Editing Warcraft (section)

==It's kind of a big deal==

Today the Warcraft franchise towers over the world of video gaming like an Olympian god on a mountain.  But it's important to remember that it got there incrementally, by stealing the best bits of other people's ideas and improving them just enough to not get sued.  Warcraft II took Command and Conquer and made it bright and fantasy in contrast to C&C's drab olive maps and fifty shades of quonset hut buildings.  Warcraft III took 3D and made it interesting by focusing on heroes that conveniently reduced the amount of 3D they'd have to draw on screen at any moment; it also gave birth (for better or worse) to the tower defence and MOBA genres. World of Warcraft took every original idea every other MMO ever had and did it just slightly better, leaving behind a veritable skull pile of defeated challengers, at least two of which began with the prompt "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...". 

Warcraft does also have a boardgame, a tabletop RPG, multiple novels and comics, and a trading card game, so it is not all /v/.