No, I’m not going to pontificate about lore.

I did want to say that, after reading Arthas: Rise of the Lich King (during that whole contest thing for the book release, remember?) it inspired us to go seek out more of the books.

Cassie and I both read and enjoyed the Arthas book. This is kind of amazing, since Cassie, as a rule, does not like fantasy novels. I can’t speak for her, and maybe she’ll let us know what encouraged her to read it, but she did tell me she enjoyed it.

She enjoyed it enough that she tried to find Christie Golden’s other Warcraft novels through our local library system.

It took some cross-library requests to get it, but we got Rise of the Horde through the inter-library transfer system, and bought Lord of the Clans at a local used bookstore, along with (since what the hell, we were there anyway) The Last Guardian and Beyond the Dark Portal.

Edit… the spoiler section talks about a book due this month that, apparently, I am totally wrong about as to what the subject matter is and such. Can’t update it with good info yet, so just follow the link and check out the comments. There is no way for me to track down the truth, and figure out what book is about Varian Wrynn and what the Ashbringer graphic novel is about. Working Bear is working as intended.

Spoiler alert!
The collected graphic novel of the King of Stormwind comics, World of Warcraft: Ashbringer is due out later this month, and I’m hoping to get a look at that, because I’d like to see how they resolved “The King is Missing, Oh Noes!” quest chain from Alliance side into “The King is Back and Cranky!” that we see from doing the Dragonblight quest chain tand storming Undercity with the King, and being pissy with Thrall.
Spoilers over

Anyway… so we got these books, and Cassie read the Rise of the Horde, followed by Lord of the Clans, and then said I should get busy with them, that they’re very good.

I have been reading the Ian Rankin “Inspector Rebus” novels from 1 to whatever based on the recommendation of our friend Daak, so I’ve been distracted (I’m on The Black Book now, with four more in the series lined up on the table at home) but I took time out to read those two Warcraft books, plus The Last Guardian since I lived for so long in Karazhan that I wanted to read about it a bit.

I don’t know what Cassie’s thoughts on them are, but I have to say that I loved both books about the Horde. The Rise of the Horde was, obviously, a little richer in the lore of the Orcs, not surprising considering how many years of development passed between the two books, but Lord of the Clans kicked ass too.

Makes me want to run Escape from Durnhold again for old times’ sake.

I don’t know how many of you out there have read the books that have come out, but if you haven’t… I suggest you give them a try. They really are very good, and they tie into our game play events really nicely.

It does add an extra dimension to the game when you know so much more about the world and the people in it.

Hopefully Cassie will have the time to mention her thoughts about them as someone that only plays the game and doesn’t usually (okay, ever) read fantasy novels.

And let me know if you enjoyed these books too, or if they inspired your creation of a guild or changed how you did quests. I’m curious, because I can see how, if you played on the Horde side, these books could inspire all kinds of fun RP events and activities to flourish!

The decisions were difficult to make. I want to be very clear about this. We received a lot of great entries, and every single one of them was very well written, and in almost all cases it was easy to tell that a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of your personal thoughts and imagination were caught up into your stories.

In choosing the winners of the contest, we tried to pick the stories that we loved the most that embraced and ran with the concept of bringing your own character into a personal moment with Arthas, as we defined in the original post.

There were a great many stories that were extremely well written and imaginative, that we felt were great… but just did not fulfill that one rule, that it be about you interacting directly with Arthas.

In the end, however, we could not simply disregard every entry because they chose to write about or around arthas rather than face to face. It was also about imagination, after all.

So we chose four winners from the group that wrote a story of their character directly interacting with Arthas, and one winner that wrote an extremely imaginative story weaving their in game activities with the recent patch shenanigans, into a story where the presence of Arthas was there, but there had been no true interaction between them.

So here we go, the list of winners who will be receiving a book. Over the course of the weekend, I will be sharing those stories with you, one story per post. I think their work deserves it.

A huge thank you to everyone that entered. I only wish I could give every one of you a book, because you far surpassed my wildest dreams with your creativity, your ingenuity, and your passion.

In no particular order the winners are -

Malphailuron of Eredar (also known as Warriorpanda) with a story about the desire of preventing the evil that would be the Lich King… tempered with a love and trust in the faithfulness of the Light.

Hannelore with a story that, while short, invested an incredible amount of emotional power, of passion and dread into her brief encounter with the Lich King that made me want to see a lot more of her adventures.

Cowsareus of the Twilight Hammer EU, who wrote a stirring story of a Druid seeking to work in the way of nature, preparing for a future spring right at the start of the most brutal winter.

Kraggette of Anvilmar with a story of intrigue and betrayal on the very eve of war against the Banshee Queen.

And, last but not least, Ærynn Lómëhtar with the entry that, as I said, may not have quite fulfilled the concept of a face to face encounter with Arthas… but was our choice to represent all those that went nuts with great stories that just didn’t follow the rules.

Congratulations to all of you, and to everyone that wrote such stirring stories.

All of the entries will eventually be posted in an archived format later, so that all of them can be enjoyed as they should. Just because these five were the winners in no way means the other stories were bad. Far from it. Some of them were just incredibly wonderful, including the POEtic efforts of Krizzlybear, and the explosive fun of Honorshammer. Those stories certainly should NOT just vanish into the darkness.

But in the meantime, the winning five will be here on the blog this weekend!

Grats!

As of now, every entry in my inbox has been properly filed, and the contest is closed.

I had a much stronger turnout that expected, and each and every entry was of exceedingly amazing quality. There are a LOT of excellent writers out there amongst you, and to be honest I didn’t expect to only get great entries. I had thought that at least a few of you would have tossed in a lame entry. No such thing occured, they are great one and all.

Which is a big pain in the butt, since they are so well done and imaginative. It’s gonna take me a bit longer than I expected to read through them all, and take notes, and compare with Cassie, and make the final decision.

Sooo….. it’s probably going to be late Friday afternoon/evening before we announce the winners. Sorry about that.

Still…. great job to everyone that submitted an entry. Just amazing. You folks are amazing.

I’ll be back with your update Friday!

Just to clarify one thing… you are not limited to two paragraphs, and if you go longer you will not be disqualified.

However, this is meant to be your story about one short encounter, five minutes or so, a brief moment in time.

If it takes you 3 pages to get your encounter described the way you think it should be, go with it, it’s your writing. You won’t be excluded.

Give it a shot; creativity, imagination and fun will matter a lot more than how many words or paragraphs you use.

Good luck!

The contest is a go, I say again, the contest is a go!

We have five hardcover copies of the new World of Warcraft novel, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden, and they are going to go to you, my wonderful readers!

Here is the good news; the contest is open to anyone, anywhere in the world to enter. It will be open to everyone who reads my blog, irrespective of where you live. The one stipulation; you have to actually be able to receive mail. Gotta have what they call an ADDRESS. 

The nice lady who is providing these books for the contest is working with me on this… she will mail the US copies directly to the winner, and she will send the copies for international winners to me to mail out.

So, five books. Five wonderful, glorious books.

I will now proceed to make you jump through hoops. Because I can.

I, of course, am full of imagination, wit and wisdom. So, when presented with the need to come up with an appropriate contest for these wonderful books, I came up with the most brilliant idea ever.

I asked Cassie to come up with the idea.

And she delivered, boy, did she deliver. You think I’m kidding, but nope, this was all her idea, and it’s certainly better than the crap I was coming up with. 

The Contest!

You are to email me a written interaction between you and Arthas, a little creative writing project describing a five minute encounter. It should take you no more than two paragraphs.

EDIT: You can certainly go over that length… you will not be disqualified in any way. If your idea takes longer, take as long as you need. Just, try and remember… it’s supposed to be one scene.

The Challenge!

Choose any point in the life or transformation of Arthas, from as early as his childhood, to as late as his full transformation into the Lich King, or anywhere in between, where you would like to meet Arthas as your character for just FIVE MINUTES… and describe the encounter, what you would like to ask of him, say to him, or DO to him. 

Be imaginative.

I love the idea. For one thing, it works for both Horde or Alliance of any level… and Cassie hit the nail on the head, what better contest to hold when the prize is an original novel delving deep into the history of Arthas and the lore of the World of Warcraft?

So you are to perform a little creative writing, and knowledge of or at least enthusiasm about the lore or story of Arthas is what it’s all about.

Write up your encounter, and email it to me (with your name and address where you want the book mailed) to tigerlordgm AT yahoo DOT com no later than the evening of Thursday, April 16th, with the subject header “BBB Arthas Contest“.

Cassie and I will read all of your entries Thursday evening, and choose the winners Friday morning, April 17th.

You hear that? You’ve got until the night of Thursday April 16th to email me your contest entry! So don’t delay!

A break for station identification.

Now, I’d like to take the time to seriously thank Marni and the fine folks at Simon And Schuster Publishing, who are making this contest possible, who are offering these books as prizes for this contest, and in general are being really awesome.

I’d also appreciate it if those of you who are choosing to compete in this contest (and anyone else interested in book news) would do me a favor, and sign up to receive Simon & Schuster book news, videos and more at Simon And Schuster’s Preference Center.

Hold on, put down the damn pitchforks… give me a chance here.

You don’t have to buy anything or anything like that… but, you know how these things work. They want to get the word out about their new book, and are offering advance copies for people like me to review, and copies as prizes for contests.

It’s all about getting the word out.

So, as far as I’m concerned, if you could take a few moments to confirm for them that promotions like this actually reach people who like the books and contests by signing up for email news… well, it helps convince them these kinds of promotions are good ideas.

Hey, they’re the ones nice enough to publish the books I like to read, so you’re damn right I’m going to support a mail opt-in. You can choose to sign up or not, as you prefer.

If it increases the possibility I will someday see an advance copy of a novel about Sylvannas Windrunner, you best be believing I’m going for it.

Thank you for your time, and seriously… good luck in your entry, I can’t wait to read them!

And you know… you KNOW I’ll be posting the winners, so make sure you also include, along with your mailing name, your chosen nom nom de plume.