Where do you actually buy Chronicles? I don’t think I’ve seen them in Australia.
I’ve seen them on Amazon. Maybe do a google search for stores near you that sell them.
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Huh yeah you’re right, online seems to be the way to go. Booktopia, Amazon, Dymocks.
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They should revamp and republish the first three with actual accurate lore and maps since each book retconned the last.
They were declared unreliable narration. They’re not doing that, when future stories will most likely change things as well.
Some of it, sure, but titans not knowing the shape of the Broken Isles, or the location of Kul Tiras, is just an oversight because of expansions. I wish they waited until BFA to make chronicle honestly because at least all of the continent shapes would be the same.
Honestly, I would like at least clarification or fixing some plot points that depend on the player character.
Like, how many people carried a Hearth of Azeroth around.
Who were the canon wielders of the artifact weapons, maybe?
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Given the way they handled canon raid clears and the fan fallout from it, I think giving names to HoA and Artifact wielders would be a terrible idea. It also would remove player immersion by saying “no, you did not actually do this.”
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Nitpicking, but Marvel Comics typically is obscenely good about keeping to canon.
At the same time, the degree of Vol. 3 glossing over and rushing through things compared to the prior installments kind of carried that implication in and of itself. In spite of the comparatively much shorter spans of time involved, far more events of note are crammed into the canon from WC3 to Cataclysm than the previous history, yet instead of significantly expanding upon those things they truncated it all to be less detailed and in-depth than it was before. As if they were trying to avoid stepping on the games’ toes and deliberately withholding details to encourage the reader to indeed “go play the games for the rest of this lore.”
These Chronicles came out when Classic WoW and WarCraft 3 Reforged weren’t around yet, but were certainly in the early stages of planning and/or development. So it’s arguably unsurprising that they’d use a brisker and more broadly summary approach to the third Volume because they’d want lore fans to go back and play those two games when they came out to reexperience the lore rather than read about it all in Chronicle.
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Continuity was always a bit of a magicians trick at the end of the day. Characters beliefs, flaws, development, plot points and even entire histories could and would be upended by something as mundane as a new creative team taking over a comic book. Or a movie series. Or the plot of a long running MMORPG. People carried on buying into it not because they were ignorant of that but a trust that the creators wouldn’t push things too far. Changes would try to be minimal were possible and when they needed a hammer instead of a scalpel there would be an explanation for that. A Crisis, a secret war, a flashpoint etc…
But like with any magicians trick the moment you acknowledge the trick, the moment you show the audience what you’re doing, you lose them. What’s happening now is a bunch of creators are going up to their audiences, who bought into the illusion of continuity, and are saying: “Hey buddy! None of it ever really matters!” And then acting oddly surprised when said audience reacts to that with either anger or worse apathy.
Because if even the creators themselves can’t be bothered to act like what they’re making matters why should anyone else?
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Honestly, if my all my copies suddenly magic’d away, I’d rebuy them in an instant. My god the art is just too good. Beholding Skyreach, SIlvermoon, Azshara’s empire… I am getting goose bumps merely thinking of it.
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I’d argue that the audience shouldn’t take it that seriously. Especially in the situations you mentioned.
Comic book continuity between runs is a joke, and coming out with a new Crisis/Secret War every decade (or every couple of years these days is a marketing ploy used to get people to buy certain issues of comics- less because they actually enjoy the story being told in that event- but because it’s important to the canon.
And I don’t think it’d be a good thing for people in the comic book industry to act like that’s not the case. They play up the relevance of the canonicty of those event comics in order to sell issues with the knowledge that another is a couple years away.
Same deal with stage magicians. Of course you don’t give away the secret of the trick, but stage magicians/illusionists. But the audience knows they’re not actually using supernatural powers.
And I think it’d be pretty darned messed up for any magician to do a show and try to actually convince the audience he was an actual sorcerer, with supernatural powers. And they certainly don’t play it up as truth backstage. That’s a big part of why they prefer the term “stage magician” and “illusionist”.
And while you didn’t mention it, there’s a similar situation with kayfabe in pro wrestling. It’s a bit. Everyone’s in on it. Heck, the unrealistic efforts wrestlers go to in order to maintain kayfabe is part of what makes it even more unrealistic.
But the people who think the interactions between those people is real and treat it like it is? Yeah, I don’t think those people should remain under that illusion.
To care about a work because you enjoy the narrative, or the themes, or the message, or other content? Cool! If it makes a reference to some previous event? That’s a fun nod/Easter egg. It can fun to take a work you already enjoy and be able to play connect the dots or see how someone can creatively work references to past events.
But to like/dislike it based purely on it’s continuity with some prior work done over a decade ago by a team that very obviously didn’t have that event in mind when they created the franchise? I say you’re getting played.
It can also result in works that largely forgo the creative process because they’e more concerned with remaining consistent with past events. Events that the original creators put in fr the purposes of that particular work, and without ever intending there to be greater ramifications.
And it also makes it harder for us to truly appreciate the hard when people do put into their work and still manage to create something engaging in its own right, because we assume it’s just the default when it isn’t. You can come out with a great work, and people will instead focus on how it violates canon.
Not acknowledging the very real world factors that influence and shape the creation of the fiction we consume is a bad thing. It makes it that much harder to engage it thoughtfully and critically.
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Yes, that was the point. No one is actually tricked by the magician’s ‘magic’ or the wrestlers beefs or that continuity is deeply important (Or at least you hope not. Angry forum threads notwithstanding). But in each case there is an agreed suspension of disbelief at play between the performers and the audience. You know that magician isn’t actually casting spells or using some kind of miraculous power or that wrestlers are actually 100% . But, at least for a little while, it’s fun to pretend that they are. Or at least not worry yourself over asking how something was done and just go with the fun of it happening. And so long as they’re not getting called out and they don’t show their hand the show “works as intended” or more accurately as sold.
When it comes to continuity “mattering” in something like WoW I would say that was sold as part of the product. Way back in the day WoW was absolutely being pushed as the natural continuation of WC3 for an entire fan base; come and see the characters, places and things from the previous games but now on the ground level. Even among the various retcons and changes that Vanillas content absolutely made the fact that it was connected to that older game and its story and characters helped sell a lot of people on an entirely new game and genre. Not on it’s own of course but it was absolutely a factor. And Blizzard is still very much working this angle, tho nowadays they’re more likely to reference previous expansions then older games. Heck they’ve contorted their stories more then a few times to make sure that the ending of one expansion, in however minor a fashion, hints at or contributes to the plot of the next. In BfA alone we had hints of death magic and “the world beyond life” as far back as its launch content.
I don’t think continuity makes something better or worse. I think consistency in a product, which as I see it is meeting or exceeding the expectations of its audience, does. And keeping continuity with prior events is absolutely part of what WoW in particular, and numerous other works of fiction a side, made an important part of that consistency in that case. There is a tight rope for sure; finding the balance between continuity being a stranglehold and doing whatever you want without regard for the foundations needed to have it make sense. And in WoWs case I think the current developers have veered way too far into the latter camp.
It’s okay to not care about continuity. It’s not okay (or “less okay”) to take an existing product that did try and care about it’s continuity and decide that no longer matters. Especially not when trying to still sell it as the “same” product.
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[quote="Liuv-moon-guard, post:34, topic:547263,]
Yes, that was the point. No one is actually tricked by the magician’s ‘magic’ or the wrestlers beefs or that continuity is deeply important (Or at least you hope not. Angry forum threads notwithstanding). But in each case there is an agreed suspension of disbelief at play between the performers and the audience. You know that magician isn’t actually casting spells or using some kind of miraculous power or that wrestlers are actually 100% . But, at least for a little while, it’s fun to pretend that they are. Or at least not worry yourself over asking how something was done and just go with the fun of it happening. And so long as they’re not getting called out and they don’t show their hand the show “works as intended” or more accurately as sold.
[/quote]
The suspension of disbelief involved in reading the Chronicles series is that you’re reading the fictional history of some fictional universe found within the pages of the book.
The mutually acknowledged fantasy is not that what’s inside the book is 100% consistent with the dozens of other novels, expansions, spinoffs, etc in a franchise that is not being written with any end in sight.
Even if it was, the internal fiction of the book itself doesn’t come out and say, “Everything you’re reading is subject to change in the next patch/expansion/novel/game.” That’s meta knowledge gleaned from the creators, who were being upfront about the unreliable nature of the book and the fact that they will not be using it as some kind of lore bible.
I mean heck, the book itself is a retcon regarding preexisting lore. It itself is something of a reboot.
Every chapter in Warcraft’s ongoing story has included significant retcons and changes to continuity with significant impact on the universe. Warcraft 1 to Warcraft 2. Warcraft 2 to Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3 to WoW. Every expansion of WoW since. To say nothing of comics and novels.
Yeah, each new game takes place in the same univese and has the ‘same’ characters, but Blizzard has never seemed to work particularly hard when it came to establishing or maintaining a tight level of tight continuity between releases.
The reality is that people have come into the franchise at various entry points, disregard all the retcons and inconsistencies that existed before, and tend to go from there.
And over time, Blizzard continues doing what Blizzard has always done, and continues releasing new material that regularly retcons, kludges, or outright contradictions of previous works and adhering to past precedent chiefly as a means of trying to as they deem necessary to justify/enhance the franchise’s current storyline.
But rather than accept that -even when the creators come out and flat out admit it- people instead get upset because they want the Warcraft to be this thing that’s maintained some sort of consistency over the limited time frame in which they’ve experienced it.
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They’ve basically already said Chronicles is not much better than tp and everything in it is subject to change. If it’s not really an accurate history, there is really no point to it existing.
I recall when Chronicles came out that Blizzard had made a lot of noise about shake-ups to the story team, and I remember a lot of people telling me that they thought this was going to finally fix the transient, juryrigged nature of WoW worldbuilding.
The closest analogy I can think of is a campaign setting book for a tabletop RPG.
I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I think it’s entirely reasonable that many people did. I actually can’t think of another EU that released even a single book based on explaining how literally everything worked, let alone three. Usually the closest you get is a compilation of existing canon or a meaningless tech specs book, not a substitute lore bible that begins with cosmology.
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People who treat Chronicle as being non cannon because it retconned some insignificant plot points are being a bit silly.
Yes, it was very annoying that Blizzard did it and I hate them, but a few inconsistencies does not suddenly make the three volumes a fanfic.
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History doesn’t change… this ticks me off because Chronicle was meant to be a historical account of the cosmology, and now all of a sudden it’s just not. So what is it then, other than an opinion piece?
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Yeah, it was called a ‘definitive tome of Warcraft history’. My interest in buying more when the definitive part turned out to be bull. This is on website advertisements and Metzen. ‘Codify, tighten up, and clarify the history of Warcraft.’ Instead they’ve doubled back and cast so much of it in doubt anyway.
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