac.

[robertfisher]

Not happy with your skimming over events while still incorporating lore elements of WoW lore on a video about the lore of the original Warcraft games. I'll list some talking points below for my criticism. If you ever do a follow up to this video or a v2, I recommend looking these over.

1) Warcraft 1
Medievh made the dark portal because he was displeased with the King of Azeroth, King Lane. It's worth noting that, at the time, Azeroth was the name of the human nation, not the entire world. Secondly, the orcs were not fleeing a dying homeworld, as there was 0 information about the orc homeworld (Draenor) in Warcraft 1. Instead, the orc invasion during the First War was initially thought to be a full fledged invasion (events leading up to Warcraft 2 would disprove this), when it was - in fact - a preliminary force sent to scout ahead. That said, the Kingdom of Azeroth did win the conflict and drive the shattered remnants of the orcs into the Black Morass. However, it was very much a phyrric victory, with King Lane being killed, the major cities of Stormwind and Northshire Abbey being sacked alongside the smaller towns. The forces had held together under the leadership of Lord Lothar, one of King Lane's generals who even had been captured during the conflict at one point. On the orcish side, the leader, Blackhand, had been betrayed, usurped, and ultimately killed by one of his commanders, Ogrim Doomhammer.

2) Warcraft 2
In the end, the troops under Lord Lothar were never able to locate the Dark Portal, meaning that Azeroth would inevitably face a second invasion, one which they would not succeed against. Because of this, Lord Lothar gathered the survivors and led them into exile to Lordaeron, who settled them on the southern coast. King Terenas, king of Lordaeron, then began trying to organize a great alliance to oppose the incoming threat. Most kingdoms joined, but Gilneas instead went into total isolation and the weakest nation, Alterac, remained neutral (spoiler, they tried joining the horde and got sacked for it). When the orcs invaded Azeroth, it was entirely uncontested. Moving north, they made contact and allied with other races already fighting the Alliance forces (goblins, trolls, dragons, etc). The war started off as a massive success for the Horde, smashing through the dwarven realms, sacking the elven cities in Quel Thalas, and even laying siege to the capital of Lordaeron. However, as the last Alliance holdout faced annihilation, Gul'dan and Cho'gall (another chieftan) broke camp and left the siege to pursue their own agenda. This resulted in the siege failing and the Alliance rallying across the northern realms. Though Doomhammer brought the rogue chieftains to justice (taking all 3 of their heads) and destroyed their clans, the time and resources it took cost him the entire war, with the Horde getting steamrolled all the way back through the portal. This time the Dark Portal was located and the archwizard Khadgar destroyed it...

3) Warcraft 2 Expansion
...or so everyone thought. Turned out you can destroy the portal and the rift joining the worlds remains. The Alliance decided to take a breather and rebuild while trying to think up ideas on how to destroy the rift. Then an orc raiding party popped in from Draenor, attacked the refounded capital of Azeroth (now called New Stormwind), and made off with the Book of Medievh. The theft of such a powerful tome of sorcery was such a catastrophic threat that the Alliance formed the mentioned expedition to go in and find it. While in Draenor, they had to kill the tank of all dragons (Deathwing) and recover the Skull of Gul'dan, but - being surrounded and outnumbered by LOTS of angry and bloodthirsty orcs - the expedition was unable to prevent Draenor's warchief (Ner'zul) from opening several other portals, this time causing a cataclysm that threatened to destroy all the worlds now connected to Draenor, and leading his own invasions of all the different worlds. After getting the artifacts from a self-serving orc clan, the expedition made a hail mary attempt to seal the rift to Azeroth before the destruction of Draenor or the attacking orcs overran the expedition's last troops. They succeeded.

While this may have been a bunch of text, I think it would have taken 5 min or less to integrate to your video. Again, take it for what it's worth as I also think it helps contrast with the later changes Blizzard made to its lore during the many years we've had of WoW.

[MagCynic]

Warcraft 3 Reforged should've been a complete remaster of the original Warcraft trilogy with retcons and updates in place.

[rubba]

Amazing broad summary to get the whole frame of events and all big moving parts! I love it! Thank you. In 5 minutes I now know the whole frame of Warcraft and all the big events and happenings. Amazing! So much better than 3 hour videos on tiny details that no one really cares about or forgets 2 minutes after learning the tiny detail. Ty.

[BigC]

This was really well done! This is gonna be my go to vid for people who wanna know the lore :D

[elleb]

Great video! I'm surprised this hasn't got more views.

[seanaldptater]

Really enjoyed this, looking forward to the next part. Played WoW most of my life on and off, but I never played the original games so this is great!

[ChrisJohnson-cchw]

Hey man really enjoy the vision you've got going on here. Keep up the good work. Entertaining content!

[donwald]

Nobody in WC1 mentioned any portal, the Orcs just suddenly showed up one day.

[ozgurcangoksen]

Hello my friend.

I wish you had also talked about Danath and Kurdran, the other heroes of the Alliance in the game Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal. I would love to hear some more details about them. Danath was really my favourite. A powerful footman who could defeat Ogres on his own, especially when he is fully upgraded.

[DALESPEER]

great video, explanation and pacing. im excited for the next one

[AdrianGarcia-rwys]

¡Muchísimas gracias! Voy a empezar a jugar Warcraft 3 antes de entrar en WoW y quería saber la historia de los Warcraft 1 y 2. Este vídeo es estupendo y se agradecen los subtítulos. Un saludo y gracias de nuevo!

[Cimbomer]

That video is legendary. Thank you so much !

[xlucykayx]

This was such a clear explanation of the lore thank you

[Wulfgeir]

Great videos, this is exactly what I was looking for. I hope you continue the story of Shadowlands

[sgimmigs]

How come you didnt even metion Lother but mentioned Turalyon is abusrd

[halfmoon]

Thank you for explaining this to me, the lore is very complicated and I can't follow it easily.

[SeanUCF]

Pretty good summary but the Eastern Kingdom is called Azeroth, not Stormwind. Stormwind is the Castle/Keep which the capital city of Azeroth is named after. Blizzard was lazy and never really gave the planet a name so they kinda just started calling it Azeroth colloquially since that was where the story starts off in Warcraft 1, but the real name of the Eastern Kingdom is Azeroth, not Stormwind.