StarCraft franchise

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StarCraft series
StarCraft II series

StarCraft is a military science fiction franchise owned by Blizzard Entertainment. It is most notable for the real-time strategy games StarCraft and StarCraft II.

Parallels to WarCraft III

Several gaming elements first introduced in StarCraft were later adapted for use in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.

Plot progression

Previous Warcraft games offered two campaigns, orc and human, which essentially dealt with the same events through different eyes. With three races, Blizzard decided to stack the campaigns to deal with different events, told in chronological order in one combined story arc. Essentially, the player was dissuaded from playing the zerg or the protoss, because they didn't learn the plot details of the terrans. This was adapted for Warcraft III with a minor difference: the player no longer had option to defy the chronology. Additionally, the campaigns for both games proceeded similarly (for the original game, the Human campaign went first, then the Evil campaign second, and finally, the "Neutral" party third. For their expansions, the "Neutral" party went first, then the Human campaign second, and the Evil force third).

Specific influences

In the final mission of the game, the player commanded two armies, one protoss and one terran, in a last-ditch effort to save the galaxy by defeating the insidious Overmind of the zerg, which was hell-bent on assimilating the protoss in order to combine their purity of form with the zerg's purity of essence to become a "perfect" species. Similarly, in the final mission of Reign of Chaos, the user commands the Sentinel army reinforced by the forces of the Alliance and Horde to stop Archimonde from ascending Mount Hyjal. The two Antagonist/Anti-Hero characters, Arthas Menethil and Sarah Kerrigan, are similar to one another. Kerrigan's transformation from human to zerg, and her subsequent embracing of the darkness, also closely parallels the tale of Sylvanas Windrunner.

Unequal units


The four races have different advantages, most of them similar to the racial attributes of the terrans, zerg, and protoss from StarCraft. The different strategically significant traits of the races in StarCraft have been combined in new ways to form the Warcraft III races. The Warcraft III night elves, for instance, resemble the terrans in that their buildings can move and their base fighting unit has a missile attack, but like the zerg, their worker units are consumed when they create most buildings. The Scourge have the protoss's ability to summon buildings rather than constructing them, so a worker unit is not tied up in construction; also like the protoss, they have a dedicated invisible spy unit, but their buildings have to be constructed upon dedicated infested terrain called Blight (like zerg creep), and their army line-up is strategically similar to that of the zerg.


The basic terran combat unit, the marine, is a fairly durable ranged unit, capable of attacking both ground and space units. By contrast, the first fighter unit available to the zerg was the tiny, brittle zergling who could only attack ground units and whose usefulness came mostly from its low cost, speed, and that two spawned from one larva. Finally, the protoss zealot, though only attacking ground units, is extremely durable, in addition to shields. Similarly, the central zerg building, the hatchery, evolves into a lair and later into a hive, while the terran command center and protoss nexus do not evolve.


References to Warcraft


  • The protoss summon their structures onto the battlefield. The undead do so likewise in Warcraft III.
  • The protoss stalker possesses an ability known as " [Blink]". An identical ability is possessed by the night elf warden in Warcraft III and the mage character class in World of Warcraft (although the latter can only teleport a short distance in front of them).
  • If the player zoom's in very close and stand under a goblin shredder in World of Warcraft, they will see that there is a miniature duplicate of the Brood War box art (the picture of Kerrigan as the "Queen of Blades") on the monitor. The  [Sky Golem] mount also has a picture of Kerrigan, but as the "Primal Queen of Blades" from Heart of the Swarm.
  • Lord Marshal Raynor was found during the portal event in World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. His name is a reference to the terran hero, Jim Raynor (a former Confederate marshal).
  • On top of the merc haven in StarCraft II, a holographic woman can be seen doing the night elf dance (each gender of each race having their own dance in World of Warcraft).
  • Warcraft III assets have been released for use in the map editor of StarCraft II.
  • [Pro Toss] is a reference to the Protoss race in StarCraft.




  • Demon fel hunters in Warcraft bear great similarity to zerglings.
  • The titans, a race of supreme beings which seed life on various worlds in the Warcraft universe, could be taken from the xel'naga, a similar god-like race in StarCraft.


  • Acolyte: My life for I mean Ner'zhul! (a quote of the zealot taking precedence over an acolyte's worship of the Lich King)

Arcade Workshop

Arcade (also known as Arcade Workshop) offers the StarCraft community an exciting new way to discover, rate, and play a wide array of community and Blizzard created games. Arcade is available within the StarCraft II client, located in the main menu at the left of the screen after you log in.

Experience thousands of games
  • Discover and play new games created by players like you using Blizzard’s own, official developer tools.
Arcade is free
  • Arcade is free. Download the free StarCraft II Starter Edition, log in, and start playing!
A community of builders & players
  • Rate games, talk shop with other players via the Arcade forums, and provide your design feedback directly to the games’ creators.


  • StarCraft started development as a "orcs in space version" based off of Warcraft II.[1]

See also


  1. ^ Blizzard Retrospective (33min40sec), Blizzard Entertainment, 08.03.2011.

External links