The Prophecy (WC3 demo)

This article contains lore taken from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, the manuals, and/or official bonus maps.

The Prophecy is the opening cinematic of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. It was originally created as the first trailer for the game.^[1]

The cinematic was remade as a cinematic trailer for Warcraft III: Reforged.

Video[]

This section concerns content related to Warcraft III: Reforged.

Warcraft III: Reforged Cinematic Trailer

This section concerns content related to Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos or its expansion The Frozen Throne.

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Intro Cinematic

Transcript[]

We see an orcish banner flying.

"We never paid any heed to the ancient prophecies..."

We see an orc grunt fighting a human footman.

"Like fools we clung to the old hatreds, and fought as we had for generations."

The orc grunt roars.

The warriors stop their fight as meteors begin falling from the sky.

"Until the day the sky rained fire... and a new enemy came among us."

An infernal lands near the warriors, then rises from a crater and roars. We see the corpses of the warriors bleeding out in a pool of water on the ground.

"We stand now, upon the brink of destruction... for the Reign of Chaos has come at last."

Trivia[]

The cinematic was originally envisioned as a smaller piece depicting a group of orcs sitting around a campfire and then getting attacked by footmen. Over the course of about an hour's worth of discussion between Chris Metzen and the cinematics department, the concept evolved into something similar to the final version seen in the game. The team was initially planning on only showing closeups of the footman and grunt's arms and weapons during the fight scene at the beginning of the cinematic, but the scope of the project grew over time as the developers became really passionate about it.^[2]