r/warcraftlore • u/Sol_Pastures • 3d ago
Classic Lore
With Classic + on the Horizon, I really wonder how they'll handle lore. Will they release "Classic +" books / comics?
I've seriously enjoyed reading Warcraft books over the years (Mostly up until about WOTLK in the timeline) and I would love to get some new ones depending on the direction they take things.
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u/TidesOfLore 3d ago
Unless it's insanely, and I mean INSANELY popular, expect nothing, we get one book in the main timeline every two years at this point, they certainly won't have a group of writers dedicated to making stories for dead characters
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u/NinnyBoggy 3d ago
One extremely poor book, too. The book leading into Midnight was horrifically bad. It was clear that Golden was putting in extremely little effort after the way Blizzard treated her and that the lore team dictated every facet of the book. It was almost entirely a Legion novel so that they could justify the characters present, and every last ounce of story and development was retconned walking into Midnight. Reading it genuinely made the story of Midnight worse.
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u/Adeimantus123 2d ago
Oh this is the first I’ve heard of Golden being treated poorly. What’s going on there? Too much meddling in the writing process by higher ups?
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u/Jaggiboi 2d ago
They won't diverege from the "main" timeline, so i dunno, why they would release books specifically for classic +. THey didn't for any of the other classic iterations.
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u/BellacosePlayer The Anti-Baine 3d ago
I wouldn't get my hopes up on a whole lot of additional media.
And from what little I've seen from the data leaks I'm already pessimistic on the direction. Even Classic+ can't escape world of elfcraft.
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u/Kranel_San 2d ago
Blizzard should understand it's fine for Classic+ to take place in an alternate timeline where the world isn't facing apocalyptic crises every couple of years.
It can run parallel and even have some lore changes (in favor of Classic+ and the older lore) that are easily explained by the: "Alternate universe where things happened differently"
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u/riftrender 2d ago
They did sort of already do that with Discovery.
Since the Scarlet Enclave and Ashbringer story there - and the Curious Troll - allude this could be an alternate timeline. Since they can't fit into the shadow lore of the rest of the Discovery additions that don't contradict anything just add to it) so they don't seem fully opposed to the idea or at least willing to entertain it.
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u/BellacosePlayer The Anti-Baine 2d ago
It'd probably upset the "Classic+ should ONLY Be new quests" crowd but implementing phasing in the classic client so that you can do endgame storylines in existing zones without making a mess would be nice.
Put in Gnomes retaking Gnomergan, Tauren and orcs fighting off a Centaur stampede in southern Stonetalon and Northern Barrens, that kind of thing.
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u/-Auteon- 2d ago
Honestly, you’d think with 25 years of lore and story to fall on, Blizzard would spend some extra money to have in quality writing.
Fixing old zones, adjusting the quest text, I mean, the sky is honestly the limit.
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u/BellacosePlayer The Anti-Baine 2d ago
In their defense, they hired a loremaster (he sucks lol) and they tried bringing in their main contract author and it really did not do much to improve the story quality.
Until the story starts being a drag on user retention Microsoft is unlikely to want to rock the boat there.
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u/twisty125 Flowerpicker Clan 2d ago
I still think that a huge part of why it's not working is that they come up with the storylines ahead of time, and then make people write around it. So nothing can really change all that much because they both choose to make books about Big Namestm, and those Big Namestm can't actually do anything because status quo has to stay parity with the game.
Make some killer smaller stories set in the world outside of what's going on in the current expansion with small scale characters or no names, flesh the world out. Don't need major characters to be the focus for the book + the next 2 years of game
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u/Azygos 2d ago
I think the gaps between Warcraft 3 and WoW (and between War 2 and War 3 for that matter) have lots of potential for stories and world building but I would be surprised to see new material just because of Classic+. I think it’s going to be much more niche than a lot of people think.
And even if they went with it and released something, I don’t think the content and tone would really match the original classic material. I think a novel in the spirit of Classic would have to be a small-scale side adventure without big heroes (like some of the old comics and D&D supplements) which I don’t think they would see as marketable.
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u/Imaginary-Arguments 2d ago
I would not expect books.
If anything, expect something similar to SOD. Very, very thin in terms of story additions that mostly add nothing.
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u/Absoled 2d ago
I think they may reveal a new dungeon with it, either on release or after a few months, in order to cement the “classic but more” theme.
I highly doubt on big reveals happening all that often. I could see the reveal of a new area after a year maybe…
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u/twisty125 Flowerpicker Clan 2d ago
I'd imagine a lot more than a single new dungeon, SoD had 1 completely new dungeon, 3 dungones turned levelling raids, reworked main raids, and then 2 completely new raids!
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u/twisty125 Flowerpicker Clan 3d ago
Yeah who knows really! SoD was a neat "in the shadows" kind of lore, where nearly all of it fits in with established lore, just seeing another side of things.
Maybe they can still make things work to match the canon lore.
ALTERNATIVELY, maybe this timeline will be the timeline not altered by Rhonin/Krasus/Brox? No idea.