Cancelled Blizzard adventure game project Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans leaks online, eighteen years after the game was originally cancelled in 1998.

Although Blizzard is something of a commercial and critical powerhouse when it comes to PC gaming, this has sometimes come at a price, with a number of in-development titles failing to live up to the strict standards of the company. Among the games that have been shelved over the years are the highly-anticipated MMO Titan and the often mourned Starcraft: Ghost. However, one cancelled Blizzard game has recently surfaced is Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans.

The game, which took the Warcraft universe and translated it into the adventure genre, was originally canned back in 1998. Over the years, dribs and drabs of the game have been released, from videos of gameplay through to previously lost cinematics, but now the entirety of the project has been leaked online. A user by the name of Reidor over on the Scrolls of Lore forum managed to get their hands on the game, and proceeded to share it with fellow Warcraft fans.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, Blizzard has been swift to act against this leak. At the moment, Reidor's link to the leaked version of the game is unavailable after the company asked him to take it down. However, this being the internet, it's unlikely to be long before another source for Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans surfaces.

When the game was cancelled back in 1998, Blizzard explained that the title had fallen upon the curse that always seems to plague the shelved projects of the company. At the time, Blizzard explained that Warcraft Adventures was not up to the standards of quality that it set itself, and as such the title would not be seeing release. Considering the strength of the other adventure games that were surfacing at the time, it does appear as though Warcraft Adventures is a little too traditional, albeit in its unfinished form.

It's perhaps an apt time for such a game to resurface after so many years. After all, Chris Metzen has announced his retirement, leaving behind a tremendous gaming legacy through the co-creation of Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft. Although Warcraft Adventures is hardly the best example of the use of the universes he helped create, it nonetheless stands as a fun reminder of the time when Blizzard was cementing its place at the heart of PC gaming.

Of course, many Blizzard fans may be wondering what else the company has hidden away that may one day appear. Many Starcraft players would love to see exactly how far the developer was through Starcraft: Ghost before it was cancelled, for instance, and this may give some hope that further details surrounding the project may be released. In the meantime, though, other Blizzard gamers will just be left hoping that the untitled Diablo project does not go the same way as Warcraft Adventures.

Source: Scrolls of Lore (via Kotaku)