If you’re into World of Warcraft, you probably know that this game franchise has its own movie. We’ve already written about it on our list of the best video game movies. However, it’s far from the first Warcraft-themed movie out there. Not even close. Before Warcraft 2016, there was at least a couple of fan-made pictures – most notable ones being Tales of the Past (3 part series) and War of the Ancients: The Well of Eternity.
Tales of the Past
Tales of the Past was born as a promotional guild video back in 2005. Eden Aurorae, a guild based in Dunemaul (EU) server, decided to make a cool 15 minutes long promotional video with a separate script fitting into the game’s lore. The video was a huge success back in the day and received very positive feedback from World of Warcraft fans across the globe.
The video creator Martin Falch saw this as an opportunity and decided to make a full-fledged trilogy out of it. In 2006 he released a second part of the movie with a total run time of 41 minutes which was the biggest World of Warcraft machinima video at the time. It featured voiced dialogues, scripted battle scenes and more. It also took over 6 months to complete and featured over a 1000 different World of Warcraft players acting in the battle scenes.
But that wasn’t the end and 8 months after the release of the second part, Tales of the Past III was released. According to the creator it had over 75 pages of script which included many famous lore characters (Arthas, Mograine, The Ashbringer) as well as characters from the first two parts of Tales of the Past. Oh! And it is an hour and a half long…
DISCLAIMER! Tales of the Past trilogy has a lot of contradictions to the game’s lore, treat it as a separate tale and you’ll be in for a joyful World of Warcraft-themed ride.
War of the Ancients: The Well of Eternity
Another fan-made movie we’d love to recommend is War of the Ancients: The Well of Eternity. You’ve probably heard this name before since original source for the fan-made movie was a book written by Richard A. Knaak back in 2004. It’s the first part of the War of the Ancients book trilogy, which told a tale about the events happening 10 000 years before the first Warcraft game.
Naturally, the fan-made movie closely follows the events depicted in the first book and, according to the creator of the movie Norbert Szilagyi, the piece took over 4 years to complete. It has everything – epic score (which is borrowed from many great films of the past), voiced dialogues and epic battle scenes. Most importantly, it’s an accurate piece of the game’s earliest history which then sets the scene for the entire Warcraft’s franchise.
However, before watching it, keep in mind that the War of the Ancients is a trilogy and the fan-made movie only tells the first chapter. The creator of the movie recently abandoned the creation of the sequel since it took a tremendous amount of time. However, if you have a couple of hours to spare – this is definitely worth your time.
And that’s that! However, we know that there are many other great but not so famous fan-made movies out there. We’d appreciate if you share your favorites in the comment section below.
