Warcraft: The Movie has created massive hype, not only in the player base but also outside the player base. Finally, people who are not interested in playing the MMO will be able to see (at least) a small aspect of the Warcraft Universe and what the epic storyline is all about - Horde V Alliance.
Warcraft: The Movie has been defined by Blizzard and Legendary as a war movie sighting examples like 300 and Gladiator; Lord of the Rings and Braveheart, when talking about what they want from the movie. They haven't said whether they are intending to have battles featuring lots of people fighting lots of people but have said that new technology (specifically the technology used in 300) will allow them to make the movie really good. In the end however, it is all down to the Director according to Metzen and we aren't going to be finding out who any time soon.
As Metzen said at the WoW panel at Blizzcon, the Warcraft movie will mainly focus around the Horde V Alliance War and it will be told from the Alliance perspective, specifically humans. To the player base, this might appear like Metzen and co are preparing to step into the realm of clearly defining Alliance as the good guys and Horde as the bad guys. This has, of course, set off rebellions from the hardcore community.
The Alliance players who play the game specifically because of the Alliance are cheering in the forums at the prospect of having themselves portrayed as the be all and end all of good, while the Horde players are sitting, biting their finger nails at the idea of being the bad guys. Is it really going to be this linear or have we been subjected to simplistic movies for too long?
If we know one thing about Metzen, we know that he is capable of creating story lines that are easily followed but deep and meaning full. For example, in the game neither the Horde nor Alliance are evil or good but both are subject to their own conditioning. Both have aspects of good and both have aspects of evil. Will this be portrayed in the movie?
Then there is the worry of characters and to that, we've been told that many characters will be featured in the movie but the main hero is a brand new addition to the franchise. Fans are worried that the franchise is becoming saturated with heroes but many will have noticed that there are no new heroes entering the game at the moment so perhaps this new hero is a good thing.
Next we have the time period it is set in...1 year before the events in WoW. Many fans are worried that this will be none canon in their eyes and ruin the continuity of the Warcraft franchise but Metzen and Legendary have both said that they are not looking to create a PC game move but that they are looking to create a movie BASED on a franchise that just so happened to emerge in the gaming industry.
So there are a lot of things for fans to be worried about and we shall have to wait until 2009 to see what we think. Interestingly however is the use of, "properties," when referring to Legendary being the new home of Warcraft in Hollywood. That is a plural and considering the recent Diablo fiasco on the Legendary website, could it be that this is a small hint the Legendary have the movie making rights to ALL of the Blizzard franchises? Could we see not only Warcraft but Diablo and Starcraft coming out of Legendary in the next decade?
