...other than the fact that he needs to shave his mustache. That thing's creepy...

Basically, people accuse Rhonin (a character he created) as being a Mary Sue. The awesomest wizard who ever was, more powerful than Illidan and dragons, and is now leader of the Kirin Tor. It seems like lazy writing and people dislike it.

@Dave

i never got the feeling that ronin was all that powerful it was just that he was used to controlling magic in a time when the powers of the well of eternity were dispersed and when he went back in time they were more concentrated. although i do agree that knaak is a bit of a lazy writer but u know Metzin likes him so it don't matter in the end what people think.

That makes perfect sense. I guess I was just disappointed with Arthas. It seemed like the entire book was rehashing what we already know. It was very well written, but the main draw for me was finding out what happened between the end of Warcraft III and now, and we didn't really get that. Lore-wise, we learned about Invincible and what happens in the last 10 pages (which I won't spoil here), but not a lot else. To me, it was like a professionally written wowwiki.com post with a few pieces of new info here and there.

Zeets. Thank god. I was worried I was the only person who felt that way about Arthas. I agree. There really wasn’t enough material in that book for people who had already played warcraft III and yet, too much was glossed over and omitted for new players to even truly get the grasp of what was going on. Overall, it didn’t feel like its own work of fiction or even a stand-alone story.

I’m worried Golden’s going to take a similar approach with this book, but then again, I probably won’t be heading anywhere near a warcraft book anytime soon. There’s just so much better original material out there and none of the blizzard books I’ve sampled have really convinced me that their worth taking up my time.

It really needs no explanation. He's a terrible writer whose work is somewhere on the level of the average 14 year old boy on Fanfiction.net. But I'll crit you with a wall of text anyway.

Not only does he muddy the lore with his nonsense as someone else said (see: War of the Ancients and the timeline fuckery). He has no idea how to write legacy lore figures, and they end up with atrociously flat characterizations if they're not OOC entirely. Then there's his well-documented love of Sues. What makes him so terrible is that he never confines himself to one Sue. It's like he creates an entire web of Sue-ery to make his characters look cooler than established lore figures. The cardinal rule when you're writing fanfic is that original characters CANNOT upstage the canon characters. They're to serve a specific purpose. What makes a Sue a Sue is that they are always extremely wise and powerful special snowflakes and beloved by everyone important. Rhonin is a Sue not because he's a powerful mage; Rhonin is a Sue because he's a powerful mage who was mentored by the Most Beloved Consort of the QUEEN OF THE DRAGONS (himself a Sue), is married to an entirely made up third Windrunner sister (herself a Sue), had TWINS with her, and traveled through time to meet every major lore figure of the era, outdoing them in battle and generally being a smug, self-important ass. Hack apologists will often try to justify his Sues by arguing that because he's working for Blizzard, his "lore" characters are official and he has carte blanche to do with them as he pleases. I think that's a ridiculous cop out by people who wouldn't know good writing if it crit them on the ass. I can guarantee you that no Warcraft fan was buying War of the Ancients to read about the awesome time-traveling adventures of Rhonin. Hack took what was essentially a story about the Stormrage twins + Tyrande fighting the Burning Legion, and the struggles of the Dragonflights, and turned it into a Rhonin story. For Christ's sake, Rhonin was giving Illidan MFing Stormrage tips on how to use magic. Illidan, who was repeatedly stated to be an extremely gifted arcanist, even in this awful rendition of events.

And really, all of that is on top of the fact that he just plain cannot write. He regularly commits thesaurus abuse, was apparently asleep in his freshman composition course during the lecture on "show, don't tell", and is in dire need of an editor with a spine. I'm not kidding when I compare him to a badfic writer. It's like he goes through those "how not to write fanfiction" articles and uses them as a checklist, right down to using "orbs" as a synonym for eyes. Repeatedly. In the same paragraph.

I find that people who love him typically are the same kinds of folks who will read any sort of licensed novel about their favorite game, regardless of artistic merit. You run into the same mentality a lot in the various D&D fandoms, Forgotten Realms in particular. I haven't met anyone who actually reads good fantasy, or good fiction period, who likes Hack's Warcraft stuff. I have notoriously low expectations as far as licensed fiction, particularly licensed RPG fiction goes, and even I can't deal with his stuff. Not even the MSTie part of me that loves to make fun of trashy books. By comparison, I was actually able to get through Twilight to make fun of it. Take that as you will.

He saves his real efforts for Dragonlance minotaur novels, that's all.

I agree with Kylenne.

I do like Christie Golden however. Although, I do agree and think Arthas was mostly rewritten lore with very small amounts of new lore added.

@Kylenne

Best. Wall of text. EVER.

That PERFECTLY sums up the reasoning behind people's dislike of him.

As for Golden -- I've heard about half and half like/dislike for Arthas, though to be fair, most of that lore was already established and she had very little wiggle room. (Haven't read it myself.) And have never, ever, met a single person who didn't like Rise of the Horde and ADORE Lord of the Clans.

She's got a solid track record with one notable hiccup in it. Still better than Knaak's.

I could try and explain, but it would be easier for you to just start reading his stuff. Just the titles will do.

His books revolve around original characters, who frequently upstage the lore characters, to the point of traveling back in time and being their teachers and saviors.

Truth be told, Metzen's taste in writers is suspect. He likes Knaak and described Walter Simonson as pretty much the biggest on his own writing. While I'm sure that Metzen's thrilled for Walter to be writing the WoW comic, the comic isn't particularily good.


Golden's a solid writer. The biggest differences between her work and Knaak's is, apart from literary quality, that Golden understands and respects the lore, doesn't have a hard-on for dragons, and doesn't populate her books with super-powered original characters that hog the spotlight.