Jason Schreier's "Play Nice"

Jason Schreier is a big name in gaming journalism, and when I first heard that he was going to publish a book about the history of Blizzard, I got quite excited. I would've even bought it on launch day, but then I found out that for some reason physical publication in the UK was delayed by something like two months, which kind of made me lose interest. I just watched/read some coverage of the book around the time of its release in the US and then mostly forgot about it again.

Until the other day that is, when it suddenly reappeared on my radar for some reason and I decided to finally pick it up. It was an enjoyable read, and I gave it four stars on Goodreads.

I especially appreciated the earlier chapters, because as someone who knew nothing about Blizzard before I started playing World of Warcraft, I always had very limited knowledge of the company's early years. I'd sometimes see people make comments about Blizzard North or Vivendi and have no real idea what they were talking about. Now I do, so in that regard, the book was very enlightening. The chapters about more recent developments were admittedly a lot less interesting, as they mostly covered events that I'd basically seen play out live on social media/in the news as they happened, and in greater detail than was covered in the book.

What really kind of disappointed me though was how little coverage there was about World of Warcraft. To be honest, the main reason I bought the book was that I was hoping for some juicy behind-the-scenes information about just why the devs made certain decisions in regards to the game's development over the years. What were they thinking when subscriptions stagnated during Wrath of the Lich King? What insights did they gain from players' responses to Cataclysm? Just why did Warlords of Draenor turn out the way it did? That sort of thing.

However, for some reason the game and its development got what I felt was very little coverage for something that's presumably been keeping the lights on at Blizzard for the last two decades. There's a chapter about its development and launch, and later there are a few pages dedicated to the release of Classic, but that's kind of it. Occasionally there'll be a reminder that WoW was still releasing expansions but that's as far as it goes, which really struck me as a big oversight.

One of the major themes of the book is the struggle between devs wanting to prioritise player enjoyment and corporate wanting to focus more on monetisation, and I figured WoW in particular would offer a lot of ground to cover on that topic. Talk about the release of the sparkle pony! The introduction of character boosts! The WoW Token! But nope, not a word about any of these things.

Considering the amount of random developers that get name-dropped throughout the book, it was also surprising that there wasn't even a mention of Ion Hazzikostas, considering how many years he's been at the helm of WoW by this point. Maybe he intentionally didn't want to be part of this book, but considering Jason's seeming lack of interest in WoW-related goings-on, I also wouldn't be surprised if he simply didn't consider talking to him.

In summary, "Play Nice" is a well-researched history of Blizzard and definitely relevant to anyone with an interest in Blizzard and/or the PC gaming industry, but for WoW players in specific, it's not as insightful as I would've expected.

I used to hope that Jason would write a similar book about Bioware one day so I could learn more about what happened behind the scenes of SWTOR's post-launch development, but at this rate it doesn't look like that subject would get much coverage even if such a book were to happen.

The WoW Diary

I first heard about John Staats' WoW Diary when Wilhelm posted about its failed first run on Kickstarter. In what you would very much expect from a former Blizzard dev, Staats learned from his failure, iterated on his approach and tried again a few months later, this time achieving rousing success. His newfound marketing chops were through the roof, as I saw him guest on at least three different WoW podcasts to promote his book within the course of a couple of weeks, and that was in my own very limited sphere of influence. He was probably on a lot more.

I was tempted to chip in for a copy of my own back then but held off, just to regret it almost immediately. After everything I'd heard from Staats and about the book, I really wanted a copy, but I figured that I'd just have to wait until the public release on Amazon. I remembered to check back a couple of times but at no time was it marked as available yet.

Interestingly it was while I was visiting a friend's house and watching a YouTube video there without adblock on that I saw an ad for the book, immediately prompting me to go, "Oh, it's finally out?!", at which point I instantly went to Amazon and ordered my own copy. Unfortunately Amazon.co.uk only had the Kindle version available (and according to the author himself that won't change any time soon), but the US site also offered shipping to the UK so I went for that.

Product picture from Amazon.

Including shipping, I thought that the price of nearly £50 was pretty steep even for a big hardcover, but I can't say that I've regretted my purchase. It's not really one of those glossy coffee table books - while there are interesting images inside, they are mostly low-res screenshots and grainy, twenty-year-old photos - but the content was absolutely worth it to me.

Staats documents the development of WoW from 2000, when he joined Blizzard as a 3D environmental artist, to its launch in late 2004. The short chapters, sometimes only 1-2 pages long, attempt to document events in chronological order, though many tend to cast a spotlight on different aspects of the project that were going on simultaneously to an extent, such as zone design and creation of character models.

If there's one overarching lesson I came away with is that it's a minor miracle that WoW, or any MMO for that matter, has been made at all, considering how many different parts needed to be co-ordinated and required constant refinement and iteration until launch (and sometimes even afterwards). It really makes you respect the people involved all the more.

The subject of crunch - an uncomfortable discussion point in game industry circles in recent years - also came up somewhat to my surprise. While Staats made a point of saying that overtime was largely voluntary and driven by passion for the project, he does also admit that this wasn't always the case, and that other times people were just dispirited by the long hours required to hit some new deadline. I had thought that this sort of working environment was a recent trend brought on by corporate greed, but clearly practices like these have been part of game development for much, much longer.

Still, for the most part the book is quite cheerful and light-hearted, featuring amusing anecdotes about goings-on in at the then still quite small Blizzard offices and fascinating insights into why certain features of WoW came out the way they did. To think that all these years I could have avoided getting lost in Wailing Caverns by simply following the mushrooms!

The one slight criticism of the book I have is that the amount of name-dropping, while clearly meant to simply give credit where it's due, can sometimes be overwhelming, as it can be hard for the casual reader to remember the names of every dev and artist the author mentions throughout the book and then make sense of what it means when he says that so-and-so also worked on feature X.

That said, when you do know who he's talking about it's super interesting. I had to smile when he mentioned John Smedley and Brad McQuaid being nosy on more than one occasion, and I did a double-take when he mentioned someone called Michael Backus being part of the early quest team - the same guy who used to work at Bioware and whom I once interviewed on the subject of flashpoints.

I can heartily recommend this book to anyone who's a big fan of old-school World of Warcraft or the MMO genre in general. The insights it provides are quite amazing.

Book review: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King

Not long ago I abused the occasion of my birthday to let someone else buy me a copy of Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. Now, I still remembered Tam's review of the book and the hilarious follow-up in which he reiterated just how much he hated it, but that didn't stop me from wanting to read it myself. To be honest I've always suspected that my own literary tastes are a lot less refined than Tam's...

In a way I was right, and I did enjoy the book, but at the same time... something felt more than a little off about it, for reasons that had nothing to do with lavender-hued prose or the occasional awkward line.

Basically, I really liked the first half, which introduces us to Arthas the young prince and his budding romance with Jaina Proudmoore. I don't really buy into the cliché of children becoming so infatuated with one another after only a few days that they then spend the next couple of years thinking about each other until they are finally grown up enough to engage in proper romance, but that aside I actually enjoyed this part of the plot. It's kind of cheesy I suppose, but it didn't strike me as particularly unrealistic (aside from the aforementioned childhood-friendship-equals-love-later trope), and I liked seeing Jaina display traces of having a proper personality for once. While her love for Arthas was obviously central to the story, she was still her own person, with interests and responsibilites that had nothing to do with the prince of Lordaeron. In fact, I found myself thinking that I'd be quite happy to read a book solely dedicated to the love triangle between Arthas, Jaina and Kael'thas, but I suppose that's my girly side coming out.

However, around the time the story got to the culling of Stratholme, things started to change. The culling itself wasn't actually that interesting to read about, seeing how I've played through it in WoW over eighty times by now, and Christie Golden pretty much copied the well-known opening scene word for word, with only a little bit of narration added in-between the lines. It's kind of strange, because I always appreciated tie-in novels giving nods to the in-game world before. I suppose the problem is that this wasn't so much a nod as it was a whole transcript.

Following Arthas to Northrend and reading about his adventures there, the feeling that something was slightly off lingered and became even more pronounced after a while. The flow of the story seemed a lot less smooth than before, choppy in fact, with a lot of details appearing disjointed and not really adding up. For example Arthas enters Frostmourne cavern with several of his soldiers, yet when he sees Frostmourne itself he's suddenly alone with Muradin and nobody is there to question the fact that Arthas is happy to leave the old dwarf bleeding in the snow.

This is when I remembered that these were all events that had taken place in Warcraft III (which I never played myself), so I decided to search YouTube for some videos to see if they would clarify things for me. In a way they did, but not as I had hoped. As it turned out, Christie Golden had faithfully copied the dialogue and the events from that game too, including some things that don't really make sense outside of the game, such as Arthas's soldier units disappearing for cut scenes when they are not needed and conveniently showing up again later. Oh dear...

And so things basically continue for the rest of the book, with everything feeling more and more rushed towards the end, leaving little room for actual characterisation between all the summarising of game missions and cut scenes. A lot of things don't get explained at all, probably under the assumption that the readers will "get it" anyway. As someone who's been playing WoW for several years now but never played any other Blizzard games, I felt kind of left out. In more than one case, the random YouTube videos about Warcraft III gave me a better impression of what the hell had just happened than the author's narration.

Also, a lot of the dialogue as copied from the game felt, to me at least, like it was completely at odds with the image of Arthas that Christie Golden herself was trying to convey, which again led to more strangeness whenever Arthas randomly started to mentally angst about Jaina's love and his lost humanity while his faithfully transcribed words and actions were completely contrary to that.

In the end I simply felt slightly disappointed. The book had been an easy read and reasonably entertaining, but even as someone who has only ever played WoW and none of the previous Warcraft games, I felt that I hadn't learned a whole lot of new information about Arthas that I couldn't simply have read on WoWWiki for free. Unless you're a huge fan of Arthas, Jaina or Sylvanas who devours every piece of content related to them that they can find, or conversely you've somehow managed to make it through WOTLK without having much of a clue about who this Lich King chap is, you won't get a whole lot out of reading Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. See if you can borrow it from someone or somewhere for free if you'd like to read it anyway, but if you can't, it's probably better to save your money.

Oh, and did anyone else feel a random urge to read Arthas/Kel'thuzad fan fiction after finishing the book?

Book review: Beyond the Dark Portal

After being reasonably pleased with my last couple of purchases of Warcraft fiction, I decided to also acquire this novel by Aaron Rosenberg and Christie Golden when I spotted it on the shelves of our local book store. Unfortunately this one was a bit of a letdown for me. It wasn't bad per se, but neither plot nor characters really managed to pull me in and hold my attention. I'm a slow reader when it comes to books these days, but the way I could only get myself to read a few pages of this one at a time and then always proceeded to not even touch it for days was lackluster even by my standards.

As far as the plot goes... well, I felt that it didn't have that much to begin with, and what was there was awkwardly structured. It starts with the Dark Portal being closed after the Second War, then Ner'zhul opens it again, then some Alliance come through the portal to Draenor and close it again. In a nutshell. And since the opening and closing of the portal is what everything is centered around, the fact that it starts with being closed and ends with being closed makes it feel like the story goes exactly nowhere. Everyone is constantly referring to all the interesting stuff that happened before the start of the book (the Second War), and there are hints at more interesting stuff happening after the end of the book (the Third War, among other things), but the actual book you're reading feels like it's just a bit of filler in-between, and that just didn't cut it for me in this case.

That's not to say that nothing of interest happens at all: You find out how the Alliance got established on Draenor ("Oh, they just built the Allerian Stronghold! And that must be Wildhammer Stronghold!"), get to follow Deathwing through the Dark Portal and get to experience the destruction of the planet. Yes, you get to read about how Outland came about, but somehow the authors manage to make even something as massive in scope as the destruction of an entire world sound relatively unremarkable. Oh look, there's some earthquakes and floating rocks and the sea is gone... but never mind, we must catch that Ner'zhul guy! /facepalm

Character development was also lacking in my eyes. Ner'zhul is an interesting character, but compared to say, his portrayal in Rise of the Horde, his second descent into madness in Beyond the Dark Portal doesn't get fleshed out in nearly as much detail. There are more interesting personalities roaming around on Horde-side, but they all tend to only make brief appearances before disappearing again, making it hard for the reader to ever get particularly attached to any of them.

On Alliance-side we have a more consistent but less interesting ensemble: I loved Khadgar in The Last Guardian, but what he gained in experience and power since then seems to have come at a loss in personality. Turalyon the paladin is such a goodie-two-shoes that it hurts sometimes; at first you wish him well and root for him, but after a while his eternal and unwavering faith in the light and all its goodness just gets boring. And Alleria? She basically starts out as a traumatised and angry bitch, which for some reason everyone sees as an obvious sign that she needs some man-loving from Turalyon (no really), and when she finally caves to the peer pressure and lets him have some, she then transforms into an empty shell of a love interest who's only there to encourage her man by occasionally squeezing his hand and giving him loving smiles. Blech.

Also, I'm all for creative use of language, but "young-old" as a casually used adjective needs to die in a fire. Okay, so Khadgar is a young person in an old man's body. I don't mind being reminded of that occasionally, but if you do so then take the time to bloody type it out. Casually throwing out a phrase like "the young-old mage said this and that" is just... no.

Book review: World of Warcraft Volume 1 & 2

Has there ever been a more nondescript title for a WoW book? I think not. To clarify, these are the first two hardcover collections of the ongoing World of Warcraft comic book series, containing the first fourteen issues, which form a single story arc. I bought the first one on a whim ages ago and saw the second one in a store the other day, so now that I've read the whole story I thought I should give it a review.

In a nutshell, the books tell the story of how amnesiac King Varian washes up on the shores of Durotar, gets captured by an orc and trained to be a gladiator, eventually escapes, gets his memory back and then goes off to do the Onyxia quest chain to get control of his kingdom back from Lady Katrana Prestor.

First off, let's talk about the art. As a layman, I'd call it slightly manga-ish for the most part, reasonably well drawn and nicely coloured throughout. It's probably a matter of personal taste whether you like that particular style or not. I did for the most part, especially the full page views of the landscape early on - Thunder Bluff and Teldrassil really look gorgeous.

Towards the end of the second book the style suddenly changes a lot though, something I didn't like too much personally. Varian suddenly goes from well-muscled to looking like he's got a bunch of balloon animals trapped under his shirt, and his little son Anduin, who initially looked a lot like his in-game model actually, suddenly seemed to age by ten years over the course of a few pages and acquired a few balloon animals of his own. Blech.

I also can't help commenting on the ladies. I have no problem with the way they are drawn per se, but in the context of the story there was a certain... dissonance between the art and what was happening at times. For example there's Valeera the blood elf, who looks like your typical scantily-clad female eye candy. Now, that's fine, but then everyone in the story keeps going on about how she's obviously just a child. Child... flashing boobs and buttocks in everyone's faces... does not compute!

I also didn't like what they did with Lady Prestor. While her model was still present in the game, she always looked like a relatively modest woman to me who quietly steered things from the background. In the comic on the other hand she looks like a complete hussy, fondles Varian at every opportunity and makes a point of loudly contradicting any sensible suggestions in matters of state, so you really have to wonder how the hell nobody noticed that something was off with her earlier.

This leads us to the story. While the dialogue is pretty forgettable, it doesn't really matter too much for the most part since a lot of page time is simply spent on hacking and slashing bad guys, which means that the gist of the story can be conveyed in a few panels anyway. Over the course of fourteen issues it still manages to be reasonably interesting, though I rolled my eyes a bit whenever Varian decided to spend another issue off on some side quest instead of getting on with the important part of the story.

The first volume is basically all about Varian's gladiator life and him recovering his identity. Plot-wise I thought this was the weaker part of the story since it had one glaring flaw in my eyes: How could Varian become a world-famous gladiator, watched by hundreds of people from all races, and nobody recognises him? Not even Jaina does at first; it's just silly. This is even more accentuated by the fact that as soon as the plot reaches the point where Varian remembers who he is, everyone who spots him, even from a distance, goes "oh hey, isn't that the king of Stormwind"? Rrright.

The second volume is basically Varian doing the Onyxia attunement chain for Alliance, including Jail Break! and the big face-off between Marshal Windsor and General Marcus Jonathan. I actually did that quest chain back at level sixty on my night elf priest, without even knowing what it was for, and I remember how epic it was, our characters walking through Stormwind, being saluted by the guards and random players tagging along to find out what the hell was going on. In a way it was cool to see that played out on the page, but it also made me a little sad again to be reminded of why they removed that chain. I would have preferred to keep that in the game, and Blizzard could have kept Varian out of it. Meh!

In the end he also goes off to kill Onyxia himself, because clearly we can't have any random adventurers do that, only the king of Stormwind himself could best her! /cough. That said, it was quite humorous to read about that encounter in comic form, as it was very true to how it works in the game. (Look, the dwarf got tail-swiped into the whelp cave!) Except that she's totally immune to roots in the game, yo.

So what's my final verdict? If you see this in a store, flip through the pages a bit to see if you like the art, and if you do I'd say that it's worth a purchase. I wouldn't recommend it just for the story though, as it's really not that amazing. Myself, I originally bought it in the hopes of learning a bit more about Varian and maybe discovering the reason for why he acts like such an arrogant prick in the game, but I have to admit that I was utterly disappointed in that regard. In the comic he's actually reasonably nice and sensible, especially during the first half when he interacts quite normally even with the Horde. However, once he remembers who he is he suddenly seems to stop having any facial expressions beyond angry brooding. I mean, I get that the whole Onyxia business would piss him off, but it really gives no explanation for why he'd suddenly be so hateful towards the Horde when he treated them alright before, even while he was being abused for their spectator sports.

Book review: Rise of the Horde

I'm not a huge consumer of Warcraft merchandise, but a few years ago I stumbled upon a copy of The Warcraft Archive in a bookstore and decided to buy it on a whim. It contained four short novels, ranging in quality from pretty good (The Last Guardian) over reasonably entertaining (Lord of the Clans) to occasionally cringe-worthy (Of Blood and Honor) and humorously bad (Day of the Dragon). Since most of what I heard about other WoW novels seemed to firmly place them in the latter two categories, I shied away from buying any more... until I spotted Rise of the Horde in another bookstore the other day and decided that since I had liked Lord of the Clans well enough and this was by the same author and also about orcs, the chances of me enjoying it were pretty good.

I'm happy to say that my assessment was spot on. Rise of the Horde is no literary masterpiece, but if you're sufficiently interested in the plot and characters it will keep you entertained, maybe even hooked. I was actually a bit disappointed that it ended when it did, not because it didn't make sense, but because I know that other interesting stuff happened after the last events in the book and I would have liked to just read on.

I'm not sure how interesting the book would be to anyone who already knows the story of the Rise of the Horde in detail, but I didn't, so it was. As someone who didn't play any of the previous Warcraft games I really appreciated the opportunity to read about some of the related events in novel form. Of course there's always WoWWiki if you have lore questions, but to me reading WoWWiki is like reading a history textbook - okay for quick fact checking, but I'll be unlikely to retain anything but some scattered bits and pieces for longer than five minutes. (Or maybe it's just me who's like that with history textbooks...) I do much better when I can look at events as a story, with context and human (or orcish as it may be) relations laid out in a logical manner. Finally I won't have to be confused anymore when someone mentions Ner'zhul or Gul'dan!

Also, it may be a bit silly but I really enjoy reading about the same fantasy world that I play in every day. Good old Velen, I know he's just as ugly in the Exodar as the book says he is! Ata'mal crystal? Oh yeah, I remember taking that off some demon dude in Netherstorm. And so on and so forth... though there's sometimes also the negative side effect of the images of the game world conflicting with what I'm reading. Like me thinking that there's no Draenei city other than Shattrah in Terokkar, I've explored it all so I know! Or frowning at the description of K'ure being buried under a lake when he's just floating around in the back of Oshu'gun in the game.

Still, overall I can recommend the book as good, light entertainment for anyone who wants to know more about that particular bit of the lore and enjoys reading about the same virtual world they play in every day.