"Shadows Rising" Now Available for Pre-purchase, Releasing on July 14th
us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/460153/1
us.forums.blizzard.comPosted Mar 4, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC
3553
us.forums.blizzard.comI wonder who they will get to do the audiobook. "Before the Storm" was done by Josh Keaton (voice of Anduin) which was one of the best surprises when getting the audiobook.
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I'm kinda hoping Patty Mattson (voice of Sylvanas), for sure.
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Before the Storm was a retconned mess and didn't actually achieve anything - I liked the Legion book (Illidan) a lot more.
This one seems like it might just be Horde politics with not much actual Shadowlands lore/info at all, so I'll be skipping this unless the reviews are good.
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That's because Before the Storm was written by Christie Golden. Most of the stuff done by her reeks of her clear bias and a fanfic style of storytelling.
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True. I don't hold anything against her, but I don't enjoy her writing/storytelling all the much. I don't think that she has the ability to turn a list of plot points into a coherent story that is also enjoyable and unbiased.
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What do you mean by biased? I haven’t read any of the books, and I usually have to have the story explained to me by guildies, but biased seems like a weird criticism of a fiction author.
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Even though I play Alliance she writes with a clear Alliance bias. I.e. Alliance = good. Horde = Bad
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True, Before the Storm was the worst I've read by her in a long time. I really liked Rise of the Horde so I was kind of expecting something better.
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This one seems like it might just be Horde politics with not much actual Shadowlands lore/info at all, so I'll be skipping this unless the reviews are good.
the blurb talks about Sylvanas trying to kill Bwonsamdi seems like thats the main focus here
0
Madeleine Roux writes some cool stuff so maybe we'll get something decent and unbiased.
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[deleted]
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This better have talking dinosaurs in the shadow realm.
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Blue text:
“The Horde is nothing!” With those infamous words, Sylvanas Windrunner betrayed and abandoned the Horde she vowed to serve. The Dark Lady and her forces now work in the shadows as both the Horde and Alliance, including her own sister, Alleria, race to uncover her next move. Read on for a first look at the upcoming expansion prequel novel, Shadows Rising.
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Second blue post in regards to question about audio version:
Any word on who will voice it for the audio version? Never did an audio book before Before the Storm, but listening to it while I was working was pretty cool.
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No word on the narrator yet, but the audiobook version should also be available at about the same time as the book release.
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“The Horde is nothing!”
4d chess
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Didn't read Before the Storm, didn't feel I actually. missed out of anything by not reading it.
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That's the ideal outcome of a book like this right? Extra story for those that want it but it's not crucial to the story (looking at you War Crimes)
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Eh. I actually prefer books that have the same lore as games, just more of it. Otherwise they are completely inconsequential, and in a case of Blizzard even more so because characters don't carry over and might be essentially retconned (along with retconning events of the book itself like it happened with Illidan and Legion expansion).
Another problem Blizzard had is if something happened in the book, they did't show it in the game. Last expansion with novelettes intersecting with Darkshore I think was an exception
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Ah nice, so I don't have to buy paper toilet to clean my ass.
4†
Lol, comes out on my birthday.
These books r cool and all but they really shouldn’t have lore happening outside of the game. Honestly would rather c them write a book recapping the expansion.
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I mean they either released Before the Storm, or the entire story available to us would have been what we had in-game now.
There's literally zero possibility of adding what the book tells us to the game. Most of the in-game storytelling, be it via quest text, dialogue or videos is more or less entirely wasted time and effort spent. VERY few people in the grand scheme of things actually pay attention to any of that. As a result, it wouldn't make the game better in any way for your average customer, and would either have no effect what so ever or even make the experience more negative due to having to grind through more quests for the story, wait more on RP talks and skip more videos.
Within the realm of things we can reasonably expect Blizzard to do (So no massive TV series' or movie trilogies) this is by far the best way for Blizzard to go about adding story to the game. The books give the story to those who want it, it gives Blizzard profits from it due to selling the actual copies and it doesn't hinder the gameplay experience of players not interested in the story. It's a win-win-win situation.
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VERY few people in the grand scheme of things actually pay attention to any of that.
i think more people do then you give credit and the people that do dont like having to buy books on top of the monthly subscription to understand the story >.>
Within the realm of things we can reasonably expect Blizzard to do (So no massive TV series' or movie trilogies) this is by far the best way for Blizzard to go about adding story to the game.
this isnt adding story to the game, its taking story out of the game, this could have been a quest line in the prepatch, this could have been something we experience but now it will never apear in game but will probably be critical to understand shadowlands plot
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its taking story out of the game, this could have been a quest line in the prepatch
you cant really translate a book into a quest 1 to 1. cant have inner monologue, cant really have complex character interactions unless you make a cutscene, cant have stuff that happens over larger timeframes or in different places at once
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You can show characters in the game. You can let them discover things. You can have multiple quests in multiple locations. You can even have larger time frames (around a whole expansion) to tell story. The only problem is being in multiple places at once. But hell Robocat was a thing so even that is more or less possible. Which really only leaves inner monologue and in quite a few cases you could probably leave that out and let people have their own thoughts about that.
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While 1 to 1 isn't possible, that's not what we ask for.
The main gripe many people have is that it's story taken out of the game to sell seperately. Or at least it seems that way, sometimes.
0
Why not just add story to the game? Before I played ffxiv I never payed attention to wow's story because you needed to put in a ton of effort to piece together events that where happening. In ffxiv you have a legit, linear story where you can play through the whole thing in the game, and a lot more people are involved in the game's story. Why not do something like that? Why not put the story in the game (prefferably the main story quests that you do for loremaster) instead of spreading it around everywhere?
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Ff14 can afford story since you only need to play through it only once. Your char can swap jobs on the fly so you don't have to go through it again if you wish to make an alt. Hell, it took me 220 hours of game time to get my char to 80.
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There's literally zero possibility of adding what the book tells us to the game.
Disagree completely. All the important parts could have easily been conveyed in pre-patch quest lines/WQ's alongside the Silithus/Battle of Thorns stuff. Of course they'd actually have to put some work in to do that, make more content, and figure out a way not to lazily remove that shit from the game one month later.
But they're just a small indie dev company so I understand why they don't want to spend money doing that and would rather just shit out a cheap book.
-1†
They do a poor job telling the story in game. Which is the main reason I would want a recap on the expansion.
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Question: Is this one of those novels I need to read for the story of the expansion to fully make sense?
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We don't know yet, we haven't read it yet. Last 2 expansion books were almost completely inconsequential: Illidan's basically said that he was a god guy all along, Before the Storm only had Calia being killed and resurrected. Oh, and Sylvanas having ulterior motives and never caring about the Horde or people, but her fanboys ignored that part anyway, they needed a cringy phrase in a cinematic
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I mean, the entire story of BfA didnt make sense so I wouldnt worry too much about it.
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Before the Storm was published on June 12, 2018. Battle for Azeroth was released on August 14, 2018 - 63 days later.
63 days after July 14th would be Tuesday, September 15th.
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Sept 15 is also one week after max cloak corruption resistance can be achieved. Get out the tin foil hats boys!
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Dope, Before the Storm was great. This will be probably be great too.
1†
Before the Storm was an Anduin fanfic. It was, in fact, not great.
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The only Anduin fanfics that are great are the ones that feature him with his bf Wrathion
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the big win here is that Anduin apparently now has a better advisor than 'King Fuckup the Wolfman' whos "advice" always ends with us falling for an obvious trap.
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Christie Golden isn’t the author so... maybe this one will be good.
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look at that, not even a mention of night elves, dont they know night elves should be front and center of the alliance story right now? this looks like a book made for horde fans which is fine but as an alliance player i dont see why should i buy it, also please remember that retcon crap on BtS where sylvanas even lies to herself on her own thoughts to fool us.
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A book about anduin, turalyon, reddit boi and nathanos by an author which dislikes sylvanas, sounds like vomit.
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Anything not written by Christie Golden gets an up-vote in my book
-1
just what BfA needed, more critical story taking place outside the freaking game
I know comments like that are usually really popular but they have made a book for practically every expansion. This isn't a new thing.
(Also its prolly not too BfA based and most likely focuses on key characters from each faction finding out what the hell happened in the north and reacting to it).
Except both Illidan and Before the Storm didn't matter except for Calia bit untlike the book that preceded MoP and had Theramore
I think War Crimes is the biggest offender here.
Nah, it's a repeat of previous book that had Theramore exploded and escalated the war, which made War Crimes and lack of any explanation at the beginning of WoD even more surprising after MoP outrage
also before the storm was translated quite well into the game
Yes, they have now made this mistake multiple times.
Just because its something they´ve done before, doesnt mean they should keep doing it.
and the story has been going downhill ever since WoD which is when they started putting critical story elements in the books, before then the books just fleshed out things we already knew
I bought the BFA story book and couldn't even finish it while I was still excited about the story. Now I wish I could just return it. Illidan novel was pretty great, but I wonder how much of that coasted on my TBC nostalgia.