The game was well-received by both critics and gamers, winning several awards such as PC Gamer's Editor's Choice Award, and prompting developers to begin a Warcraft series whose competition with Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer franchise created an RTS boom in the 1990s.

This real-time strategy game introduced the fantasy world of Azeroth for both single and multiple players. The Warcraft franchise began in 1994 when Blizzard Entertainment released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans for PC and Macintosh.