Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was an ugly and awkward game, done by the company that did the Zelda CDi games

Back in the late 1990s, Blizzard wanted to try and expand on its Warcraft RTS game franchise for the first time, and they decided to do so by trying their hand at a 2D animated game called Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. Only they didn’t have anyone that had any experience in 2D hand-drawn animation, so they turned to a Russian company called Animation Magic, who among other things, had done the animation for the catastrophes that were the Legend of Zelda CDi games.

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was to be a CD-based point and click adventure, expanding on the story of the war between orcs and humans and the origins of the Horde, etc etc. But the game never saw the light of day, because it just wasn’t very good, and when it was supposed to have been released in 1997, LucasArts came out with Monkey Island 3, and Lord of the Clans would have been years behind.

Check out the trailer:

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was first announced in 1997, and promised to be “the pivotal next chapter in the epic Warcraft saga”. Taking the player to “More than 60 stunning locations within seven Azeroth regions”, it would also feature a “classical soundtrack of Warcraft music”. Oh, and it also featured the voice acting of Peter Cullen, best known as the voice of Optimus Prime. So it had that.

Read more here