WoW Books

[smite]

Are there any books on the story of WoW?
 
I have noticed the new "Arthas: Rise of the Lich King" and wondered if there were any before.

[TeaLeaf]

Aye there are, I'll need to dig out the names.  Quite a few actually.

[Tirkad]

I've only managed to find the 3 books of "the War of the Ancients" serie, and i really had a nice time reading them. But i'm not sure how many more books about warcraft are there.

[smite]

This was more to find the basic story from start to current content as i think i would be a good story.
But i get the impression the ones currently out are small stories by different authors. Not quite what i am after.
 
Anyway it is Gandy's fault he got me started by looking at it from the horde side and with the recent ingame movies showing the darker side of the King of Stormwind.

[Jim]

Semi books but i read the "Warcraft Sunwell Trilogy" About Anveena and the sunwell powers. Includes Kalecgos

Kinda like comics but was a good read

Order of trilogy

1. Dragon Hunt
2. Shadows of ice
3. Ghostlands

[Gandalf]

Buy this play the games, job done

[Azunai]

Bar the new Arthas book (which this thread reminds me I need to reserve), there's 11 Warcraft novels, not including manga's, all of which are in my posession, and very good reads I must say They're about 300/400 pages in length each and written by various authors, Richard A. Knaak and Christie Golden having written the most of them. They're written in roughly the same style though so no problems there. This is the order in which I recommend reading them, and the order in which the events take place on the WoW timeline:

The Rise of the Horde is about how the Orcs were manipulated by Ner'Zhul and Gul'dan and driven against the Draenei, followed by their initial invasion of Azeroth.

The Last Guardian is about Khadgar (the guy in Shattrah) and how he became an apprentice of Medivh, the wizard in Kharazan. Deals about how Medivh was corrupted into collaborating with Gul'dan to open the Dark Portal and let the Orcs into Azeroth for the First War.

Tides of Darkness tracks the Second War from both an Alliance (Turalyon and Khadgar) and Horde (Ogrim Doomhammer) perspective. It's a sort of novel about Warcraft 2.

Beyond The Dark Portal is basically the story of the Warcraft 2 expansion, it follows Turalyon, Khadgar and co through Draenor.

The Day of the Dragon by Richard A. Knaak is about Rhonin and Krasus (the wizard in Dalaran and the Consort of Alextrasza on Wyrmrest) and tells of their first adventure, takes place in the aftermath of the Second War.

You can read Lord of the Clans at this point, which is about Thrall's life - including the Escape from Durnholde from CoT, and how he becomes the leader of the Horde. Can see this as a prelude to Thrall's story in Warcraft 3.

War of the Ancients is a trilogy composed of The Well of Eternity, The Demon Soul and The Sundering. The story itself takes place 10.000 years prio to current Warcraft time, but it involves Rhonin and Krasus going back in time to said timeline. They do this from WoW vanilla time (Kalimdor has been discovered and Thrall resides in Orgrimmar), so hence I placed it here in the chronology.

Then comes Cycle of Hatred, which wasn't all that interesting. I can't even fully recall what it was about but globally it deals with Theramore and Orgrimmar. Gives some more insight into Jaina Proudmoore as well as tells some stuff about Aegwynn, Medivh's mother. Takes place ...well I guess somewhere during original WoW.

Finally is Night of the Dragon, which involves Rhonin and Krasus once again going into Grim Batol, this takes place between TBC and WotLK. It's rumoured that this book establishes the lore for the 'secret' 3.2 raid instance, which would then be Grim Batol with probably Deathwing as a (final) boss.

The Sunwell Trilogy Jim talks about is a manga and can probably be plucked off your torrent place if you want, or ordered somewhere. They set up the story for the Sunwell Plateau instance. There's also a comic series about Varian Wrynn, the druid and the blood elf rogue as gladiators in the Orgrimmar arena, which goes to explain why Wrynn is so ****ed @ the Horde, but I've not found any of it available in Netherlands yet so haven't gotten my hands on them yet.

[TeaLeaf]

Thanks Azunai, you put it way better and more completely than I would have done!

TL.

[Bellanie]

thanks for the post gonna pick them up asap and give em a read:)

[smite]

Cheers bud.... i will start looking for them.
 
Actually cheers all for replying.

[Azunai]

Even if you only read a few I would definetly recommend the War of the Ancients trilogy. It's quite an epic piece of lore, with the story of how the Burning Legion first came to Azeroth, and involves alot of notable characters such as Azshara, Illidan, Malfurion, Tyrande Whisperwind, Maiev and Jared Shadowsong, Cenarius etc. for the Night Elves, Archimonde, Mannoroc, the Satyrs for the demon side and also tells of how Neltharion became Deathwing and about how the blue dragonflight was turned insane, alot about dragons and even the Old Gods in there. Good stuff indeed.