A note on out-of-game sources of lore

[Feralan]

The sourcebooks for the pen & paper RPG can be a fun read and I've posted some excerpts here that sound relevant and interesting, but I would personally take information that does not come from the games themselves (WoW and the Warcraft strategy games) with a grain of salt ... especially the novels. This isn't just because in my not so humble opinion, "franchise fiction" is usually pretty damn abysmal. It's also because, for example, the "War of the Ancients" trilogy rewrites the official history to cram the characters from an earlier novel by the same author into the storyline via timetravel. And the RPG sourcebooks are based on the d20 system (like D&D 3rd Edition), which means they contradict the games in several ways, such as by having halfbreeds (an abundance of them, in fact) and allowing every race to be of every class. Yes, in the pen&paper game gnomes and Forsaken could be druids, and there are more half-elves than High Elves left. Pure nonsense if you ask me.

So ... I'd suggest using those out-of-game sources of information that mesh well with with the in-game lore, but when in doubt take novels, pen&paper sourcebooks, WoWWiki or lore discussions on various forums with a grain of salt, or a whole bucket if need be.

Thoughts?

[shemuil]

I agree completely.

[Lana]

Agree as well. Bad enough that the majority of roleplayers follow the novels/pen&paper RP books.

[Ardhel Milwraeth]

Well I have to say I disagree on this or at least can't agree with it completly. You talk about "fnachise fiction". But WoW itself is quite a comercial game and Blizzard itself made many mistakes about basic story. So, I just can not ignore all those sources and put "a grain or a bucket of salt" on it as you stated.

I'll stress again; not only do thos "frnachise fictoins" storys contradict in-game story, but in-game story contradicts on itself (some comparison between storylines in Warcraft I, II and the storyline in Warcraft III and Frozen Thron on other side.

My point is that story evolved as the success of Warcraft grew, so you can't just ignore all those storylines. Or can you?

In the end, I happen to like "War of the Ancients" triology and even more so Lord of the Clans, which happens to be Thralls story, especialy the part which talks about shamansm.

In the end if you want to look on bad example, lets just look on what Blizzard did with introduction of new races (Draenei and Blood Elfs). Oh, come on. I did like to play Draenei and some of their quest lines, but still, if we go back to basics, at the begining there were only Orcs and Humans. And that is just it. All the rest came after. So, if you ignore all the rest, then its best that we also ignore our race (nighelfs), goblins, trolls, all of them.

Well, that is just my humble opinion