WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal
Description official descriptions
Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal is an expansion pack for Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. After defeating the Orcish Horde and capturing the survivors, the Human Alliance attempts to destroy the Dark Portal. However, whilst they destroy the portal, the rift that joins the Orcs' world of Draenor to Azeroth remains.
The Alliance forces decide to enter the rift to the Orcs' home world to attempt to seal it from the other side.
At the same time, Ner'zhul - Warchief of the Shadow Moon clan, who has seized control of the Orcish hordes of Draenor following Orgrim Doomhammer's departure (and eventual defeat) to Azeroth, plans to send his forces to Azeroth to gather magical artefacts in an attempt to open rifts to other worlds.
Beyond the Dark Portal contains two 12 map campaigns; one for each side, 50 new pud's (maps) and a new tile set for the Orc home world.
It also contains 5 new hero characters for each side that actively participate in several of the new single player missions. In function, they are simply super powered versions of standard units that have different sounds.
There are no new standard units however, which many saw as a disappointment.
The map editor also isn't updated to include any of this expansion's new features, though third party programs exist that can add these features to the editor.
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Credits (DOS version)
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Programming | |
Executive Producer | |
Campaign Design | |
PUD Design | |
Additional Design | |
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3D Art Design |
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Executive Producer | |
Design Consultant | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 84% (based on 18 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 57 ratings with 1 reviews)
Fight the Orks in their homeland!
The Good
There are new cutscenes, missions and hero units. Additionally, there is a completely new territory: the Orks' homeworld itself, Draenor. As usual, the background story is worked out in detail, in the game manual as in the cutscenes and mission briefings.
The Bad
There could have been some new units - not only new heroes. And what I truly did not like was the way the mission briefings were used to narrate the story - in the original game, the briefings just served to, uhm, brief about the mission, so it sounded somewhat strange to me to have them used in that way.
The Bottom Line
A well done add-on that leads through the Dark Portal into the reddish homeworld of the Orks. If you see this planet, you can understand why the Orks are bad tempered...
DOS · by Hadanite Marasek (27) · 2002
Trivia
References
The chorus of the hidden disco track is "I'm a medieval man". This is a reference to the track Mechanical Man from Command & Conquer. The track itself is a remix of the first Human theme from WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, and most of the lyrics are quotes from the same game (annoyed Human unit speech and the narration from the intro sequence).
Awards
- PC Player (Germany)
- Issue 01/1997 - Best Add-On in 1996
- Computer Gaming World
- May 1997 (Issue #154) – Best Enhancement of an Existing Game
Information also contributed by BostonGeorge.
Analytics
Related Sites +
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Beyond the Dark Portal Overview
official game page from 1996, preserved by the Wayback Machine
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by MAT.
Macintosh added by Terok Nor.
Additional contributors: Patrick Bregger, Plok, MrFlibble, GenesisBR.
Game added April 28, 2000. Last modified November 14, 2024.