There have been a number of films that were made based on video games including the popular “Super Mario Bros” from Nintendo, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” starring Angelina Jolie, “Street Fighter” starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, among others. For some reasons, all of those films flopped at the box office.
It is the other way around with “Resident Evil” as it was actually the movie that spawned the video game series, which have been the case for so many other games.
The massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) “World of Warcraft” will have its very own movie entitled “Warcraft” hitting theaters in the coming weekend and many of its millions of gamers, as well as critics, are hoping that it finally becomes the first good movie based on a video game.
What is clear is the premise that “Warcraft” is based on the “World of Warcraft” universe. It is about the war between humans and orcs, notes Vox.
In the world of Azeroth, humans are fighting off an invasion of orcs, who arrived via a magical portal that linked Azeroth to the orc’s dying home world of Draenor. The conflict is what fuels the struggles between the movie’s many characters.
Orcs have been familiar characters in “The Lord of the Rings” movie series and its spin-off trilogy, “The Hobbit,” so viewers and fans do not need much of an imagination to describe them. And besides, gamers are all-too-familiar with their appearance in “World of Warcraft.”
But the catch in the plotline is that the orcs are not inherently evil in “Warcraft” not unlike in the other movies. They are actually another race of intelligent creatures trying to survive the death of their world, even if it means taking over someone else’s, which is actually shades of the plotlines of “Superman” with Kryptonians trying to establish Krypton on earth, or “Transformers” with the robots working to revive Cybertron on earth.
Favoring the call to bring back the legacy servers
The next expansion to “World of Warcraft” entitled “Legion” will officially drop on August 30 which was announce by game developer Blizzard Entertainment during a recent company event held in Irvine, California.
Blizzard’s Tom Chilton, game director, and Chris Robinson, senior art director, also spoke about Nostalrius and the idea of legacy servers during the event.
Chilton confirmed that while it looks very challenging, they love the idea. He disclosed that they have met with the Nostalrius server guys recently and they were even given the opportunity to play the game on the server. He said that it was kind of a moving experience to re-experience playing the classic “WoW” game, reports Kotaku.
When asked if Blizzard is still using the same development tools that they have used in the development of the classic “World of Warcraft,” Robinson said that it is basically the same but the tools have evolved dramatically because of technology.
Chilton explained that Blizzard had a tools engineering team of 5 to 6 people and they work in various departments such as WoWEdit, WoW inception, and some other things. He added that the tools have grown in power and complexity over the years to where it is incredibly powerful.
Robinson quipped that the name is probably the only thing that remains the same in “World of Warcraft.”
Drawing support from Chinese gamers
Going back to the movie, “Warcraft,” will be hitting theaters initially in Europe, before it starts making it to the other cinemas in the world.
Although the movie is based on a very popular game that has millions of subscribers worldwide, it seems that “Warcraft” will have a hurdle in shooting all the way to becoming the projected blockbuster success that it was being hyped to be.
The initial reviews on the movie indicate that the film is not good and gamers will just be disappointed with it. While non-gamers of “World of Warcraft” would be lost if they just come on to the theaters and watch the movie, their expectations would not be as high as the real gamers of the game.