‘World of Warcraft’ Wednesday!

Because alliteration is always cool... :o)

I’ve always found it odd that while I can sit and read for hours I’ve got the attention span of a gnat when it comes to spending a similar amount of time playing computer games. Grand Theft Auto is one of my favourite games but you can guarantee that within ten minutes I’ll have stopped trying to complete the mission and decided to drive around Liberty City mowing down innocent pedestrians instead. It’s the same kind of thing with Star Wars: Battlefront, while my comrades are holding out against stormtroopers I find myself shooting ewoks and seeing what happens if I climb out of my X-Wing in mid-flight. I won’t tell you what I did to the citizens of Mos Espa, suffice it to say that a young Anakin Skywalker refused to help me onto the next stage of the game...

It’s no surprise then that I’ve never felt the urge to give the ‘World of Warcraft’ a go. A game that demands you sacrifice hours out of your day to complete quests? I wouldn’t last an hour before I got bored, tried to do something stupid and got myself in so much trouble that I would never be able to show face in the World of Warcraft ever again. ‘World of Warcraft’ books are a completely different deal though, I could read these and not do anything silly at all. Thanks to Tokyopop, I got the chance to check out some of their ‘World of Warcraft’ manga. Here’s what I thought...



‘Warcraft: Dragon Hunt’ - Richard Knaak & Jae-Hwan Kim

‘Dragon Hunt’ is the opening shot in Richard Knaak’s ‘Sunwell Trilogy’ and is one of those books that has the weird effect of leaving me non-plussed but interested in seeing where it goes next. A mysterious power has arisen in the world of Azeroth and it’s a race to see whether the blue dragon Kalec or the forces of the Undead Scourge get their hands on it first...
While I really enjoyed Jae-Hwan Kim’s artwork (which really brought Azeroth and its inhabitants to life) Knaak’s story didn’t do so well. There’s plenty of action and betrayal but the bottom line is that it’s the beginning of a quest story with all that entails. Cue lots of characters being manoeuvred into position for questing, the discovery of where the mysterious power resides and the introduction of the evil villain. It’s all handled well but I just couldn’t escape from the feeling that I’d seen it all before. When the beautiful (yet mysterious) maiden met the down on his luck (but still rock hard) warrior I knew that I had. The thing is though, I still find myself wanting to find out what happens next so it must be doing something right...

Seven out of Ten



‘Warcraft: Legends (Volume One) – Various

This one was more like it however. The first volume of ‘Legends’ collects four different tales from the Warcraft world and, as such, doesn’t give the reader too much time to get bogged down in formulaic storytelling. The clichés are still there but at least there’s some variety. ‘Fallen’ is best read after you have read the ‘Sunwell Trilogy’ but this tale of a bid to escape a curse still makes for an interesting read.
‘The Journey’ was perhaps my favourite of the four with it’s warnings of the perils of war made recklessly and what might happen if you try to do the right thing by your family. It was nothing that I hadn’t read before but I still felt a little sad at the end...
‘How to win friends’ (a tale of a gnome who makes friends the hard way in his new town) was actually my least favourite of the bunch with a tale that was too clearly signposted to be anything other than feel good fluff. The little guy always wins through and this was very clearly the case here.
After the letdown that was ‘How to win friends’, ‘An honest trade’ was a good way to round the book off as it ends things on more of a high. A weaponsmith dwarf learns to grow a conscience (over whose hands his blades end up in) at the cost of his son’s life. His quest for some kind of redemption culminates in an encounter with the orc who killed his son... This is an intense tale and I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of Nori Blackfinger’s adventures leading up to the final encounter, good stuff.

Seven and a half out of Ten

It’s probably fairest to say that these books are most likely to appeal to Warcraft fans, they were harmless fun for me. I wouldn’t mind reading more of these books but can’t see myself going out of my way to get a copy...