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Stormrage novel hits the best-seller lists
Stormrage by Richard A. Knaak has made USA Today's Top 150 Best Selling Books list, coming in at #126 of the best selling books based on sales through February 28, 2010. Apparently the ebook community is embracing the new story as well: Stormrage hit #8 on the best seller list for ebooks from BooksOnBoard. The latest offering in the World of Warcraft line of novels, Stormrage continues the story of events that the green dragonflight have been dealing with since World of Warcraft's launch: Nightmares have invaded the Emerald Dream, Malfurion Stormrage is nowhere to be seen, the Dragons of Nightmare are busting out of portals, and it looks like the whole of the Emerald Dream is in danger of permanent corruption. With Stormrage, we finally get to see what's been brewing for five years now -- no wonder it's popular! You can pick up a copy of Stormrage at the Blizzard Store for yourself. Check out our full review of the novel, and our refresher course on the history of Malfurion Stormrage.
The Twelve Days of Winter Veil: Day four
WoW.com continues celebrating Winter Veil with our Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests. Today is day four of our countdown and we are giving away a set of World of Warcraft novels written by Richard Knaak to one lucky winner courtesy of Pocket Books. The set includes: Night of the Dragon War of the Ancients Archive (which includes Well of Eternity, Demon Soul, The Sundering) Warcraft Archive (which includes Day of the Dragon) The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before 12pm ET (noon) Thursday, December 31, 2009. Please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be the winner. You may enter only once and one winner will be selected randomly. The winner will receive 1 set of Richard Knaak World of Warcaft novels including Night of the Dragon, War of the Ancients Archive and Warcraft Archive with a total retail value of US$50. Click here to read the official contest rules. And if you don't win today (or even if you do!) check back later today for loot card giveaways and tomorrow for more contests -- the prizes only get better as we count down the Twelve Days of Winter Veil! EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!
The Twelve Days of Winter Veil: Day six
WoW.com continues celebrating Winter Veil with our Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests. Only six more days and today we are giving away a set of World of Warcraft novels written by Christie Golden to one lucky winner courtesy of Pocket Books. The set includes: Arthas Beyond The Dark Portal Rise of the Horde Warcraft Archive The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before 12pm ET (noon) Tuesday, December 29, 2009. Please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be the winner. You may enter only once and one winner will be selected randomly. The winner will receive 1 set of Christie Golden World of Warcaft novels including Arthas, Beyond The Dark Portal, Rise of the Horde and the Warcraft Archive with a total retail value of US$58. Click here to read the official contest rules. And if you don't win today (or even if you do!) check back later today for loot card giveaways and tomorrow for more contests -- the prizes only get better as we count down the Twelve Days of Winter Veil! EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!
The Twelve Days of Winter Veil: Day eight
WoW.com continues celebrating Winter Veil with our Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests. Today is day eight of our countdown and we are giving away a set of World of Warcraft novels written by Richard Knaak to one lucky winner courtesy of Pocket Books. The set includes: Night of the Dragon War of the Ancients Archive (which includes Well of Eternity, Demon Soul, The Sundering) Warcraft Archive (which includes Day of the Dragon) The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before 12pm ET (noon) Sunday, December 27, 2009. Please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be the winner. You may enter only once and one winner will be selected randomly. The winner will receive 1 set of Richard Knaak World of Warcaft novels including Night of the Dragon, War of the Ancients Archive and Warcraft Archive with a total retail value of US$50. Click here to read the official contest rules. And if you don't win today (or even if you do!) check back later today for loot card giveaways and tomorrow for more contests -- the prizes only get better as we count down the Twelve Days of Winter Veil! EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!
The Twelve Days of Winter Veil: Day ten
WoW.com continues celebrating Winter Veil with our Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests. Today is day ten of our countdown and we are giving away a set of World of Warcraft novels written by Christie Golden to one lucky winner courtesy of Pocket Books. The set includes: Arthas Beyond The Dark Portal Rise of the Horde Warcraft Archive The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before 12pm ET (noon) Friday, December 25, 2009. Please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be the winner. You may enter only once and one winner will be selected randomly. The winner will receive 1 set of Christie Golden World of Warcaft novels including Arthas, Beyond The Dark Portal, Rise of the Horde and the Warcraft Archive with a total retail value of US$58. Click here to read the official contest rules. And if you don't win today (or even if you do!) check back later today for loot card giveaways and tomorrow for more contests -- the prizes only get better as we count down the Twelve Days of Winter Veil! EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!
WoW 5th Anniversary Giveaway: World of Warcraft novels
For our final contest celebrating World of Warcraft's 5th anniversary we have four, count them, four novels from Pocket Books' WoW fiction line to give away. Well, two novels and two compilation books. So whether you're a Christie Golden or a Richard Knaak fan enter for your chance to win one of these great lore-filled books. The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Thursday, November 26th, at 12p ET (noon), and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be one of the winners. You may enter only once and a winner will be selected randomly for each one of the following prizes: Arthas:Rise of the Lich King retail value of $25 Night of the Dragon retail value of $16 Warcraft Archive retail value of $17 War of the Ancients Archive retail value of $17 Click here to read the official contest rules. EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks so much for participating!
Excerpt of the Stormrage Novel available online
I already mentioned that there's an excerpt from the upcoming Stormrage novel in the back of TokyoPop's Warcraft Legends Volume 5 manga, but if you're anxious to get yet another glimpse before February 2010, you're in luck. Pocket Books has posted a new excerpt over at their site, and all you need to grab is an email address. The excerpt doesn't reveal any new lore per se, but it does tease pretty damn well, and should bring up some pretty nostalgic memories for a lot of Alliance players. Combine this with the excerpt from the manga, and you'll get a pretty good idea of where the story's going, I think -- Right into the Heart of the Emerald Nightmare, as we confirmed with authour Richard Knaak at BlizzCon a week ago. As to whether it will cover the Cataclysm, or not, that's a bit up in the air. However, considering we know that Malfurion will be back in the waking world fighting Ragnaros at Hyjal, chances would seem to be good.You can check out the excerpt at Simon and Schuster's website.
BlizzCon 2009: Wow.com interviews Richard Knaak
On the second day of BlizzCon 2009, I got the chance to sit down with Richard Knaak, best selling author of countless novels, including many in the Warcraft universe, such as the War of the Ancients Trilogy, Day of the Dragon, and Night of Dragon. His upcoming projects include the Stormrage novel, as well as the Dragons of Outland manga trilogy. We talked about all this and more, and you can read our conversation below.So of course, the big thing on everyone's mind is the new Stormrage book. How's it coming along? Is it near completion?It's near completion, we're in the editing process, getting the OKs from Blizzard. You can find an excerpt in the latest volume of the Legends Manga, along with a story I wrote, sort of a Prologue that ties in with the book.Can you give us a sneak preview of what to expect lore-wise?You know Blizzard likes to keep these secret, so I am going to be very limited in what I can talk about. It is Malfurion. It is about the Nightmare. And it is very current. That's the three biggest things I can say about it right off the bat. You'll see characters you know from the game and obviously from other books, and places you know from the game, and it's very current, very relevant. Of course, that's about all I can say. You know Blizzard, they love their secrets!
Richard A. Knaak, other authors will be signing at BlizzCon
Part of the fun of BlizzCon is that beyond all of the dev panels and crazy mainstage stuff going on, there's also the big convention hall full of things to see and do. All of Blizzard's licensing partners usually show up, so Upper Deck usually has games going on, FigurePrints shows off their wares, and all of the computer companies usually have some fun rigs on display. And now we've learned that, as usual, Pocket Books and TokyoPop will have booths set up, along with their usual stable of authors and artists. Richard A. Knaak has confirmed on his website that he'll be there, so if you're going, be sure to bring along your copy of War of the Ancients, and maybe you can get it signed.Our staff is hoping for a Christie Golden appearance as well, and while she doesn't have anything about BlizzCon on the website yet (she is at ComiCon this week, though), we're presuming that she'll be there. Medievaldragon of Blizzplanet is apparently also presuming it: he's included her with Knaak in his headline about the show (see update). So hopefully she'll be around, and Ziebart and Whitcomb can take their treasured copies of Arthas over and do some fanboy groveling.Should be excellent. We'll be doing our best to get some interviews with these folks here on the site as well, so even if you're not with us in Anaheim, you'll still get a chance to hear from some of your favorite Warcraft authors. BlizzCon ahoy!Update: Medievaldragon has gotten back to us, and he says that he's heard from Golden herself that she'll be at BlizzCon. Get those books ready for some signin'!BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon, you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there are some great looking costumes.
Golden's Arthas delivers the lore goodness
A note from Alex Ziebart: When Simon and Schuster sent Daniel and I a pair of free, early review copies of Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, we immediately went about planning how we were going to handle a 2-man review. We've been good friends for years, and one of our favorite past times is debating things like this back and forth. We rarely agree on books, and we can argue our sides until we're blue in the face. We were going to write an Alex vs Daniel knock down, drag out argument about Arthas and it was going to rule. Unfortunately, things didn't go our way.When we finished reading the book, we got together to talk about it. It was... unsettling. We completely agreed with each other on almost every point that was raised. The high points and the low points, we were completely on the same spectrum. That's just not right. We decided that, rather than write two reviews parroting each other, we would just go with the one. Daniel's review says everything I want to say better than I could have said it, so once you read what he says, just pretend you can hear me say "Ditto" at the end. Take it away, Danny! As WoW Insider's self-proclaimed junior lieutenant Lore Nerd, when Simon & Schuster so generously offered to send us a couple of free advanced copies of Arthas, the new World of Warcraft book by Christie Golden, I was all over that. As soon as the book showed up on my doorstep, I turned on the answering machine, grabbed a soda, popped some popcorn, curled up in my favorite chair, and pretty much read the whole thing straight through. The only breaks I took were to discuss various scenes and their ramifications for lore with Alex. And by discuss, I mean "fanboy out." But I am being completely serious when I say, of all the Warcraft manga, comic books, and novels I have read, Arthas has the most solid, balanced writing and best realized characters. It's not a perfect book, but it's a very worthwhile read for anyone who has even the slightest interest in the why and how of that big armored dude up on the Frozen Throne.
Guild Wars 2 lore to be told in book series
At the Penny Arcade Expo yesterday afternoon, ArenaNet played host to a jam-packed Raven Theater within the Washington Convention Center for their panel entitled "Three Years of Guild Wars" where attendees were treated to the history of the game and an open Q&A session regarding the current and future state of the game.Yet possibly even more exciting was a small tidbit of news we got from Chris Lye, ArenaNet's Director of Marketing, regarding Guild Wars 2. The team is working with Pocket Books (a division of Simon & Schuster) for a three-book series that will fill in the lore gaps within the 250-year period between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Stay tuned to Massively for more on this series and any other Guild Wars 2 news we may uncover.
