What do you define as a "self-contained game" for an MMORPG that was birthed from an RTS trilogy? With going on 10,000 years of backstory, and a cast of lore figures that stretches into the dozens even when we reduce it to "most important people"? Warcraft stopped being self-contained the moment the story stopped being "Orcs vs. Humans" circa 2002.

I'm really not trying to bash you, but this mentality really baffles me. Believe me, I totally understand the frustration of having major lore events happening "off-screen" and then sprung on us in the game with virtually no explanation. I was mad as hell over Varian being introduced in the comics, the Sunwell Trilogy garbage (I will rant about that until the end of time), and the Sartharion raid, so I share that irritation, trust. But at a certain point, a world gets too big to be contained in one medium, and the Warcraftverse passed that threshold years ago IMO. And this novel, from the spoiler-free summaries I've seen like this, don't seem to indicate any sort of bait-and-switch asspulling marketing scheme to make you buy extra crap. It just seems to be detailing things already in the game, which is how supplemental material SHOULD be. So this is really just reading like you're cutting off your nose to spite your face. I mean, ultimately I don't think Blizzard's going to miss your $9.99 or whatever the hell paperbacks cost nowadays, they certainly haven't missed the money I keep in my pocket every time Knaak has another superpowered bowel movement and commits it to paper.

Oh, I'm perfectly fine with supplemental material; my anger is precisely directed at the same issues you mention. I just don't trust Blizzard not to pull another Varian or Sartharion (in fact, they kind of will be with Fandral - much of the early Hyjal questline in Cata makes very little sense if you don't read up on wowwiki or in Stormrage).

But as you say, the risk of supporting the practice by buying this book is probably quite slim, so it may not be such a tough choice.

the Sunwell Trilogy isn't really something that should be judged in the same context as "conventional" WOW lore or fiction. It's manga and should be judged on those terms and as it's own continuity. On the terms of manga it's actually quite good.