Warcraft

Blizzard's Warcraft began in 1994 as a real-time strategy series, and its two-faction war between Orcs and Humans gave the studio a sandbox of lore it has mined ever since. Warcraft II expanded the conflict, and Warcraft III added hero units and a story dense enough to launch a thousand fan campaigns, including the custom map that eventually birthed the entire MOBA genre.

Then came World of Warcraft in 2004, the MMORPG that defined the format for a generation and turned Azeroth into a place millions genuinely lived in. The expansions chart a slow-evolving saga from The Burning Crusade through Dragonflight. Warcraft also branched into the card game Hearthstone, a 2016 feature film, and tie-in fiction. This is a strategy-roots franchise that became a cultural institution, and its world-building remains the connective tissue holding the whole sprawling thing together.

The Warcraft franchise spans 15 books, 14 games, 1 movies in the CrossBinge catalog.