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StarCraft franchise

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Of the three universes that Blizzard walks in, the StarCraft franchise is technically the least developed; Warcraft now spans four games, four expansions, eight novels, a manga series, and a pen-and-paper RPG. Diablo encompasses two games, two expansions, an RPG, four novels, and an upcoming third game. Starcraft has one game, one expansion, and novels. This is changing as StarCraft II was announced on May 19th, 2007, with 2 expansions to follow the core game, and new books are in the works.

Contents

Parallels to WarCraft III

Several gaming elements first introduced in StarCraft were later adapted for use in Warcraft: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft: The Frozen Throne.

Plot progression

Previous Warcraft games offered two campaigns, Orc and Human, which essentially dealt with the same events through different eyes. With three races, Blizzard decided to stack the campaigns to deal with different events, told in chronological order in one combined story arc. Essentially, you were dissuaded from playing the Zerg or the Protoss, because you didn't learn the plot details of the Terrans. This was adapted for Warcraft III with a minor difference: you no longer had option to defy the chronology. Additionally, the campaigns for both games proceeded similarly (For the original game, the Human campaign went first, then the Evil campaign second, and finally, the "Neutral" party third. For their expansions, the "Neutral" party went first, then the Human campaign second, and the Evil force third).

Specific influences

In the final mission of the game, the player commanded two armies, one Protoss and one Terran, in a last-ditch effort to save the universe by defeating the insidious Overmind of the Zerg, which was hell-bent on assimilating the Protoss and Terrans as the next step in the Zerg's unnatural evolution. Similarly, in the final mission of WCIII, the user commands a Night Elf army reinforced by Orcs, Humans, Trolls, Furbolgs, Tauren, High Elves, and Dwarves to stop Archimonde from ascending Mount Hyjal. The two Antagonist/Anti-Hero characters, Arthas Menethil and Sarah Kerrigan, are similar to one another. Kerrigan's transformation from human to Zerg, and her subsequent embracing of the darkness, also closely parallels the tale of Sylvanas Windrunner.

Unequal units

Warcraft I and Warcraft II were completely balanced: for each human unit or building, there was a corresponding orc unit or building with similar damage, armor, and requirements. The only differences occurred with spells. In StarCraft, no such perfect equality existed.

The four races have different advantages, most of them similar to the racial attributes of the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss from StarCraft. The different strategically significant traits of the races in StarCraft have been combined in new ways to form the Warcraft III races. The Warcraft III night elves, for instance, resemble the Terrans in that their buildings can move and their base fighting unit has a missile attack, but like the Zerg, their worker units are consumed when they create most buildings. The Undead have the Protoss's ability to summon buildings rather than constructing them, so a worker unit is not tied up in construction; also like the Protoss, they have a dedicated invisible spy unit, but their buildings have to be constructed upon dedicated infested terrain called Blight (like the Zerg Creep), and their army line-up is strategically similar to that of the Zerg.

Example

The basic Terran combat unit, the Marine, is a fairly durable ranged unit, capable of attacking both ground and space units. By contrast, the first fighter unit available to the Zerg was the tiny, brittle Zergling who could only attack ground units and whose usefulness came mostly from its low cost, speed, and that two spawned from one larva. Finally, the Protoss Zealot, though only attacking ground units, is extremely durable, in addition to shields. Similarly, the central Zerg building, the Hatchery, evolves into a Lair and later into a Hive, while the Terran Command Center and Protoss Nexus do not evolve.

In Warcraft III, the races are balanced from the perspective that they all have infantry, ranged, cavalry and spellcasters, with similar-type production facilities, but feature different specific abilities and traits.

References to Warcraft

Gaming

  • In World of Warcraft, zerging is a term that now means attacking a player or mob (or a group composed of them) with a far bigger group. The word is derived from the "zergling rush" strategy in StarCraft.
  • Zerg Drones mutate into structures, the player using the Drone unit. In Warcraft III, night elf wisps morph into structures, the wisp likewise being lost.
  • All Zerg structures must be built on creep. The undead in Warcraft III must build all their structures on a substance known as blight, which possesses similar properties.
  • The Protoss summon their structures onto the battlefield. The undead do so likewise in Warcraft III.
  • Many Terran structures are mobile. The same applies for many night elf structures in Warcraft III, which are able to "uproot" themselves.
  • The Protoss Stalker possesses an ability known as "Blink". An identical ability is possessed by the night elf warden in Warcraft III.
  • Marine, Zergling and Hydralisk models can be found in Warcraft III.
  • Lord Marshal Raynor is found during the portal event in World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. His name is a reference to the Terran hero, Jim Raynor.
  • On top of the Merc Haven in StarCraft II, a holographic woman can be seen doing the night elf dance (each gender of each race having their own dance in World of Warcraft).

Lore

  • The Alliance is one of the two main factions in Warcraft, having been created in response to the threat of the Horde in the Second War. The Alliance in StarCraft parallels this, the Protoss and Terrans facing the universal threat of the Zerg.
  • StarCraft possess the Argus Stone, Argus crystals, Argus talismans, etc. The homeworld of the draenei is a world called Argus.
  • The capital of the island nation of Kul Tiras in Warcraft is Boralus. In StarCraft, the capital of the planet of Braxis is Boralis.
  • Demon fel hunters in Warcraft bear great similarity to Zerglings.
  • The titans, a race of supreme beings which seed life on various worlds in the Warcraft universe, could be taken from the Xel'Naga, a similar god-like race in StarCraft.

Quotes

  • Acolyte: My life for Aiur...er I mean Ner'zhul! (a quote of the Zealot taking precedence over an Acolyte's worship of the Lich King)
  • Artanis: This is not Warcraft in space! (a reference to the phrase used to coin the StarCraft alpha, which bore great resemblance to Warcraft II)
  • Artanis: What do I look like, an orc? (Warcraft orcs, if clicked on enough times, will exclaim "stop poking me!")
  • Mortar Dwarfs: Tassadar has failed us. You must not. (a gag quote in Warcraft III and a repeat of Aldaris in the first mission briefing of Episode III)

Brood War

The StarCraft expansion set was a huge success. Starcraft: Brood War expanded the storyline through a new campaign for each race, with new units, upgrades and tilesets.

The Stand

Though the insidious Zerg Overmind is dead, the Protoss are forced to abandon their homeworld to the now-insane Zerg Swarms. The survivors flee to Shakuras, homeworld of their fallen brethren, the Dark Templar, only to find that the Zerg have followed them there. In a desperate attempt to survive the Protoss must form an alliance with one of their most hated enemies, and initiate a galaxy-wide search for their salvation...

Directorate

The Terrans of the Koprulu Sector are descended from a number of hackers, outlaws and rebels, sent in cryosleep from Earth three hundred years ago. Unknown to them, their progress has been watched from afar. Now, the United Earth Directorate (UED) has determined that the Terran Dominion be annexed, and that the Zerg threat be neutralized.

Queen of Blades

While the Protoss fought for survival, and the Directorate sought supremacy, one being waited in the shadows. Now the time to strike is here. For Sarah Kerrigan, once a defender of Humanity, then a near-mindless murderess, the recent upheavals are but the warm-up to her own campign: to rule over the Zerg with supreme power. The time for empires, dominions and directorates is over...the reign of the Queen of Blades has come.

Novels

Liberty's Crusade

Danny Liberty was a good reporter. But when his investigations struck too close to the heart of the corrupt Confederacy, he was sent to cover the Marines on the front lines of the Koprulu Sector. Thrown into the middle of a war between two alien species, Danny Liberty knows only one thing — the only person that can keep him alive is himself.

Shadow of the Xel'Naga

Bhekar Ro: a bleak, backwater world on the fringe of the Terran Dominion, where every day is a struggle to survive for its handful of human colonists. It is a verible wasteland — one speck of dust among many in the vast, dark sea of space. But when the most violent storm in recent memory unearths an unfathomable alien artifact, Bhekar Ro becomes the greatest prize in the Terran Sector — the Holy Grail of the Zerg, Protoss, and Humanity alike- as forces from the three great powers converge to claim the lost secrets of the most powerful species the universe has ever known.

Speed of Darkness

Far in the future, 60,000 light-years from Earth, a loose confederacy of Terran exiles is locked in battle with the enigmatic Protoss and the ruthless Zerg Swarm, as each species struggles to ensure its own survival among the stars — a war that will herald the beginning of mankind's greatest chapter or foretell its violent, bloody end.

Queen of Blades

Former marshal-turned-rebel Jim Raynor has broken away from the power-crazed Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. Enraged over Mengsk's betrayal of the powerful telepath, Sarah Kerrigan, to the ravenus Zerg, Raynor has lost all faith in his fellow humanity.

Yet, in the aftermath of Mengsk's tearchery, Raynor is plagued by strange visions of Char — a deadly, volcanic world haunted by horrifying alien creatures. As the nightmares grow in intensity, Raynor begins to suspect that they may not be figments of the imagination- but a desperate form of telepathic contact. Convinced that the woman he loves is still alive, Raynor launches a hasty mission to rescue Kerrigan from Char. But deep beneath the planet's smoldering surface, Raynor finds a strange chrysalis...and is forced to watch in horror as a terrible, all-too-familiar entity rises from it.

Before him stands a creature of depthless malice and vengeance...

Sarah Kerrigan: the Zerg Queen of Blades.

Ghost: Nova

Four years after the end of the Brood War, Emperor Arcturus Mengsk has rebuilt much of the Terran Dominion and consolidated a new military force despite an ever-present alien threat. Within this boiling cauldron of strife and subversion, a young woman known only as Nova shows the potential to become Mengsk's most lethal and promising "Ghost" operative. Utilizing a combination of pure physical aptitude, innate psychic power, and advanced technology, Nova can strike anywhere with the utmost stealth. Like a phantom in the shadows, she exists only as a myth to the enemies of the Terran Dominion.

Yet Nova wasn't born a killer. She was once a privileged child of one of the Old Families of the Terran Confederacy, but her life changed forever when a rebel militia murdered her family. In her grief, Nova unleashed her devastating psychic powers, killing hundreds in a single, terrible moment. Now, on the run through the slums of Tarsonis, she is unable to trust anyone. Pursued by a special agent tasked with hunting down rogue telepaths, Nova must come to terms with both her burgeoning powers and her guilt -- before they consume her and destroy everything in her path....

Dark Templar Saga: Firstborn

Jake Ramsey — an unassuming, yet talented archaeologist — has been given the chance of a lifetime. Hired to investigate a recently unearthed Xel'Naga temple, he knows this latest assignment will open up whole new possibilities for his career. Yet, when Jake discovers the remains of a long-dead protoss mystic, his hopes and dreams are irrevocably drowned in a flood of alien memories. Bonded to the spirit of the dead protoss, Jake has become the sole inheritor of the protoss's total history — every event, every thought — every feeling.

Struggling to maintain his own fragile identity amidst the raging psychic storm in his mind, Jake soon realizes that he has stumbled upon a secret so cataclysmic in magnitude — that it will shake the very foundations of the universe.

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