Blizzplanet Interview – World of Warcraft: War Crimes by Christie Golden

Welcome to Blizzplanet, everyone. I'm Medievaldragon. Today we are interviewing New York Times best selling authors Christie Golden and Micky Neilson (Blizzard publishing lead). We'll ask questions about World of Warcraft: War Crimes.

Among the interviewers are Blizzplanet staff members: Valnimsil, Sara Storrer and Ian Bates (alson known as The Red Shirt Guy). We'll now begin with the first question.

I think it was email actually. We usually communicate through email; and I do remember (I believe) -- Micky you sent that one to me, and they told me the idea that they wanted me to do and they said they wanted to work with me on developing the outline. Sometimes the outline comes complete from Blizzard and sometimes we all get together and kind of hash it out and this time we were getting together to hash it out; and I remember thinking: "Wow! This is a really, really cool idea."

I don’t know of anything like this that has been done before and I was just very excited because I knew it would be an aweful lot of interesting possibilities and threads and story ideas.

We have Baine with the thankless task of trying to defend Garrosh and we end up with having Tyrande being essentially prosecution which is accuser in the terminology that we use for the book; and it was a little sneaky of the Alliance. They originally fronted Varian; and Varian got vetoed so then they were able to get Tyrande who was going to be much more, I think, hard-nosed than Varian, at least the Varian as he is now (would have been). So the Horde might have done better to have stuck with Varian.

You know I think if you want to take the big scope (which is what of course the celestials are doing), it is not just Garrosh. It is everybody. And the point of the trial is for many, many story arcs are wrapped up here or examined and gently laid to rest; and a lot of people go on their own journeys here, so it is not just Garrosh who is one of the main characters.

It’s several characters that we have followed for many, many years; and this trial pretty much brings out all the skeletons in the closet and all the ways of looking at things. So my hope was that it would feel like a journey of not just the one character. Not just the main character that is on trial; and I think the cover art was brilliantly designed to reflect that. That’s one of the best covers I think I have ever seen; and it does such a great job of setting the stage to the fact that this is a multi-character book with many different arcs.

The basic idea was conceived by Blizzard and Micky has an interesting back story angle on that so I will let him take this one.

That pretty much sums it up. We got to do one of my favourite things in life, which is to hang out at Blizzard HQ and have a great jam session with some extremely creative minds. I love that. I love getting to interact with the Blizz-folks and pounding out these ideas and it is just so exciting to in retrospect to look back on those meetings and say: "Yea, I remember when Chris had the idea of this; or Micky said this; or Dave told us about this quest chain:" and so it was great. It is always fun to sit down and co-create with Blizzard.

It wasn’t necessarily that it would be the best way to represent Warlords as much as it was an opportunity to answer several questions and set up Warlords. So we knew by the end of the book (and I won’t give anything away for people who haven’t read it) but we knew what the ending of the book was going to be; and we knew that the ending of the book was going to set up where players are going to be going in the game.

So in the meantime, though, we had an opportunity to really dig into several marquee characters, and to take a look back at kind of how we have all gotten here; and everything that Garrosh has done; and kind of remind people who Garrosh is and why he does what he does; and thinks the way he thinks; and we were also able to explore a fantastic theme in the book, which is that even though Garrosh is certainly guilty of all these many crimes, no one is innocent. So it was a way to really dig into that theme which we were all very excited about.

That is a great question; because there are a lot of things we wanted to say and showcase and I have done a multi-character book before with "The Shattering" ... was my first effort to do that with a Warcraft book; and so, one of the things I actually did, because as a writer you want everything to have good pacing and good balance ... so one of the things I did was actually get out index cards (good old color index cards); and each color was a different plot thread, and I laid them out on my dining room table so I could see when it was time to shift the attention to one thread and make sure that everything was moving on together as it were, so yes that was a big challenge for me.

I don’t think there is anything that got cut, but initially -- you know, WoW is so much to choose from; so I let the charges that were levered against Garrosh (which come from actual charges, and where we got the term crimes against humanity was of course Nuremburg); and I let the charges dictate which scenes came.

I wanted to make sure I had something really striking and griping and dramatic for each of the charges that were levied against Garrosh; and so at the beginning, it was kind of like an embarrassment of riches; but once I had a guideline which was: "Does this serve the theme of war crimes?"; then it became a lot easier to narrow down especifically what scenes to pick.

The whole bombing of Theremore was really striking to me because we have a scene actually in-game where Garrosh punishes, indeed kills, somebody for doing pretty much exactly what he ends up doing; and the contrast between the Garrosh-then and the Garrosh-now; and especially also of how deeply profoundly that affected, that wiped a whole city off the map. That’s a big deal; and so again, we are looking for things that do double duties. So to be able to compare Garrosh’ actions before and then currently with Jaina; and how it affected her, as well as everybody else who was involved in Theramore -- the repercussions of that, that was a really key scene; and that was one of the things we did know we had to have in the book.

Well, I certainly had a blast writing them. You know, it was actually comic relief. You put a goblin in, and you are going to have a laugh. So I love writing goblin dialogue. I gathered them. I had some suggestions from Blizzard, and then I actually ran across Harrowmeiser in-game; and I was like: "I have got to put him in." So they were a great foursome; and such a differing personalities. I would be more than happy to work with them again. I don’t know about anything coming down the pipe for sure; but I certainly enjoyed writing those scenes.

Yea, that was one of the plot threads that we did not feel helped the main storyline; which was the trial, as well as character development, as well as etc. and so forth. This book could have been huge, if we had wanted to, we could have addressed so many different plot threads and storylines; and so it was hard picking and choosing.

Certainly for some of the crimes that he was charged with you could find 5 different examples of it, for instance. We really tried to just narrow things to certain characters and certain events that we thought would really serve the book best and that was unfortunately one of the plot threads that we decided early on not to pursue.

Let’s see off the top of my head they are listed in one of the excerpts: Forcible movement of population, the kidnapping of children, genocide, targeting sites that were not seen as military necessities for war, forced pregnancy (was a big one and very hot topic when that came out). So yeah, there is 10 of them and they are all real world crimes that we did see reflections of in-game.

I am very fond of Baine. When I started working with him in "The Shattering," he really didn't have that much character development. We knew his backstory; but we didn’t really have a personality for him other than you assumed he would be a pretty cool guy; because we knew Cairne, and Cairne was a cool guy.

So I really got to develop his personality and figured out a voice that I could listen to when I was writing for him and so I have really become very fond of him and I identify a lot with him with the loss of his father; and I think he is what I like to call in a book "a good travelling companion."

I believe when you are reading a book you are almost on a journey with the characters and you want to have good travelling companions. They don’t necessarily have to be the best people in the whole world; but they have to be comfortable and entertaining and I think Baine serves that purpose.

I think Tyrande as evidenced by what she did in that particular scene that you referenced, she wants Garrosh dead and she has been charged with doing, just as Baine has been, doing the very best she can to make sure that this orc receives what she and many others perceive as the only ... the ONLY real justice.

Everything else to her would just be ridiculous; and so I do not think she would stoop to anything illegal or immoral; but if it is there, she is going to use it; and she is also prepared to see that from Baine.

So I won’t say she will stop at nothing; but I think she will use every tool in her kit to make sure that she gets the verdict that she wants.

Micky, I am going to let you field that; because I basically follow what Blizzard tells me on this. When you are dealing with time travel (because it is all theoretical) there are many different ways you can go; but I think Micky is better equipped to speak on that.

This one is ... I'm going to make it as spoiler-free as possible ... The August Celestial's verdict (without giving it away) is quite odd, considering what Garrosh has done and we know he is going to do in "Warlords of Draenor". Do you think they will regret their decision? -- the Celestials, once we find out about the Iron Horde. Or can they see into the future? ... like some people have theorized. Or do they want him to go to Draenor?

... Like how the destruction of the veil ended up helping the pandaren in the long run.

Yea, I'd just say that-- you know ... We as mortals are short-sighted. They are not. So they have a much bigger picture, and they have that wisdom. So even if it is not necessarily a matter of being able to... look into a crystal ball and see what is going to happen 100 years from now, they still have the long view; and that is built on the wisdom that they have accumulated over their lifetimes.

I do have one comment I want to make. Again, thank you so much for this opportunity. Christie, you did an amazing job with this. Once again, and Micky and Lindsy... you guys are doing an amazing job over there, as well. So once again, thank you guys so much for this.

Of course.

That is a Micky question.

No, that was one of the plot threads we decided not to pursue.

Cool.

The previous expansions, there has usually been two different novels to introduce the expansion. Are we going to see a new book some time in the next months?

I would suggest that people read it; because there is so many characters and so many references to the history, that it is going to be pretty a good refresher just kinda on who the Alliance and the Horde are, and were; and hopefully, are going to be.

I think also it is a chance to hang out with some of your favorite NPCs, and hopefully it is interesting philosophy conversation that you can have.