I am curious to hear people’s opinion about her work once Lintian reaches her.
While I agree that Knaak should be credited as a solid worldbuilder, in DotD he does not really shine. The book isn’t really a great work, let’s be honest. But hey. The article made me giggle a couple of times.
I do kind of wonder how much of Knaak’s “stumbling” in DotD is just due to him still being relatively new to freelance writing at that time, he only started it as a profession in the 90’s, and I imagine quite a lot of that time was practice, building experiences etc. before ever getting any attention from publishers. DotD is from 2001 and is also his very first foray into Warcraft both as a genre and a setting so I feel like I can be quite lenient on the guy, especially because in 2001 Blizzard themselves I doubt had very much protocols in place for writers and what they should be doing.
Interestingly, the complete disconnect from Blizzard and the Writers it hires to publish written works seems to be an idea that pervades the company even to this day with Madeiline Roux in an interview with Nobbel only a few years back saying that Blizzard just gave her like 5 bullet points and then left her completely alone to write with little input from themselves as a company.
I have things to say, and it’s not negative. Despite all the criticism people give about her worldbuilding, as a character writer I think she has always been fairly good. People often forget that she wrote two of the best (and arguably most important) books in this entire franchise.
Character-wise, she is better then Metzen, for sure… But I like Roux’s way of writing better, ngl
But yea, Golden is a fairly good writer when it comes to giving characters’ depth(from the little writing I know off them all, mind you)
Metzen for Woldbuilding, Golden for main characters and Roux for (abit of main character, who shiny less usually, and) secondary character writing would be ideal for me.
Chiming in Stackpole for visceral, engaging combat scenes – he’s good in other aspects, but Chen melting faces with breath of fire and someone’s “larynx becoming a crimson porridge” stuck with me.
Ironically my major problem with her. But I’ll wait, all in due time.
Perhaps you will disagree but without going too deep into her merits [or lack of], I will just say this.
It is not a coincidence if this passage applies perfectly to War Crimes.
https://lintian.eu/2024/02/18/warcraft-retrospective-15/
Excerpt:
After Warcraft 2, the Warcraft setting underwent a rapid reverse-flanderization. The first two games started very basic, with campy aesthetics and completely black-and-white morality of good humans versus evil orcs (though some humans were traitors and some orcs were more evil than others). The story of the First and Second War was told in very broad strokes, and the characterization of all characters fit in a single paragraph.
With the novels, the characters are acquiring much-needed depth. They focus on specific characters and small corners of the world, giving them more and more detail with each iteration. What seemed to be black and white turns out to be not as simple. The process can be likened to drawing a snowflake, by starting first with the stem, and then drawing increasingly smaller and thinner strokes until the end result turns from a simplistic schematic into a work of art.
Excellent read that summarises my love of the novel! Concerning Iskar, Thrall later recalls when he’s among the Frostwolves and sees an orc child for the first time that he was told the Warsong children were the first to die when they waged their hopeless war of survival against humans. It contextualises Iskar’s motivation for wanting to harm the human child (eye for an eye) while also projecting his hatred onto Thrall for having been raised by them. This better frames Grom’s change of heart and softening compared to the brutal warrior we’ve known him to have been in the Draenor days.
Describinh period of the development of Warcraft setting as deflanderizing is inspired.
The existence and the conversation over the orcish interment camps was always fascinating, and sets up so many questions (i.e, not problems to be solved) both the orcs and the humans have going forward.
The dichotomy of orcs living in squalor as punishment, the adults as a price of their defeat and their children born into captivity due to no fault of their own – the catalyst for Garrosh’s rhetoric taking root in the younger generation. The question posed, “how do you genuinely atone for the sins of the father”, something Founding of Durotar tackles yet vitally doesn’t go on to solve.
The dimensions and considerations added ontop of the ramifications of the Horde’s invasion, the human suffering and struggles portrayed which ultimately serve to paint the Legion’s manipulations as something so horrific (more on that in Rise of the Horde) – it’s all compelling stuff, especially for literature about a videogame in the earliest of the 2000’s.
Great chapter of the Retrospective and by the sounds of it, an amazing book. I’ve always heard things but I’ve not read it myself!
I know Golden had/has received some criticism in later years for some aspects but I think she is a good writer & one of Warcraft’s better and with Lord of the Clans, she definitely helped shape Warcraft so early on.
The nuances in the story are something that’s been strangely missing in later parts of Warcraft, in WoW in particular, either by a complete absence or more often done more poorly. Later Warcraft/WoW seem to think that this nuance means that a villain character is one that is in need of forgiveness, for example. That their deeds can be excused.
Lord of the Clans shows a much more engaging and believable way instead. You can sympathize with Blackmoore and understand why he does things, but there is no attempts from the story and writer to turn the sympathy into an excuse or paint him as as just some poor, unfortunate victim who also needs forgiveness. His glimmer of regret in his lucid states and better moment shows a deeper character, but his actions are not excused by Golden or hand-waved off as nothing.
For a sort of comparison of what I mean, if Blackmoore had been written as some modern days characters are, he would have dropped down after the duel infront of Thrall and sadly talked about his own poor upbringing or losses, and been forgiven and brought to talk off-screen with him to reconcile, facing very little real consequences of his actions.
Also I think the two moons being invented in this book is really cool.
I feel I can forgive the earlier books for having key story-beats before WC3 far more than later ones, when WoW is out and about conquering the MMO scene. WC3 was still an RTS and still limited by its nature, so there’s not as much harm in external media and, ultimately, they do sound pretty neat (I’ve not ready any of the Warcraft books, full disclosure) and it’s interesting to see the piecing together and evolution.
I just feel that once WoW is out and about, particularly as it gets more technically capable and advanced, the storytelling not being enshrined front and centre in the WORLD becomes much more a narrative sin.
Edit: Fantastic write-up, as ever!
In the former’s case, during the RTS years, it served as a good way to enrich the setting or fill in blanks they couldn’t. Or with the tie-in novels case, help build up the world in preparation for the next release and also build excitement.
The way it’s been done with WoW, it is 98% just about money and either laziness or poor decisions. Or both. I’m not saying the book themselves are bad, but the reason for their existence, especially the way they tell exclusively and important parts of the story, are.
It’s FOMO but for narrative.
Another factor here is that the novels are completely optional to understanding and enjoying Warcraft 3. As I’ll write in just two entries from now, the premise of Lord of the Clans is (very briefly) summarized in the Warcraft 3 manual. You’ll miss a more in-depth look into what kind of people Thrall and Grom Hellscream are, but Warcraft 3 is good at conveying the gist.
And when I played Warcraft 3 at release back in 2002, I didn’t even have the manual, nor did I know any prior lore except that the orcs and humans had two wars before, I guess. Yet I found the plot and characterization of the game perfectly understandable.
To go back to the snowflake worldbuilding metaphor, Warcraft 3 is the stem and the novels are the fine strokes that give detail and deeper beauty to the fractal. In contrast, Cataclysm drops lore developments on you that are just baffling without its tie-in novels. It’s a snowflake whose whole bits have been randomly cut out and you have to scavenge around to piece it together like a haphazardly made jigsaw puzzle.
I’ll talk about Warcraft’s increasing and detrimental dependency on out-of-game lore in due time.
(And yes, I excise Warcraft 1 and 2 from the criticism because they had very limited opportunities for in-game storytelling, due to technical limitations at the time. Warcraft 3 holds well on its own, still.)
Same for me mostly! I played the Demo because my family were subscribed to a PC-magazine that came with CD’s in each number that sometimes had demos on them. I barely knew english and had only just gotten interested in some games and I was just installing basically everything. And then later on, we got Warcraft 3 thanks to one of my siblings and I played it.
My only previous knowledge of Warcraft before was that I had older cousins who played 2 when we were visiting and I used to watch.
This sums it up perfectly, aye. Thank you!
Same for me. While I was getting a bit lost during the start of human campaign (I think I didn´t even play the orc tutorial one), I had no issue to understand the main story. Orcs sacrificing people to demons they worshipped wasn´t some complex idea that would need much explanation for me at the end of the day.
Overall it helps that Warcraft 3 abandons the “Alliance vs. Horde” as main plot after second human mission, spending hours upon hours afterwards on completely new story until you reach the main orc campaign.
I think a big factor here is that in the early days, there were plethora of stories that were already written as part of backstory for old games or completely unknown and part of ancient history. I don´t know how gaming world viewed game remakes in ye olde days of early 2000s, but I don´t think remaking Warcraft 1 and 2 to make new story would have been popular, nor would sacrificing TFT for orc or night elf backstory.
So, books were pretty much the only thing left. And looking at them, many follow the “piece of lore that wasn´t explored previously” format. Only Lord of the Clans fits the formula of book that explains important lore bit. Other than that it´s mostly stuff about ancient history, Warcraft 1 and 2, and backstories of characters that you don´t need to know (Arthas is cool book, but you get everything needed in Warcraft 3 and WotLK even repeats some thematic beats happening in non-flashback part of the book).
What I think happened is that these stories ran out, but the books were still making decent cash. Maybe someone at Blizzard realized that lore nerds will buy a book anyway, and those who don´t care about the story won´t care about it anyway, so might as well keep making money by writing books about current events.
I have never read Lord of the Clans so I won’t comment on the style but… these novels you are covering have been game-changers. And LotC is arguably the most important of them all. Christie Golden deserves more credit than I gave her, especially this young version of Golden. It appears she is responsible for the Warcraft version of the orcs just as much as Metzen.
This was my favourite review so far and I am pleased to read more about this book. It speaks of a soul of the Warcraft game that was lost in latest expansions: the ability to be grim, and even a little bit dark, but without being too crude, only… real, trying to depict a world with its high and lows; it’s something that is really immersive. This is the kind of style I’d like the game to have, too.
I also like the introduction of Taretha as a positive force in Thrall’s life. I think she is the first woman the universe somewhat fleshes out, aside from Garona. It’s a bit of an endearing character.
My main frustration as I come back listening to this tale, is just how little was made of the redemption of the orcs. Which leads me to another bit that may be a bit of a negative point - not for the book, but for the series of Warcraft: it looks like the character’s morality, especially the wisdom (Grom’s, or Drek’thar’s), is mostly taken from other franchises. While not necessarily a bad thing, it would raise a challange for a long-lived game: these products can’t reiterate the same pop wisdom, they need to try and make something of it…
https://lintian.eu/2024/02/25/warcraft-retrospective-16/
Excerpt:
On the bright side, to me, the unexpected highlight of this novel was Garona’s characterization. In Warcraft 1, she was just an unusually literate scout and assassin of the Shadow Council. Here, she’s sympathetic, snarky, sharp-witted, a quick thinker, and able to see things from another’s perspective. She’s neither a generic monstrous orc nor a generic noble-savage orc, but a very distinct individual who has lived among different cultures and knows how they think. Through her, we see some of the roots of xenophobia not just in Warcraft, but in the real world as well: when faced with an outsiders, people tend to overdwell on the differences, while overlooking the similarities.
…But what race is her other half, anyway?
As my favourite book in the entire series, I’e been waiting a long time for this post. My thoughts after the initial reading largely reflect yours as well, and I’ve since then read the book maybe 3 or 4 times to the point I have almost memorised it back to back.
The novel served an important role in laying the groundwork for (arcane) magic in this setting and it remains surprisingly consistent through out the decades with minor retcons that can easily be explained to re-establish continuity in the modern era. The mention of draining the youth out of plants to make them grow can be easily explained as Medivh describing chronomancy in his eccentric verbose way. Forcing time through the plant, much like we see Khadgar do with a chair during his training montage in this same novel, to either fix or break items by manipulating the direction of flow of time through the object.
Other discrepancies are given a way out with the point raised in the novel about how mages can’t agree on the nature of magic with everyone having their own theories concerning its nature due to everyone experiencing it differently, and vast majority of magic is explained in-character through Medivh, rather than objective descriptions from the narrator. Medivh – while powerful and smart, and usually right – is also painted as being heavily biased in his opinions. He notably rejects the idea of magic being maths and to his credit makes a very compelling argument in favour of his interpretation. The addition of every mage experiencing magic differently reconciles his perspective with later lore blurbs on the matter.
Either way, a good write up for the post I have personally been waiting for the most, and I urge everyone with interest in magic lore to give this book a try. It’s full of great lore about the mechanics of arcane magic that stands against the test of time and retcons.
Makes me ponder on finding the PDF, never too late to solidify and adapt magic lore into mage roleplay, even from a Zandalari perspective.
Now, approaching the mammoth-posts of WC3. I first played the game on 2006 , near the Burning Crusade’s release (parents wouldn’t buy a subscription based MMO, my older brother bargained for the second-best thing).
Our copy didn’t come with the manual, likely because it was bought second-hand. Never gone to find it online, as the subject material has been well-covered or retconned in later works. Fascinated to see what it holds in store!