Challenge Rift - Week 47

Top 2 (Standard) is This Week's Brawl!

Before the Storm Preview
Christie Golden's next novel, Before the Storm comes out next month and Amazon has released a preview. These pages contain significant spoilers.



Adam Savage's New Warcraft Armor
Adam Savage got his hands on some armor from the Warcraft movie.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Before the Storm Preview, Adam Savage's New Warcraft Armor started by chaud View original post
Comments 92 Comments
  1. Alveia's Avatar
    Can someone specify what kind of spoilers are contained here? Spoilers for stuff that will happen in BfA that hasn't happened yet? Or what? I was planning to read this before the expansion came out.
  1. Orloth's Avatar
    I'm holding out hope that there will be something more about this from Sylvanis's point of view, and that the Windrunner family reunion will be a thing. Right now it's just looking like another Warchief turned evil story. We really need to stop having Warchieves, it's just not working out guys.

    I mean, I can understand Sylvanis's and Nathanos's resentment of Stormwind; which is born of a the fact that when the Forsaken were first looking for allies they sent emissaries to Stormwind first in the belief that Lordaeron should stand with the Alliance even in death. The Horde was their desperation move after they had been turned down. Add in 10+ years of resentment, cooked in with the whole Forsaken continuance thing that's been driving most of her actions since Wrath and the motivation seems sound, just not something that other people (myself included) can really sympathize with.

    I'm still pondering Vol'jin's vision. Right now Sylvanis hasn't done anything as Warchief that any other worthy candidate couldn't have done. The fact that the Horde and Alliance are patting themselves on the back for the Legion's defeat is equally ridiculous on both sides, as it was the practically all of the Neutral Factions that did most of the heavy lifting in the later part of the war while the Alliance and Horde fought each other for towers. I think Vol'jin appointing Sylvanis as Warchief was explicitly to get her out of the shadows so that her actions and motivations could be observed by the rest of the Horde. While that strongly echoes Garrosh at this point, and I would hate to see a repeat, I don't see this story going any other way.

    Hopefully the rest of the book proves me wrong.
  1. Sykol's Avatar
    Getting a preview of Christie Golden's books is like being forced to see your baby on an ultrasound before having an abortion.
  1. Asaliah's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sykol View Post
    Getting a preview of Christie Golden's books is like being forced to see your baby on an ultrasound before having an abortion.
    OMG savage xD
  1. Igzorn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ithekro View Post
    See, the Alliance is the Savage faction.
    he reminds me a bit of leeroy (the penny arcade art style of the defunct tcg)
  1. jinreeko's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Igzorn View Post
    the defunkt tcg)
    hue hue hue
  1. Soeroah's Avatar
    God damn it. Looks like there's no way around Sylvanas not being Garrosh 2.0, I guess. Also not really into what they're doing with the other -her-.
  1. keyboardshinobi's Avatar
    Well I enjoyed what I read of that, looking forward to the full book. And to all the Golden Haters on this thread, if you hate her work so much, you know, maybe don't spend the time to read it. Saying things like her writing makes my eye bleed is just beyond stupid.
  1. Aquinan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by musicallittle1 View Post
    No, it is not good. It is supremely sub-par writing. Anyone over the age of 14 should be able to recognize this fact.

    And yes, reading her books makes my eyes bleed.
    Then why do you read them?
  1. Arthor220's Avatar
    imo plot of Wow has turned into a very sub par shonen manga type deal lol

    also i still don't get why horde and alliance would fight each other when they both know the void is still out there, like why fuck with each other when you know there's still a big bad out there... why whittle down each others numbers when you need to band together again... attacks on each other are so dumb and forced
  1. mmoc1c7d942621's Avatar
    nice armor <3 love it
  1. Nirosu's Avatar
    WoW's writing has gotten weaker the more they have to make new stuff up and don't have older villains to fall back on. Golden's writing is well mediocre at best and the bigger issue is she can't stop herself from adding poorly written romance to the stories, which might be blizzards fault for giving her crap a direction to go with or not. All in all the init marketing of grey area both sides are bad in bfa or both sides have major baddies, is really not being executed well. BfA at least the main story start is very filler-esque more so than a lot of WoW's writing.
  1. Dannihilate's Avatar
    There are many more pages if you're a Prime member.
  1. Igzorn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Arthor220 View Post
    imo plot of Wow has turned into a very sub par shonen manga type deal lol

    also i still don't get why horde and alliance would fight each other when they both know the void is still out there, like why fuck with each other when you know there's still a big bad out there... why whittle down each others numbers when you need to band together again... attacks on each other are so dumb and forced
    Dont forgett the light is also going to be a threat.
    And yeah i am also sick of the grrrrrr Horde/Aliance story, it is geting old . ofc i can understand local conflicts but in the bigger picture it does not make any sense.
  1. Amaroq's Avatar
    First it was Knaak getting shit, and now that his writing for Blizzard was canned, people are turning to shitting on Golden. She's far superior to Knaak and I genuinely enjoy her writing. If you enjoy it, who cares what other people think. I look forward to reading the whole novel.
  1. Super Kami Dende's Avatar
    Man I'd wear that armour to every convention I ever went to.
  1. mmoca5eb6916b3's Avatar
    This is an interesting discussion, but why are you not quoting or paraphrasing specific sections from the text for discussion? Simply demeaning the text by claiming to hold finely attuned reading sensibilities closes discussion, so please make your observations about Golden's prose explicit.
  1. Kiri's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Amaroq View Post
    First it was Knaak getting shit, and now that his writing for Blizzard was canned, people are turning to shitting on Golden. She's far superior to Knaak and I genuinely enjoy her writing. If you enjoy it, who cares what other people think. I look forward to reading the whole novel.
    Golden is competent. That is my opinion. She is not grandiose or anything, but she is competent at what she does.
    However, the issue here is that competence alone is not good enough for people. There are definitely better authors out there and there are better books. And once people read those - and continue mostly reading books of those better authors - that becomes their new standard, meaning everything else becomes sub-par. They also tend to not realize the differences between this book and most fantasy novels. In most of those, authors have a lot of freedom regarding characters and oftentimes even the world they work in. Original fantasy works have much less editorial mandates than those set in established universes. And even extended universe novels can often at least focus on original characters. Golden though, she is working with established characters and has to at least somewhat coordinate that with other writers. The books have to reflect and inform ingame writing, which is no easy task and can be quite restrictive for a writer. Golden seems to have a lot of direction, especially when it comes to political events and outcomes. Her character development seems to often be ignored, too, like with Jaina. That kind of stuff can bog even the best writers down and turn books into messes.

    Plus, she is usually on a fairly tight schedule and can't just take all the time in the world to finish her book. Ain't that right, Mr Martin?
  1. mmocb5eb5900d6's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Amaroq View Post
    First it was Knaak getting shit, and now that his writing for Blizzard was canned, people are turning to shitting on Golden. She's far superior to Knaak and I genuinely enjoy her writing. If you enjoy it, who cares what other people think. I look forward to reading the whole novel.
    She's not at all superior to Knaak, he has put out some really enjoyable stuff like Day of the Dragon or the War of the Ancients trilogy. They both have some good and bad works but I mainly blame the state of Warcraft's lore at the time of the novel's writing.
  1. Zephre's Avatar
    I'm not a big fan of Golden's work for one simple reason, she picks favourites, for a game such as WoW it doesn't serve well if you have an author who turns characters into mary sues and others into villains. I mean Sylvanas was already pretty evil already and we're probably gonna kill her Garrosh 2.0 style but the Anduin writing is terrible, the guy can literally do no wrong.

    I've personally had enough of those types in the WoW novels, Thrall and Rohnin were bad enough.

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