Read Warcraft: Legends for free until March 17th
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 8th 2009 at 2:00PM
March 17th marks the release of Volume 3 of the Warcraft: Legends manga series, and Tokyopop is offering a pretty slick deal to build some hype around it. As of March 6th, Tokyopop has started putting the entire series thus far online to read for free, one chapter per day This will last through the 17th when the last chapter of Volume 2 is posted. They will not be putting new chapters up on the weekend, so despite the fact that we were a bit slow to notice this campaign of theirs (sorry!), you haven't missed anything yet. The first chapter is still the only chapter currently available, and another will be going up sometime tomorrow.If you're not familiar with this series, Warcraft: Legends is a series that brings multiple stories from many different authors and artists. It's not one solid story arc like The Sunwell Trilogy (for example), but a number of different stories about the denizens of Azeroth. Each chapter in a volume is a different story, though some of the stories span multiple volumes. Some of them are epic tales that tie into the more famous Azerothian figures (Lich King/Scourge, Richard Knaak's characters), and some of them are just about random Azerothian adventurers getting their adventurin' on. If you don't like one of the stories, odds are that you'll like one of the others.
This is a really, really good opportunity to decide whether you like the style of the series or not. Before this thing is through, you'll be able to read all of the current Warcraft: Legends material. My only complaint is that it's a little hard to read the small text on the reader Tokyopop is using for these. I find myself squinting a lot just to read the dialogue even when I switch it over to full screen. Still, they're letting us view it all for free. I'm not going to complain too much about that.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Comics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zuldim Mar 8th 2009 2:04PM
It's worth noting, one of the stories in each issue is a continuing story arc, about a character from the sunwell trilogy, raised in undeath.
But other than that, yeah, it's just random stories. Good ones too. Can't wait for book 3.
FifthDream Mar 8th 2009 2:29PM
Cool. I'll have to check this out.
Elionene Mar 8th 2009 2:35PM
I have the fist two volumes, and I think they're great. It's actually pretty engaging to just read about random adventures around the world that aren't necessarily the "fate of the universe" type stuff that tends to happen in novels or even the comic book series. Some are serious, some are tongue in cheek, and all in all, I highly recommend it.
BaronSoosdon Mar 8th 2009 2:51PM
The first one was quite crap, I don't have high expectations for the second one. Most of the stories in the first part vere either corny, childish or both.
Though I gotta admit that the Finnish translation may have been one of the key points that never got me in the "mood". All these game adaptations etc are meant to be read in their native language imo.
Thirah Mar 8th 2009 3:54PM
I picked the first two comics up a few months ago, and I loved them. They may not be for the more 'hardcore' comic lovers, but everyone can enjoy the stories. Can't wait til march 17.
Draelan Mar 8th 2009 4:02PM
Warning, some minor plot spoilers for the Sunwell Trilogy in this post.
The Sunwell Trilogy had its up and down moments. Some of the fail moments include:
- Kalec blabbing his story like an idiot to Anveena after just meeting her and "justifying" it by thinking "I don't know why, but I feel I can trust her." Very, VERY poor plot excuse for blabbing.
- Anveena getting upset over the destruction of her home and presumably the death of her "parents" then discovering the egg with Raac in it and being ALL BETTER when he hatched 2 seconds later.
But it did have some better moments. Mostly once you got past the first few crappy introductory chapters. I especially the parts featuring Trag and the Baron.
As for the Legends series... I remember them previewing some of it when it first came out. They used the same insanely small text that's nearly impossible to read in places. But, regardless, the parts of it I can read seem interesting. I just won't be reading any more of it on their site since I'm not too fond of eye strain.
Evelinda Mar 10th 2009 9:59AM
Thats because knaak is... i dont want to say awful, but...
he seems to have a real talent for sweeping story arcs, but all the little pieces in between that make up for it are much less exciting. On the whole i quite enjoyed the sunwell trilogy, and day of the dragon and the well of eternity, as well as the couple of dragonlance books of his i'd read, but really... he's like the dan brown of fantasy writing (if thats not almost a tautology). You can read through his books in a day. Interesting ideas, but not the best delivery.
Amateur literature critic hour over.
:P
Devin Mar 8th 2009 4:15PM
I don't know about you all, but it was not worth my time to get my face 1" away from the screen and strain my eyes to read the damned thing.
Mognet T Mar 8th 2009 5:53PM
I agree, especially with all that exposition. Too much of a strain on the eyes, and that's coming from a guy who reads stuff off OneManga...
Elionene Mar 8th 2009 4:19PM
They are official in that they are licensed by Blizzard, I believe. Each book contains four stories, each from a different author. Most of the author's have a background in manga and/or other WoW novels, such as Knaak.
So yes, I would take these books as "canon" or things that actually happened in the universe that we play in. But at the same time, most of the stories have little to no bearing on the events in game. The big exception would be the story with Tragg that is continuing from volume to volume, and involved Northrend and the Lich King. I'm really interested in seeing how that turns out.
aerows Mar 8th 2009 8:22PM
Devin, I agree. I use Firefox, and tried every single setting that I could think of, and it isn't readable. I have a 28" monitor and I still couldn't read it. Anything I did resulted it the black border getting huge and no improvement on the actual Flash work.
If someone could shine some light on how to actually view this without going blind, I'd love to read it.
aerows Mar 8th 2009 8:28PM
I just now tried it with Chromium, and I finally could read it, but I had no control over the speed at which the manga was displayed. If you are hoping for me to use IE and an insecure browsing format to read something, hope more.
MaxBliss Mar 22nd 2009 5:42PM
Tiny text = fail.
Solution:
1. PrtScr button
2. Paste clipboard into image editing program.
3. Crop away the black border.
4. Print to landscape letter page.
Not going to do this for every page tho.
Silly thing is that the reason they embedded content in Flash was to prevent people from downloading it. Better choice would be PDF and then I can enlargen it to make readable. This is what happens when lawyers rule instead of graphic artists.
Reader Mar 8th 2009 11:47PM
The easiest way I'm finding to actually getting it in a readable size is to actually downgrade your screen resolution. Playing on a 1920x1200 widescreen laptop, it's looking like 1280x800 is going to be decently comfortable.
Now read! Read like the wind!
soveryclean Mar 20th 2009 10:37AM
FYI, The reader does have a *fit to entire screen* button, it's just
a bit small (at the bottom of the player)... people who are used to
youtube video players and the like will recognize it.