Best Books/Lore to prepare for Classic?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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What are the best WOW books I should read to get ready for Classic? I want to know ALL about the lore, characters, and history. Should I play through Warcraft 1, 2 and 3? I’ve been playing since vanilla, but want refreshers.

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Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and the expansion The Frozen Throne are great games. You don’t need to wait for the remasters coming out later this year IMO.

The books are OK, but the writing is uneven. Golden’s The Rise of the Horde is probably the best of the lot, I’d say, while RAK’s War of the Ancients trilogy is OK as well. In the case of the latter, a lot of the lore was heavily retconned for Legion–bear that in mind.

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Warcraft 3

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Warcraft 3 is the pre cursor to WoW.

Warcraft 1 has a bit of lore, mainly about King llane being killed by Garona and Stormwind burned - which in game leads to Defia’s brotherhood.

Warcraft 2 you learn a bit about the Deathwing. Chogal, Human kingdoms, why Alterac was burned. - the expansion brings in Nerzul - before he became the lich king - How Draenor got turned into Outland , How the Alliance heroes got stuck in outland.

Warcraft 3 is pretty much how the classic world looks

Thrall builds the horde from slaves listens to Medivh goes to Kalimdor joins the tauren and trolls creates Orgrimmar.

Humans get the scourge refuse to leave for Kalimdor, Arthas becomes a Scourge proxy.
Night elfs and Horde and alliance unite to fight the legion - Introduces Grom and how illidan become a demon.

Frozen throne - introduction of Kaelthas and illidan try to stop arthas and fail.

then World of Warcraft.

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Can’t go wrong with Warcraft 3, its such an amazing story that leads up to World of Warcraft. I honestly never liked RTS games but I would force myself to beat it just to get to the next cutscene.

It felt so amazing to finally beat A Symphony of Frost and Flame after failing it 10 times to see Arthas ascending the frozen throne, one of the best endings to a video game ever!

It answers a lot of questions about Classic WoW if you never heard the story before, how the Tauren and Night Elves where discovered, what happened to Dalaran and Hyjal, why the Dark Portal is closed, and of course everyones favorite… The Culling of Stratholme!

It also shows how Orgrimmar was being built in the bonus campaign after the main story.

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War of the Ancients was awesome!

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If you are going to to play a hunter read the Lord of the Rings trilogy because Legolas. :sunglasses:

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The Star Wars prequels is basically the story of Arthas Menethil.

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The most important figures to learn about for classic are Mankirk, his wife, and Hogger.

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I have it on good authority that Mankirk’s wife can be found in Silithus.

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Warcraft III. (+The Frozen Throne). 100%

It sets the scene for so much of the World and the characters in it

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Lord of the Clans, (My boy Thrall) War of the Ancients, (just cause Broxigar) and Of Blood and Honor. (Find out why Tyrion is hiding in the plague lands)
You should be able to finish all of them before classic.
I expect 200 word essays on each one no later than Aug 24th. Lol.

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If you’re looking for books, then there’s a bevy of published works you might want to look into.

Warcraft 1-era:

The Last Guardian by Jeff Grubb.

Warcraft 2:

Tides of Darkness by Aaron Rosenberg.
Beyond the Dark Portal by Aaron Rosenberg and Christie Golden
Day of the Dragon by Richard A. Knaak
Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden.
Of Blood and Honor by Chris Metzen.

Warcraft 3
Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden.
The War of the Ancients Trilogy by Richard A. Knaak
Cycle of Hatred by Keith RA Decandido

There’s at least one short story you should read: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/story/short-story/war-of-the-shifting-sands

But yes, Warcraft 3 is all you really need. Everything else is Lore.

There’s also the old D20 White Wolf published Warcraft RPG books, which are the building blocks for the layout of a lot of what we then see in WoW itself.

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I’d look into finding PDFs of the old WoW tabletop RPG, chock full of lore to sink your teeth into, I really recommend them.