Posts with tag novel

Not only will our friend and the king of Stormwind (and my heart) Varian Wrynn be getting his own novel soon, but said novel will also be released as an audiobook. Richard Knaak's Wolfheart will not just be released as a novel, but also as a recording with special effects, in-game sounds and narration. The novel is scheduled to be released Sept. 13, 2011, and the audiobook is expected not long after.

Are you excited? I'm excited! I'm actually looking forward to seeing how King Varian and the Worgen, especially their king Genn Greymane, interact in this book. Thanks to BlizzPlanet for the heads up!

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A preview description for the next book set in the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm universe, Wolfheart, has appeared courtesy of BlizzPlanet. The novel, penned by Stormrage and War of the Ancients trilogy author Richard A. Knaak, follows the exploits of Varian Wyrnn, Genn Greymane, night elf leaders Malfurian Stormrage and Tyrande Whisperwind, and surprise guest Maiev Shadowsong. From the description, it appears the novel will focus on the tensions between Stormwind and Gilneas due to their tenuous new alliance, the Highborne's reintegration into night elven society, and the continued fight in Ashenvale against the surmounting Horde odds.

Christie Golden's Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects, is currently on the shelves, chronicling Thrall's journey post-Cataclysm with the Earthen Ring and his counterpart Aggra, as well as the dragons and their quest to stay alive and allied during Deathwing's brutal return. With Wolfheart, it seems we're getting an Alliance leader's story opposed to that of Thrall, who was once the Horde's warchief.

World of Warcraft: Wolfheart is going to be available on Sept. 13, 2011. Hit the jump for the full description.

Before we begin, in the interest of full disclosure, we will make it clear that Simon and Schuster did forward us free copies of Stormrage for this review. They did not, however, dictate any of the opinions held in this review. In addition, our network has a policy against keeping 'giveaways' sent to us, so our copies of the novel will be given away on our site sometime in the future. With that out of the way, let's get to the review.

The last book we reviewed here on WoW.com was Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. It was written by Christie Golden and was a little over three hundred pages of Prince Arthas Menethil's personal history, from his childhood to his fall to the Scourge. If that's what you're expecting out of Richard A. Knaak's Stormrage, drop those expectations. All of that can be found in the War of the Ancients trilogy. Despite the similar naming scheme, Stormrage is a novel that takes place at the same time as the events going on in Wrath of the Lich King. It's specifically stated that the Wrath Gate incident has already happened by the time the events in this novel begin. This isn't backstory, this is buildup to Cataclysm.

While it may or may not hint to the release date of the next expansion, a listing on Amazon has pegged the release of a hardcover novel by award-winning author Christie Golden entitled World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm. While that might seem like one colon too many (insert snickering here), the self-explanatory title actually sounds pretty cool. What sounds uncool, however, is that it's a prelude. Meaning before.

If you're reading into this as much as I am (generally not a good idea), that could mean that the Cataclysm expansion will ship after August 31. After all, you'd think that Blizzard's marketing team would want a book that reveals what happens before the Cataclysm to actually launch before the expansion hits, right?

Well, not really. The Arthas book, which focuses on the Lich King, was released long after Wrath broke out. In short, the novels follow a completely different schedule from the game even though they all share the same lore. So I made you fret over absolutely nothing! You didn't fall for it? Ok, so I made myself fret over absolutely nothing. The book is available for pre-order at $26 on Amazon and should be chock-full of lore and hopefully explain a lot of what will change during the expansion.

Considering how a lot of people (well, okay, at least Alex and Daniel) geeked out over Golden's Arthas novel, this book promises to be a good read. At any rate, we can probably expect it to be free of super-powerful, hackneyed, Mary Sue-ish, self-projected characters like time-traveling dudes who shack up with the hottest girl or multi-racial scions who can wield all kinds of magic. I mean, it's a freaking black dragon, man. It's kind of hard to mess up something innately awesome as that.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

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All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles.

With all the talk lately about starting new characters once the Cataclysm arrives, it struck me that most roleplayers already have more than one, including myself. Like most players, I started with one, a night elf druid, and focused on playing that exclusively for quite some time. It didn't really occur to me that I would even want to play more than one.

Then, I began to notice that other people played more than one character, even within the same small group of friends. I had one friend in particular who had mastered the art of roleplaying multiple characters. She never said anything out of character to anyone in our group, and it took me ages to even realize that her characters were ally played by the same person in the first place. Each one had its own personality, and each had a different relationship with all our mutual friends.

Knowing her made something click inside my mind, and I began to see other possibilities for myself too, other sorts of characters I could play with different weaknesses, strengths, and entirely different stories to tell. As my roleplaying experience grew, I began to feel as though one character couldn't contain all the ideas I had jumbling about in my head, so... I started another one, then another, and ... another. Little did I know all the pitfalls I could run into with so many characters, nor the quirky little tricks that could become possible with multiple characters, a small group of friends, and a bit of creativity.

So the convention is over, Blizzard has shown all (or at least most -- there are still secrets, we're sure) of their cards, and the next expansion will involve the return of Deathwing and a completely remade Azeroth. Goblins will be in there as the Horde race, but as for the original speculation of the Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream, well... It remains to be seen exactly how those will tie in to what we heard about at BlizzCon.

The biggest hint I saw at the Emerald Dream in the last year was the fact that Blizzard is going to release a "Stormrage" novel -- that would hint that good old Malfurion Stormrage and his kin would be spotlighted in the near future. Richard Knaak says the novel is set in the present, so something is going on for sure. Even though Deathwing is going to be the big bad this time around, something's still cooking with Stormrage.

Which actually makes sense. If we're going to get looks at Deepholm (the elemental plane of Earth, where Deathwing has been lying dormant recently) and The Firelands, as well as Skywall and the Abyssal Maw (the Fire, Air, and Water planes, respectively), that could mean they're going to open up Azeroth's other planes as well, with the Emerald Dream among them. The return of Deathwing would undoubtedly bring the other Aspects to bear, and Ysera would definitely be among those. In the opening ceremony last weekend, Metzen dismissed the Emerald Dream as "rumors and speculation," but the upcoming Stormrage novel still hints we still might see the Emerald Dream sometime soon.

One of the Warcraft novels I've actively been looking forward to is Arthas, Rise of the Lich King. It's set to be released to the world on April 21, 2009 but BlizzPlanet.com has gotten its hands on a few bound galleys of the book early. Some of them are being given away, but he's also reading one on his own and has gifted us with a quick review.

The review makes the book sound incredible, though perhaps a bit too cluttered. The novel is roughly 300 pages in length (I believe) and the first 100 pages covers his childhood from the arrival of the Stormwind refugees in Lordaeron to the beginning of Warcraft III. That covers about fourteen years, and that's potentially a lot of territory to cover!

BlizzPlanet has an excerpt up from Christie Golden's upcoming Rise of the Lich King novel, featuring the back story of perhaps the lesser known (though no more less powerful) half of the Lich King, Ner'zhul the Shaman. Arthas has gotten banner credit for being the big bad in this expansion (because it's his form that the Lich King is possessing), but Ner'zhul is in there as well, being all evil and angry. And this little snippet from the book portrays very well just what exactly is going on inside that big spiky helmet. As much as little Arthas is lost inside the Lich King's power, there might still be a tiny bit of him that's still fighting back. Is he worth saving or not?

I haven't been really interested in the Warcraft books, but given how timely this is (we're about to go knock that helmet off), and how interesting the story of Arthas has been, this is one that I plan to check out. It's due out later this year.

BlizzPlanet has a nice tidbit from Christie Golden about her upcoming novel about Arthas Menethil (better known as half of the Lich King, that bad guy we're going to be spending a lot of time with in the expansion). The book is due out next year (so odds are that we'll be approaching the end of the story by the time it hits store shelves), but it'll offer a look at the bad guy way before he started being bad -- the book starts with Arthas as a 10-year-old Prince, and covers everything between there to his little meltdown we witnessed in Warcraft III. The romance with Jaina is supposed to get some good coverage as well, so the book should be a good read.

And there are some bonuses for close readers as well -- we'll have seen some scenes before (including one between Arthas and Muradin in Beyond the Dark Portal), but of course, in this book, they'll be from Arthas' perspective. Arthas is undoubtedly the villian of the next ten levels in WoW (they even named the thing after him), but it's really exciting to have a villian with such an interesting and twisted past behind him.

You've been reading Know Your Lore for a long time now, and since then, you've started checking out the WoWWiki's lore information. You've read the World of Warcraft encyclopedia and history. You've even gone out and bought all the Warcraft novels, comic books and table-top roleplaying games, and previous Warcraft games, just so that you could go through and feast your eyes on more WoW lore.

Or... maybe you've just read some of the quest texts every now and then. Everyone's got at least some idea of Warcraft lore just from playing the game, with some sense of what the story is about. Chances are you've also encountered many other fantasy stories of one sort or another, and perhaps started thinking about how WoW is different, or how it is the same.

What are some of the similarities and differences you see between the Warcraft lore and the lore of other great fantasy stories? Do you think it's just a cheap ripoff of Lord of the Rings? Or do you think it brings its own unique contribution to the genre of fantasy storytelling and cannot be fairly compared to any other story lore? Perhaps it even draws the most inspiration from a certain religion or philosophy! What do you think?

The Warcraft universe is constantly expanding. Trading card games, sound tracks and board games abound. It seems we can't get enough of Azeroth online or off. Blizzard has tried to meet this growing demand is by creating a series of fiction novels and comic books. One of those endeavors is a Korean manga title, Dragon Hunt, the first novel in the Sunwell Trilogy that was published last year.

Now, our friends over at the WoW Europe official site have made Dragon Hunt available to read online for free! Every week they are putting up a new chapter. So far there are three chapters to read and I already can't get enough. Head on over, check it out and tell us what you think.

Tie-in novels really aren't my thing, so I never read Rise of the Horde, but for those of you that are interested, there's a new Warcraft novel coming out. World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness is written by Aaron Rosenberg, who wrote, among other things, Starcraft: Queen of Blades. If you couldn't guess by the title, this new book is going to be exploring the events of Warcraft 2, which was my favorite game by far of the three. Blizzplanet has the full story on it; it's going to be released in August 2007, and the author will be making an appearance at New York Comic Con if you want to meet him.

Regardless of whether I personally read these novels or not, I do think they're a good thing, in that they delve further into the lore than the games often have a chance to. Lore: it does a body good. What aspect of Blizzard's various universes do you think needs a novel treatment?

The latest novel set in the World of Warcraft has been released this week. While I haven't yet seen it in my local bookshop, it does seem to be available from Amazon.com.

Rise of the Horde is written by Christie Golden, who wrote (with Don Perrin) Warcraft: Lord of the Clans, as well as a couple of Star Trek: Voyager novels.

From Amazon's blurb:

Though the young Warchief Thrall ended the demon curse that had plagued his people for generations, the orcs still wrestle with the sins of their bloody past. As the rampaging Horde, they waged a number of devastating wars against their perennial enemy -- the Alliance. Yet the rage and bloodlust that drove the orcs to destroy everything in their path nearly consumed them as well.

Long ago, on the idyllic world of Draenor, the noble orc clans lived in relative peace with their enigmatic neighbors, the draenei. But the nefarious agents of the Burning Legion had other plans for both of the unsuspecting races. The demon-lord Kil'jaeden set in motion a dark chain of events that would succeed not only in eradicating the draenei, but forging the orc clans into an single, unstoppable juggernaut of hatred and destruction.

I've bought a couple of WoW novels in the past, but I've never really been drawn-in by them, preferring being in the game than to lazing on the couch reading about it. Rise of the Horde seems to be a little more interesting, as it may give some background going into The Burning Crusade. And hey, with a couple of weeks to go, and not a lot to do in-game, now might be a good time for me to give WoW novels a second chance.

So, are you going to pick this one up? Have any of you read the past novels, and do you find they add to your enjoyment of the game, or just give you a nice break from staring at the computer screen?

01/16/07 UPDATE! Christie Golden has written in (YAY! THE AUTHOR!) and clears up a few things:

Thanks for making people aware of the book! I do have a correction
for you if I may--I did not write Lord of the Clans "with" Don
Perrin. Lord of the Clans (as a novel that is, of course the
backstory and the world is Blizzard's!) is entirely my own creation,
I never saw any of the work Don had done on the project before I
started writing.

Also, I'm delighted to report that many things made it from the book
Rise of the Horde into the expansion, which is a real thrill for me
personally and doesn't often happen in the world of media tie-ins.
Blizzard is a fantastic company to work with. And yes, I play WoW.
:D

Thanks for the information, Christie, hopefully we'll see you in the Outlands!