Turn-based tactical combat on a grid inside an MMO; the French world that has been running since 2004.
Deathwing rips the old world apart, so every zone from 2004 is rebuilt around the damage.
Twelve missions a side on Draenor, with named heroes who stay dead if you lose them.
Four zones underground beneath Khaz Algar, and warbands that share progress across every character on the account.
The Vortex campaign: four factions race each other to finish the same ritual first.
Free to play and paid for with cosmetics, built around a passive tree of more than a thousand nodes and a new league every few months.
Top-down and unforgiving since 1997: die and you lose experience, skills and part of what you were carrying.
Norrath in 1999, where dying left your corpse and your gear where you fell and you had to walk back naked; still running.
Creative Assembly take the licence and put dwarfs, greenskins and a vampire count on the campaign map.
Castle sieges of hundreds of players in Aden; the Korean MMO the clan wars of the 2000s were fought in.
Grinding Gear's sequel, in early access since December 2024 with half of its planned acts still to come.
Quel'Thalas and Silvermoon opened up in March 2026, with player housing added twenty-two years late.
Tamriel with the level gates removed, so a new character can start in any chapter and scale to it.
Kul Tiras and Zandalar on opposite sides of a faction war that starts with Teldrassil burning.
Northrend, the death knight as a playable class, and Arthas on the Frozen Throne at the top of Icecrown.
An alternate Draenor before it broke apart, and a personal garrison that quietly replaced the world outside it.
No subscription, instanced land outside the towns, and a build capped at eight skills chosen from hundreds.
A full-loot sandbox where every item is crafted by a player and the territory map is drawn by guilds.
Four more campaigns and a shelf of new artefacts bolted onto Heroes II by Cyberlore in 1997.
The heroes walk onto the battlefield and fight in person, the one change the series never repeated.
The dwarves arrive as a new faction, with runes to spend from the stock their heroes carry.
A standalone expansion with the orc horde and an alternative upgrade for every creature in the game.
The Conflux town of elementals, six campaigns and a random map generator worth more than any of them.
The 1994 original: two campaigns in Azeroth, mouse-driven, before anybody had heard of the setting.
A fan expansion still being patched two decades on: the Cove pirate town, new maps and the fixes 3DO never shipped.
The 1995 original: four towns, a hero who carries an army between them and a week that ends when everyone has moved.
Nival rebuild the game in 3D with caravans and a combat wheel; Ubisoft take the licence over from 3DO.
The 1994 first game: a whole continent generated at random and a staff broken into eight pieces.
Sandro the necromancer gets seven campaigns of his own, in the standalone box most people still install.
The resource list is cut back and every hero is pushed towards Blood or Tears; Ubisoft rename the series.
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