World of Warcraft Illustrated by Christie Golden

[Pellex-hyjal (Pellex)]

I think there is room to write about stories of the past:

There is, but with the way the lore has been lately, I don’t want the headache of all the retcons they’re sure to introduce.

[Dreadmoore-wyrmrest-accord (Dreadmoore)]

I hate to call them small scale stories, but the Illidan and Vol’jin novels are good examples. They weren’t expansion connecting novels and even if you didn’t read them you still had enough knowledge based on in game sources to cover what was in them.

Those are also basically the only good books.

[Blizzplanet-zuljin (Blizzplanet)]

There is, but with the way the lore has been lately, I don’t want the headache of all the retcons they’re sure to introduce.

It is possible that stories of the past introduce retcons, but not everything that looks like a retcon is a retcon per se. New stories help to inspire new games and expansions. Diablo: The Sin War introduced the core of what Diablo III is about. All the mythos behind many of the stories in-game.

In a sense, long before World of Warcraft, Day of the Dragon, The Last Guardian, Of Blood and Honor and even Warcraft III introduced the backbone of World of Warcraft (2004).

So I am very interested in the writers focusing on novels, short stories, and comics based on events that happened long before the Opening of the Dark Portal.

Fleshing out those stories will certainly inspire quest designers to develop things that in one way or another tie-in with the past. You can’t have a future without a past. At least, that way we don’t have to go through… Mists of Pandaria stuff again. It was all made up as they go. Mostly not based on actual past events except for the Sundering, and some ties to Ulduar.

[Yvenathilm-fenris (Yvenathilm)]

Why the Dragonflayer, and no other vrykul clan, begun suffering worse from the curse is not clear.

For all we know it’s tied to their flaying Dragons. We saw what Galakrond ended up looking like(Undead).

[Pellex-hyjal (Pellex)]

@Blizzplanet-zuljin

It is possible that stories of the past introduce retcons, but not everything that looks like a retcon is a retcon per se.

Let me spell out in more detail why I don’t want them to revisit established lore. I like most of the established lore, and I am convinced that any revisiting it just now will only lead to the ruination of characters and stories I used to like. To quote Faelinthia from another thread:

@Faelinthia-moknathal

I’m a pre-MoP Garrosh fan, pre-Cata Sylvanas fan, and pre-BfA Saurfang fan. I’ve just come to terms with the fact that:

• Any character can get twisted into something awful and barely recognizable as what I liked.
• It will be followed by the writing team indirectly telling me I was wrong for ever having liked the character
• And that will be paired with players telling me I’m a bad person for ever having liked the character.

That is what will be the likely outcome of the retcons that will happen in a new book re-examining stories of the past. Even if the events are so far back that no current WoW characters are involved, they’ll probably re-imagine the society or one or more playable races, like how Forsaken society was completely rewritten in Before the Storm, sweeping away more than a decade of established lore.

@Blizzplanet-zuljin

New stories help to inspire new games and expansions.

But I thought you wanted expansions of existing stories. Frankly, I think all-new stories, rather than fleshing out of already sketched-in events, is a better chance of getting something palatable.

I will say that if I had more faith in the current writers, I would welcome this sort of thing. But now? I just want them to leave the stuff I like the heck alone and not ruin it.