down production and made the iteration process more challenging. Roper later recalled "a lot of odd-hour phone calls and faxing and e-mailing of files and working through language barriers" while managing the project. The 2D animation style of Warcraft Adventures was chosen to maintain visual consistency with the Warcraft strategy games, a major concern of Blizzard's. This was in contrast to the pre-rendered 3D graphics featured in certain other games of the time, including Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, whose 2D artwork had been drawn overtop pre-rendered 3D models. When it was announced in March 1997, Warcraft Adventures was slated to include above 40,000 individual animation frames, 70 characters and 60 areas for the player to visit. Around 20 minutes' worth of animated cutscenes were ultimately created for the game. The quality of Animation Magic's output was a concern for Blizzard, and the team had difficulty keeping the Russian team in line with the "anal-retentive" attention to detail of the Irvine team, according to Roper. Blizzard's Micky Neilson later recalled a moment early in the project when Metzen, alongside artists Samwise Didier and Ron Millar, traveled to the Russian office to coordinate with the animators. He noted that Blizzard had been unable to convey its directions remotely, and that "the art improved [after the visit], though it still had a ways to go before reaching Blizzard quality." Didier and Metzen continued to put long hours into managing the Russian team through early 1997; in Neilson's view, the project began "taking a lot longer than expected." Later that year, Roper reported that Blizzard felt the art was coming out well. Warcraft Adventures was initially set for a 1997 holiday shopping season release for Windows 95 and Mac OS, and was Blizzard's second title planned for that year, alongside StarCraft. According to Neilson, Warcraft Adventures was growing close to completion around August 1997, but Blizzard was unsatisfied with the results. He saw StarCraft, which had just undergone a redesign, as the higher-quality project at that time. Neilson wrote, "The prevailing opinion was that the game wasn't as fun as the adventure games we had all come to know and love. Beyond that, however, even the adventure games of that time were moving to 3D." Meetings were held about reworking the game. Late in August, PC Gamer US reported that Warcraft Adventures had been delayed until "the first half" of the following year.