Warcraft Ii Demo

This is Blizzard Entertainment's official shareware demo of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, the 1995 real-time strategy hit that pitted Humans against Orcs across land, sea, and sky. The Mac build of the demo arrived July 17, 1996, six months after the DOS shareware drop, and gave Mac players six exclusive missions - three Human, three Orc - lifted out of the retail campaign of 28.

Setting and story

Warcraft II picks up after the Orcish Horde's victory in the first game: humanity has fled north to Lordaeron and rallied the Alliance, while the Horde - now allied with trolls, goblins, and ogres - presses the war across new continents. The demo's six missions stage early Alliance and Horde scenarios, introducing players to Anduin Lothar, Uther the Lightbringer, and the broader cast that the franchise would carry into Warcraft III and World of Warcraft.

Gameplay

Players harvest gold, lumber, and the new third resource oil, build bases, and field a roster spanning footmen, knights, peasants, ballistas, ogres, dragons, gryphons, transports, and battleships. Both factions are playable in the demo, with their respective allied races on screen - elves, gnomes, and dwarves on the Human side; trolls, goblins, and ogres on the Orc side. The demo's six campaigns are a unique scenario set rather than a slice of the retail campaign.

Engine and technical changes

Tides of Darkness moved to SVGA 640x480 graphics, added Fog of War, and introduced naval units and aerial combat - all of which the demo showcases. Resource gathering requires roads and oil rigs, and the new pathing AI allowed much larger armies than the original Warcraft could field on the same hardware.

Development and release

Blizzard released the DOS shareware demo on January 28, 1996; the Mac demo followed on July 17, 1996, almost a month before the August 1996 Mac retail launch. Davidson & Associates published in North America. The demo file (Mac_Warcraft_II_Demo.sit_.hqx, ~13 MB) is preserved on Macintosh Garden alongside the full game.

Reception and legacy

Warcraft II won most of the major PC strategy awards of 1996 and went on to sell over three million copies by 2001, with the shareware/demo bundle credited as a primary driver of word-of-mouth growth. It directly seeded the design template Blizzard reused for StarCraft in 1998, and remained a multiplayer fixture on Battle.net long after launch.