Warcraft could make such an excellent CGI series

[Kokolums]

A tv show would never be able to tell all the stories it had in the past 25 years. The best approachable way is to do the story of Arthas, who is the most relateable as a centric character and carries over a lot of what happened for the world building. If the show is succesful they can also try to do stories like the First and Second war and the War of the Ancients.

The odds are low they would ever tell the old stories. The new showrunner would hire writers and directors, and the first thing they want to do is put their own stamp on the franchise. That means they will try to create new characters (often times they will be self-inserts) and then they will have new characters beat up / kill / destroy all the old characters to build up their credibility. So you might get something like a story centered around a Med'an type character who is mixed blood and in the first episode he kills Grom Hellscream, Thrall, and all the warchiefs solo.

It would be up to the showrunner to step in and strictly control the writers to prevent that sort of thing and keep the writers and directors on the actual material. But that almost never happens.

[Wangming]

A tv show would never be able to tell all the stories it had in the past 25 years. The best approachable way is to do the story of Arthas, who is the most relateable as a centric character and carries over a lot of what happened for the world building. If the show is succesful they can also try to do stories like the First and Second war and the War of the Ancients.

Maybe not the whole story as having potentially thousands of years between seasons would be weird. But I'm pretty sure a tv show would have enough time. Even if we take a show like the Mandalorian with 8 episodes of 30 minutes, that's still 4 hours. That could fit all the cutscenes in Reforged.

Personally I think the Curse of the Worgen comic series could also provide a nice season. Flashbacks to the Warof the Ancients and the Satyrs, Wall built after second War, curse outbreak during the Third War and the Scourge attack, walls fall during the Cataclysm. It samples all the important storylines if only for just a bit.

[Gunter0]

My ideal scenario for a Warcraft series would be something similar to Love, Death & Robots on netflix, which IIRC was a series of unrelated stories based in the same universe, using different animation styles. It would let them do a combination of storylines from books, ingame, historical lore events, as well as "new" stories such as the adventures of a group of heroes, the SI:7 show that was talked about around when the Warcraft movie released, or Harry Potter and the Shenanigans of Dalaran.

Popular storylines could then be expanded into their own show/mini series etc. Warcraft has a lot of lore, and with everyone having a different storyline that they want to see, building a starting point for several stories instead of focusing on one, seems like the better strategy IMO.

[Kyphael]

Doesn't it take like a ridiculous amount of time to make one of those 3 minute cinematic cut scenes? Add in to the fact the Warcraft movie showed there is zero interest in the mainstream for a "Lord of the Rings rip off", where is the money going to come from to turn over a profit for all the hard work it would take to create a quality CG series? I love Warcraft as much as anyone, but let's be realistic. It seems like it's better left off to remain a video game.

[Ardenaso]

Doesn't it take like a ridiculous amount of time to make one of those 3 minute cinematic cut scenes? Add in to the fact the Warcraft movie showed there is zero interest in the mainstream for a "Lord of the Rings rip off", where is the money going to come from to turn over a profit for all the hard work it would take to create a quality CG series? I love Warcraft as much as anyone, but let's be realistic. It seems like it's better left off to remain a video game.

Yeah, like making good quality CG cinematics and cutscenes instead, like in Reforged.

Oh wait.

[Kyphael]

Yeah, like making good quality CG cinematics and cutscenes instead, like in Reforged.

Oh wait.

I don't see the correlation. Blizzard dedicates time and money to make quality cut scenes for WoW because the game is profitable and worth investing in. Such profit would not be there for a TV series. Meanwhile, Reforged was a side profit to try to squeeze some money out of it, but the end result shows they put little effort and money into it because it was indeed just a side project. It was not Blizzard's priority and is nowhere near as much a cash cow for them as WoW is. It received the amount of production time it deserved.

[Dapower]

While CGI would look good I would love to see a Warcraft show in the Castlevania show art style, would be perfect

I'd love a Castlevania style anime of warcraft, since I pretty much hate the CGI concept.

[Ardenaso]

I don't see the correlation. Blizzard dedicates time and money to make quality cut scenes for WoW because the game is profitable and worth investing in. Such profit would not be there for a TV series. Meanwhile, Reforged was a side profit to try to squeeze some money out of it, but the end result shows they put little effort and money into it because it was indeed just a side project. It was not Blizzard's priority and is nowhere near as much a cash cow for them as WoW is. It received the amount of production time it deserved.

Eh. You said CG series and letting if it off to a video game?

But yeah, if they didn't treat it as a mere side project the mass refunds wouldn't have happened

[taishar68]

Doesn't it take like a ridiculous amount of time to make one of those 3 minute cinematic cut scenes? Add in to the fact the Warcraft movie showed there is zero interest in the mainstream for a "Lord of the Rings rip off", where is the money going to come from to turn over a profit for all the hard work it would take to create a quality CG series? I love Warcraft as much as anyone, but let's be realistic. It seems like it's better left off to remain a video game.

It depends. Television is its own animal, and nearly every streaming service is always looking for new shows to keep their sub base happy; there are only so many times you can re-watch Friends, (but don't tell my wife that) so original content is constantly being churned out.

A series in the cinematic style would be crazy expensive, but a feast for the eyes. Storywise...you'd need good writers to make the existing story come alive, and then build on it if it was a success. It's not impossible. Look at the WATCHMEN series on HBO; the book is held in extreme reverence, the movie was crapola (imo), but it hasn't been in the mainstream, and yet it was a huge hit for HBO. The right people on a project can make it work.

[Mojo03]

They should start it with Arthas and if it does well, do prequels or something in the future.

They could probably make like 5 seasons of a show based on Warcraft 3 alone pretty easily if it was shown in real time and extrapolated (IE FF7 remake)

It's also probably the best way to start the franchise, since it'd be easier to connect with Arthas.

[ReleaseDay]

Honestly the CGI they use for the better in-game graphics looking cutscenes (like this one) would be perfect for a series... Shame they'll likely never do it.

Oh god no, all those in-engine rendered cutscenes are absolutely awful. I cant stand them. Was doing the "battle for uc" yesterday on an alt, and jesus christ was it shitty looking. Absolutely underwhelming when they want to visualize massive armies fighting, but on screen are maybe 25 vs 25 npcs. I've seen bar fights irl with more people involved, and this is supposed to be the enemies biggest army assaulting a capital city?

Also the colour/style makes it look like a garbage, kids cartoon. If they go for something its the real blizzar cinematics or nothing.

[Schattenlied]

Oh god no, all those in-engine rendered cutscenes are absolutely awful. I cant stand them. Was doing the "battle for uc" yesterday on an alt, and jesus christ was it shitty looking. Absolutely underwhelming when they want to visualize massive armies fighting, but on screen are maybe 25 vs 25 npcs. I've seen bar fights irl with more people involved, and this is supposed to be the enemies biggest army assaulting a capital city?

Also the colour/style makes it look like a garbage, kids cartoon. If they go for something its the real blizzar cinematics or nothing.

Not sure if trolling or you just have the memory of a goldfish but you already said that, and I already responded to it. I already told you why everything you said here is wrong and some is self contradictory.

[SinR]

Are people really forgetting about Warcraft Movie?

[Maxilian]

They should really just let Netflix make a cartoon or a CGI series, that alone would make Warcraft so much popular.

And they don't even need a big storyline, maybe just the story of a party of unlikely allies. (Combining Horde and Alliance races)

- - - Updated - - -

Are people really forgetting about Warcraft Movie?

Well... they added real people, something that had no reason to be, also... the Movie did incredible well in China.

[Schattenlied]

Are people really forgetting about Warcraft Movie?

The problem with the Warcraft movie is that it wasn't made by Blizzard, easily half of it was non-canon, and it was live action (and the acting was honestly not very good).

It should have been animated, it should have been made by Blizzard, and, most importantly, it should have stuck to the goddamn lore.

[matrix123mko]

Honestly the CGI they use for the better in-game graphics looking cutscenes (like this one) would be perfect for a series... Shame they'll likely never do it.

And it is a lot cheaper than the style they went for with Warcraft: Beginning.

[XDurionX]

No. No, it really couldn't.

[matrix123mko]

Are people really forgetting about Warcraft Movie?

Its main flaw was that it treated lore too loosely.

[ReleaseDay]

Agree....actually his story was what I hoped for in the Warcraft movie (and I play 80% Horde) - but yeah...to little Horde probably.



Yep, I like that style. Still wonder how long that took and how much it cost - because in the end I suppose it is why they won't do it...too expensive and too few ppl interested.



Sure, the cinematics are great - but even tons more expensive. Which is why that would happen even less IMHO - The Warcraft movie cost 160 million, runtime two hours. That are barely 6 x 20 minute shows for a series. And it was considered a flop in the end. CGI movies, when done well (as in "realistically" can cost up to 260 million dollars - that was the budget of Lion King at least)

Yes but the movie was literally shit. I can fully understand why it flopped. Meanwhile, all real CGI cinematics by blizzard looks amazing, some of the best in the industry (although they've got alot harder competition these days).

- - - Updated - - -

I ain't talking about the in-engine shitty real time rendered ones that are just fucking NPCs running around... All the battle for UC ones aside from maybe one or two of them (like the final one where they confront Sylvanas in the throneroom) are the shitty cinematics. Don't compare them with the pre-rendered ones, they are not the same thing, maybe actually look at the example I posted.

And you whine about fights only showing "25v25" and then go one to say "real cinematics or nothing"... You DO realize that has absolutely NOTHING at all to do with the art style they used, right? Doing massive fights with the "real" cinematics takes MORE time and MORE effort and MORE money... Do you want them to do this or not? Because doing a real series with full length episodes with the "real" cinematics would be prohibitively expensive to the point that it would never fucking happen and is therefore not even worth discussing.



It's literally the same color and style as the game, is the game a shitty kids game? No, of course not, but if you somehow think it is because of the color and style you should stop playing, because clearly you think it's for kids and dislike it.

The style has turned awful past years. That's why i'm using a ReShade that changes it, my game looks alot darker, more crisp and not as cartoony. Yes this legal.

[Schattenlied]

The style has turned awful past years. That's why i'm using a ReShade that changes it, my game looks alot darker, more crisp and not as cartoony. Yes this legal.

It really hasn't, but you are welcome to your opinion, thankfully the overwhelming majority of people don't agree with you. Warcraft's artstyle has been consistently very cartoony since WC3, and general consensus around the forums tends to be that the art team are doing a great job these last few years.

Yes but the movie was literally shit. I can fully understand why it flopped. Meanwhile, all real CGI cinematics by blizzard looks amazing

The movie didn't flop because of any of that, it flopped because the acting was mediocre (they hired mostly B actors for leading roles) and the plot was rushed and bad (and didn't even follow the lore).