if there's one type of person i don't trust it's a Warcraft fan, and each one i've seen says not to touch Warcraft 1 because it is so outdated it will actually physically age me and give me arthritis. so here i am playing Warcraft 1, i've never played this or any RTS besides Halo Wars when i was 12, which i didn't enjoy because it was an RTS. i tend not to like games that force me to confront how stupid i am

the opening cinematic is incredible. i never saw the movie but i can't imagine it looked much better than this. all the big-budget actors in the world could not contend with Eric From Quality Assurance's narration

i lost my first game pretty quickly, as expected. games back then were really good at making you feel like you ruined absolutely everything when you got game over. the war is LOST my family is DEAD and Blizzard has gone UNDER because YOU did not build enough FARMS. i definitely would have cried if i played this as a child. sorry to orcs

since i don't play RTSes's i can't gauge just how archaic this really feels, but it's not unplayable. unwinnable maybe since how am i supposed to compete with the humans if they can beat me without any resources or structures buh!!? i will have to consult the manual that's split into two versions for the human and orc sides, and i will be very mad if the human version is shorter. i may even consider becoming a human. desperate measures but all's fair in love and warcraft

then i won my second try! well "won" - i kept to myself and just built farms like i was told to and no one bothered me. but the brutish orc voice on the results screen praises me for the havoc and bloodshed i wrought against the human forces so don't tell him this. [tending to my crops] yeahh i did all that haha down with the Allegiance or whatever

why does a gold mine explode when it's depleted of its resources. making me feel like this isn't the laidback farmtown sim i thought it was

second level was a toss-up. at no point did i know what my objective was or how well i was doing, eventually i just kept birthing guys and making them wander around killing people until suddenly one human's death was the winning kill. i'll have to start making better use of the game speed option, because that was 20 minutes of uncertainty that very well could've ended in a sudden reminder of why i usually don't enjoy longform games like these

regret to say that since last playing this i have bought a Warcraft book. my goal is to know enough about the lore that i can decide it's stupid before i end up playing WoW again. luckily the story is so spread out across games and novels and comics that there is plenty of time to do so before feeling comfortable diving into the World of It. there's also a surprising amount of story laid out in this game's manual that i'm sure has already been heavily retconned. i always read that lore-wise this game is pretty nothing, which i guess it is because it's the manual not the game

turns out these orc guys are pretty bad actually? at least in this game. i just always assume that humans are the ones to screw everything up like they are in the real world. starting up the human campaign now with the knowledge that there is a key to see the mission objective, so i'm not nervously waiting around to suddenly be met with victory or defeat

great that clears things up

me and my squad we can do anything, as long as i'm with my trusty pals soldier with voice, archer with same voice, peasant with same voice, old man with same voice,

human mission 4 i thought was cool until it wasn't. i could tell i was going to quickly get bored if each mission was just the same thing but harder, so a rescue mission with a set squadron and no resource management seemed like a nice change of pace. unfortunately this is a game from 1994 with terrible pathfinding, and this mission involved navigating a long winding corridor twice, while only being able to control four units at a time

i call this the "hell corner", and i can see why a rescue party was warranted

i've discovered the shortcut for changing the game speed which is alleviating some foot-tappetry. not going below 'normal' speed during skirmishes since i feel it cheapens things but i can absolutely see myself getting impatient and not caring at all about any Warcraft 1 Integrity soon enough

had my first longmission loss, and moreso than losing 20-30 minutes i was mostly worried about being put off the game. it's not too bad, i can think of some stuff i did wrong and can try to fix next time, but how worthwhile is it to trial-and-error things instead of just looking up a guide. especially when a good chunk of my time is spent nervously shuffling one peasant across the map trying to find a gold mine in this foggiest of warfog

another hour of trying and i was still getting my axe handed to me on mission 5, entering offputting territory. succumbed to looking at a guide and immediately see a gold mine outside the cusp of the areas i usually explore, pretty cool. not sure how much help i was expecting to find online that didn't involve painstakingly following hundreds of micro-actions to a tee, it's just maps and unit numbers and general tips on how to not be stupid. how much effort am i willing to put into getting good at Warcraft 1 i wonder