Warcraft novels VS WoW novels

Lore Story Forum
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Hello!

I make this thread to express something that annoy me a lot since a while now but the more i see it the less i can endure it.

When i was younger, i loved to read the novels labeled as “Warcraft” such as the War of the Ancients trilogy, the Last Guardian, Lord the Clans etc…

But recently, as i started to read more of the novels labeled as “World of Warcraft” such as Tides of War, Illidan, and more recently the short stories about Alleria meeting Arathor and Faerin Lothar, something just bugs me out.

There is way too much references to the game and gameplay elements…i think it break immersion at least for me.

I will explain why i dont like it :

For example, in Tides of War when we are given a description about Theramore, what the book say is…what is in game, and well, in the game Theramore is tiny, tinnier than what the devs intanded to make it since they said themselves that they had to make the world lot smaller than what it should have been.

And so, since in the game there is 3 houses…in the novels the lore tells you that there is 3 houses…and to me that is such a bad thing, like, a novel give you the possibility to not be bound by the in-game restrictions that you are allowed to think big, to make the world feel big, and they bascially throw it away just to “be closer to how it is in the game” which is terrible imo.

Another thing that annoys me is the “in game references” such as for example in the short story about Alleria being in Silvermoon, at a moment they say that she bough a “Talador’s cheese”. The problem with that is, well, how do they get these cheese? I mean, this is from alternate Draenor…but the point was just to make a “references” because, the npc sell this in the game so it sell it in the story too…but it makes kind of no sense.

Last thing that annoyed me hard, was on the Faerin Lothar, there was a part that went as follow :

“Faerin focused the light in her fist and released a Blinding Light which blinded all the nerubians within 10 yards.”

I am not joking, the thing is wrote like this WITHIN 10 YARDS whch is EXACTLY the radion of the spell in game.

To me, this is like if they added like “ho and then nerubians died and Faerin got an achievement!”

To me this just breaks the immersion, i feel like i am reading a game manual and not a novel.

These kind of things were not in the novels labeled Warcraft, there was no such things in these novels, but if these novels had such things, if would be like that for example : “And then Thrall asked his peon and build barrack, and he had enough gold to train 3 grunts! Exactly 200g for each grunts!”

What do you think yourselves? Are you also tired of seeing such things in the novels?

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…That doesnt mean the cheese came from Talador, its referring to where it was INITIALLY created it in the same way Cheddar/Brie cheese is not all made in England/France.

And apperently that means it’s cheese made from Elekk milk, that only eats orchids.

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The books written by golden tend to just the literal game scale, while the books written by literally anyone else take liberties with scale and tend to be more enjoyable reads imo

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Do you even have a proof of that?

Golden does have a tendency to do such things yes, but she did not do that in the Lord of Clans novel.

However, it was also the case in the novel Illidan which was not written by Golden, like i clearly remember the part about Illidan fight when its stated that Illidan was forced to attazck the tank…i was like “wtf?”

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Yes. In fact, this is not an item sold ingame as you implied. This is the only reference to Taledorian cheese ingame(side note apperently its not only elekk milk that can be used for it):

https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Fine_Taladorian_Cheese_Platter

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Well, ok, but that dosent remove all the other examples i gave you know, nor does it change the problem of my post.

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So first of all, I feel ya. Those “Warcraft” Novels were written before WoW came out. So it was able to take more creative liberties due to the fact there was no Theramore, Orgimmar, Darnassus, Stormwind, etc for us to be immersed and walk around in.

From “Of Blood and Honor”
Tirion was the governor of the prosperous Alliance principality of Hearthglen, a large forested region nestled at the crossroads between the towering Alterac Mountains and the mist-shrouded shores of Darrowmere Lake.

This is completely wrong. Darrowmere Lake is southeast of Hearthglen. Alterac is Southwest of Hearthglen. But it clearly stated in the Novel that Hearthglen was nestled between the two. You could make a case for Andorhal , Chillwind Camp, or Uther’s Tomb. Either way, it is what it is.

Also, back in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, the Humans were part of the Kingdom of Azeroth, and their Capital was Stormwind. That changed after Tides of Darkness when they brought in other Human Kingdoms during the Second War.

I love reading the novels, but I have to take it as is. It’s really hard to write a large scale of something that is already scaled to something smaller. It’s minor to me I guess. But I can understand why it can bother some people. War of the Ancients Trilogy is my fav still.

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This annoys me in D&D books as well. It is anachronistic at best to impose meta game terminology onto what should be realistic depictions. Something about it just feels like… sterile in a corporate way, like it is a there to be consistent to the brand first, tell a story second.

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Yes, thats exactly how it feels, like for example, when i read a story like LotR, i would not have a thing such as “Gandalf threw a spell that blinded all the orcs in a 10y radius”

Like, its just so artificial, like imagine you had an orc at 10,1y of him…he would not be blidned then? Thats just ridiculous…

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“Her spell of the third level was not enough to overcome the protection of the fifth level.”

Nothing turns a book into kindling faster than that kinda tripe.

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Aaaaaaaaggghhhhh!!!

I have made it well known enough around here that I play DnD, and I may have mentioned I’ve been playing for quite some time. I remember when writers could write things like “this seemingly normal sack you have discovered is quite useful. It’sinterior dimentions are larger than what you’d expect” and we all knew it’s a Bag of Holding, and it felt natural. Nowadays I cannot read the novels, because instead they’ll say “this is a Bag of Holding. It’s quite useful.” And once you spell it out like that? It feels less magical and more mass-produced. “Oh, Bag of Holding? Yeah, I got three coming with free overnight shipping from Chultazon.”

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That adequately sums up why I ended up hating 3.x/PF, and probably why I bounced off of 4e.

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while I can imagine Wizards (who are the nerds of their own worlds) actually going and trying to quantify magic into in-game levels of power/skill/mastery, I think that everyone else in earshot when they do that should roll their eyes at them

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Even then, find a couple of neurons to fire off to cloak it in a bare minimum of in-setting dressing. “I am a Wizard of the Fifth Circle of [Important Wizard Name].”

Not, “I command 5th Level Spells and will hit you with a Cone of Cold!”

Even the notion that every wizard from every walk of life piecing together the secrets to bend reality would all randomly have the same name for every spell is preposterous.

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For me, it’s even worse when they use named spells. Like Melf’s Acid Arrow.

No. No, he’s from a whole other world called Greyhawk. Stahpit. Just slightly modify the spell’s name. Morf’s Acid Arrow. Do some bare minimum thing if you are so uncreative cannot simply describe the spell’s effect and trust our three working brain cells to figure it out.

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No, we’re going to turn every setting into the same generic fantasy goulash so there’s no point in the setting anymore. What do you mean it doesn’t make sense for every cookbook to exist in every reality? What do you mean I shouldn’t send Pinkertons to harass our customers?

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Yeah, exactly like the Blinding Light in my example, actually this reminds me of another thing that i always found ridiculous in fantasy and wow tend to do this more often since i think DF : The yelling of abilities by boses…

Like, you noticed that sometimes boss literally yell the name of their abilities when they do it? Like “BRUTCAL CLAWS!!!”

Its as stupid to me as if you had a Knight during midle age yelling “SPIN ATTACK!!!” ofc you will never do this irl.

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