The First To Second Edition Transition
In 2005 White Wolf Publishing updated the rules for the game into a new edition and renamed the series World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game to tie in with the success of World of Warcraft, under the Open Gaming License. The Art in second edition continued to have Samwise Didier in its crew but no longer Metzen. Instead it had been praised with likewise talented artists as Glenn Rane (who also created many of the recent covers for novel books and Burning Crusade concept art). Glenn was responsible for the entire art found in the Monster Guide marking it as the only book to have just one artist.
The early version of the game was full of short stories throughout the series. There are little or no short stories printed in the new series with only the core rulebook containing a simple anecdote in the introduction to the book. This has since changed, as the Alliance Player's Guide, the Horde Player's Guide, and Dark Factions all include several short stories in the format of sidebars instead of full-pages.
Like the MMO, Chris Metzen is in charge of the lore, and he uses the books to expand upon things in his view of the World of Warcraft. Many things do not show up in the MMO, due to limitations the game's scale, and other gameplay mechanics. Metzen's personal view is that the history of Azeroth is not found in just one source, but includes the RPG, Novels, Comics, Manuals, and Games.
Most of the books are placed chronologically before World of Warcraft, and authors such as Brann Bronzebeard cover many alternate legends believed by the people of Azeroth covering various topics. Many of the books are located at earlier points in the timeline, and the culture, and population factors, and other historical events have taken place or changed since the point in time they cover.
Many cultures have changed since the period of time when the RPG books take place, and even between the events of the books. Some cultures mentioned no longer exist at the time of World of Warcraft, and some are cultures that existed thousands of years before or during the "War of the Ancients".
Still, the books of the roleplaying game is one of the major sources for lore of the Warcraft universe, and is often quoted on several Wikis related to the different games.
Read more about this topic: Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game
Famous quotes containing the words the first, edition and/or transition:
“The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.””
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house, but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)