Post
The Blizzard fantasy universe that conquered both RTS and MMO history, then became one of the heaviest legacy brands in gaming.
Warcraft started as a real-time strategy series and evolved into one of the medium's deepest shared fantasy settings. Warcraft II and III helped define PC strategy culture, while World of Warcraft exploded the setting into a social universe people lived inside for years. That two-phase dominance is why Warcraft remains so important even when Blizzard is no longer culturally untouchable.
Example
Warcraft III seeded mod culture, hero-unit design, and eventually DotA; World of Warcraft then became the MMO by which every other MMO was measured. Very few franchises can claim to have defined two major genres in separate eras.
Why it matters
Warcraft matters because it is one of the strongest examples of worldbuilding compounding across genres. At the IP level it explains a huge amount of Blizzard's historical power, as well as the long tail of RTS, MMO, and mod-scene influence that still shapes games today.
Related concepts