Project Lore

The Novel Post is Project Lore’s review column for materials - books, manga, comics, card games, etc - of World of Warcraft’s Extended Universe.  As such the column’s posts may contain plot, character or other spoilers. Run Draenei, Run! Ignore the note above, I did my best to rid this post of spoiling material. I have never been big on manga (pronounced it incorrectly for over a decade), but I've come to love these compilations from Tokyopop.  Each and every episode has bowled me over with at least one epic story.   The upcoming Volume 5 continues, and closes, not one, but two storylines that were launched in Volume 4.  It also includes what equates to an opening for Richard Knaak's upcoming book, Stormrage.  Fear not though, Volume 5's quality stays on track with the previous installments, thanks to Blizzard's lore historian. Yes, the company has frakking historians. A Warrior Made - Part 2:  Christie Golden's tale of Thrall's mother really lost it for me at its closing.  Part 1 was a finely crafted look into the clan atmosphere of the Frostwolfs, and the Spartan like attitudes towards ill children.  Part 2 sees her continuing her quest, and then she has a very special Blossom moment and the chapter on Draka is closed.  We do see a little character development in the pages - a nod to where Thrall gets his cool determination - but even the connections to a pair illustrious characters didn't save the story for me.  A drag to start out with. Warrior: United:  Grace Randolph also returned to complete her two-part story.  Warrior: United sees us following the estranged twins Lieren and Loania as they attempt to save their other parental unit from the damnation.  It just so happens that their father has become trapped in Karazhan.  This little tidbit allows Randolph to bring the nostalgic entry raid from The Burning Crusade into the story.  You'll have to read it to find out if they move during Flame Wreath. Randolph and artist Erica Awano do a fantastic job at displaying the differences of the twins.  In both the art and the writing, we can see how the separate upbringings of the twins, one as a Dwarf, the other as a high elf, impacted their lives.  The environment even impact their skillsets, the dwarf-raised Lieren is well versed with a mace, while Loania is a mage in training.  Warrior: United was a little predictable for me, but the fantastic characters kept me interested. The First Guardian:  Louise Simonson, co-writer of the Wildstorm comic, dives deep into the past for this previously unknown story.  I am talking way back there.  We're talking before Warcraft 3, before Aegwynn.  It's elf old, not dragon old, but it's old enough that most people - myself included - couldn't place the story in the timeline accurately.  You'd have to be a heavy, heavy lore buff, one who reads the RPG manifests for fun, to place the tale of The First Guardian off the top of your head.  For the rest of us, Simonson writes a nice recap of Dalaran's history, and where we are in it, before the opening. As a seasoned comic scribe I expected Simonson to be able to deliver a fantastic story in the 50 or so pages she had.  She didn't disappoint.  The mage heavy tale, with a gnome (!), explains the early days of the Guardians of Tirisfal, and the groups constant struggle against demonic beings.  There's also that small problem of the tearing of the world by magical use.  Simonson used the plight of the world as a backdrop, setting up the main character, Alodi, as a Peter Parker type.  A great read, but the art isn't as detailed as I would have liked. A Cleansing Fire:  Evelyn Fredericksen, Creative Development Historian for Blizzard (seriously, that is her title) and nutty professor on the Wrath DVD, doesn't pen many stories for the universes she watches over.  When she does, you'd better stand up and take notice.  Evidence?  She crafted the original Naxxramas tale, and the short for Wrath Gate.  And now they roped her into a bit of story telling for the manga.  This story alone is worth the price of the collection. Fredericksen picks a character that we all know.  We all know him because he's the centerpiece of Hallow's End.  That's right, the main character is the rhyming Headless Horsemen.  But Fredericksen paints a new picture for us.  A Cleansing Fire isn't about the horsemen's love of pumpkins, but his fall from grace and his ultimate corruption from the horrors of war.  It's a captivating look into a character we just thought of as a loot pinata.  Like last edition, the best story is accompanied by the best art. Nightmares:  Richard Knaak is back in short form - where I enjoy him the most.  Glancing at the first page of Nightmares I noticed two things.  First off, the art looks like cartoons from my childhood (not a bad thing), and it's annoying me that I can't place which cartoon I am thinking of.  The second is that Knaak dropped the L word at the first chance he got.  I am starting to think that it's a private joke of his - "How many times can I say leviathan before Blizzard censors me?" To sum up the story, Nightmares is a shameless self promotion for Knaak's upcoming book.  I'll let that slide simply because the story was so engrossing.  As the title suggests, Knaak conjures up a trio of stories told through dream sequences.  Each of them touches an important city leader, Thrall, Jaina, and Magni Bronzebeard in ways unfathomable and highly disturbing.  Knaak takes old stories that we are familiar with and casts his own spell over them.  Changing them into dark, horrible What If...? series of tragic happenings.  Very entertaining. What the writers and artists pull off in such a small amount of space continues to impress me.  We've got stories from thousands of years ago, psychological warfare, battles from beyond the grave, cracked minds, the early horde and avenging hearts all rolled into one Volume.  I highly recommend that more people begin reading these tales.  They are relatively inexpensive, imaginative, and very quick reads. Something to do while your waiting for that 7:30 raid to start...at 8:30. Warcraft: Legends Volume 5 comes out on September 1.

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I'm late to the show with this one, I know.  Get over it, because I couldn't resist picking up The Ultimate Edition (because it's so Ultimate) of the manga after reading through the available four volumes of Warcraft: Legends.  After all, if the success of The Sunwell Trilogy allowed Blizzard/Tokyopop to make another series, it couldn't have been bad.  Right?  With high hopes (and a bad current book) I took a deep breath and purchased yet another piece of literature from scribe Richard Knaak and his first effort with artist Jae-Hwan Kim. Tokyopop's collection of all three mangas, Dragon Hunt, Shadows of Ice, Ghostlands, into a single hardcover edition made quite an impression on me.  The Ultimate Edition (is there a 'The Not-So-Ultimate Edition'?) binds all of the installments together in what is best described as a tome.  If I didn't know better the imposing size of collected works would have lead me to believe that a year long read was about to begin.  Tokyopop's craftsmanship doesn't stop at the physical construction and presentation of the literature either.  Included in the non-purist edition is a new, eight-page color prologue of the Sunwell's creation, a fantastic abridged history of WoW, an art gallery, developmental drawings and an afterword by the loremaster himself, Chris Metzen.  Ironically there is also an advertisement for the next manga trilogy from Knaak/Kim, Dragons Of Outland.  It'll be here in 2008...wait a minute. Spoilers Ahead! Dragon Hunt:  The first of the three partitions is the most boring, although it isn't a bad thing to be honest.  Like most of the manga (and literature) I have read, the opening of the Knaak's story is full of character introduction, development and backstory.  More than half of Dragon Hunt is dedicated to various introductions, some minor characters included, but the author slipped in subtle, yet important, details during the opening.  The front loading of characters distracted me from the story somewhat, but Knaak's writing style (and Kim's focused art) makes it hard to miss the really important points, like Tyrygosa's first appearance and the destruction of Tarren Mill.  The unorganized opening didn't instill high expectations for the rest of the trilogy. Shadows of Ice:  Thanks to the abrupt ending of Dragon Hunt, Shadows of Ice starts off with a bang.  With all of the main characters introduced, Knaak ramps up the action and creates a sense of urgency in book two.  We're shown dragon battles, betrayal, a Scourge officer (I guess they aren't entirely mindless), and enough action to allow Kim to show off his artistic prowess. Shadows of Ice is where we meet Trag Highmountain, the star of Knaak's Legends storyline, and his master that betrayed the betrayer, Baron Mordis.  The pair are the main antagonists of this section and drive the story forward in a few interesting ways.  If you're looking for action, this subset of the trilogy is the book you want to pour over.  The flip side is that Knaak's storyarc takes a backseat to the battle sequences. Ghostlands:  The entire first chapter of Ghostlands is dedicated to further character development.  It's taken some time but we are finally given details on Jorad Mace's past, which by a second hand account, details some aspects of the mysterious Borel and how the shadowed figure is tied to the storyarc.  Unfortunately Mace's story is fairly uninspired.  Up till now I had been waiting for something epic from him, but he ended up being a relatively underdeveloped main character.  Lor'themar and Sylvanas are given about the same development in the section and they are already known figures.  The aptly titled chapter, after all nothing is left around the old Sunwell, is a well-balanced combination of action and story telling.   The unusual cast of characters teaming up in the ending chapters to take on the empowered Dar'Khan was a nice touch.  The only real knock against Ghostlands is that Kim's art got a little to anime-y for me in some scenes, hardly a showstopping flub. I know I have beaten Knaak's work pretty badly in various lore-focused posts, but this time I will give him a pass.  The characters he created, Trag, Aveena, or fleshed out, Kalec, Tyri, Dar'Khan happen to be part of the best work he's done in the Warcraft universe.  I just wish he didn't tie it all back to Korialstrasz again.  At least we have a Rhonin-less adventure on our hands.  Last but not least was the (semi) non-combat pet of Aveena's, Raac.  As cheesy the wind serpent was, I loved the bastard. Spoilers Done. The tome's own elegance, if not for Knaak's best action and character work to date, is worthy of any lore nuts' shelf space.  And yes, the book is impressive enough to be put on your shelf.  Right next to that Frostmourne. If you are wonder about Dragons of Outland, the trilogy set during The Burning Crusade's timeframe, it is now scheduled for a Fall 2009 release.  Hopefully Wrath of the Lich King's manga (I'm assuming it is being planned) will be released in a more timely fashion.

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After falling in love with the stories from Warcraft Legends: Volumes 1, 2 & 3, I decided to become a first adopter to the latest installment, Warcraft Legends: Volume 4.  The new manga from Tokyopop didn't have the same fanfare as its predecessor, but to be entirely honest, it didn't need it either.  Not only does that package contain the conclusion to Trag Highmountain's struggle against the Lich King, but Dan Jolley and Christie Golden return to pen a pair of excellent stories. Fate: I've been pretty critical of Knaak's novels in the past, however the short stories he creates for the mangas are entertaining and more spirited.  Sure, Trag may have been a Yoda clone back in The Sunwell Trilogy, but the Tauren has come into his own in his undead state.  Fate, the culmination to the four-part mini-series, happens to be the best of the quartet, even though its short and to the point. Knaak's ability to articulate Trag's desperation and his need for revenge in only a handful of pages is an impressive show of a cohesive and clear direction.  The 300 (among other movies) reference did not get by me either. Bloodsail Buccaneer: There is no point beating around the bush on this one.  Dan Jolley's epic tale, relative to the rest of stories in Legends, of the Bloodsail pirates is easily the best of the bunch.  The tale spans a whopping 62 pages, that enables Jolley to craft some of the deepest character development I've seen outside of the novels.  Bloodsail Buccaneer is a tale about three boys who are kidnapped and forced to work for, and later alongside, the band of pirates and their undead Captain Jerias Bloodvein.  What makes this story so grand isn't only its length and detail, or even the stellar art (best of the edition as well), but the blend of a known storyline with unknown characters.  The boys are a trio from Westfall who were at the wrong place, at the wrong time.  Eventually they are tied up, forced to pillage and plunder for the Stranglethorn Vale band, and are even sent off to seek the Captain's revenge against Edwin VanCleef. Yes, the story culminates in an epic raid on the Deadmines.  Apparently I can't get enough of the craftsman. Blood Runs Thicker: It's almost as if newcomer Tim Beedle read Jolley's story and realized how awesome the blending of unknown and known lore is.  Beedle's contribution to Volume 4 follows the odd traveling group known to all as the Darkmoon Faire.  The adventure focuses upon a newcomer to the group, the freakishly strong Kerri, and her troubles with the law.  By the end of the piece we see just how far the performers of "The Greatest Show In Azeroth" will go to protect one another.  Thebackstory puts a whole new light upon Silas Darkmoon's crew.  In short, don't piss them off.  Everyone's favorite buffer, Sayge, makes an appearance too.  As much as I enjoyed the story, Kawakami's art wasn't detailed enough for my liking.  Many panes felt rather empty. A Warrior Made--Part 1:  I know Golden has been writing fantasy for quite some time, but I can't help but think I have seen her grow within the Warcraft universe.  Initially I disliked her dialogue, but she made up for stale or bland conversations with terrific characters (see Fala).  A Warrior Made--Part 1 fixes the dialogue problems while setting the stage for another manga mini-series.  The tale takes place before the corruption of orcs, a time frame we rarely see, and revolves around a weak newborn female's struggle to be accepted by the Frostwolf clan.  It's another mix of known and unknown lore, but like Knaak's tales, the introduction lore to the mother of Thrall looks like it will be spread across a series of very short tales.  Part 2 will be published with three other stories in Warcraft Legends: Volume 5 in September. Volume 4 definitely had a reoccurring theme, blending new information into previously known lore, and it worked.  Well.  I don't think that all of the manga should focus on addingbackstory , but it was certainly refreshing to see some of these "everyday" characters play a part in the grand storylines that we players have always wanted to influence.  As for the mini-series stories, I really feel that the authors should make the parts far longer.  I may have enjoyed the tales from Knaak and Golden, but they seemed to finish just as they were getting started.  Overall, Volume 4 offers the best quartet of stories, including the best of all volumes, in Warcraft Legends.  On the strength ofJolley's story I will certainly be picking up his manga, Warcraft: Death Knight, and of course, Volume 5. To Tokyopop: The "behind the scenes" information is much more appreciated than a subset of literature from that other series you produce.

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In an effort to cover World of Warcraft's extended Extended Universe I drank not one, not two but four Game Fuels recently, two of each flavor.  Now I know the Horde is going to freak out about this with claims that Project Lore hates hordies, but your drink taste exactly how I would imagine Cherry citrus-flavored death to taste.  The stuff is absolutely awful.  It should be pulled off the market as fast as Zicam and its creators forced to drink it, and only it, until they beg for mercy.   Screw waterboarding, just force terrorists to drink this concoction of chemicals and "flavor!" As with most things, the Alliance is better.  Well, that is simply relative to the Horde mockery of a refreshing beverage.  This pop is only mildly less appalling than its co-branded cousin, offering gamers a Wild Berry-flavored potion of high fructose corn syrup, caffeine and almost the same collection of chemicals that are difficult (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid), and scary (Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin), to pronounce.  I've yet to meet someone who drank the disgusting tonics out of something other than curiosity, but the shocking thing is that they have both been around the block before. As unattractive as I find Horde Red, the carbonated catastrophe is a re-branding of Mountain Dew's Halo 3 GameFuel which debuted in 2007.  Not to be outdone by unoriginality, the Alliance Blue is also a re-branding, this time of Mountain Dew's election tie-in flavor, Mountain Dew Revolution. Something good did come of the cross branding though, IRL dailies.  Again, I am not a marketing mastermind, but forcing us to view the same junk, much of which has nothing to do with the sodas, day in and day out seems like an odd marketing strategy.  Even money says it has to do with the act of repetition forcing the human brain to remember things more accurately (see Navi). In all seriousness the good aspect is another vanity pet!  After this morning's failed attempts at the Scorched Stone, my GM and I took out our frustrations on each other's Battle-Bots.  Once fueled up (you have to reboot WoW after requesting your fuel) these guys duke it out for a bit and then one explodes in a great show of leakage.  Glad Blizzard gave the animators some time to play with these machines, but it makes me want a mini Diablo vs. mini Tyrael battle even more. I'd say that between the chance for IRL rewards, even if the token collection system is absolutely stupid, and the in-game combat pet, the co-branding has been a success.  But Blizzard, next time make the other company create interesting IRL dailies.  It really shouldn't be that difficult, some guerrilla marketing, puzzles we have to solve, trivia, need I go on? There are a ton of things more entertaining than "watching" videos over, and over again. Here I thought reading numerous Knaak novels was the worst thing that could come from the Extended Universe!  I kid, I kid, the story arcs are entertaining and leave absolutely no aftertaste (of death). I am sure many of you out there actually enjoy these deviants of ahh, but are you proud enough to admit it?  Me?  I will stick with my Pepsi/Mountain Dew Throwback, as I cannot stand the aftertaste left on my palate by High Fructose Corn Syrup.  The Throwback stuff is awesome, as far as soda goes anyway.  Anyone else get a kick out of the Battle-Bots? Edit: Yes the Horde Drink is the Halo 3 GameFuel, not Code Red. Thank you readers!

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The literary form of anime isn't a hot topic in the greater WoWverse, if the number of comments left on the previous manga post are anything to go by.  I entirely understand that not everyone is going to want to purchase the collection of Warcraft inspired novels, let alone the higher priced manga titles, but we were talking free stuff! I for one took the opportunity that Tokyopop offered us and caught up on my manga.  Heck, I enjoyed them so much that I picked up Volume 2 to add to my collection even though the entire book is still available online.  You don't need to read the previous volumes to get into the manga - aside from the reoccurring Richard Knaak storyline - but I highly recommend it since they are very entertaining.  That trend only continues in Volume 3. Fiend: Numerous readers have pointed out in other Novel Posts that I don't particularly enjoy Knaak.  I am not going to deny that.  For that reason, you may expect me to badmouth the third Trag Highmountain tale, but for the first time in the series, Knaak's story is not the worst in a particular volume.  Unlike the previous two installments, Fiend moves the storyline along, rather than being focused on a single event.  Both Fallen and Fear previously hinged on one happening, causing Trag's story to barely move at all.  In conjunction with the progressing storyarc, Knaak unveils multiple sides to Trag, compassion, comradely and thanks, that we hadn't seen since the Lich King began speaking to the tauren. Crusader's Blood:  For me, this tale of the Scarlet Crusade's unabashed hatred for anything and everything undead takes the number one spot for the volume by far.  Dan Jolley, in Alan Moore fashion, presents the readers with multiple sides of the struggle, not the black and white discussions we are used to.  At the forefront is the plight of the Forsaken versus the blind faith of those who follow the Scarlet Crusade.  But amongst these ranks we are shown the morally gray side of things.  Do all undead, Scourge-bound or not, need to be vanquished?  Is the Scarlet Crusade infallible?  Does this taste rotten to you?  The best story of the bunch. I Got What Yule Need:  Christie Golden's tale of Winter Veil certainly seems oddly placed in a book that was released in mid-March.  Even money on the story originally being slated for Volume 2, which was released in November.  The story, and the art accompanying it, is meant to be a feel good holiday tale complete with Greatfather Winter, robots, big-eyed children and happy endings.  Scheduling issues ignored, Golden delivers an iconic children's story set in the Warcraft universe that could easily be mistaken for a Pixar pitch.  After all it offers entertainment for the whole family and I'll be damned if Fala isn't the cutest character ever. The Thrill Of The Hunt:  Most of the stories presented in the Legends series are based on unheard of adventurers like you and me.  Nameless people who are just living their day-to-day lives in Azeroth, doing their best to provide for their factions and friends.  This is not one of those stories.  Breaking from tradition, Troy Lewter was given permission to add some backstory to the best known - and dressed - hunter in all of Azeroth, Hemet Nesingwary.  The story starts off with Hemet calling out a traveler for a bogus tale, before he launches us into a flashback on the seedy underbelly of hunting, poaching.  Nesingwary's adventure is by no means an original piece of work, but who wouldn't want to read about the dwarf going Rambo on a group of cub hunting, elf killing poachers? Initially, I wasn't expecting much from the Legends spin-offs, but reading the three installments in quick succession have turned me towards the darkside.  The quick and dirty stories of unknown travelers, adventurers or plain citizens add a complexity to Warcraft that no other form of the universe, extended or otherwise, has previously attempted, let alone accomplished.  Consider me a guaranteed purchaser of Volumes 4 and 5.  I highly recommend that you give Legends a chance.  Again, they are free so what are you waiting for?

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An interesting post cropped up over on the video game journalist social network a few weeks back and it got me thinking. In said post, the OP innocently asked what his peers thought about novels based on video games properties. While most gamers know that a movie based on a game equals a waste of two hours, the threat of a book, let alone a series of novels, on one's free time can be far more detrimental. The best example would be the epically bad Doom novels, and to a lesser extent, the long-running Resident Evil franchise.

The consensus ended up being the same as with movie tie ins. Generally speaking, the idea of a video game branching out into movies or novels was branded as a bad idea, with the Doom series being an example of a failure on both ends. Yet there is always the exception that proves the rule.

For Blizzard's part, the novels based on their properties were mentioned as some of the best out there. The Warcraft-inspired series of novels will be hitting book 12 (although not all in a single series) with Christie Golden's upcoming Arthas-based novel coming in April 2009. It is probably worth mentioning that some people believe the book will coincide with the release of Icecrown Citadel.

Wrath of the Lich King has really got me back into the whole “lore nerd” routine and as such, I just had to pick up the newest novels when I came across them while doing some holiday shopping. What? You never get gifts for yourself?

For those who haven't read anything from Blizzard, there is a nice little spoiler-less Novel Guide over on WoWWiki, although it has not been updated recently (which I may take care of later today). For starters, Night of the Dragon came out alongside Wrath, so that is no longer unreleased. This is especially awesome because Richard A. Knaak has done the best novelization work in the Warcraft universe, in my humble opinion. Pick up the Warcraft: War of the Ancients Archive (containing the entire second series) for proof.

Fun facts on the Warcraft novels:

• None of the World of Warcraft-branded novels actually tie directly to events in the MMORPG.  They come before, after or are entirely new events.
• All of the cover art is done by Blizzard artists.
• Much of the lore to be incorporated in the canceled Warcraft Adventures was reworked by Metzen and the writers for the novels. Most notably Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden, which is titled after the video game's subtitle.
• Richard A. Knaak has written five of the eleven published novels, all of them linking to each other. This includes a book from the original series, the three book run of the second series and the just published Night of the Dragon.
• The original series spoils much of the earlier RTS games, the second series spoils some of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, while the World of Warcraft series has spoilers all over the place.

During my shopping spree I picked up three novels, the latest pair in the World of Warcraft series, Tides of Darkness by Aaron Rosenberg and Beyond the Dark Portal by Aaron Rosenberg & Christie Golden and Night of the Dragon by Richard A. Knaak. The stack of literature will come in handy for my vacation at the end of the year. I just have to read them slow enough to grasp all of their plotlines separately, rather than having them meld into a single entity in my pea-sized brain, like the numbered StarCraft series did.

Anyone else enjoy the Warcraft/StarCraft/Diablo novels?  The Warcraft universe has the best novels with Knaak's numerous contributions standing out.  However, the single best adapatation of the universe would have to be Lord of the Clans.  In fairness to the other writers, Golden had a huge advantage due to the help from Metzen and the other writers who penned the adventure game.

What about other franchises?  Halo?  Mass Effect?  I saw a Gears of War book while I was browsing, surely that has to have a more fleshed-out plot than both 360 titles combined.

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